A different query about the effects of IQ testing...

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Is High IQ a burden as much as a blessing?

In general my personality difficulties as an AS are minimal. I have no outstanding nervous patterns and I have not ever been persecuted as some of the other participants here seem to have been. I just seem to think differently from most other people and my interpersonal relationships are tenuous and not very long lasting.

I have no difficulty with words and, in general, have a better vocabulary than most people and a better flexibility of expression in English than most but, living in Finland for many years, nevertheless, have very poor facility in Finnish. But most of my internal thinking is not in language, which I find amusingly idiotic in construction, but in visual patterns, sounds, smells, tastes. In other words I can store and recall and manipulate basic sense impressions and these "images" have a life of their own so that whenever I close my eyes I see scenery and faces and architecture that never existed and continually melts and transforms automatically into other forms that always entertain and surprise me. I can control this to a certain extent and it is very useful as a designer since I have an internal Autocad working all the time and sometimes my dreams can be spectacular.

I mention this because the standard IQ tests are mostly based on language which I find poverty stricken insofar as representing reality is concerned. I remember, as a child back in the 1930s, I took an IQ test and one of the questions was "Do you cross the street when the traffic light is red?" I answered "yes" because I look to see if cars are coming and if the streets are clear I cross. But the question was not trying to see if I was truthful (as I saw it) but how I interpreted a traffic light which is another matter altogether. Language can make a mess of things and my capability for seeing alternate interpretations frequently did (and still does) get me into trouble.

Interesting... I do adequately in interacting with others, although it has taken a long time and a lot of craftsmanship to develop those skills and trying to recognize and codify various responses. My senses tend to be a little cross-wired... emotions tend to have 'tones' or sounds; sounds have internal visual patterns. When I conceptualize, I use associative concepts to develop a greater whole, often pulling abstract images and combinations together to form a better understanding instead of sequential development. For example, when I write music, I often write the ending either first or after I have written the beginning so that I can fill in the space between effectively... the whole is evident in my mind before the middle is completed. I score relatively well on some IQ tests, but they are at best limited measures of specific faculties. My curiosity stems from what effects the practice of eugenics, in some cases on the basis of such testing, may have shifted future tendencies... more from the hypothetical standpoint, as I do not feel the practices were in place long enough or on a large enough scale to truly have a profound effect.


M.

Hitler actually picked up his eugenics from psychologists and others in the USA and of course, that was a huge disaster. Eugenics attempts to improve humanity by set standards which evolution does not recognize and thereby produces tremendous failures with a few successes. It is an interesting and useful technique if you have millions of years to play with and don't give a damn about the miseries of the individuals who are only nominally successful. The complete failures, of course, don't survive. As cruel as humans can be, they usually are kinder than evolution. But humans have very limited concepts as to what goals are worthwhile while nature is not teleological. That, in the long run, is magnificent for creativity.

I'd want to be sure of the downstream impacts of any tampering (or not tampering) with the gene pool. Of course, that's impossible - but that just illustrates the point. Being runty and incapable for years after birth probably didn't look like much of an advance at one time.

A question that eugenics seems to miss is what actually would be a desirable human to propagate? While educated people pontificate on the ideal human being I think they miss the point entirely. The "best" humans are those that are able to survive the niches they live in and to reproduce. Evolution at work.

There is a certain irony that educated and intelligent parents tend to have fewer children and later in life than those living off the state with poor education. Who is exploiting their niche better?

Regarding intelligence I am well above the norm by standard tests. Like Sand I too think predominantly in images not verbal language. Some of my "thinking" is highly abstract and I can only describe it as watching three dimensional graphs moving and flowing. Trying to express the concepts they represent as words is a complete none starter. Similarly there are certain bits of knowledge that are very clear to me. However I cannot express that certainty in language in a logical step by step manner. This is because my mind sometimes moves from step a to z using the "flow thinking" and steps b to y do not exist as discrete steps, much less can they be expressed in language. Sometimes I see people make wildly incorrect assertions on WP in this forum but don't bother to try to debate them because my arguments are none verbal.

I think this may be similar to some aspies / autistics who can do complex arithmetic in their heads - the savants. I don't have that ability but I think the brain wiring is analogous in terms of information processing. They see a problem and they see the solution.