Mensa

I scored high enough on an official IQ test (as in, from a clinical psychologist who tested me professionally in person, not some illegitimate online test) to get accepted into Mensa. Should I do it? Some people love it, others claim that it's just a bunch of pretentious cunts playing board games and bragging about how smart they are. What do you think? What have your experiences in Mensa been like?

Being smart autists, I figure that at least some of you might know what Mensa is like. I would appreciate any and all serious insight.

>>80
No, you aren't.

Garbage collection is training wheels for underachieving autists.

The jews are after me.

>>1

I had the opportunity to join (I guess I still could), but I didn't see a point to it. I like puzzles, but I can find plenty of those without Mensa (besides, IIRC Mensa loves word puzzles, and I prefer spatial puzzles). I don't need peers, and I've gotten so used to being alone that I enjoy it, so a social group wouldn't buy me much.

I've read things written by Mensa members, and they always come off as shallow and pretentious. Their understanding of the various topics they philosophize about appear fairly superficial, and seem to be governed by the "popular science" genre of books. I guess when you've been told that you're smart, and that everyone else around you is smart, you have to rush to say things perceived as "smart" to help you fit in (and thus don't have the time to internalize them and, you know, actually think about them). If you are the type of person who finds Douglas Hofstadter fascinating, programs in Haskell because you think it makes you a math genius or constantly asks questions in class that you already know the answer to (to impress the teacher), Mensa will probably be a good fit for you.

If you don't care about the puzzles or the social interaction, it's really just a club full of people who sit around  masturbating themselves over how smart they are. I've seen little action taken towards helping gifted people succeed. It's easier just to reassure yourself that you're "smart enough to do anything you want, if only you cared enough to do it." That's the illness I've had to spend most of my life curing, and I'm fairly certain I'd relapse if I allowed myself to join Mensa, so I don't plan on going anywhere near it.

Then again, maybe joining Mensa will boost your enthusiasm and give the motivation to do something great. It's up to you to decide.

U MENSA HASS KAL

>>84
And if find SICP fascinating, program in Lisp because I think it makes my ideas easy to express and maintain and constantly ask questions on forums about the best of all possible programming languages (to direct discussion into Lisp), what will be a good for me?

MORE LIKE
MENSES
AMIRITE LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLZzz!!11oNE!!1ONE1!

>>84
If you are the type of person who finds Douglas Hofstadter fascinating

That's the guy who wrote "Gödel, Escher, Bach", right?
I've heard that it's supposed to be a really cool book, would you like to elaborate further on that point?

I understand your second, latter points.

Too bad, I actually thought that Mensa would be a little more than cirkle-jerking.

>>86
Then you have reached your final destination, stay on /prog/.

The self-outed Mensa members that I do know name drop their affiliation at every possible opportunity and are generally quite obnoxious. Kind of, "I'm always the smartest guy in the room, and if you don't believe it, just ask me" style people.

I'll never forget back in the 1982 at a computer club meeting when the single Mensa member of our club declared that the IBM PC was a totally worthless object and had no future because when you first turned it on and got a cursor on the screen, and you typed in:

1 A$="HELLO"
2 PRINT A$

RUN

...you got error messages every time you hit ENTER, since you were in the operating system and not BASIC. Being a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 owner, he vocally asserted that he'd discovered a major bug the first time he sat down at a PC.

I always think of that guy when the subject of Mensa comes up.

>>90
I'll never forget back in the 1982 at a computer club meeting
Woah, what are you doing on /prog/, old man?

>>88
I've heard that it's supposed to be a really cool book, would you like to elaborate further on that point?
It's like xkcd in book form.

So, if I understand this thread correctly, Mensa members think they're smarter than they really are, and garbage collectors just plain suck.

Go away, Adok.
This place isn't for you.

>>93
Thats about right.

Also consider the Mensa members I've known really were garbage collectors and janitors, basically because high functioning autistics have no social skills.

It's a world full of people; it don't fuqin matter how smart you are if you can't get along with people. It's not what you know it's who you know.

>>86
If you feel the need to ask questions like that, it means you're insecure about "belonging" to something. In that case, I'd say you need to decide for yourself. At the very worst, you joined an organization that you don't want to be a part of.

>>88
The whole book seemed pretentious to me. Once you understand the concepts he's playing with, you're left with 800 pages of some guy droning on about cognitive science. I think a lot of people like it because they read it at a point in their lives where things like the philosophy of mathematics are foreign to them, so they get introduced to it in GEB and have positive memories of the book, even if they didn't understand the author's thesis.

Evidence bears this out, since in the 20th anniversary edition of the book, the author explicitly states that he himself didn't know what the hell the book was about when he wrote it (you can read this part on the Amazon preview), and as a result has been bombarded by fans who thought the book was simply about the three people in the title or about how all of these fields are related (and has the gall to sound annoyed at the people who don't understand what he wanted to say).

The worst part of the book undoubtedly lies in the form of (some of) its fans, who tell anyone who doesn't like the book that they don't "get it" (which is odd, considering that the author himself admits he doesn't "get it"), without giving a definition of what "getting it" means.

My theory is that anyone who writes a book without knowing what point they want to make is arrogant, an idiot, or both. I'm already familiar with the the material he uses as "examples" in the book (math, art, etc.), so coming at the book from that perspective, all I saw was poor writing and a nauseating sense of self-importance. I don't want to waste my time deciphering the rambling screed of blowhard trying to outdo daddy's Nobel Prize.

Obviously, you should read it for yourself and find out what you think of it (and if you need motivation, look back at the 100+ 5-star reviews on Amazon). As they say, YMMV.

>>15,20,47
I can strongly relate to this.

you can't write a low level thing that has a lot to do inherently with memory management in a GC'd language

NO FUCKING SHIT

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum#C.2B.2B

Seriously guys...

Its MUCH more efficient cleaning "close to the pavement" with a toothbrush rather than using a broom.

But for god's sake people - would any of you take up such a job?

>>96
But that is why I found the book an interesting discussion of sorts: the kind you have with your friends when you're drunk, only somewhat better structured.

Tell me do you write yourself?

Or maybe you can just check out some of your older posts on /prog/ from time to time (since it is slow as C#).

It's always fun to read through something you once thought to be pinnacle of autistic wit and chuckle at how obvious or naive that concept has become in one's eyes.

</metarefernce> etc......

>>100
It's always fun to read through something you once thought to be [...]
Yeah, I do this all the time with things I've read (generally not /prog/ posts, but books, articles, sometimes even things online people have said), movies/TV, even video games.

Ask yourself: Do they have hot chicks in Mensa?

Ask yourself: Do they have hot chicks in /prog/?

>>22
>lesswrong
FUCK YOU

>>103
Yes there is Erikah Cuddlver and some toutous.

>>96
Hofstadter may be arrogant, but at least he isn't pretentious. Just because a book wasn't written with a coherent vision doesn't make it less interesting (c.f.: Finnegans Wake). I suppose you tell people you didn't like Harry Potter because there were no greater themes?

Assuming you weren't actually trying to argue Hofstadter is "an idiot", your argument reduces to being too smart to find the book intellectually gratifying, which is worrying indeed. Perhaps you should join Mensa?

http://xkcd.com/774/

>>106
xkcd
Fvck off, ``faggot''.