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I went ahead and did it all... by the time I was half way through, perseverance came into question. Wow that is boring.

At about the 3/4 mark, I guess, some of the patterns were really hard to figure out, and the clock is ticking. My mind goes to "wait, I kind of suck at pictorial pattern matching with so many different objects", and "is that the only judge of my IQ? What is mensa? Oh wait, clock ticking, not bored out of my mind"... I scored almost right in the middle of the bell curve. I guess I really suck at pattern matching, or I am just dumb. They want you in the very top for mensa.

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Based on my experience with Mensa members, being obsessed with your own intelligence is seemingly the primary criterion for joining Mensa. A long, boring test was probably exactly the selection filter they're looking for.

Mensa doesn't need a special filter for that, by virtue of being an IQ organization and not a chemistry/literature/mathematics organization (where it's about using your IQ for something) they will end up with the people who haven't joined an organization that's more specific to their interests: a great implicit filter for people who don't have interests other than solving puzzles.

We are not restricted to one membership (of course).

Editing for the skimmer who will not read the implicit: it's about an interest in meta-skills, transversal, exportable.

I joined Mensa today because I overheard some good reviews, but that's my biggest fear. I want a group that I can go for coffee and have interesting conversations with, not a group of people who are all about how smart they are.

I don't want to be biased before even going, though.

> not a group of people who are all about how smart they are.

You're going to be disappointed.

Seriously though, you can find incredibly intelligent people in the strangest of places. And you find less than you might think in the most obvious of places. Once you learn what to look for, I think it becomes easier to find people to have interesting conversations with. Personally, I find that curiosity about the world around you is a very good indicator of someone I would enjoy speaking with.

It's funny. I am fascinated by cryptozoology, but generally don't believe cryptids exist. So you'd think skeptics' groups would be my jam? Turns out, nah. All the skeptics' groups I've tried aren't really all that interested in paranormal subjects, per se, just in their agreement that it doesn't exist. And the conversations often don't go much beyond that, so I quickly get bored.

Cryptozoology enthusiast groups are way more fun for me. I may not agree with most people there on whether Mothman exists, but we are 100% agreed that Mothman is awesome and we would like to spend more time talking about the story and what it means to people.

I used to be a regular at a Ruby meetup on similar grounds. I don't actually like the programming language itself very much, but I love Rubyists.

This largely comes down to local group culture. In my experience, in the U.S. at least, more rural groups seem better. I speculate that this is due to: (1) lack of alternatives for intellectual engagement and (2) demographics, specifically that older generations are more likely to join clubs and organizations of all kinds. Both of these would balance the trend of millennial professionals to only join such an organization out of arrogance.

You self-filtered into a group that's only about how smart people are, though.

In my experience, interesting conversations involve people with interests (and navel-gazing is antithetical to that).

A transversal quality does not imply «navel-gazing».

Maybe a 2600 meeting?

The thing to remember is that one in fifty people qualifies to be in Mensa, which is not particularly selective or exclusive. This is 2% of the general population, not 2% of, for example, readers of Hacker News. Or 2% of software developers or 2% of people who read more than one book per year.

My experience with Mensa is from 20 years ago with the group in Chicago. I was in my twenties and my guess is that the average age of members was late-fifties. In theory, they were interested in recruiting younger people, in practice they were not interested in changing the activities in a way that would attract younger members, like focusing efforts to solve real-world problems. I felt they were more interested in showcasing depth in various atypical hobbies, or to simply talk about how smart they were. I was never in awe of anyone’s intellect. Pretty much just normal people. I don’t think I came across anyone that was exceptionally accomplished at anything.

I joined in Chicago for a year, and it turns out that it's really a board gaming club.

Honestly that would be a great outcome.

It wasn't bad. The people were a little bland and John Galty, but I love playing board games. The main problem was that they call it a Chicago chapter, but it was way out in the suburbs. I assumed that it was to be as far away from black people as possible (along with its membership, I think I was the only black person at the first meeting I went to out of probably 60 people IIRC), but I assume bad faith.

edit: would recommend if you live nearby and treat it as a board gaming club.

edit2: also, if I remember correctly you could bring two guests to meetings, so you're not stuck with only Mensa members.

> The people were a little bland and John Galty

I feel like that could be the Yelp review for every Mensa club.

Googled it for you:

> To qualify for Mensa, you must have scored in the top 2 percent of the general population on any one of more than 200 accepted, standardized intelligence tests — including our Mensa Admission tests — at any point in your life. An estimated six million Americans are eligible for membership.

I've met some members. Their personalities are not what I would associate with the most intelligent people I've otherwise met. People who memorize digits of Pi come to mind.

> People who memorize digits of Pi come to mind.

Hey, I feel attacked. What's wrong with memorizing digits of Pi?

For starters, they're infinite, so it's a futile endeavour...

Is life itself really more than a series of rather futile endeavours? The point is that futility is, luckily, orthogonal to being enjoyable.

Infinite? Only if you include duplicates...

Or if you include order, which is what was meant (that's called literal irony)

I think you will quickly find that there are only 10 distinct digits found within pi.

This is a very base-10 mindset.

In fact, if we use base-π representation then π=1 and memorisation is trivial. QED.

Oh no, then if n=∞, there are infinite digits in pi!

I got you -- it's 0 through 9.

You should have been memorizing Tau, of course! Don't embarrass the human race to our galactic neighbours. Imagine what we'd think of receiving a signal that was an encoding of e/2?

They used to allow you to join based on SAT scores. I know someone from that era. They don't seem very intelligent. I'm guessing they just studied a lot. Maybe it's the same for those people.

> in the top 2 percent of the general population on any one of more than 200 accepted

> An estimated six million Americans are eligible for membership.

That's not how it works. 6 million Americans is about 2%. It means that in order to have such a filter, you only have one chance on a single test. Not, "1 of more than 200 at any point in your life"

Out of 200 tests, even among those of the highest standards, you are bound to find one where you are particularly good at, and then you can try again several times, because you are unlikely to be at the exact same position every time. Furthermore, the "general population" includes people who are not in their best shape and yet, "any point in your life" tests your peak performance. And there is training of course.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than 10% in reality. By that I mean "pick a random person and give him a huge incentive (ex. millions of dollars) to pass". If we restrict to people who really want to join without further incentive, it may be way higher.

I've never been part of Mensa, but it seems like good concept for when it was created.

The basic problem a lot of bright people had -- in the days before telecommunications -- was that the only people you had access to lived on your own street. If you were a nerd, most were boring.

A lot of work went into finding interesting people, be that through ham radio, organizations like Mensa, universities (at the time, about 5% of people went to university), gifted programs, or other places nerds could congregate.

I don't see much point to Mensa in 2022, but I think the cynicism is unwarranted. What do you do when you have a social club which is suddenly obsoleted by cars, phones, air planes, and the internet?

>I've never been part of Mensa, but it seems like good concept for when it was created

"Let's create an wannabe intellectual elite club based on a controversial and not really representative test, milking suckers with paid tests, and giving them a false sense of achievement and superiority"

(and I score in the high range, it's not about sour grapes)

Is it better or worse than having a club for Ivy League schools? At least Mensa doesn't gate membership on political connections and class (yes by proxy, lets be charitable).

Tests in 1946 didn't have the same types of controversy as in 2022.

Prior to standardized testing, college admissions was literally based on belonging to a club. Rich parents would send you to a prep school, and admissions was based on admissions officers knowing the prep school (and grades, recommendations, etc. there-from). It was introduced to allow anyone from any socioeconomic background, and more demographic backgrounds, to be admitted based on ability rather than wealth. At the time, admissions rates to elite schools weren't nearly as cut-throat. A poor kid could study hard, take a test, and go to Harvard.

They didn't make the world equal, but they made it /more/ equal.

I really don't think the cynicism is warranted. Institutions go obsolete.

I don't think it's about wanting to be an intellectual (evidently, IQ has very little to do with that), but rathe about finding someone who might also be able to think in the same way you do, and socialize and talk with them.

I've found that there are people with whom I can share many thoughts and concepts as they pop into my head, and they will "get" it, maybe not agree, but they have the capacity to entertain my idea, bad as it may be. I find that kind of socializing very pleasant, and I much prefer it to "talking about weather and current events in sports and popculture" which also have it's place, but which can be discussed with a much broader selection of people.

And that's just me, and I'm not one of the smart ones, but if I can feel like that, I can only imagine that someone in the top 1 percentile would feel something similar, if stronger, and thus would need to make an extra effort to find such company.

If you don't feel like this, it's just very likely that you already have this need met from someone around you, and you've just never noticed?

Did you not read the thread you’re commenting in? There’s a very good reply just a few comments up explaining how the origins of MENSA seem much more reasonable to our modern sensibilities in a lower tech world. Are you dismissing that perspective, or did you just not see it? Ranting about an IQ Club that you’re not a part of seems to me even more embarrassing than what you’re accusing them of. Does that make sense?

Maybe that last line is a bit harsh, but I presume MENSA has never negatively impacted your life - certainly not tangibly. This is my experience, and I have no interest in joining. Assuming the worst, and denigrating those that haven’t done anything to deserve it is immature at best, yet it’s something that we seem to be getting more comfortable with. It frustrates me.

sure but:

> If you were a nerd, most were boring.

Is either of those strongly linked to IQ? Anecdotally and in my experience not really.

You can get pretty far on this by implicitly grouping a certain set of interests into "nerdy" or whatever but that is highly culturally mediated. A generation ago video games and sci-fi would have been a core of that set, but those are just the culture now.

The most nerd energy I've ever run across outside of my own interests is in people who follow auto racing and sports. Fiber arts and baking too. Not typically considered or even recognized as valid nerdery but very similar kind and degree of interest.

I'd argue that people who want to be in a group of other high IQ people probably do feel superior to people who can't be in that group. Now, and in the past too. Whether that's a useful grouping or a warranted superiority I don't want to get into. But it's really not more complicated than that, sorry.

I think you're underestimating just how disconnected the world of 1946 was.

In 2022, it's awfully easy to find people into whatever you're into, and you can talk to them around the world. In 1946, if you were a physics nerd and you ran into a chemistry nerd or biology nerd, you'd be excited to have a friend who shared your interest in /science/.

As a footnote: Performance on a test like Mensa's is strongly culturally-mediated. I suspect most people can score decently with a bit of practice and training. I think the major question was:

- Do you want to talk about football and sports?

- Dating and gossip?

- Intellectual stuff

A lot of this also had to do with how people spend their time. It's a lot easier to be an intellectual / nerd in 2022 than in 1946. I have the world's information at my fingertips.

> I don't see much point to Mensa in 2022

To connect people who might have something to exchange. Not differently from HN, really.

YMMV :)

I joined mensa in two countries; I was involved in one, while in the other, I went only to one meeting.

The first had mostly regular table/social game events, and cultural events (e.g. chess competitions, museums, literature etc.).

I couldn't tell I was at a Mensa club, if not for the orientation of the cultural events, but especially... for the quantity of engineers :)

I remember there was at least one teenager at the social events, and I wouldn't even exclude that they just allowed them in because he was a friend of somebody - the atmosphere was relaxed and playful.

I'd totally join again a club like the first: 1. it was fun 2. the cultural activities were actually interesting 3. I'd network with SWEs. Which is, in some way, the attractive of Mensa - it definitely attracts nerds :)

Regarding me as a member of Mensa. I wouldn't qualify me obsessed with it; intelligence is a tool for me. And definitely I didn't enroll in college at 13 like some other HN readers :)

> being obsessed with your own intelligence is seemingly the primary criterion for joining Mensa

The parent says that scoring like an average person means they "really suck" or are "just dumb," so I think they have the right mentality for Mensa, even if their performance fell short.

Exactly. I don't know exactly what it is about intelligence, but people get really defensive about it. No one wants to be average or even slightly above average. People will go through a lot of mental hoops to stake a claim of incredible intelligence.

We don't do this with any other measure though. The difference being that most other measures can be measured. They run up against reality rather quickly. Am I tall? No. No shame in saying that. No shame in saying I'm around the average. Am I fast? Slow? Strong? Weak? Thin? Fat? How big are my feet? My hands? etc.

All can be measured and seen. All have physical manifestations I cannot argue against.

Intelligence. Well. That's a little more abstract. Abstract to a degree that we don't always recognize that Jeopardy is not really a "smart" game. It's a trivia game. You have to know things. That's not intelligence, that's knowledge.

> the primary criterion

You are describing a type in the context of a club of people interested in the opposites of the type. It could suggest you that the deviation may remain the interesting part.

> the primary criterion for joining

Improper formulation. Not that important, but.

> I scored almost right in the middle of the bell curve. I guess I really suck at pattern matching, or I am just dumb.

Well, no, that'd be average, not dumb.

On top of that, it's average amongst the group of people who self select into taking such a test.

There's no way they're not accounting for selection bias. This isn't on online poll where you score among x% of people who took the test. They give the test to a (hopefully) representative sample and score you against that.

I don't think tests like this one are calibrated by those who happen to take it online. I believe they calibrate these tests by looking at a known test taker's results and comparing them to other test results. The other tests would be the high quality ones used in psychology that have a much larger, less biased selection of test takers.

And expected, most of us have to fall in the middle of the bell, only the very outliers will be at the extremes. It's normal to think one's very gifted, even boasting about it, but maturing is realizing that most of us are average.

At least we can get solace in knowing that intelligence and work is what makes great things, either alone is weak.

LMAO this mirrors my experience exactly. About 10 mins left...I was questioning what I'm doing with my life. Hey, there's a finish button already, let me click that and end this thing. Does that count the rest as wrong? It wasn't clear.

Mensa is catnip for narcissists who are great at pattern recognition.

Yeah. I did pretty well and I'm definitely not Mensa smart... but a lot of the middle questions were pretty easy to pick up on... or/nor/differences/unions...

Just like the entire IQ thing

You're entitled about your opinion about catnip, but pattern recognition is an important component of problem solving.

> catnip for

And an opportunity for people looking for people with whom to have some productive exchange.

People who already tried some selection filter before (the IQ), will have no issue applying another afterwards (and discard e.g. the pure narcissists).

Worse, IQ tests are catnip for people who take IQ tests. If you practice IQ tests, your IQ will increase not because you've become smarter, but because you have more experience with IQ tests.

I have always wondered how do they say IQ tests can't be gamed or learned, but I never believed that. There really must be certain number of standard pattern matching ways that can be applied. Just cram these like leetcode and you should get better.

This, specially the pattern matching. Sequences, dominoes, there's not many ways they can be arranged. The first time people see them they will be stumped, but after knowing how they're made, the tested can figure how the testers think and answer them easily.

Another example is language and vocabulary, which are heavily influenced by culture and education. If IQ is going to measure education too, it would be valid to include number sequences that are the even digits if Euler's number, or names of famous astronomers without the vowels.

> I scored almost right in the middle of the bell curve.

Congratulations! You're in possession of the statistically perfectly normal pattern matching skills!

A score of 100 means that you're as good in pattern matching as a normal human being, assuming the test is served and adjusted to a varied enough population.

This being Mensa, an organisation that's known of attracting people who think they are smart, your normal pattern matching skill might still be statistically better than the rest of the populace. Or it might mean that you're normal according to Norwegian standards, which doesn't necessarily say anything about your country. Or it could mean that you're above intelligent but not raised in a western, white society, because IQ measurement is culturally sensitive as well.

The homepage doesn't give any details about the population the IQ test was measured against, so it's hard to say what the end result means. Higher number = better pattern matching skills, that's the best explanation I can think of.

I had to go through these things with a psychologist when i was in school and beeing suspended. My focus is very fragile, but these kinds of test actually satisfy so much that I am not paying any attention to the clock ticking. These tasks stimulate the mind, imo. Anyways, I am only scoring the average, nowadays. Now i know, that there are things I can excel at, but at others I dont.

These kind of tests were complemented with a few other days, where I had to answer questions, recall stories, talk about things fascinating me, myself and my opinions, picture interpretations, sequences of digits, multiple choices and other things I cant recall. At the start of the following week, these test were rated for multiple sections of knowledge. Then, the average IQ was estimated.

What I want to say is: This is only part of the actual estimation. It is the first test, who actually reminded me of these tests.

I did not suceed in school. I did start consume drugs on purpose, getting rejected from my school and only did the necessarities. After a few years working, I did start wondering about knowledge and started to pursue studies.

If there is a topic that facinates you, such test would complement one. In the end we are all median overall.

Sounds like a lot of smart people with ADHD I know:

- Fragile focus (well put)

- Drug use

- Rejected from school

- Humble as hell despite being obviously brilliant (just read through a bunch of your comments)

Not saying you have it, but if you're still looking for answers perhaps it's something to look into. It's quite treatable too, if you struggle with anything.

These were my thoughts after reading this too.

If an IQ-based club sets its threshold too high, then it might end up accepting Mozart but excluding Beethoven. I'd personally find that fascinating, but the other 100% of the population would probably find it incoherent at best.

If an IQ-based club sets its threshold low enough to include a Beethoven, then it's no longer really an IQ-based club. (E.g., our threshold is "Edgar" because we want the smartest people and also we really like Edgar's output.)

Edit: I changed "Edgar" above to "Edgar's output." Let me explain:

Mozart had the "bigger brain," but Beethoven obsessed over a narrower set of techniques and devoted his life to exploring every facet of them (much to the detriment of everything else in his life). Probably for that reason, his output is considered to be at a comparable level by most historians. This is true even by modernist analysis standards which attempt to exclude considerations like influence.

You can probably find similar cases straddling any IQ threshold, where you want to include output from X and Y even though Y's IQ didn't meet your threshold.

The problem with measuring IQ is that you don’t want to measure education or culture.

Math, history even reading comprehension are all affected by that.

IQ testing has sort of settled on pattern matching as a measure of IQ that isn’t correlated with your education or culture you grew up in.

Personally I still don’t believe you can’t train for an IQ test.

Oh you absolutely can train for an IQ test. It's not just pattern matching but also measures one's ability to abstract, and working memory and stuff.

The question is to what degree would IQ-test-specific training help you? I'd guess that it would, and it would be measurable and statistically significant, but not that impressive.

Most of the questions were a progression in a sequence and/or set membership under some operation.

Anyone who plays Sudoku, Chess or enjoys abstract algebra would have had an advantage.

Only if those skills were generally transferable. Sure you can get better at Chess, but that won't help at all at making you a strong Go player.

I did ok, but there were some puzzles that just didn't make sense to me. I suspect they were about rotating or reflecting. The xoring ones, though, those are my jam.

I don't think anyone who knows the xor trick behind the matrices questions can really say the test is measuring them. :-) Also I think it's funny that this comment thread will be giving 10 points of "practice effect" to everyone who reads it. We are ruining psychological research.

Is the trick just knowing what xor is? I haven't done anything like this before, but I did do EE as an undergrad so some xors just jump out at you, haha.

I think knowing xor is the trick because once you recognize it, the first half or so of the test becomes a bunch of questions that are exactly the same. It would be one thing if I thought they were equally easy (then I could imagine that I was just saturating them with my Giant Brain(tm)) but for them to be absolutely identical, I think, shows that the test isn't working anymore.

Joke’s on you, I’ve read this entire comment thread and I’ll still get those questions wrong when I try them later today.

Well, if you have the giant brain then we will just have to trust your reasoning.

I randomly guessed for the last six questions because it was getting boring and still ended up with 121. https://i.imgur.com/hgXGoXn.png Some of the pattern addition / subtraction stuff was neat though.

I also don't put a lot of faith into IQ tests. I've met some incredibly smart people, on paper, who are incredibly dumb when it comes to common sense.

You don't put a lot of faith in IQ tests but did the following:

- Let readers know you didn't really try for the last 6 questions

- Took a screenshot of your score to share?!

Well, you see, I don't think that I'm all that smart.

Humble brag? Maybe you are smarter than you think :)

No, legit. I have difficulty doing math in my head because the numbers get mixed up. I have to write it down, and I'm not dyslexic.

If you don't put a lot of faith in IQ tests, I think it should be for a different reason. Intelligence and common sense are two independent things and an IQ test only attempts to measure one of them.

121 sounds reasonable if you guessed the last six ones. What the test measures is essentially how many questions you get right before you start guessing, whether out of boredom or because you don't have enough time to figure the questions out (the test cannot really differentiate between those two). For reference, I scored 133 and had to guess the last three or four ones; this is consistent with the last time I did a test like this several years ago.

Are you sure you got bored, and didn't just run out of time like me? :P

I don't believe you got bored on the questions, they were hard enough that I did some screenshots to think on them afterwards, and I needed to spend 5 minutes with each of those before they cracked xD

Haha, there was seven minutes and change left on the clock. Which, honestly, would probably not have been enough time for me to complete them all.

I think after a point, skill in pattern matching and skill in creative invention pull in opposite directions.

Don’t take this too seriously, but this sounds like my prior experience with undiagnosed adhd.

> undiagnosed adhd

I don't know if not wanting to perform boring activities in your free time is a great indicator of adhd. How far would a neurotypical person get into a long terms and conditions disclaimer before wanting to quit if there didn't seem to be a good/any reward?

ADHD brains crave novelty and mental stimulation. Random challenging quizzes are like crack to me, personally. Half of them I get bored with immediately and drop.

All brains crave novelty and mental stimulation.

I've met plenty of people who've never left their metro area in the 3 decades they've been alive.

On the other hand, when my girlfriend asks me what I would like to do, she has to qualify it with: "inside of this state." I have driven across multiple states on a whim a few times over the past couple years.

The degree to which people crave novelty varies greatly.

I think what you’re describing is a difference in degree not kind

ADHD is only a difference in degree not in kind. But that degree can still be significant enough to be crippling.

The difference between a forest fire and a camp fire is a difference in degree, not kind.

Not too often you see someone being glib and pedantic at the same time. ADHD is at least related to a dopamine deficiency and those affected generally self-sooth by seeking stimulation.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24997891/

Next time, check if your dismissive one-liner makes a valid point.

Not wanting or wanting to but failing?

Right haha...like, I WANTED to pay my bills and take care of speeding tickets, etc. I just failed miserably at those type of things for a long time.

Same here. The last 15 I just randomly clicked anything with 10 mins left on the clock because I got bored and wanted to see the end. Still scored 105 so maybe I was lucky...

No, it appears the test is quite calibrated based on these HN comments. You got a bit more than half of them before starting to guess, so you got a slightly higher than average result.

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