When You Are Literally Too Smart to Function in Society

Honest Guy: Like some high IQ types, Ron Unz shows definite signs of autism and being way out “on the spectrum”. Also fairly obvious mental illness and very few friends in “real life”.

Do you think this is true? Do you have any evidence for this? Do you evidence that he has a diagnosable mental disorder? If so, which one? Also do you have evidence that he has few friends. I heard he took an IQ test once and scored 190. That is also the score of Elon Musk and Thomas Pynchon, the notorious reclusive novelist.

I interacted with him in his comments section, and we exchanged one email. After that, he wasn’t answering my mails. He seemed to have the appropriate “adult” type social skills that I find very restrictive.

But I recently worked with a renowned scholar who had Assburgers. He also had excellent, “adult”-type social skills. He said he had had to learn them in life, as they did not come naturally. He did not wish to talk to me on the phone. He tried to get a PhD but dropped out of the program. He wanted to be a professor, but his advisor said he wouldn’t be able to do it. He said,

You don’t talk!

So he was extremely introverted. He was too weird to work in academia! I’ve worked with a few of these independent scholar types who are outside of academia. One used to be the editor of the Arts Section of the famous Le Monde newspaper out of Paris.

As far as the man in question, I interacted with him a lot via email, and he seemed to have very appropriate “adult” and not only that but “professional” social skills. I have worked with lots of academics, and you must have these sort of “professional” skills, most of which boil down to controlling your emotions and in general a lot of discretion and an extreme emphasis on “appropriate” as in “adult” behavior.

There may be a particular “academic” professional style, but I’m not sure. I know that any expressions of anger are very much discouraged. Even if you are outraged at some work or theory, you are supposed to use toned-down language in attacking it.

I’ve decided that this “professional” style is mostly about “toning down” your interactions with other humans and being in extreme control. Even anger is portrayed in very toned-down ways. Casual language and conversation is discouraged, but you have it if you get to know the person well enough. The academics that I dealt with overseas such as Turks (I worked with a lot of Turkish academics) were a lot more open and even “human,” if I could use such a word.

I’m not sure if high IQ types are more likely to be on the autistic spectrum or not. It’s a popular view but I’d like to see some good evidence.

I know that the famous Charles Sidis, one of the highest IQ people in recent history, was definitely an Aspie. That’s beyond dispute. I’m not sure how he supported himself after that. He had a professorship at a famous university but he dropped out of it at age 21 or so. He had started lecturing hardcore courses at this university at age 9!

The famous extremely high IQ Theodore Kaczynski, the Unibomber, was similar. I believe that he was said to be on the autistic spectrum. Same deal. I think he got a professorship in mathematics at age 21 or so, but he dropped out of it for no good reason after a year or two. He was an excellent math scholar and his dissertation is excellent.

It is true that as IQ rises, people tend to get weirder and weirder, but they’re not necessarily on the autistic spectrum. They’re just weird! As a good friend of mine at university said as we were walking to the parking lot one time,

All those genius guys are totally out to lunch.

He was looking at me as he said it and it seemed like he was talking about me.

I don’t think I was particularly weird at university, but there was this really hot chick who lived next door who thought I was weird as Hell and spared no opportunity to let me know that. One day I was reading a William Burroughs novel called The Ticket That Exploded while she was reading The Shining. We were both sunbathing in the parking lot with a couple of her chick friends. I left to go to the bathroom and she picked up the book and started reading it. Next time I saw her she looked at me like I was from outer space and she said,

Are you still reading that bizarre Ticket book?

To her, me reading a Burroughs novel was further evidence that I was weird as Hell.

Her beef about me was that I was too introverted and that I never left the apartment and seemed to keep weird hours. Like I would stay up all night reading books alone.  Compared to how I am now, I think I was mentally pretty healthy, much more than I am now, sadly.

University professors max out at 145 IQ. Above that, they start getting weird, and they can’t advance anymore. I read an article called “The Outsiders” about men with IQ’s over 160!

I don’t think they had Assburgers, but they were strange.

Many of them were working at very menial jobs, and most were low income or even living in poverty. They lived alone and almost never dated. Most were celibate at the time they were interviewed. They were all extremely introverted to the point of being painfully shy. All of them were misanthropes and their main complaint against humans in general was that they were stupid! As in “so stupid that there’s no point even having much to do with them.”

This is very interesting and it smashes the idea that income and accomplishment are equated to success. At some point, like with these men, your IQ is so high that you are literally too smart for society and too smart to function. They’re literally too smart! Almost too smart to live.

You got the impression that they were like aliens who landed here and got disenchanted with the place. Why they didn’t date, I’m not sure, but many very IQ men don’t date much. Perhaps they are “too weird to date,” if such a thing is even possible. I suppose women might see them as too weird to get involved with. I’m not sure if they had low or high sex drives.

I have read that in other cultures, it’s the same. An extremely high IQ man in Italy was working as a janitor! He loved it because he said it gave him time to think. He literally wanted a menial job where he could just think all day!

I think a lot of these guys are the same. For them, thinking, reading, that sort of thing, is almost a sensual (as in involving the body) pleasure. As others take pleasure in chess or swimming or vacations to exotic places, these guys get the same pleasure simply by thinking.

They can play chess games in their heads. They can swim anywhere and any way by doing breaststrokes in their brains. They can go on as many exotic vacations they want anywhere on Earth simply by traveling in their minds! I think they are very happy when they are thinking, reading, and daydreaming.

It’s sort of like the Literature professor at a famous university who taught courses on James Joyce. He was one of the most famous Joyce scholars around. One day another professor asked him what literature he had been reading lately and he confessed that in the last 20 years, the only novel he had read was Joyce’s notorious Finnegans Wake! The other man was taken back and said,

Think of all the other books you could have read in 20 years. Why just read one book?

The Joyce scholar responded and I love this quote:

But you don’t understand! They’re all in the Wake!

That is, all of the novels he could have read in 20 years are already “in Finnegans Wake,” as the book is so all-encompassing that in a sense it includes not only all past literature and all present literature too!

This reminded me of how these high IQ guys could go anywhere and do anything in their heads. No need to go on an African safari. They can go on the wildest safari vacation right in their minds!

They probably love challenging intellectual activities and see them as fun puzzles that seem impossible to solve but can be solved if you work hard enough. They probably see Herculean intellectual tasks as fun challenges, as in “doing the impossible.”