Mensa

I'm a member!

5 (10%)

I'm a member of another high-IQ society.

1 (2%)

I probably could get in, just never thought about joining.

10 (20%)

I probably could get in, but I don't want to.

15 (30%)

They probably won't take me, and that makes me sad.

6 (12%)

They probably won't take me, so screw `em!

7 (14%)

Eat the geeks!

6 (12%)

Total Members Voted: 26

[sillyperson]

When I get home tonight I'm taking a drink for Ed.

[Jason Orr]

I feel like groups like Mensa place too much emphasis on one's intelligence.  There are plenty of other factors involved that could make a person great.  The only thing Mensa people have in common is their relative IQ score, which really isn't much.  I don't see the point in associating myself with anyone who would think that's significant enough to form the basis of a fraternal organization.  Atheists have more in common, really, and that isn't saying much.  I could probably get into Mensa (though I've never taken an IQ test so this is speculative), but I have no desire to try.

[mikehz]

Yeah. I've known a few geniuses who did some pretty stupid things. It isn't how much intelligence you have, but how much of what you have that you actually use.

I remember one very high I.Q. guy telling me that he never bothered to read. "I don't read anything I don't have to," he proudly stated. "It's boring. Life is too short."

As that great philosopher Forrest Gump observed, "Stupid is as stupid does."

[bonerjoe]

I don't read anything I don't have to. I prefer to watch it on TV or listen to it on audio book. It's almost impossible for me to learn something just by reading.

[zpippin]

I polled a group of Mensans once to see where they stood politically. My thought is that since there is a 98% chance that a politician would have a lower IQ than us we wouldn't want him making decisions on how we live our lives.

It ended up being about 60% liberal and 40% libertarian.

[alkanen]

I polled a group of Mensans once to see where they stood politically. My thought is that since there is a 98% chance that a politician would have a lower IQ than us we wouldn't want him making decisions on how we live our lives.

It ended up being about 60% liberal and 40% libertarian.

Ahh, but you see, the fine folks at Mensa understand that politicians need to lead the sheeple, since they're obviously so goddamned stupid =)

[mikehz]

One of the objections I've heard to libertarianism is that it takes too much brain power to understand.

[Andy]

One of the objections I've heard to libertarianism is that it takes too much brain power to understand.

Could be true but its no harder to understand than any of the other "ideologies" out there. My guess is that most people who subscribe to anything else don't really understand their own ideology. This would apply to libertarians as well except that some of the counter intuitive stuff means that people have to think about it a little more before actually becoming libertarians.

[AlexLibman]

One of the objections I've heard to libertarianism is that it takes too much brain power to understand.

Only because it goes against government-controlled education that almost everyone has been subjected to since early childhood.  There is a certain natural individualism in man that, if left unmolested, would lead a lot more people to strive to raise themselves above the mob, to take responsibility for their own lives, to put barriers on them on their own terms, to demand individual dignity and, by extension, individual freedom.

Smarts have nothing to do with it.  The libertarian philosophy requires, more than anything else, a certain inner stubbornness, a sense that life is too precious, too important to waste on keeping up with the herd.  Your ideal libertarian third-grader isn't the straight-A's student, it's the C student who never misses an opportunity to cut school and to seize the day on one's own terms, and you just know that thirty years from now the straight-A's student will be calling him "boss"!