MSN Sponsors Mensa

crankyspice writes "Fresh on the heels of Google courting members via GLAT advertisements in the Bulletin, Microsoft's MSN is now sponsoring American Mensa events, featuring Mensa questions on the MSN homepage, and Mensa will put MSN's search on their new homepage."

Comments

So what ?

[Space cowboy]

Look, I'm no shill for MS - I think their OS sucks dead bunnies through short straws, but frankly, who cares ? MS want to associate themselves with an organisation that likes to consider itself better than average, by their own definition. And the news is... what ?

I have no respect for Mensa, they like to position themselves as the "society of the intelligent", and yet most of the people I've interviewed who have claimed Mensa membership on their resume are less than attractive as candidates. It's almost a badge of dishonour... They don't fail on intelligence (but that's not normally where people I interview fail anyway), they fail on people skills - being able to recognise that someone else may know more about X than you do, and coping with that knowledge well.

Oh, I've not much respect for MS either (at least technically - I think their marketing is excellent), but that ought to be obvious from my tagline...

Simon.

Re:So what ?

[bonch]

I've known people who were complete morons. Until you got them underneath a truck or at a baseball game, where they would know an engine inside out or remember the details of entire decades of team statistics. We've all got our specialties.

Just something to keep in mind...a lot of times, computer geeks think they're God's gift to the earth. There are lots of people smarter at you when it comes to things you know nothing about. I don't know a damn thing about making really good spaghetti or building a car engine. Variety and the collective versatility it creates is what makes society great.

Re:So what ?

[nbharatvarma]

I was involved in setting up a mensa chapter at where I live (Hyderabad,India). I am also in touch with mensans from Bangalore. I cannot comment on the general attitude of mensans in America, but I never felt a lack of social skills in the mensans I know of.

We shouldn't mix social skills and intelligence. IQ by itself doesn't mean anything anymore. That way if you were a 99.99999 percentile, doesn't mean shit. You need emotional maturity to carry you through life. That way, except for those who want to boost up their egos, being a Mensan doesn't prove anything.

I look at Mensa as more of a common grounds for people to meet. Mensans I know are willing to help other Mensans. I have known people who made CEOs, who were entrepreneurs, MBAs so on. What I get is contacts. So, if I need guidance or advice, they are more than willing to help.

When one slashdot user meets another, there is an instant recognition. An instant willingness to help. (In India, the number of people who read slashdot are few). Mensa is pretty much the same thing. Atleast thats what I look at it.

Re:So what ?

[metlin]

> So are you saying that IQ != intelligence?

No, I'm saying that IQ is not all that is there to intelligence.

You may get a fewer false positives, but you will get a lot of false negatives - lots of intelligent people who're good at other things might flunk the tests.

> What is intelligence, then, and how do you
> measure it?

There is no single measure, which was exactly my point.

Intelligence is not one thing, and you cannot have a single quantitative measure of it and label it as, "If you do well in these these tests, you'll fall under the top 1-2% of the intelligent folks in the world".

That is absolute bullshit. Solving mathematical and logical problems is just one facet of intelligence, there are several others - many, many more.

What about folks who cook amazingly well? Or paint amazingly well? Or who have a skill for language? There are a million other things - these could be people who'd not touch math or logic with a 10 foot pole, but could probably be extremely intelligent, in their own way.

I mean, would you say Michelangelo is dumb if he flunked a few multiple choice questions you threw at him? I think not. That was just my point.

> (For what it's worth, I think IQ, intelligence,
> and Mensa are all overrated).

Yup, you're spot on.

Re:So what ?

[metlin]

See, if you consider artistic talents to be skills, then so are mathematical or logical abilities. Intelligence by that definition could also be construed as a gift of sorts, no different from someone who can draw.

I'm a sciences guy - I feel extremely comfortable under quantitative stuff, and do quite well in stuff related to that, too.

However, I know for a fact that I suck at qualitative stuff - and I've seen lots of people for whom those qualitative abilities are second nature. And some of these people lack the mathematical and logical skills that I do not find all that extraordinary.

Inherently, I've always known that I'll be in the sciences. And some of those folks have always known that they'd be in the arts.

The difference is, the society considers my abilities to be intelligence for the simple reason that it has easy, tangible, real world application. And perhaps because I fall under the minority of folks who are enjoy doing this stuff.

However, that does not necessarily make me smarter than them, atleast in my book. I know for a fact that I couldn't draw for nuts, even if I took lessons my entire life. Or for that matter, analyze and come up with designs. Or a lot of other things. These people can, and that is just no different from the way I do a math problem.

It is all the same, we're just using different abilities that each of us has been gifted with, that is all.

While I would agree that it is overrated, I would also add that its definition is being skewed by a handful few.

Re:So what ?

[RWerp]

So Mensa is an "old boy network"? The worse for it. People will never forgive you belonging to circle they can't.

Re:So what ?

[isometrick]

Both my father and I qualified for Mensa. Even though we disagree on many important life issues and qualified at times more than 20 years apart, we both found the membership of our local chapters to be filled with extremely misguided and, frankly, annoyingly pompous people.

That's not to say everyone in Mensa is that way, but we both chose not to associate with a group that seemed to base its membership requirements on ideals that commonly (though not always) predicate extreme arrogance.

Mensa Members

[Kaenneth]

Almost every Mensa member I've met is an arrogent bastard who thinks they are better than other people; having spent a few years at Microsoft, I know they'll fit right in.

This isn't envy, when I took an IQ test I was literally off the scale. The highest standardised test score in the history of my school district was 176, I scored 212. I was disqualified from an 'intellectual' competition because I scored 98, when the second highest of over 100 others was 76, and I completed the quiz in 15 minutes of the alloted hour; they believed I must have cheated somehow.

But I'm smart enough to know that the value of a person has nothing to do with standard test scores.

While working at MS I treated the janitors with the same respect as my managers, because I knew that without eighter of them, the job wouldn't get done. One amusing moment was when the local grocery store clerk said she liked people like me, unlike those stuck up people who work at Microsoft, which was where I was working at the time.

I may be able to craft an exceptional peice of software, recall what portion of a page in a novel a sentance appeared on, and instantly remember 10 digit numbers backwards; but I can't draw worth a damn, can't sing, or play a musical instrument, am a terrible speller, and can't parellel park.

Everyone has different abilities, and just because someone is Rich, Smart, or Pretty; dosn't make them a good person.