IQ Tests- Any Geniuses here?

[71 dB]

I wasn't diagnosed with AS until adulthood (& even now my therapy team has mixed opinions on the validity of the diagnosis)—part of it is because for a long time it tended to be under-diagnosed in women/girls, but this is not so much for sex-related reasons as that it's much more acceptable/less noticeable for a girl to be quiet, not very social, etc. But AS probably goes under-diagnosed in boys as well if you live somewhere that it's considered normal for boys to be quiet and withdrawn. Difficulty reading social cues and the tendency to notice too much is definitely a big part of it though, although as far as I know, the largest signifiers are heightened or unusual sensory sensitivities to e.g. sound, light, touch, etc, and difficulty with "theory of mind" which is essentially the ability to understand one's own and other people's intentions, beliefs, thoughts and desires (without asking them). So I find it very difficult e.g. to why I did something in the past even if it was something that made sense to me at the time, or to "read between the lines" and understand how people feel about things, unless they make it obvious by speaking in an angry or sad tone of voice etc.

Social skills and theory of mind are things that can be learned though—and other things, like noticing lots of random details (for example I'm sensitive enough to sound to notice the sounds made by central air systems, computer screens, power units etc which is why I play music at night to drown all the other sounds out & help me get to sleep) are not really "bad". Same with being more honest than is socially acceptable, or having "unusual or stereotyped interests". That seems to be why a lot of AS people reject the idea of it being a disability or an illness, instead (correctly I think) asserting the problem is simply that society isn't set up in a way that is friendly to AS people.

I was over 30 before I even heard about aspergers syndrome from my sister. I don't have a diagnose and I don't really need one because the point is I know now asperger exists and I seem to have some of those symptoms explaining some mysteries about why some things are so much easier or harder for "normal" people than they are to me.

The sensory sensitivity thing is something I don't recognize in myself. I do pay attention to environmental sounds most people ignore, but I have always thought that's because I have "trained" analytic ears and an interest to sounds as an acoustic engineer. I don't have a superhuman hearing, I just listen to the sounds around me analytically (I am aware of the sounds).  If I am over-sensitive to something it's maybe cold water. I find colder showers horrible and I would never jump from sauna to frozen lake even if Finns tend to do that! Cold water on skin. That's horror to me!

[drogulus]

What I suppose I am saying is that we are all ASD to some extent and that ASD is not an aberration but a built in part of the psyche. The sad thing, which you mentioned above, is that it is looked upon as a disability when it should really be classed as an ability. Just think of the famous ASD composers, musicians, inventors, researchers, Mathematicians, etc who could have been classed as disabled who were, in fact, 'enabled'.

     It's a difference in degree that is pragmatically and somewhat arbitrarily treated as a difference in kind. The question is when an ability becomes "dis" even while it still is "able". I don't think it's a flaw in the concept of spectrum.

[greg]

Honestly I just do most ~mundane jobs on autopilot to the extent possible, letting my mind focus on other things. Sure the job may be boring but my rent isn't going to pay itself. Working in e.g. a library where all you do is reshelve books, check patrons out/in and catalogue new items/decatalogue withdrawn ones is obviously less physically taxing than being a supermarket cashier, since you don't have to spend the whole time standing in place (and libraries are much quieter), but it's about the same in terms of ability to turn your mind off and focus on other thoughts. I think if one struggles with doing that something like mindfulness practice could be helpful.

Mundane tasks are part of everyday life—cooking, cleaning, doing laundry etc—and I don't think are something one should focus on too much.

I was a library shelver for a few months before being a cashier, and I didn't really find it to be that bad.

I was a cashier at Lowe's, and since you mentioned noise... the Christmas season was always terrible. Very busy, chainsaws cutting trees, and Christmas music at full volume while you have to shout to customers, all day.

The best part of that job were the moments you could talk to coworkers or, as the thing I did alot  that really helped, was work in the evening where the last 2-3 hours were very slow, and I'd spend at least half my time alone, pacing back and forth.

The thing that set off the most red flags was when everyone I worked with said business being slow was "boring," but I always told them that when it was busy it was the most boring, and someone said that I was working in the wrong industry. Well, yeah. 

I quite like repetitive tasks, to a degree anyway.

If gives my brain space to do other interesting things, like listen to music.

I hear ya. My first job was putting papers in a box. You can't get more mundane and repetitive than that.
You know why I liked it? I was able to listen to my own music.
Why I hated working as a cashier: literally not a single thing interesting going on.

The need for variety/stimulation is, in my opinion, more a function of personality than of IQ. Perhaps being smart does contribute to the fact that I live inside my own head and analyse things to death (in that maybe that behaviour wouldn't be as enjoyable if I was less smart), but it's certainly not a direct correlation. There are very smart people with personalities and behaviours that are completely different... including ones that would be driven mad by mundane tasks.

I think they actually are correlated, though.
The big 5 trait "openness to experience" is often strongly correlated to IQ. But I don't know how strongly. It would be something interesting to look up.

[drogulus]

I recommend Thomas Nagel's short book "The last word" (from the late 1990s or so) for a brief critique (among other things) why language analysis does not make metaphysics go away.

     Metaphysics is a broad term. It's correctly viewed as suspicious when speculations it contains are treated as foundational. The concept that entities have both properties and "is-ness" has been destroyed outside the minds of dualists who hold on for dear life. Oddly, Nagel wants to refute subjectivism by upholdling a material independent realm where no explanations or links to this world are possible in principle. He is my enemy, I will destroyyyyyyyyyy him!!

Scientists will usually pretend to find out objective facts about a world "out there", not to engage in a particularly difficult language game and similarly for fields like law.

      We interact with the world and build models of it out of sense data organized by tools of formal reasoning. Scientists have become aware of the distinction between the map and the terrain. I guess that's a kind of pretending, while what we call "naive realism" isn't pretending.

      Though I can't be certain, I'm not convinced it's like something to be a bat. They don't make analogies.

[Elgarian Redux]

Scientists have become aware of the distinction between the map and the terrain. I guess that's a kind of pretending, while what we call "naive realism" isn't pretending.

I'm sure some scientists are aware of the difference between the map and the terrain, but I seem to have met an awful lot who aren't.

But this business of 'pretence' is interesting. I'm not sure how to define it. Most of it seems to be to do with anticipating a predicted result. When I put my coffee mug on a table, I expect my coffee mug won't fall through onto the floor. In a sense, I 'pretend' that I understand what my coffee mug is, and what a table is. Science is like that, isn't it - but just on a more sophisticated level? We talk as if we understand the Schrodinger wave equation, but it's a predictive mental map just the same, and what looks like understanding is really just familiarity with the map. (I'm not disagreeing with you - just trying to explore what we mean.)

[71 dB]

When I put my coffee mug on a table, I expect my coffee mug won't fall through onto the floor. In a sense, I 'pretend' that I understand what my coffee mug is, and what a table is.

I don't about you, but I have decades of experience of coffee cups and tables and how these object behave physically so it's no wonder my mind has learned a precise physical model of what is likely to happen when I put my coffee mug on a table. That model is pretty everything I need to know and understand about coffee mugs and tables, pretending or not.

Similarly in science if someone comes up with a model explaining empirical observations and also has predictive power, that's it. It works! If the model explains empirical observations only partly or inaccurately and the predictive power is limited clearly the model isn't perfect and there's work to do.

[Madiel]

Part of intelligence is working out what is important. In most contexts, questioning the validity of your coffee cup or your table is a waste of time.

[Jo498]

     Metaphysics is a broad term. It's correctly viewed as suspicious when speculations it contains are treated as foundational. The concept that entities have both properties and "is-ness" has been destroyed outside the minds of dualists who hold on for dear life. Oddly, Nagel wants to refute subjectivism by upholdling a material independent realm where no explanations or links to this world are possible in principle. He is my enemy, I will destroyyyyyyyyyy him!!

      We interact with the world and build models of it out of sense data organized by tools of formal reasoning.

Sorry, but you apparently don't get the problems of metaphysics and objectivity in the first place otherwise you would not believe that this last sentence would be a "solution" to anything. Quite to the contrary it pre-supposes all the very things that are called into question by skeptics and subjectivist!

"We" (who that?)
"interact with the world": so it is something "out there" and it is presupposed as independent to some extent and real and so are we, so we can interact with it (and at least to some extent isolate what is our contribution in such an interaction and what is "out there")
"and build models of it": so there is another intentional relationship between mind and world, in addition to the more strictly causal relationship in the phrase before (and I guess the models are also testable, another kind of reliable interaction).
"of sense data" (I am skipping this because this was a very shortlived concept in epistemology that was virtually dead in the middle of the 20th century already. Only one remark: Experimental data are not sense data, they are something one gets out of complex apparatuses.)
"tools of formal reasoning": They are also tools but they cannot be any old "tools". They must be objective and truth-conducive. (E.g. if they were just historically completely contingent tools (established by some phallologocentric ideology) there would not be any reason to trust them any more than the method of looking into sheep's guts for divining the future.)

Don't get me wrong. I basically agree with that last sentence I quoted. But it cannot replace philosophy, epistemology or metaphysics. It simply takes most of the things called into question or looked at in philosophy already for granted, at least for the purpose and compass of science, namely independence (of the "world"), interaction/causality betwen "us" and "world", intentionality (the models are about the world and map important structures isomorphically) and objectivity of formal reasoning.

[drogulus]

Sorry, but you apparently don't get the problems of metaphysics and objectivity in the first place otherwise you would not believe that this last sentence would be a "solution" to anything. Quite to the contrary it pre-supposes all the very things that are called into question by skeptics and subjectivist!

    I think you are interpreting me as a skeptic about objectivity. If I am skeptical at all it's about subjectivity, the "user illusion". That's why I'm at war with Nagal, he presupposes subjectivity as a fundamental force of nature, and I think that is a preposterous claim.

[Elgarian Redux]

Part of intelligence is working out what is important. In most contexts, questioning the validity of your coffee cup or your table is a waste of time.

On a pragmatic level, and in most contexts (eg the first ten minutes of stumbling downstairs in the morning after sleep), it is indeed a waste of time. But taking that as given, then if one thinks there is some sort of reality 'out there', the relationship between it, and our mental map of it, seems to me to be as important a subject as any other area of philosophical/metaphysical  enquiry. It's not unintelligent to be interested in both, I think.

[Elgarian Redux]

I don't about you, but I have decades of experience of coffee cups and tables and how these object behave physically so it's no wonder my mind has learned a precise physical model of what is likely to happen when I put my coffee mug on a table. That model is pretty everything I need to know and understand about coffee mugs and tables, pretending or not.

That's a fair enough pragmatic (indeed, Johnsonian) response to the problem. But I am fascinated by the idea that the table on which I put my coffee is not at all, not even slightly (apart from having the requisite stability etc) like the model of a table I have in my head. The thing I call 'solid' (look, I bash the table and I hear the clunk) is not 'solid' at all: 'solid' is part of my mental map. The relation between what, say, quantum mechanics tells us about the table, and what we actually seem to experience, remains utterly baffling.

[Madiel]

On a pragmatic level, and in most contexts (eg the first ten minutes of stumbling downstairs in the morning after sleep), it is indeed a waste of time. But taking that as given, then if one thinks there is some sort of reality 'out there', the relationship between it, and our mental map of it, seems to me to be as important a subject as any other area of philosophical/metaphysical  enquiry. It's not unintelligent to be interested in both, I think.

Oh, I'm not saying don't be interested in it. I'm just saying that constantly being interested in it would be a recipe for paralysis.

[Elgarian Redux]

Oh, I'm not saying don't be interested in it. I'm just saying that constantly being interested in it would be a recipe for paralysis.

Wouldn't that be true about a constant interest in any aspect of reality, though? Fact is, I eat my dinner and feel better for it just like anyone else.

[71 dB]

1. I am fascinated by the idea that the table on which I put my coffee is not at all, not even slightly (apart from having the requisite stability etc) like the model of a table I have in my head.

2. The thing I call 'solid' (look, I bash the table and I hear the clunk) is not 'solid' at all: 'solid' is part of my mental map. The relation between what, say, quantum mechanics tells us about the table, and what we actually seem to experience, remains utterly baffling.

1. No, it's not, but the model of a table in your head seems to work very well nevertheless.

2. Yes, but you don't operate on atom scale. You are not interested of individual atoms and molecules. If you were, your model of a table and coffee mugs would be very different. According to quantum physics nothing really happens in the World, so it's great to have these illusions of a lot of happening because otherwise it would be so boring...

[drogulus]

1. No, it's not, but the model of a table in your head seems to work very well nevertheless.

2. Yes, but you don't operate on atom scale. You are not interested of individual atoms and molecules. If you were, your model of a table and coffee mugs would be very different. According to quantum physics nothing really happens in the World, so it's great to have these illusions of a lot of happening because otherwise it would be so boring...

     XLNT!

     Q: Why is there something and not everything?

     A: Because you don't pay attention!

     

[Elgarian Redux]

1. No, it's not, but the model of a table in your head seems to work very well nevertheless.

Of course it does. I drink my coffee, I place my mug on the table. It all works.

Similarly I put an envelope in the postbox, and some days later my friend mysteriously receives it. One could just leave it at that. It works. I do not need to know more. But why should I not have an interest in the mode of operation of the postal service?

2. Yes, but you don't operate on atom scale. You are not interested of individual atoms and molecules. If you were, your model of a table and coffee mugs would be very different. According to quantum physics nothing really happens in the World, so it's great to have these illusions of a lot of happening because otherwise it would be so boring...

Atoms? Molecules? I would very much like to know more about them, too, but they seem to be elusive, fuzzy creatures. Talk of atoms and molecules, rather than coffee mugs and tables, just kicks the can down the metaphysical road, doesn't it?

You seem to be saying, not that the map and the terrain are the same (which would be a serious philosophical mistake), but that the map is all you want. I can't argue with that preference, but I don't share it.

[Madiel]

Sigh. Agreeing to the proposition that 'solid' was questionable was our first mistake.

Because something that is 'solid' does in fact have demonstrably different properties to liquids and gases. And those different properties are derived from differences at the molecular and atomic level.

You can question this if you wish, but it won't convince me of your intelligence. It will actually tend to suggest that you're intelligent enough to see the trees but not intelligent enough to also see the wood the trees are located in or comprising.

[Elgarian Redux]

Because something that is 'solid' does in fact have demonstrably different properties to liquids and gases. And those different properties are derived from differences at the molecular and atomic level.

Perhaps it would help if I explain that I'm a physicist, and therefore completely aware of this. I'm not talking about the scientific explanation of the difference between solids and liquids and gases, which are of course well understood (as far as they go), useful, and indeed interesting. Rather, I'm thinking of the Kantian difference between the phenomenal and the noumenal, which has long fascinated me. After all our experiments on the mug of coffee and the table, ranging from merely sitting there and drinking it, to an analysis of the sum of its collapsed wave functions, there yet remains 'the thing in itself', which is unknowable to us. The noumenal is therefore not accessible to intelligence through phenomenal analysis, but that doesn't stop the Imagination toying with it, or intelligence from trying to understand more completely what Kant meant.

You can question this if you wish, but it won't convince me of your intelligence. It will actually tend to suggest that you're intelligent enough to see the trees but not intelligent enough to also see the wood the trees are located in or comprising.

It seems to me that when a discussion degenerates into personal insult (I don't accept you as a judge of my intelligence, partly because I don't think you understand what I'm saying), any hope of useful exchange is gone. Enough of this.

[71 dB]

Of course it does. I drink my coffee, I place my mug on the table. It all works.

Similarly I put an envelope in the postbox, and some days later my friend mysteriously receives it. One could just leave it at that. It works. I do not need to know more. But why should I not have an interest in the mode of operation of the postal service?

Postal service works, but not as fast as it used to. 10 years ago my Amazon orders from UK came in about a week, then it changed to two weeks and now I have to wait for 3 weeks. I wonder how slow it will become in the end. Months?

Atoms? Molecules? I would very much like to know more about them, too, but they seem to be elusive, fuzzy creatures. Talk of atoms and molecules, rather than coffee mugs and tables, just kicks the can down the metaphysical road, doesn't it?

You seem to be saying, not that the map and the terrain are the same (which would be a serious philosophical mistake), but that the map is all you want. I can't argue with that preference, but I don't share it.

What I want and need are separate things, althou often linked.  I need a map to drive somewhere, but I may want to understand the molecular structure of asphalt.