French Scientists Link Higher BMI with Lower IQ 728
Xemu writes "French scientists have linked obesity to lower IQ reports the Telegraph. In a new five-year study of more than 2,200 adults, people with a low body mass index (BMI) could recall 30% more words in a vocabulary test than those who were obese. The fatter subjects also showed a higher rate of cognitive decline when they were retested five years later. In the United States, 30% of the population is obese according to OECD. That's the highest rate of obesity anywhere. Do these high obesity rates affect the average IQ of the population?" (Of course, this sidesteps discussion of whether IQ tests measure anything significant at all.)
BMI is not accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
During the rainy season, I don't exersize, so I lose muscle mass and get skinny, and I look - pardon me for saying it - like a geek. And my BMI is normal ( and allegedly healthy ). But during the other ten months, I am more muscular ( and probably a lot healthier ) and yet I am technically obese, according to the BMI.
Do I feel smarter? Heck, I'm a slashdotter - I think I'm smart all the time.
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Yes, BMI makes no fat/muscle distinction and recognizes a body builder as "obese." (BTW, how much weight do you gain to go from "normal" to "obese"? Because there is an "overweight" level between, under 30 BMI IIRC).
But I think it is safe to say, that the overall trend is that people with a higher BMI have a higher fat %.
I know, from personal experience, when I'm significantly thinner, my brain is less occupied with food. I feel mentally and physically faster. Of course, more
Re:BMI is not accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
You mentioned when you are slimmer your less occupied with food and such. Your brain is noticibly performing better as you can notice the differences. It apears though that this study is gearded towards saying slim people are just smarter or have the ability to be smarter easier then fatter people. As if fat content in a prsons body directly reflect thier mental abilities.
Now, What if the slimmer people have traditionaly concentrated on more mental work and less physicle work, therby training thier brain instead of thier muscles. Would this mean that a person who is slimmer is smarter because they are slimmer and less occupied with food or that they have traditionaly used thier brain more and remembering things or solving puzzles becomes more easy to them. Therefore a person with a larger build, spends more time not using thier brain and more on thier muscles, watching TV, or whatever else and thier ability to perform as well as the slim person is diminished?
I remeber in third grade when we started multiplication. I used flash cards and could do almost any problem in my head that involved less then two numbers of two digits or less (20x7). After using calculators for a while, I could do this anymore. But I have been able to return to it becauseof vaious jobs ove rthe decades. (like roofing, framing and general construction working wich involves alot of math)
So, from my personal experience, Could it be just how a slim person spends his time verses how a fatter person might? Obviously anyone who plays sports is going to be better then anyone who doesn't. And people playing for severla years will have somewhat of an advantage over those playing for a few weeks. Is this just the reverse were the game is a mind game instead of football? And someone with several years experience because of lifestyle differences will have an advantage over someone who doesn't exercise thier mind? Could it be that slim or fat is just a reflection of how a person spends thier time and has nothing or little to do with thier fat content outside what a fat person does compared to a skinny person.
I would like to see this studdy done again and the occupations of the people be part of it. I would bet some one of larger BMI who does something like programing or construction were he reads blueprints, sets grades, or transferes scale to live building projects might do a little better then someone who is just fat and works at wopper floppers of america. But if the burger king employee of the month does the same as one of the others of same BMI, I would conceed that fat might have an impact.
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- Poorer people are fatter because they eat more junk food and cheap, rich in carbo-hydrates food (like potatos or rice) instead of healthier (and usually more expensive) food such as vegetables, lean meat, olive oil, etc...
- At the present, intellectual work is more highly regarded and beter payed than manual work. This means that the poor tend to be those with lesser abilities to do intelectual work (people with lower IQs or those who didn't had a opportunity to get a good education).
This c
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Wow, eh, do you do steroids or something ?
Muscle mass gain is usually measured in X * (100 grams) per month, if you're working out once in a while. Only by working out almost constantly you can build up a kilogram of muscle mass per month, but that's hard, painful work. You're certainly not building up 16 kg of muscle mass in one year, unless you have some sort of genetic mutation or do steroids.
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Re:BMI is not accurate (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, we've noticed. : p
(sorry, couldn't let that one slip by)
Re:BMI is not accurate (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds right then, most body builders I've met aren't exactly bright...
But what's your suggestion? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have an alternative easily computed number you think better measures obesity?
Or do you just think we should not try to measure it?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, measurements of body fat percentage are inaccurate unless expensive. Scales that use electrical impedance are reliable at detecting relative change in a single individual, if they are used consistently under the same circumstances (time of day, level of skin moisture, etc.) They don't give you a useful reading from one trip to the doctor's office. Skin fold te
Re:But what's your suggestion? (Score:5, Funny)
"now this may sting a little"
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Density: p = M/V
The above formulae clearly illustrate the problem with the BMI. The BMI in SI units would be kg/m^2, whereas the density is kg/m^3. Further the m^2 is from only one dimension, rather than from three mutually normal dimensions. The purpose of the BMI is to determine adiposity. For this purpose it may serve as a semi-useful metric in statistical studies of a epidemiological, or actuarial nature.
However, as a diagnostic metric in a clinical setting it is worse t
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not at all. Doctors and nurses use charts; most people use charts or web calculators like this one [nhlbisupport.com].
Mostly "quick and dirty" applies to medical research, where it's quick, cheap, and routine to record a patient's height and weight. You don't need extra funding or specially trained staff to measure height and weight consistently, and in many cases, that
BMI = Worthless (Score:5, Insightful)
This also seems to sidestep discussion of whether BMI measures anything significant at all.
=Smidge=
Re:BMI = Worthless (Score:5, Interesting)
Concur but I have a different take on this wording. Of course IQ tests measure something significant. The question may be whether or not "IQ tests are a signigicant measure of anything at all". My wife is an elementry teacher and we recently discussed how children are placed into gifted classes. She said that they used to do IQ testing but that has fallen out of vogue due to their being a rather politically incorrect measure (not to mention all the other types of "intelligence" (emotional, creative, et crappra)). This is sad. IQ tests are a near-perfect indicator of intelligence. That is they have a very low incidence of Type I (false positive) error. The cultural biases come into play and lead to false negatives (Type II errors). It seems the logical approach would be to use a combination of tests or qualitative assessments rather than ditching a good but non-perfect test.
Re:BMI = Worthless (Score:4, Interesting)
IQ tests are a reliable measure of one's ability to perform well on IQ tests. You may choose to call that "intelligence" and wrap it all up in a tidy tautology, but that doesn't really prove anything.
While debating the methodology of a study is valuable and worthwhile activity, it tends to get in the way of what generalizations can be drawn from the data. Since there is a strong positive correlation between BMI and actual obesity (even if that correlation is not 1.0 due to factors such as highly muscular individuals), and there is a strong positive correlation between IQ tests and actual intelligence (due to cultural and educational testing biases) this data identifies a negative correlation between obesity and intelligence. That's interesting and potentially useful. Now it's time for studies with more precise methodology.
Re:BMI = Worthless (Score:5, Insightful)
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Like....uh... hm.
Well, crap.
This explains the state of the world today, huh?
(or maybe it's just strongly correlated)
It measures something (Score:4, Insightful)
It is the people who don't think they mean anything at all usually are either fat or stupid.
Re:BMI = Worthless (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I grew up and lost over 80 pounds.
Anyone who show as "obese" on the BMI charts but has enough muscle to throw things off is obviously either way toned, or way strong. Seriously. If you're an average person, even a once or twice a week gym habit, and you show as obese... then you're 99% probably fat. Grow up and admit it. Especially in the USA, "normal," is a long way from "fit." The vast, vast majority of people with high BMIs are fat, end of story.
Sure, Tom Cruise is the poster child for "overweight by BMI standards." He's obviously not. If you can see your sculpted abs, you probably aren't as well. Otherwise, you are. Deal with it.
If you want to ignore it, that's your decision. Be overweight. But stop pretending you're not. And also, more to the point, stop trying to convince everybody else that they're not overweight because you can't deal with your own issues. And yes, that is a more generic rant than just one aimed at the parent poster, but its still true.
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Two points.
First, BMI is effective for a large percentage of the population. And by large I'm not making a bad joke, I mean 95% plus. Not 100%.
Second, actual body fat testing (reliable stuff, not Tanita scales) is expensive.
This means that BMI testing is damned useful. Not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but damned useful. And, by the way, I totally agree w
Uh Oh! (Score:2)
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IQ Tests (Score:5, Informative)
This wasn't a general purpose IQ test. It was a specific test of people's ability to recall words. They're talking about memory in particular, not some fuzzy idea of general intelligence.
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It's sour grapes, political correctness, and anti-science. We damn well do know that people with high IQ are usually more successful than those with low IQ. This is especially true if you compare an IQ 80 person to an IQ 115 person. (rather than 140 and 170, where social problems can make things interesting)
IQ is unpopular because it is mostly in-born, inheritable, and unevenly distributed. There is a sort of unfairness that goes against Western ideals. The idea that anyb
Re:IQ Tests (Score:5, Insightful)
We damn well do know that people with high IQ are usually more successful than those with low IQ.
True, but (as shouldn't even have to be pointed out in this discussion) correlation does not imply causation. Specifically: when people are given better education, their IQ increases. IQ is decidedly not (as you claim) "mostly in-born [and] inheritable" unless you really believe that there is a measurable sense in which whites are inherently (on average) intellectually superior to blacks and hispanics in the United States.
Now, even aside from any issues of political correctness, I hope you aren't in fact claiming that, because it's been pretty thoroughly refuted. If you take someone (of any race) out of poverty and give them a good education, their average IQ increases dramatically. While in any group (including those in poverty) there will be certain extraordinary individuals who have a high IQ (or whatever positive attribute you're measuring) despite all disadvantages, the frequency of these individuals goes up an awful lot if you take away the disadvantages in the first place.
The reason some people dislike IQ, or claim it does not measure anything useful, is that most discussions about it implicitly assume that it succeeds in its goal of measuring intellectual capacity independently of cultural and educational factors. In this it fails completely. Which doesn't mean that it isn't measuring anything useful, but your comment shows there are still plenty of people who think IQ is some sort of "in-born" attribute. It's not.
There is a sort of unfairness that goes against Western ideals. The idea that anybody can pull themself up out of poverty, that every child has a chance to succeed intellectually, is threatened by this.
I'm actually kind of with you on this. I don't think the world is as fair as a lot of people would like to believe, and I don't think that anyone can pull themselves out of poverty, everyone has a chance to succeed, etc. -- and even though I think IQ is (mostly) bunk, I think some amount of intelligence is inborn. But nowhere near all. Even people who could have been very successful intellectually can fail because of their surroundings. All of which suggests, to me anyway, that it is important to do what we can to help others out of poverty and to provide children with good educations, since they may not be able to attain these things themselves regardless of their actions (that is, unlike some Americans, I don't see poverty as a moral failing).
But, as I said, the fact that the world isn't fair doesn't mean it's unfair in the particular way you suggest, that is, that IQ is an innate property transcending culture, language, and education, and rich folks just happen to be innately the smartest.
Re:IQ Tests (Score:4, Interesting)
The obvious theory is that both genetics and child care (nutrition, education) are vitally important.
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IQ is meant to measure exactly what you're describing -- the inborn intelligence that is relatively non-plastic after birth (or at least the first few years of development.) Decades of research have been devoted to this, and supposedly it works -- at least within a given race and within a given culture, in an industrialized society.
Re:IQ Tests (Score:5, Funny)
This story is riddled with nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
First, they make the classic error of attributing causation when the study found correlation. If that was in the original study, then I'd question the researcher's methodology, but I suspect the blame lies with whoever wrote the article. Testing people's intelligence and comparing their weight does not show a causitive link between wieght and intellect. It could just as easily show that poor judgement translates into bad eating habits and low IQ.
Second, the criticism they reported came from a politician who tried to use anecdotal evidence to debunk the link. That's right, she said she knew witless skinny people and clever fat people, so the study must therefor be wrong. Someone ought to tell her that the plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".
Re:This story is riddled with nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
So obesity is (at least in Western and Central Europe, the study is french after all!) negatively correlated with the social status. People with low income tend to be more obese than people with high income. People with a high IQ also tend to have higher income than people with a lower IQ. Thus both correlations together tell you, that obese people have in average a lower IQ. If there is a causality, it may be this: Lower IQ -> lower wages -> more prone to obesity.
I think you've probably got it (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it any wonder those with lower income would opt for the McDonalds food?
Ad
As a fat man... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, though, I test pretty well for intelligence, but being fat is part of a vicious cycle with laziness and depression, leading to a lack of achievement. I wonder, in fact, if the results would be similar in the population of people with untreated major depression regardless of BMI. Based on no scientific data at all, I would suspect increased BMI as being a symptom of another problem which could be the causative factor in the poor IQ showing.
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As for causation: so if I run around a hill a few times, I'll get cleverer again?
I dunno (Score:4, Insightful)
This last bit from the TFA sums up how I feel about it:
"But Ann Widdecombe, the former Tory minister, said that the research seemed unsustainable. "You just need to look around the world and you will see hundreds of thin nitwits and clever fat people,""
It is worth pointing out that good looks & a tall height can be as relevant to your success in life as your weight.
Not IQ, but energy level (Score:4, Insightful)
Link with poverty (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with these studies... (Score:2)
My vote is on the later. Because honestly, I don't see anything about body fat that could affect your head (to -this- extent). So its almost certain that its people who don't have a me
What Words? (Score:5, Funny)
Fat and Stupid? (Score:5, Funny)
one thing to think about... (Score:5, Insightful)
So does obesity somehow lead to mental decline? Or are people who are less intelligent more likely to let their physical health deteriorate?
Or maybe less intelligence leads to poverty which leads to obesity. Then again, it could be the other way around...
Correlation does not equal causation. If I had to place a bet, I would say that the link between obesity and intelligence isn't biological like the article is inferring. There may be some kind of link there, but I bet that other factors are more influential.
Re:one thing to think about... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't stand posts like this. You obviously have not read the academic report and therefor your conclusion about its fallacy are completely worthless. I have not read the actual report either but to hear you make an instant "it's probably due to this other factor" summary about something you have obviously not even read is infuriating!
The primary task of academic studies is to identify the true reason for an observed correlation. Every researcher knows that "Correlation does not equal causation" and the fact that the report has been published in a respected journal means for definate that the researchers have taken steps to ensure other obvious factors - like the ones you mention - are accounted for.
Causality (Score:2, Insightful)
Being overweight doesn't make you stupid,
being stupid means you have higher chance of getting over weight because you don't monitor diet/understand proper eating.
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Whats almost 100% sure in my view, however, is that the actual body fat doesn't affect anything, or at the very least, very little compared to the above factor, and your explaination.
Correlation=Cause Confusion (Score:3, Insightful)
Obesity leads to poor health which leads to diffuculty in concentration, stress, lower attention span etc. Also obese people are (statistically) less educated, with lower self-esteem etc. All of which correlate very well with the findings of this study. In otherwords obesity correlates well with doing badly in tests (IQ or any) for various reasons - it does not lower your IQ.
Any qualified sociologist could've made a fairly accurate hypothesis for the results of that study. But that's boring so people will want to see something in it ...
Oh well..
Dr. Doh! (NIMNO)
National reseach Institute for the Mind Numblingly Obvious
Perhaps... (Score:5, Funny)
Then perhaps people get fat because they can't remember they have already eaten.
Memory != IQ (Score:5, Informative)
This is simply not true. If you actually take an IQ test, you will see that it does not test your memory as had been done in the study, but rather your cognitive thinking skills. In fact, there are many people who can memorize history or math equations or whatever, but they come up far short when they have to apply the concepts they memorized.
Again, memorization is not critical thinking, and memorization != IQ.
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IQ is really more about how well you're able to use the data that's put in front of you. I remember the IQ tests they gave me in the 1st grade -- most of it was about puzzling out how one thing related to another thing. My favourite part was the "exploded boxes" section. I had no idea boxes came apart like that, but it made sense the mome
BMI to IQ? UNPOSSIBLE! (Score:3, Funny)
Their test is quite inflammable and uncindiary.
did they adjust for income level? (Score:3, Interesting)
Superficial analysis of actual article, plus link (Score:3, Informative)
Now, some comments. The idea that correlation doesn't imply causation is correct, but this paper used a multivariate analysis to attempt to control for several possible confounding factors. I count twelve that the authors thought about and included in some of their models: age, sex, educational level, diabetes, systolic blood pressure, daily alcohol intake, physical activity, perceived health score, perceived stress score, energy, social isolation, and region of residence. It looks like the paper acknowledges more confounders than anyone's mentioned here on Slashdot so far. Ultimately, though, this paper is a cohort study, so you can still argue that they missed a confounding factor. If you can think of a legitimate one, you stand a good chance getting it published in the journal Neurology.
Next, naming intelligent friends with high BMIs or famous thin people with questionable smarts does not change what this paper says, of course. Let's even pretend to add those people to the data. Now we have 2243 subjects instead of 2223. I doubt that changes the results much, but I admit I can't prove that. Counterexamples do tell us something very important, though. If high BMI really causes worse word-list learning, it is still one of a staggering number of other effects on this measure, and it by no means excludes anyone from higher intelligence.
Lastly, people are right to wonder what cognitive tests like word-list learning really measure. This paper didn't use IQ directly, but the point still stands. The authors know this and address it, too. "The functional significance of cognitive changes in our sample is difficult to assess.... We did not collect any direct index of work performance." In fact, they don't know whether differences in these psychometric test scores apply to "this healthy working population." BMI, too, may represent a surrogate marker. The association in this paper still stands, although I don't see anything about whether active weight loss attempts change cognitive point measures or decline. Yes, there are other markers of cardiovascular risk, and these include waist circumference (Am J Cardiol 2006;98:1053-1056), which someone could study in the same way that the Neurology paper studies BMI.
So what's the point? The point is, the differences in these cognitive tests concern some people. The results suggest that some real effect on cognition exists, and the authors mention a few reasonable mechanisms for the effect. If you agree that a normal BMI leads successively to less diabetes, less coronary artery disease, and less chest pain when you walk around, then it makes sense to try for a normal BMI if it's even possible that it will save blood vessels in your brain, or your brain cells directly, or whatever mechanism you believe. It wouldn't surprise me, though, if weight loss merely slows cognitive decline or lessens the risk, rather than positively improving intelligence or some similar claim. The other point is that newspapers check sources and strive to do it very well, but they rarely offer substantial analysis of original research. They will quote authorities regarding the research but leave item-by-item discussion to commentary articles in specialty journals. Even my couple hundred words here only begin to address the reasonable analysis of this or any scholarly article.
Do these high obesity rates affect the average IQ? (Score:3, Funny)
study doesn't say anything about "obese" people (Score:4, Informative)
In particular, they broke up BMI's into five groups: (1) 15-21.5, (2) 21.5-23.4, (3) 23.4-25.2, (4) 25.2-27.7, and (5) 27.7-45, where BMI's up to 25 are considered normal, up to 30 are considered overweight, and over 30 are considered obese. Even within the final group, not all the participants are obese.
It begs the question of why they didn't compare "normal" weight IQ's to "obese" weight IQ's, as this would be a big story and a more impressive research finding! It's likely that either they didn't have enough obese participants to satisfy statistical significance (so most of group (5) is actually individuals with BMI's of 27.7 to 30), or they didn't find that obese people had lower IQ's. When the BMI groups that they break up their data into as strange as this, and not at all the groups that are normally used in research papers, it begs the question of what kind of data massaging they had to do to find their conclusions. Did they try 100 different breakdowns of BMI groupings until they found one that (barely) satisfied statistical significance?
I remain skeptical as to the conclusions of this paper.
The biggest problem with BMI (Score:3, Interesting)
The other question is what your BMI "should" be, but in my opinion it's fairly easy to tell when you have low body fat. People might be slender or muscular, but it's hardly a problem seeing if they have the kilos in the right place or not. It's simply a rough estimate of where your body should be given average muscles. Want to add 20 pounds of muscles? No problem. Just be sure you're not making it an excuse not to lose those last twenty pounds of fat. Check your abs, your measures, try the "jiggle" test and see if it's as firm as you want. There's plenty good metrics to use, and BMI is a good one used in conjunction with others. People that are problematizing measuring healthiness is using a Chewbacca tactic - that's not where the problem lies at all. Most of them just want a way to say "Because the metrics are imperfect, we can ignore the conclusions." That might work to disregard one dissenting metric, but if your BMI is too high AND your waist is too wide AND you aren't working out enough to build that kind of muscle AND everything jiggles when you walk then no way.
Re:Timothy has low IQ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is slightly beside the point though because the study noticed a drop in 'cognitive function' in obese people, not IQ. Cognitive function most certainly is significant, albeit specifically to the function measured (which in this case was primarily arthmimetic and vocabulary). It was only the reporting newspaper which introduced IQ, probably for the benefit of dumber/fatter readers.
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Even that oversimplifies the situation. The study tied memory recall to high BMI, not to obesity. A high BMI does not necessarily make someone obese. I'm 5'8" and 190 pounds (173cm and 86kg for those outside North America), and my BMI says I'm not far from being obese. But I wear size 33 jeans (84cm). A lot of people I know have similar proportions.
So the question is, did this researcher choose people who were visibly obese for
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Been there, done that... but I wore size 36 at that time. Trust me, it's possible for a slashdotter-computer geek to get in shape. Just find a form of exercise you enjoy doing.
Re:Timothy has low IQ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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There certainly is a definition of "intelligence" (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not true.
There certainly is a pretty well established definition of general intelligence 'g' used
in psychometric studies which has, contrary to what some people may desire, withstood many
challenges, and is logically and empirically consistent.
Essentially: you have a test of a multitude of widely varying tasks all of which are at some level, obviously "mental", and you measure the performance of people on all these varying axes.
Intelligence is the projection along the first principal component, reflecting the fact that people who do well on some of them, tend to do well, up to some degree, on most of the other ones.
This is a highly consistent phenomenon among all human groups tested.
It is correlated with numerous, objective, biological measurements in prospective, controlled experiments.
This is also a falsifiable hypothesis as well, as for example, performance on a number of
*other* tasks, most of which are probably less mental, significantly less
correlated with 'g', except probably among the very lowest tail which reflect significant disease or genetic disabilities with systemic effects.
Obviously, there isn't going to be any scientific definition of "success in the real world".
No not in a comprehensive sense but you can definitely come up with specific proxies which approximate it, and quantify it fairly well. For example, 'felony imprisonment' is clearly 'not successful' by almost everybody's standards.
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Re:Timothy has low IQ? (Score:5, Funny)
The disproportionately high representation in groups like MENSA of lonely singles who earn below average salaries in unsatisfying jobs seems to counter your "decades of data" (which I have never seen.)
Or are you defining "demonstrated intelligence" as the ability to recite Star Trek dialog by rote and "success in the real world" as having your very own crafts store at the local Renaissance Festival?
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Mutual Admiration (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm not just saying that cause I was rejected. No, really.
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friendly and attractive (and ideally drunk) women
anyone who wants to play MarioKart with me
funny people
foreigners (cultural comparisons are interesting)
People who accomplish things are generally tedious and self-important. Witty losers are where it's at.
Re:Mutual Admiration (Score:5, Funny)
Have I got a web site [slashdot.org] for you!
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Emotional range.
Specific insight (the lack of which leads to that haughtyness you mentioned).
Empathy.
Self awareness.
Social skills.
I figure if I just drop some of the above, and reserve most of my mental capacity for the taking of IQ tests, then I would be a genius also.
Only stupid people think they're smart (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah. I suspect that really smart people don't perceive themselves as smart. The more you know, the more you realize how little you know. If you don't know anything, you're not capable of estimating your own knowledge - you don't know enough to know whether you know anything. Stupid people probably think they're pretty smart, while smart people probably constantly doubt their own intellect.
In order to be attracted by Mensa, you need a certain amount of stupidity which prevents you from understanding that b
Mensa bashing (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Timothy has low IQ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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To be honest, although most MBAs might be successful at gaining money, they are often not particularly successful in terms of being contented. There's not much point in being rich if the result is stress and unhappiness.
Re:Timothy has low IQ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite all this intelligence he refused to take care of himself, got obese, had several heart attacks and then a series of massive strokes. For decades his doctors told him to lose weight, to stop eating junk food, to drink more water, to exersize and he ignored not only his doctors but his family and friends too.
Now he can barely talk, his mobility is severly limited, he has problems reading and all he does is watch tv.
Was my dad smart or dumb? I used to think he was brilliant but now I realize that he was dumb. Too dumb to prioritize, to take care of the important things in life. The time he took to learn that one more language or to write that one more book should have been spent taking walks or something.
I know lots of "smart" people who are actually dumb like that.
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My friends and I have an ongoing argument about 'metabolism'. I've always been had a relatively skinny/athletic build, and my friends keep saying it's only because I have a 'high metabolism', and that I'm lucky I'm not like them because otherwise I'd be fat.
I take exception to this because from my perspective, I'm really careful not to get fat. I eat a balanced diet - sure, I have a Big Mac now and then, but much more often I'm
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The notion that rich people are unhappy is a myth. In reality, rich people are generally happier than middle- and low-income earners. The idea that money makes people miserable is a fairy tale perpetuated by poor people to try and console themselves regarding their own unhappiness.
Money ca
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It has some power to predict academic performance, but that is not what it is designed to measure. Nor is it particularly good at it. Just as in business, non-IQ abilities (hard work, emotional strength, social skills, mental stamina, valuing achievement and status) play a role in academic success. Predicting academic performance from IQ is like predicting a car's range from its engine efficiency.
Of course IQ measures something... (Score:5, Funny)
A truly groan-worthy pun... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:IQ means nothing... (Score:5, Funny)
Which you aren't smart enough to ignore.
KFG
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Yeah, you're totally smart.
Re:IQ means nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, fatty, but everybody thinks they're smarter than everyone else. Everbody. It's okay though, you can take solace in the fact that everyone has the same lame excuses for their short comings.
Re:IQ means nothing... (Score:5, Funny)
IQ means nothing, MENSA is pointless and so on (Score:5, Funny)
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Funny story: The guy downstairs had his "MENSA Bulletin" delivered to my mailbox by mistake (probably due to the innerwebs and lack of blue mailboxes!), so of course I kept it. I've been leaving it prominently near the john for some high brow bathroom reading. And man oh man, have I been disappointed. The articles are poorly conceived and written, the letters from readers absolutely dumb. The pictures of "smart people" show them not even badly dressed, but incapably dressed--as in , for example, they clearly missed belt loops when they were putting on their belts (Is looking accidentally slovenly for nationally distributed photographs the mark of a genuinely intelligent person who likes themselves? I submit that it is not.)
So my friends have been coming over, and when they inevitably have to use the restroom, they see the magazine and go "You're in MENSA?" all accusingly. And of course I pretend to be, and mutter something about how "we're trying to reform the government under our own intelligent rule" (did you see that episode of The Simpsons too?)
And as I can feel their opinion of me lessening, lessening...I finally let on that, no, of course I'm not a part of fucking MENSA. And every time, they respond with something like "Oh I was gonna say, because those people are idiots!" And then we page through the magazine together, mocking it the entire time. And we live happily ever after. The end.
Find a shady place to sit (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually have received invitations to attend MENSA meetings in the past, but have always declined. (Is that how recruitment is done? God only knows.) I politely say that I have a "differing philosophy". Namely, I believe that intelligence and success should be measured in terms of real, humanistic achievement in the real world, and not by corny metrics that determine whether or not a person should be admitted to a shamelessly self-promotional smarty-pants club. But of course I don't say all that. Politely declining the invitation is really enough.
I know that must just fry you--that there are people out there in the world who are at least reasonably smart and reasonably socialized, and who look at their introverted and prideful intelligent brothers with pity. It may seem at odds with what I read as teenage angst, but I assure you we exist.
And speaking of teenage angst, you might want to stop using the lexicon of a teenager. "Jocks"..."frat guys"...it's the language of someone who still thinks of people in terms of symbolic high school lunch tables (i.e. somebody not all that smart after all). If you're just some silly immature kid (I understand that about half of Slashdot readers fit that description)--then you get a free pass, because that's all you've seen so far in terms of how people organize themselves. But if not, then, well, there's that whole pity thing again. To phrase this in terms you've voluntarily adopted, I am no jock, or frat-guy, or anything else. I sit at everyone's lunch table, and I don't use their interests as some kind of bogus reason to judge and dismiss them.
So I guess to be more crass about things, that, my boy, is why I haven't joined your fruity little club.
Good luck--may your false pride and wanton disdain for others take you to great new heights.
Mine's bigger (Score:3, Funny)
Smart people who don't realize that intelligence is only one dimension of a well rounded person - who are arrogant about their intelligence - truly are stupid.
Speaking of arrogance, I'm 43, my BMI is 20, my body fat is 10% and my resting pulse is under 50b
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The score on an IQ test is relative to the sample the scoring method was calibrated against. If I go into a room and take an IQ test by myself, will I automatically be assigned a score of 100? No. I'll be given a score that indicates how I compare to a reference sample. Since some popular tests remain in use for decades, and correlations betw
the average IQ can change :-( (Score:2)
Yuck, if you want to compare somebody against the average. It's nice though if you want to see how the population is changing.
Re:frist psot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Jokes! (Score:5, Insightful)
The joke in that... (Score:2)
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.as
rj
Re: (Score:2)
So MENSA members (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't believe you're in a position to hire anybody. Otherwise you would realize that:
- what you just said is against the law (equal opportunity employment laws)
- you're implying that 30% of the United States have no self discipline, which is obviously stupid
I'll tell you another thing, something that I know first hand: I tend to gain weight easily. Before I left the US, I was very careful with my diet, but still had a hard time not making la
Re:Not hiring! (Score:4, Interesting)
She remains a brilliant (slightly biased opinion, but not by much) chemist (pretty much disproving the original article), and now that the hormone is regulated, she has lost most of the weight she gained, though she remains scarred from the experience. And trust me, were she looking for a job from you, you bet your butt you would be sued under EEO and ADA laws. You can probably plan on that anyway. Hope you've got a good lawyer.
Re:BMI is a poor way to measure body fat. (Score:5, Informative)
All the BMI measures is your risk for a variety of heart related ailments. The theory is that the more massive you are, the harder your heart has to work.
The issue is most people lack the ability, the financial resources, and the discipline to gain an extraordinary amount of muscle mass. So, in the vast majority of cases, the BMI does measure body fat. But, it has nothing to do with the percentage of your body that is fat or how toned you are.
Just thought I would add that to what you are saying.