ARE YOU A GENIUS?

QUORA today had a query on the subject:

10 unusual signs indicating high intelligence - explained by the hunter-gatherer hypothesis

You can read the entire exposition, but let me just indicate the 10 plus 1 such signs  You are (with my responses):

• Messy:  maybe not totally, but my kitchen table can be improved and I never make my bed.
• Thin:  I was on the high side of normal most of my professional career, but was skinny until the age of 35 or so, and seem now to be heading back in that direction.
• Night owl:  I'm relatively normal on this one, but now and then get up in the middle of the night to do something on my computer
• Distrust authority:  I tend to rely on authority.
• Worry a lot:  yes, I do.
• Non-conformist:  that's me.
• Funny:  I like to think so
• Doubt yourself:  all the time.
• Didn't have sex until after high school:  yup.
• Need a lot of alone time:  I was around people all my life until my wife died a little more than a decade ago, and learned that I actually liked to be mostly alone.
• Bonus #11--called voluntary piloerection, has to do with music giving you the chills:  yes, that's why I regularly feature music in this blog.

So I guess I'm not a genius.

Here are two You Tube versions:

• In eleven minutes another attempt at providing 10 signs, which start with you are messy.  I'm closer to being a genius on this one.
• Five-minute clip presenting a science viewpoint.  Interesting that in the right column of the You Tube page I noticed a must watch high quality version of Steve Jobs' best speech, which I featured two days ago.

What percent of us are geniuses?  Depends on who you ask:

• One view looks at IQ tests, and indicates that anything over 140 sort of indicates you are a genius.  You would think they would know the exact percentage, but it only gives a range of 0.25% to 1% of the population.  And, anyway, genius, I think, is more than just IQ.

• Cliffnotes suggested that if you scored within the top 2% of any intelligence test, you are a genius.  Mensa members need to be in this range.  2% of the world calculates to be 130 million geniuses in the world.  Mensa has around 100,000 members.  In any case, I gave two invited talks to a Mensa conference here in Honolulu, and found their questions after my presentations and general discussion during the breaks to be rather mundane and disappointing.  Maybe I was expecting too much.

Mensa looked at all the countries in the world and picked the ten smartest countries, with Finland being #1 and Croatia #10.  All ten were from Europe.  Looks like the continuance of a Western Civilization mentality.  If you want to know about that organization, four years ago I had a rather interesting posting on this subject.

A contrary opinion was provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, headquartered in Paris and founded by European countries and the U.S.  They say East Asia has the smartest kids.  Here are the top ten:

Also pointed out was the science excellence of Vietnam, which made the top ten even though its GDP per capita is rather low:

The secret to East Asia's success is plain hard work and good policy.  Plus family culture.  

And where is the USA in all this?  Read and weep:

• Mathematics:  #38
• Science:  #19
• Reading:  #14

Asian countries dominate the top ten in all three.

Lewis Terman of Stanford spent most of his life studying the gifted, and reported that these individuals with a 150 average IQ were socially and physically well-adjusted.  More so, they tended to be healthier, stronger, taller and less accident-prone.  In 1955 the average income was $33,000, compared to the national average of $5,000 (In 2019 it was $68,703.)  A large number got professional degrees.  They were goal-oriented, self-confident and had perseverance.   Hmmm...that's me.

While the general viewpoint is that geniuses and the truly creative are born and not made, there is no study that supports this thesis.  Like most things dealing with the mind, nurturing and upbringing can play important roles.   In any case, the designation of genius is mostly an honorific partly based on mystery.

They blocked me from reading it because I had gone there too often, but Forbes had an article mentioning that 50% of men think that they are geniuses.  Live Science had 10 Odd Tales about Mad Geniuses.

What makes sense to me is that everyone is a genius in one way or another.  Only you can determine what that might be.

I'll end with Charlie Chaplin on life.  He is a lot more religious than me, and must cry in the rain.  I love to walk in the rain, but with a sense of joy.

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