Alfredo writes:
I also have a 147 IQ and I do think that some people with 115 IQ’s I can communicate quite effectively. Yet, I know someone who has a 128 IQ and I think his brain is not connected correctly. Great article!
Yes, I have had friends and lovers with IQ’s around that range. Although the theory supposedly states that decent communication is not possible when you have 30 IQ points difference, I do not believe that is correct. However, once you get to 45 IQ points and especially 60 IQ points, communication starts running into some serious roadblocks and I often find myself frustrated in relationships with these people.
The 115 IQ Type
I could communicate well with all of the 115 IQ types that I have known honestly, but with some of them I had to explain things fairly often. With others, I didn’t have to do a lot of explaining. These 115 IQ types always shocked me with their occasional brilliance and even genius. I was surprised because honestly I just assume most people are morons and expect nothing of them, so when someone says or writes something very perceptive and bright and they don’t have an extremely high IQ, I am always taken aback.
But these types take me aback quite a bit. It is an interesting IQ range. They are just close enough to average to get along well with mainstream society without seeming like the freaks that you I appear to be, yet at the same times, they are bright enough to converse with us folks.
What is funny is that people in this range often do not think they are very smart.
Some people in this range have stunning psychological skills in analyzing other people, often to perfection. They are like little psychologists who can look right into your mind and figure it all out. Psychological problems are not uncommon, especially anxiety disorders and mood disorders. Depression is common as are the more complex anxiety disorders. However, these types understand psychology very well and they often diagnose exactly what is going on with themselves. They often seek help for their problems via psychiatrists who usually give them anti-anxiety drugs or antidepressants. Quite a few are in therapy and they do very well there.
They also catch on pretty quickly, and they are very interested in new ideas or brilliant or ingenious ways of looking at the world. A lot of them are quite funny too.
Psychologically, they are often “complex” or “complicated,” and they often describe themselves this way, especially the women. They often say, “I live in a dream world. I live for my dreams.” Many of these types are surprisingly creative and some are brilliant artists.
A 115 IQ is absolutely enough to graduate from college and most of them do. Is it enough to get an advanced degree. I would say that it is enough to get a Master’s Degree, but at that range, getting a PhD might be a challenge and at the very least, they would have to work very hard for it.
Incidentally, two of the brightest commenters on my blog had IQ’s of 113 and 117. The 117 IQ guy was fantastic at philosophy and other forms of abstract thinking. The other fellow was into genetics and anthropology, but he thought in much the same way. A few of these types are so bright that you almost think that their score is wrong. I am not sure what is going except maybe they are working their brains extra hard or they have filled their brains up with all sorts of goodies.
With regard to the fellow with the 128 IQ slow guy. My father had a 129 IQ and in most respects, he was a very bright man. He was a better reader than I am. At the end of his life, he was reading a book a day.
However, one peculiar thing about him was that he was sort of concretist in his thinking sometimes and he just could not seem to branch out into the higher realms of abstract thought. There were more than a few times when I tried to explain some abstract concept to him and he just couldn’t get it, and he kept pounding his fist on the table and emphasizing some stupid concretist way of looking at the concept.
Granted these were tough concepts and the concretist way of thinking seemed intuitively correct for most of these concepts, but of course it was wrong. The concretist view was usually something like, “What a stupid idea! This means nothing at all! Dumbest idea I’ve ever heard!” You had to stretch your brain quite a bit to figure out why the abstract view of the situation was actually the correct one and the idea indeed had some merit.