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Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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».

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.

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.

> 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.

Maybe a 2600 meeting?

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