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Living with a high IQ
Various strategies haven been suggested for living with a high IQ,including:
- Adapting to the slower pace of the masses
- Living like an adult among children
- Staying under the radar
Particularly note the absence of "using your IQ to become a successfuland respected member of society". A high IQ not only does not help yourcareer, it actually blocks your ways to success. In some independent studies,the IQs of university students were measured (e.g.[4]), and the results were rather chilling froma high-IQ point of view.
The IQ distributions of university students showed a mean of 125 and anaverage standard deviation of 6.5 (μ=125,σ=6.5). While the mean isto be expected, because it makes sense that students are, on average, moreintelligent than the "normal" person, the variance seems odd at a firstglance.
The right-hand slopes of both curves, the population's distribution andthe student's distribution, seem to be almost congruent. This would meanthat the percentage of highly intelligent people is about the same amongstudents and the general population. In other words: there are no more high-IQpeople among academics than in the general population. The highest IQmeasured multiple times in above studies was 138 with one outlierat 149. Nothing above 149, not a single one.
When we zoom into the curve, we can even see that at 147 IQ points(3.1σ), highly intelligent people start to get massivelyunderrepresented in Academia. Wherever the brightest people onthis planet go, it's not research and education.
The mystery is easily solved using the Window of Comprehension.Students with an average IQ of 125 become professors with an averageIQ of 125, so the average professor is quite a bit away from the lowerborder of the Window around 150 (131..139, depending on how optimisticyou are). Interestingly, 125 is also 13 points away from 138, giving aWindow of 14.
So what options are there?
"Dumbing down" may work for some people and might be good advicewhen it comes to social occasions. In a professional setting, though,this strategy may lead to perpetual boredom, resulting in underachievementand burnout. Even more importantly, adapting to the slow pace of the mainstream does not solve the problem of intellectual disconnection from thepeople around you, more than often resulting in a sense of emotionaldisconnection, anxiety, and depression.
Making a virtue out of the sense of disconnection and just acceptingthat the world is a fierce and unintellectual place may sound like areasonable idea but comes, of course, with its own dangers, mostnotably a complete disconnection from the shared reality of thegeneral population and living in a reality of one's own, i.e. adream world. This may be unavoidable in order to maintain some degreeof mental sanity in a world that does not understand one, but is certainlynothing to strive for.
Adopting a benevolent attitude towards those who do not understandyou may be a better approach, but its success depends largely on thekind of feedback you receive. Imagine living as an adult among childrenwith access to credit cards, SUV's, drugs and, where law permits, guns.In such a setting it seems wise to choose your peers carefully.
So all of these approaches boil down to staying under the radar inone or another way, either internally, by adapting to the masses andburying one's own intellectual needs, or by withdrawing from the peopleand living a life on your own.
However, much of this advice comes from a time where little wasknown about the difficulties associated with high IQ and where therewas no easily accessible global communication network like the Internet.
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