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Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

The communication range is a great point, one I've never considered before. It's the reason I enjoy the comments on HN so much: for once, a good deal of the discussion is in my communication range, and the rest is above it, pushing me higher, rather than encouraging me to sink below.

I think this is one reason alcoholism is so common among high IQ people, including several of my relatives who are very social. They socialize but they always drink beforehand. The drink lowers the effective IQ, bringing them into a much wider communication range. I had the same experience just the other day.

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>The drink lowers the effective IQ, bringing them into a much wider communication range. I had the same experience just the other day.

Frankly, I'd have to drink to endure anyone who thinks in this manner.

> The drink lowers the effective IQ, bringing them into a much wider communication range.

Or it just disinhibits them and lowers social anxiety. It's not the most widely used social lubricant for nothing.

Of course. I said one of the reasons, not the only reason. I just wish I could connect with more people without drinking. There are a few people I can do that with, but they're few and far between.

I tried giving all my friends psychedelics, but most of them preferred the beer. I'll have to keep looking.

Try chemical empathogens instead of alcohol. They do work just as well when the others didn't take them ;)

Pardon me for showing my ignorance, but what chemicals are considered empathogens?

mdma is the most common (and thus somewhat well researched), but there are quite a few, though barely any of them legal (or rather: not yet illegal in the case of most "research chemicals", RC for short).

Except presumably everyone else at the party is also drinking alcohol. Are you saying people with low IQ can drink alcohol and be unaffected, or that people with high IQ are lightweights?

Yes, but that just means I have to drink even harder to catch up.

Assuming that at some point people pass out (equivalent IQ=0), there will always be a moment when the effective IQ of any two people will match, no matter the initial IQ.

A quick search on "communication range" returns as first result a post [1] calling it a myth.

"Hollingworth was writing specifically about leadership, and in childen, but Towers extrapolates the point to claim that any kind of ‘genuine’ communication is impossible across a 30 IQ point gap"

[1] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2017/08/31/my...

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