Problems of the Very High IQ Woman

Tara writes:

Yes, I agree, although my IQ is not “very high”, my GRE score does correlate to an IQ of about 140, but my near-genius or possibly even bona fide low-level genius IQ has never done anything save cause me grief…I suspect that for people who have even higher IQ’s than myself the problem is further compounded. I am very introverted and have little or no interest in the trivial things that most people (specifically most women around my age) deem gives their life a sense of purpose…I’m not interested in having children, getting married, or even the pointless rat race that the so-called ‘career woman’ aspires to…In short, I agree that it’s not all rosy for the high-IQ crowd, but I disagree that high IQ women have it any easier. In fact, women may run into social integration problems even with modest IQ’s in the 135 to 150 range whereas men may not run into the same problems until they hit 160–175 due to 1) More societal tolerance of the display of ‘high-IQ traits’ in males. 2) Reaching a point of relative rarity at a lower IQ level due to differences in variation (e.g. twice as many men have an IQ above 140, and the disparity increases further as the intelligence level increases, thus high-IQ females experience isolation/maladaptation possibly as much as 20 to 30 IQ points lower than males). Anyway, I’ve worked as a janitor/cleaning lady most of my life despite having a degree in mathematics with a minor in physics…My high IQ hasn’t done anything except get me into a bunch of shit both literally and figuratively…😦

A similar sort of thing is often reported in very high-IQ males. Very high IQ males often shun marriage or marry late to very late. Childlessness is common. To give you an example, all of my siblings and I have genius IQ’s. Only one of us has married and had a child. The other two did not marry and had no children. I am 58 years old, and I have no children that I am aware of anyway. I was actually philosophically opposed to marriage until age 47 when I started to consider it as an option. I don’t care that I never married, and I am not dying to marry. I think I may marry at some point in my life though, as a number of women have been trying like crazy to marry me for the last 18 years. I haven’t ever really lived with a woman. The longest I have ever lived with a woman was two weeks. I can also be quite introverted, and sadly I have become much more introverted as I have gotten older. I have worked at all sorts of occupations: magazine editor, proofreader, schoolteacher (K-12), freelance writer, paralegal, linguist, cultural anthropologist, book author and illustrator, head of a computer consulting business, psychological counselor/therapist, medical counselor, broker for artists, academic book writer, book illustrator, HTML designer, dispute arbitrator for artists, information sales, and blog author. I also had a few criminal careers which I very much enjoyed, as it seemed like, as below, I was putting one over on society. The one I will discuss is drug dealer, an occupation that I had for nearly a decade and a half. So you see, I have been all over the map when it comes to jobs. Furthermore, I am something of an impostor as I have dived right into fields that generally required a degree or certificate. I had no degree or certificate in most of these cases, and in some cases I didn’t even know anything about the job. Sometimes I would go get some books on “How to Be a So and So (name of job).” I would just read through the books and then dive right into the job. “If you can’t make it, fake it” ought to be my motto. I rather enjoy roaming around doing all sorts of jobs in all sorts of different fields. It’s a kick, and it’s also sort a big joke, especially when I act as an imposter and pretty much fake my way into some job and then learn on the job. It’s like a gigantic con job, as I am sort of putting one over on society if not my employer. As you can see though, I have not had one single job in one career as many to most folks do. Probably as a result, although I have worked at some prestigious jobs, I have not made much money in life, which is another thing that I could pretty much care less about like the woman above. I have also worked at many basic, low-level type and even minimum wage jobs like the author has, quite a few of which are not only non-prestigious but are actually looked down on by society as “loser’s jobs.” I will pretty much do anything when it comes to minimum wage and low level jobs. I do not feel humiliated having to work as these jobs. Some of the jobs I worked at are so degraded that I have even have people yell at me and call me a loser for being “only a son and so (name of job). Working at low-level jobs and not earning much money in life is quite common among very high IQ people, especially in males with IQ’s 160+. Most people are shocked by this and think if you have a very high IQ, it is a ticket to automatically making a lot of money. This is absolutely not true and in fact, in many cases, the opposite is true. These very high IQ times who lead rather unsuccessful lives employment-wise are not losers at all. Instead, they are being rather normal for people with that high of an IQ level. Most people just can’t seem to get their heads around that, and they are completely baffled by the lack of success of many very high-IQ people. All I have to say is that at some level of very high-IQ, I feel that having that high of an IQ is as much or more of a hindrance than a gift. I am thinking that it may just be possible to be too smart to succeed well in life. In other words, some people are just too smart.  

Please follow and like us:
error3
fb-share-icon20
Tweet 20
fb-share-icon20

0 thoughts on “Problems of the Very High IQ Woman”

  1. Life isn’t all about money. You can be happy in a lower class situation. A person that does what he enjoys everyday is a happy person.
    Possibly the frustration with living like a bum is that you have to struggle to obtain basic needs, and stuff like a yearly vacation are out of the question.

    1. Sorry to use bum that sounds anti-working class. OK bums are one group who struggle to get basic needs, but also the lower end of working class people are also in the same boat many times.

  2. It’s no secret that the higher your IQ the harder it is to relate to most people. Generally high IQ people:
    Over analyze and overthink things. Being able to see nuances and gradations,in everything. Instead of right or wrong answers. Analyzing and contemplating world Issues and politics can be VERY depressing.
    Are overly introspective. Brutally self aware of ones own flaws and the flaws of others. Makes them overly inhibited and very tough get out of their comfort zone.
    More likely to see bullshit and tell call out things for what they are instead of what they are made out to be.Unfortunately, pointing out the delusions that society runs on outside of private is typically a one way ticket to the abyss

    1. That sounds very familiar. In particular, not being able to relate to other people, or at least not being able to relate to their motives.
      The issue I find isn’t so much that over analysis of politics and issues causes depression or despondency, but that I can’t relate or empathise with what motivates (or doesn’t motivate) people. I genuinely can’t understand how people can ostensibly appear content spending their lives at a cubicle, going home, watching TV and ads, consuming ‘content’. Most people live lives that would drive me absolutely bat-shit insane. And yet they don’t flip out. They don’t see the bullshit. They don’t see the ‘what if’ or ‘what could be’.
      I also think high IQ people may tend to see human behaiviour in a more objective, or “detached” manner. That is, if someone is talking to them, they are more likely to analyse WHY they are saying what they are saying, what they are trying to achieve, than to be engaged in the conversation itself. High IQ people are deconstructing and analysing the world all the time, rather than taking part in it, at least, some of us are.

  3. The very high IQ could be mistaken for being gay or bisexual because they come across as weird and unsociable. Some high IQ are actually thought to be retarded.
    Of course, high IQ equals more sensitivity which makes you more weird, more un-macho, more un-cool, so that makes you a target.

    1. Some high IQ are actually thought to be retarded.

      Yes! My 7th grade teacher actually thought I was retarded and made me sit in the hallway all period.

      The very high IQ could be mistaken for being gay or bisexual because they come across as weird and unsociable.

      People used to say this about me all the time (not everyone did though), but I do not hear it much anymore for some reason.

      Of course, high IQ equals more sensitivity which makes you more weird, more un-macho, more uncool, so that makes you a target.

      Yes! Except for the uncool part. I have been “Joe Cool” for a very long time now, or at least that’s who I try to be.

        1. I don’t support bullying. Instead I support teasing, roughhousing and childhood horsing around, that sort of thing.
          Actual bullying is ugly. I cannot support it.

        2. Being bullied is a necessary evil essential to understanding your place in the world and the dark side of human nature. Special ed teachers and “best buddies” aren’t doing the kids any favor by constantly hugging them telling them how special they are. This makes them very vulnerable to predators later on in life.

        3. Yeah, but a lot of times it’s tough to know the difference between “just being boys” and bullying. Well, one indication is that they’re being mean to you all the time That’s a good indication they don’t like you and it’s bullying.
          Another indication is extreme below the belt remarks targeting disability or somebody’s mom etc..

        4. A big problem is you can tell on real bullying as opposed to “just being boys” cause then you labeled a wussy. You get labeled one even if the treatment you get is just hardcore bullying.

        5. In other words, sorry for mistake, you cannot tattle-tale on bullies, the real thing, as opposed to rough-housing without being called a wussy.
          Make no mistake, a lot of the situations where it seems a whole place is turning against you, like everyone is the enemy, is bullying. For instance, at a typical high school or college, you should be able to get by without constant name-calling every hour or so.

  4. If someone is a genius, then they should go into linear algebra studying fun stuff like “Find the vector coordinate of a certain polynomial relative to a certain ordered basis.” I doubt if the people studying it know the deep part, only just the procedure to solve the problem.

  5. I am 58 years old
    That’s not old enough. Take it from a junior pro 🙂 you still have what it takes to Rock the Casbah.
    Heck, Donald Trump’s 70 and he’s just got started. Being a billionaire and a total shithead is an awesome combo, he must have fucked every hot pussy out there.
    Bill Clinton, rumor has it, continues to get even more action from younger strumpets to this day.
    As for you, I say give it a good 10-15 years more before you finally decide to hang up your boots. Maybe even longer than that. Out-fuck everyone including Hugh Hefner.
    Life’s what we make out of it.
    Fuck marriage, responsibilities and paternity suits. That’s for low IQ men who like to be in control of their desires rather than the other way around.

  6. Seems like your relatives are doing a dysgenic favour to society, by not doing any kids, unlike those ghetto blacks for example.

  7. “A similar sort of thing is often reported in very high-IQ males. Very high IQ males often shun marriage or marry late to very late. Childlessness is common.
    To give you an example, all of my siblings and I have genius IQ’s. Only one of us has married and had a child. The other two did not marry and had no children.”
    This is a tragedy. Smart people need to reproduce or we’re going to end up with idiocracy, though we may already be there. I don’t think this was a problem before birth control and women’s liberation. Every guy, smart or dumb was going to have a wife by 25 and some kids. Now all the smart people carefully plan their lives to the point that many opt not to have kids. And the dumb guys bust a nut in anything with a pulse, no condom needed.
    I’m still not entirely convinced that very high IQ people do occupationally and financially worse in life. You’ve only given us apocryphal evidence but I’d like to see some hard research behind this and a distribution of IQ scores and their correlation with income. I thought one of the main themes of Murray and Hernstein’s The Bell Curve was to show that high IQ strongly correlates with outcome in life?

    1. I thought one of the main themes of Murray and Hernstein’s The Bell Curve was to show that high IQ strongly correlates with outcome in life?

      I think the studies will show IQ benefits you all the way up to IQ 145, and then achievement starts to decline I think maybe because they are just too damn smart.

      I’m still not entirely convinced that very high IQ people do occupationally and financially worse in life. You’ve only given us apocryphal evidence…

      IQ does benefit you statistically but stories of very high IQ not achieving much in life are very common. A lot of the very high IQ people on the IQ Quora board seem to have done quite well for themselves.

    2. Perhaps the desire to have children, procreate, marry and follow the ‘standard life pattern’ is something based on more primitive genetic drives than rational choice. More intelligent people build a worldview framed moreso on their thoughts and reason than internal desires, and therefore are skewed further from these base genetic desires towards something else. I think in some way, this is why White people breed less, are keen on Liberalism (which is essentially about liberating us from nature) and why more traditional or conservative societies still place more value on the correct gender roles, family, duty, etc, which is really living according to programming.
      There is no reason to believe that evolution leads to higher and higher IQs. Evolution selects for fecundity, adaptation and survival, and if that doesn’t need or is hindered by a higher IQ, then it will select against it.

  8. Speaking of myself mostly: As an intelligent person I can live happily enough on much less money than a normal or dumber. I spend my money more efficiently. I can do things for myself in less time than it would take to earn the money from overtime to pay someone else to do it. I don’t buy things thinking they are going to make me happy.
    For that last sentence, I can only think of one time in my life it might have helped me to buy into the consumer thing for a while.

  9. This is a highly fascinating topic, I hope you can continue on for a few more posts. As for poor Tara, good God, that was heart-wrenching. If you are reading this comment Tara, all I can say is that I feel for you.

  10. I am shocked by your testimony. Canada looks far worse than US by your observation. Do you really have statistical insight for what you’re saying or is it only a subjective feeling?
    I always had (maybe romantic) view at Canada as mor intelligent part of American contintent. I am from Europe btw.

Leave a Reply to Tulio Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)