Posts
At issue is:
Once you hit about a 20-point IQ gap, communication starts to completely break down.
It’s not that the lower IQ person is “stupid” (although that can often be the case) or the higher one is arrogant, it’s that you’re literally operating on different systems.
A 20 point difference (roughly 1.3 standard deviations) means:
Vocabulary and abstraction levels diverge sharply. What feels like crystal clear logic to one side sounds like vague, pretentious word salad to the other. Jokes land flat. Metaphors get taken literally. Complex cause and effect chains get simplified into “this good, that bad.”
Different time horizons and pattern recognition. One person thinks in months or years and sees systems, the other is locked into days or immediate rewards. Trying to explain second order effects feels like speaking another language.
Also, processing speed and working memory gaps. The higher IQ person is already three steps ahead, getting impatient. The lower IQ person feels talked down to or overwhelmed.
Both walk away frustrated.
Both have wasted each others time.
Jøhnathan @Heavenly_Race_
Posted on X May 25, 2026
I have frequently been the person who's 20 to 30 points behind the person I've been talking to. Marv's 152, for example. The physics students who played in my Traveller campaign definitely had higher IQ's. I dunno what FuzzyGeff or Technomad score, but I know it's higher than me.
I routinely tested around IQ 139, despite that being below the threshold for Mensa, I still passed their silly test. I declined the membership because... Have you been to a meeting? It'd be faster to tattoo your score on your forehead so everyone can segregate properly and look down their noses appropriately.
I have noticed that I'm making connections that others do not see when figuring out something abstract and complex.
Because a draftsman is a translator between engineers and tradesmen, I learned to speak both languages.
And it's more of a dialect problem than a language problem. Terminology not words.
But being smart doesn't give one the magic ability to suppress instant gratification.
Most of the smart people I know have poor savings skills. But the ones who do have good skills in this regard have exceptionally good skills.
Many of us have extremely awkward social skills that have hampered conventional success.
Vocabulary is more a function of education than ability! Those tradesmen include some VERY intelligent people who don't speak with a college vocabulary, but can understand and visualize what they're about to build and what they need to build it faster than I can.
I also qualified for Mensa, and chose not to join. I spent my entire life working a basically labor type job, making steel for the investment casting sector. I did this because I chose to do so, not because I could not do a more mentally stimulating job.
ReplyDeleteI learned how to speak with both my coworkers who often did not have much education or a high IQ, and with everyone from engineers to representatives of major customers, including representatives of the Columbian Government, who had purchased a lot of steel for making AK 47's, supposedly to fight drug dealers.
The biggest thing that I learned is that I did not have to talk down to someone who might not be on the same level as myself, nor did I have to attempt to put on airs in front of those who were both much smarter than myself and held positions of greater responsibility than myself. Plain language is always appropriate and sometimes you need to be intelligent in order to get your point across without resorting to "lofty platitudes".
Well, McThag, this seemed like a pure genius statement:
ReplyDelete"a draftsman is a translator between engineers and tradesmen"
A guy I know intimately, was trained in university as an electrical engineer.
First job out of college was draftsman.
This was just before the advent of computer aided design.
Then he spent the next forty years walking, sometimes running, that thin dashed white line in the middle of the automotive manufacturing road, at one point supervising unionized skilled tradesmen, never talking down to anyone, (well, mostly) and suppressing deep hatred of all the "smart" "leaders" that stood in the way of making more and better vehicles.
I wish I had heard that pearl of a remark, TRANSLATOR, before I had ever started doing interviews, or writing resumes.
Milton
As another one who "qualified" for the Mensa thing but had no real interest I can agree... The 150 IQ and a couple of bucks, you can buy a cup of coffee :-)... Neat, but I didn't care I suppose. And I do not feel like I missed anything. It DID take my now ex wife to point out that my RPG group was pretty exclusively "higher IQ" with theoretical physicists, dentists, doctors and a few of us engineers... But oddly we also included plumbers, electricians and paramedics... Not sure we ever really had the original poster's difficulty in communicating, it was mostly shared interests and growing up in the same area/neighborhood? We all spoke that common language and that was certainly far more important that some artificial intelligence comparison... Just my thoughts, YMMV...
ReplyDeleteI've been in Mensa since high school. (I've commented that if Mensa was an outlaw 1% MC, I'd be what some clubs call a "forever brother.") The meetings I've been to are nothing like what you describe, but I will admit that I've never been to any but Central Iowa meetings.
ReplyDeleteIt was a central Iowa meeting that convinced me the only thing that mattered was your score, though one NEVER asked directly OR stated theirs outright.
DeleteThe circling of sharks trying clever questions to figure out where you stood in the pecking order was tiresome. And they wouldn't stop their games to talk about anything interesting, so I decided to pass the test JUST to decline the membership.
Sounds like different people from the ones I've met.
DeleteI've never been under any kind of illusion that I was particularly smart or talented If I had a nickel for every time a teacher told me I was stupid and lazy in school I could have retired prior to my senior year. I've largely gotten by over the years because I have been able to BS my way through and "fake it until I make it". Part of that is I can usually talk just enough to get by being the dumbest person in the room when dealing with smart people and know when to mostly keep my mouth shut and nod at the right times when I'm with the other side of the picture. I can't recall ever taking a formal IQ test so I can't throw out any kind of number, but I'd guess maybe just slightly above "average". Of course I also believe that most people rate themselves 10-20 points above what they really are, so perhaps I could in fact just be a virtual Forest Gump and people have just been humoring me all these years and I've just been incredibly lucky to have ever gotten anywhere. Now that I think about it, that seems pretty plausible.
ReplyDelete-swj