I’ve been told I was smart ever since my second year of high school (equivalent to the seventh grade: in England, high school covers ages 11 to 18), when they streamed us according to ability. I hadn’t regarded myself as exceptional prior to that, although my primary (elementary) school did have a high reputation, so perhaps all of us were little Einsteins. But for various reasons I won’t go into here, I didn’t do exceptionally well, graduating with respectable but not outstanding final exam grades in a respectable but not outstanding number of subjects. Neither did I, at that time, go on to university, which explains how, more than twenty years later, I come to be plugging my way through junior college.
Of course intelligence is always relative. One thinks of Conan Doyle’s Watson, a medical doctor and no dummy, but intellectually dwarfed by the genius of Sherlock Holmes and humble enough to recognize the fact. I run across folks who are smarter than me all the time, not least here on Blogcritics. I couldn’t hope to grapple with certain individuals on complex questions of economics, for example, without looking like an utter fool. Yet there are other topics on which I am more sure of my ground, and on which I can triumph in an argument.
Which brings me back to that exception: that one class in which I feel that I could never have gotten an A, no matter what. It was a biology class, and while I am deeply interested in the subject, I ran into trouble once we descended to the interior of the cell with its awesomely complex chemistry. No matter how much I tried, I simply could not grasp the exact processes by which, on a molecular level, ATP is synthesized or DNA polymerase replicates genetic information. Clearly, cellular biology is not my strong suit. Neither, apparently, is mental geometry. The IQ test questions I struggled on – and had to guess – were the ones that asked things like whether it was possible to divide an equal-sided octagon into six equilateral triangles with four bisecting lines (or something of that sort).
Conversely, though, I’m sure that if you were to have asked Fritz Lippman – who first described the function of ATP – to write you an essay on foreshadowing and symbolism in Bleak House, he would have struggled. And this is the point. Everyone has their limits: no one, except the few true polymaths like Leonardo, can be universally clever. Holmes, although he possessed deep knowledge of the subject himself, usually deferred to Watson on medical matters.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Lou Novacheck
I was once tested and informed I was eligible to join Mensa. But I took the Groucho plea. I told them I wouldn't belong to any society that would let somebody like me in.
Seriously, I liked the article, but was a little puzzled by your last sentence in the mini-bio, where you say you don't understand why you like techno. I'm ... well, let's say I qualify for Social Security based on age. And I like techno. A lot. But I also like Tchaikovsky and Jimi and Benny Goodman. Seriously, it has to do with math. But you know that already, don't you? Most highly intelligent people have an affinity and quick grasp of math, or at least math principles, a lot of which as to do with the absurd amount of sense it makes in an absurdly nonsensical world. And techno is highly mathematical in structure. 2 + 2 = 4. Simple!
Or was that comment about techno meant as humor, and I've just made myself look completely idiotic because sometimes I'm just too stoopid?
2 - Dr Dreadful
No, I'm just satirizing myself.
It is quite surprising how inventive techno (or trance) music can be. It's cool, fun to listen to and perfect for housework and exercising to!
3 - Clavos
143
4 - Dr Dreadful
Clav, is that your IQ or the number of techno CDs you own?
;-)
5 - Clavos
My age (at least in the morning).
What's a techno???
6 - Dr Dreadful
It's a type of electronic dance music, generally designed to get the discerning nightclubber pumped up without having to resort to interesting substances.
Which is especially odd because I very rarely go clubbing and dance like a demented gecko. Actually, I'm thrashing around to a techno track at this very moment. Quite a sight, I can tell you.
7 - STM
135. Dang. I'm just not very bright.
8 - STM
Plus, I don't particularly like techno, unless a couple of groove armada songs count.
Superstylin' (the extended dance mix).
What a classic track for a surf movie - which is where I first heard it.
9 - duane
Interestingly (to me, anyway) my IQ, bowling average, and golf average (18 holes) are all the same. Damn! Never really noticed before.
10 - Dr Dreadful
Australians say 'dang'???!?
11 - STM
Only for a laugh Doc.
12 - hef
Dr. Dreadful
There are many studies that show the greatest asset to success in life, both as a professional and in business, is the ability to relate to and get along with people. When you're on a job interview, or when trying to get a new client for your business, no one ever asks, or even cares, what your IQ is. What they want to know in the great majority of cases is what kind of person you are, first and foremost, then they want to know if you can get the job done.
You're piece on "Am I Really That Smart?" is the most shameless, unabashed, self-aggrandizing display of arrogance I've seen in many years. What's worse, you're nowhere near as smart as you'd like to believe. If you had any idea how absolutely distasteful and repulsive such a nauseating display of ego is, you'd crawl into a whole till people forgot how arrogant you are.
With that high IQ you think you have, you cannot even comprehend how people look down at such obvious fools. A great actor once said, "If you gotta tell them who you are, then you ain't." For someone to toot his own horn like that, you can't be getting much respect in your personal life.
If you're still in school, stay there. If you're already out, go back. The real world holds nothing but setbacks and failures for such repulsive personalities. You better wake up and smell the real world, it has nothing to do with IQ. You're in for a long series of disappointments and rude awakening.
13 - Dr Dreadful
Hef,
Didn't read past page one, did ya?
14 - stella
Dr. Dreadful, It doesn't matter if he read the whole thing. An article about yourself? Who cares? How vain can you get?!!!
[Stella, we don't usually tolerate the changing of people's online names here - and certainly not when it is by an anonymous commenter with 6 different names coming from one IP address. That will get you banned.
Comments Editor]
15 - Dr Dreadful
It matters if his gripe with it turns out to be the whole point of the article: that IQ in and of itself is not a reliable indicator of smartness.
I'm guessing you didn't read it all the way through either.
But you're right: talking about oneself is always vain. I guess Maya Angelou, Frank McCourt, Marcel Pagnol and the like just shouldn't have written all those autobiographies. Next time I go to the doctor, I'll insist on discussing someone else's medical issues.
16 - duane
Ah, yes, the internet at its best: gratuitous, anonymous, triple-exclamation-mark insults based on a lack of comprehension and a disregard for "the ability to relate to and get along with people."
17 - Davy
I'm trying to follow the logic of this blog, but it fails me.
1. Maya Angelou: American poet and an important figure in the American Civil Rights Movement.
2. Frank McCourt: Winner of Pulitzer Prize.
3. Marcel Pagnol: Several best foreign film awards.
4. Dr. Dreadful: Run-of-the-mill blogger, somebody-wannabe.
Is there something I'm missing about item 4 that should make it part of this list?
It seems stella makes a good point.
18 - Jordan Richardson
So bloggers should never talk about themselves because it's "vain" to do so. Hmm.
I wonder what that says about commenters who feel the arrogant desire to make their thoughts known online to random strangers via obscure and insulting personal insults and ramblings.
19 - El Bicho
Stella, if that's your attitude, I would recommend that you stay away Ruvy's latest article.
20 - Davy
Listen up, people, try to follow this. It's not that complicated.
Dr. Dreadful put himself in the company of three highly-accomplished people.
It can be interpreted in only one of two ways; he is also highly accomplished, or he has an ego that goes far beyond his accomplishments, if he has any accomplishments at all.
Which one is it? Please do fill me in on his background that I may be missing.
21 - Dr Dreadful
Or: it could be an example to illustrate why writing about oneself is not necessarily vain.
What's up, Davy? Did I run into the back of your car or something?
22 - Clavos
Woo Hoo!! What fun!
Doc, ya shoulda stayed in the Politics section, these "culture[d]" types play dirty!!
Stella sez:
It doesn't matter if he read the whole thing. An article about yourself? Who cares?
Well, Stella, apparently you do, cuz here you is, commenting on it...
23 - Davy
Clavos-Watching a cockaroach for a few seconds so you can step on it doesn't mean you care about it.
dreadful-you do a poor job of even avoiding an issue. How did you put yourself in the company of those accomplished people?
24 - Clavos
Clavos-Watching a cockaroach [sic] for a few seconds so you can step on it doesn't mean you care about it.
So, Stella needs you to answer for her?
Blind leading the lame. Or, in this case, the illiterate leading the ignorant.
Try actually reading the article; at least then you might be able to talk about it intelligently.
Nah.
You've already demonstrated the impossibility of that...
25 - Dr Dreadful
Davy, Stella:
The article is not about blowing my own trumpet. I presented my IQ scores as a simple fact, not a boast. Did you expect me to hide my light under a bushel? Would you have been happier if I'd written about my friend Shlomo rather than myself? I would suggest that false modesty is at least as vain as what you're complaining about.
I wrote about myself in this piece because my experience with the online IQ scores is what prompted me to think about the subject in the first place. I'm well aware that IQ is not the be-all and end-all of smartness. There are many different types of intelligence, some of which I rank highly in and some of which I don't - as I acknowledged in the article.
As far as 'putting myself in the company of' Angelou, McCourt and Pagnol goes, I make no pretensions of grandeur. I brought them up simply because Stella seems to look down on people who talk about themselves. Your insistence that I must either be as gifted as them or highly conceited is bullshit. It's an example of the logical fallacy known as the false dilemma.
As I said to Stella also, perhaps I shouldn't talk about myself when I see my doctor either!
Hef:
I've been making a living in 'the real world' for over twenty years. Again, I was not putting my GPA out there to be self-congratulatory. I'm in college now because I want to be, because I didn't go when I was young and always regretted that.
I work full-time and have numerous other activities, so to avoid burnout, my strategy includes identifying classes in which I can attain an acceptable grade without wasting effort. I'm not being arrogant, just pragmatic.
And that's all the explanation I feel I should offer. Why the hell should I have to repeat every damn point in the article simply because certain people didn't have the common courtesy to read all the way through before commenting on it?