On 1/14/2014 3:10 PM, Doctor John wrote:
> On 14/01/14 21:09, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> On 14/01/2014 02:14 AM, Doctor John wrote:
>>> I left the society
>>> purely because I found most members to have their noses stuck firmly up
>>> their own fundaments.
>>
>> Yes... that is the impression I get about Mensa too. "Ooo, let's found a
>> club that only really smart people can join. Then we can all stand
>> around and rejoice in how clever we are..."
>>
>> No thanks.
>
> However, and this not aimed at you, Andrew, it never ceases to amaze me
> how many people have a knee-jerk reaction to the subject of intelligence.
>
> If you can run 10,000 metres in under 27 minutes, you are a hero. If you
> can consistently knock a small white ball into a hole a few hundred
> metres distant, you are a hero and get paid $SILLYNUM for it. If you can
> string more than two words together, have a body like a god/dess and are
> willing to stand in front of a camera for interminable takes, everybody
> wants to have your babies. I also note that good athletes join athletics
> clubs, good soccer players join soccer clubs and Povray users eventually
> end up on news.povray.*. Where's the difference?
>
Hmm. The fact that the people that tend to be in Mensa have more in 
common with Rainman, than Superman? lol Well, ok, not a nice thing to 
say, but its like a social club for billionaires. They are there not 
because they are actually smarter than everyone around them, but because 
they refuse to see how they got their, and being arrogant, assume it was 
due to "talent", and not happenstance and luck. In this case, the 
happenstance that led them to find puzzles, before golf clubs, and 
people willing to let them pursue it, and the luck of figuring out the 
sorts of tricks needed to solve them. The former, is much rarer than the 
latter, which most people can learn, if they want to waste a lot of time 
doing it.

Its all well and good to have a club, but.. Mensa is a bit like a 
"gentleman's club", it comes with the flawed assumption that they are 
there because they are inherently better, and the ones not in the club, 
thus, have huge, substantial, mental flaws. Unfortunately, they do allow 
women in, so its.. kind of hard to walk up to the door, and embarrass 
them, by showing them that they are not as good at the things they 
praise themselves for as they imagine they are. They are, as you say, 
like a golf club, or a sports club, etc., where everyone there is there 
because they got good at something which, frankly, when it comes to 
solving real problems (which don't involve sports stadiums, golf clubs, 
or obscure logic puzzles), is objectively useless.

To me, its a bit like having like... a certificate of expertise for 
something like computer networks. It will get you in the door of places 
where the people like certificates more than actual skill, but, to 
actual solve problems, the only credentials that **might** count, is 
having read a lot of 2600 magazine and attended DefCon conferences. Why? 
Because the guy with only the Cert only knows how to press all the 
buttons, and mash things together "by the book", but the other buy, 
actually knows how, and why, the damn thing actually works, and thus, 
how to make it work, if its not a nice, neat, clear, and simple problem, 
which you can look up in the "official" certification manual. Mensa is a 
label, in other words, which bloody fools value, but anyone that knows 
what they are doing would chalk up as, "Ah, one of those.. lets hope 
they actually know how to F-ing do something though..." lol

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