In other news (apolitical thread)...

[jgvol]

My gun is a keyboard.

It is a great movie scene, and true -- and bolsters your argument.

[FearlessF]

hah, just don't bring a keyboard to a gun fight

[betarhoalphadelta]

I'm really trying not to do that.  I'm trying to understand something I don't understand.  But a few here seem to chalk it up to this, so we're exploring that as well.

Well then you might want to take the time to understand that you're in a bubble. Not just you... We all are. 

This board skews higher IQ than the general public. Not just that we're pretty much all college-educated, but we also self-select to be the type of people that talk about things--sometimes trivial but sometimes quite complex--on an internet message board. 

Where you work, teaching school, basically everyone there has to be credentialed. Meaning they not only were accepted to a college, they made it through, got teaching certificates, survive ongoing education, etc. Which means that amongst the people you work with, they will skew above average IQ and will have a sort of natural filter keeping out the true dolts. 

Where I work, I think it skews higher. If I look around at the 4th floor of my office where I work, it wouldn't surprise me if the average IQ is a full standard deviation above mean. It'll sound douchey to say this, but one of the things I love about where I work is the opportunity to talk to people smarter than me. It's not something I find in the general day-to-day life very often. But even though not everyone here is some sort of super-genius, we also have a natural filter--someone of merely average IQ won't likely get a foot in the door, and if they do, won't last long here. 

In our personal lives, we often cluster around people similar to ourselves. Which means we've largely filtered out people in our friend group that aren't "like us". 

It's a bubble. 

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So I might say that if you take the distribution of people who are wide-eyed at a Buc-ees grand opening, I might be disparaging them, but I think the average IQ might actually be below national median. But even if the distribution perfectly matches the US distribution--it's still lower than this peer group of CFB51 members, of the teachers and friends you hang out with, and of the coworkers and peer group that the rest of us deal with. 

If you try to apply your own preferences and thought processes to people who aren't like you, it's going to be hard to understand what they do and why, sometimes. 

[betarhoalphadelta]

You reminded me that back in my senior year of high school, a McDonald's came to the small town I lived in at that time.  Not like I'd never seen a McDonald's before, but it was a big deal for that little town.  It was kind of a sign that maybe we were moving up to being a one-horse town instead of a half-a-horse town. 

Me and a buddy decided we wanted to be the first people served there and we stayed up all night so we could be the first in line at the 5 am opening time.  Unfortunately we fell asleep sometime in the 4 o'clock hour (and wound up missing the first few hours of school to boot). 

Why was that important to us?  Well, as I recall....it wasn't.  We just thought it'd be cool to look back and remember that we were the first-ever customers there. 

And BTW, just to call out my last post and say that it shouldn't be construed at you and your buddy being deemed lacking intelligence. 

There's something about being a teenage boy that makes all of us quite stupid no matter our IQ. We can all tell you've grown out of it 

[MikeDeTiger]

So I might say that if you take the distribution of people who are wide-eyed at a Buc-ees grand opening, I might be disparaging them, but I think the average IQ might actually be below national median. But even if the distribution perfectly matches the US distribution--it's still lower than this peer group of CFB51 members, of the teachers and friends you hang out with, and of the coworkers and peer group that the rest of us deal with.

If you try to apply your own preferences and thought processes to people who aren't like you, it's going to be hard to understand what they do and why, sometimes.

I feel like there's some explanatory power here.  Yet, then I think about the cfb example again, and realize that some brilliant people love football and are crazy for it, and others have looked at me like I'm a drooling idiot for investing so much time, energy, emotion, and sometimes money in it.  

In that category, IQ may not be a big delineator.  Which would suggest that regardless of intelligence, there are other factors peculiar to individuals which motivate our weird interests.  i.e., "we're just built that way."  

I guess the question then becomes:  is a Buccees opening objectively and demonstrably different than a nonsense game with no real consequences?  If so, then my point is mostly moot.  If not, then we need to look for other explainers than IQ.

Personally, I kinda like that there are oddballs in the world who get excited about things I don't understand.  I like reading the World Cup thread, even though I care nothing at all about soccer.  But there's something comforting about watching other people clamor in joyful exchange about the thing that excites them, even though I don't get it at all.  And that's coming from somebody who gets sports fandom.  (Just not that one.)  If they aren't hurting people or themselves, I kinda like knowing there's weirdos out there.  After all, the weirdos gave us Austin, and that used to be a cool city.  

Not anymore, though.  They're all a bunch of low-life, asshole, kidney thieves, and nobody should ever live or visit there.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

I feel like there's some explanatory power here.  Yet, then I think about the cfb example again, and realize that some brilliant people love football and are crazy for it, and others have looked at me like I'm a drooling idiot for investing so much time, energy, emotion, and sometimes money in it. 

In that category, IQ may not be a big delineator.  Which would suggest that regardless of intelligence, there are other factors peculiar to individuals which motivate our weird interests.  i.e., "we're just built that way." 

I guess the question then becomes:  is a Buccees opening objectively and demonstrably different than a nonsense game with no real consequences?  If so, then my point is mostly moot.  If not, then we need to look for other explainers than IQ.

Again, it's a distribution. You're a data scientist, right? You know that if the average IQ of college football fans is 95, that doesn't mean there won't be college football fans with IQs of 145. College football, in fact, might skew higher IQ than NFL, given that for many people college fandom only comes about from attending a school--self-selecting for those who have the IQ where they can actually get into those schools. 

Just like if the average IQ of those who attend a gas station grand opening is 90, that doesn't mean there won't be smart people in that group.

These may not follow normal distribution. But let's say that for the gas station, one standard deviation above is an IQ of 100, and two SD is 110. And let's say that at my workplace, the two SD low end IQ is 100, and one SD is 110.

That means that the overlap of "people I interact with daily" and "people who would be likely to go to a gas station grand opening" is pretty small. Not zero, but pretty small.

And given the way workplaces work, they might be doing it but keeping that fact to themselves because they know it doesn't "fit"--I don't hear any of my coworkers talking about WWE matches either  

[SFBadger96]

Where I work, I think it skews higher. If I look around at the 4th floor of my office where I work, it wouldn't surprise me if the average IQ is a full standard deviation above mean. It'll sound douchey to say this, but one of the things I love about where I work is the opportunity to talk to people smarter than me. It's not something I find in the general day-to-day life very often. But even though not everyone here is some sort of super-genius, we also have a natural filter--someone of merely average IQ won't likely get a foot in the door, and if they do, won't last long here.

This is one of the things I like about where I work, too. In the normal population, I'm pretty smart. In my office, I'm about average, or maybe below it, and several of the people I work with blow my mind. It's pretty cool.

[bayareabadger]

I’m sort of confused how IQ links to Buc-ee’s, but does not seem very productive to read through four pages to figure it out.

[FearlessF]

highly intelligent folks don't read through four pages to figure it out. 

[bayareabadger]

highly intelligent folks don't read through four pages to figure it out.

I fear the reading may tick down my obviously above average IQ.

[FearlessF]

I'm below average for the members here so I don't worry about it much

I just scroll past the movies/tv show thread Tech Nerd thread, and a few others

[OrangeAfroMan]

Where I work, I think it skews higher. If I look around at the 4th floor of my office where I work, it wouldn't surprise me if the average IQ is a full standard deviation above mean. It'll sound douchey to say this, but one of the things I love about where I work is the opportunity to talk to people smarter than me.

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If you try to apply your own preferences and thought processes to people who aren't like you, it's going to be hard to understand what they do and why, sometimes.

When I worked on the rez, I'd have a wish to walk into a room of people talking who were smarter than me.  It wasn't about a lack of intelligence around me, just a very low population and absolutely nothing to go out and do.  I just missed those random comments that would impress you when you're out somewhere among people.  There was no 'out somewhere' for those conversations to be happening, lol.  

I get the bubble thing.  But as I get older I'm less likely to disparage things I don't understand and want to understand them better.  Even if they seem truly bizarre...maybe even especially so.

I've also wondered if life in this time and place is more enjoyable with a 95 IQ.  How we do have an army of people who actively aim to part our monies from our wallets.  I still don't have an answer on that one.  It'd be a lot better to not be aware of life's little inefficiencies and injustices...but would it though?

[Cincydawg]

Have you read "Brave New World"?  It sort of answers that question.

[FearlessF]

ignorance is bliss