Kids Like Mine: Dueling with the Double-Bind

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Dueling with the Double-Bind

This masterpiece of wicked humor was written and re-written over the course of 9 hours, when I obsessively crafted it into a brilliant display of rapier wit as a means to distract me from how hellacious I felt. My sister said "Although politically and socially incorrect, it is bitingly funny -- I laughed out loud." You may have seen it elsewhere under the name: And Deafening Silence Followed... (If you happen to know which forum was on the recieving end of this exercise in circular logic, please do not think badly of that forum or the people in it. It is a great place to hang out and they kindly did not fry me for it. I have been fried for less in other forums.)

I am not saying your IQ score on this test is bad, just that I suspected it was lower than your actual IQ -- which you have now confirmed. I have stated repeatedly that IQ tests tend to top out around 140 and a score near the highest score that the test goes to may be inaccurate and may actually be lower than the IQ of the individual who got such a score. And I have stated repeatedly that they are pretty meaningless for adults -- that taking an IQ test past a certain age is likely to give you an inaccurate score which errs on the low side if you have a higher than average IQ. And your comment that your score is only a little lower than the last one you took as a kid sort of agrees with that point as well.

You know, I am really tired of trying to defend my position. Let's go with yours: Because you are so smart, you cannot be wrong. Therefore, I must be wrong and I don't know the first thing about IQ tests. This test is completely accurate. ...

Oh, but wait, if that is true, then I am the smartest person in this forum with an IQ of 140. Hmmm. If your IQ is too high for you to be wrong and my IQ is higher than yours....

Hmmm... perhaps the test isn't perfect and the test is wrong to show my IQ as 140. Which would agree with what I have been saying all along. So, if what I am saying is right, then, maybe, I do know what I am talking about.

So, would you like to choose Door Number One: Behind door number one, you get to chase your tail and attempt to figure out how to explain how it is that I am completely wrong -- the test is accurate and infallible and I am too dumb to see that -- AND your infallible test states that I am smarter than everyone else here, you included.

Or would you prefer Door Number Two: Behind door number two, you can save us both some time, energy, and ire and admit that I might have a valid point and know what I am talking about.

Oh, wait, I have the perfect solution: You can choose Door Number Three. Behind door number three, you, I and everyone else admits that we lied when we reported our scores. We must have lied because not only have I made ridiculous statements about this IQ test but, some weeks back, I made all these claims that I knew something about IQ's and giftedness and that I had concluded that the average IQ of the members of this forum was "above average" and "probably gifted".

"Above average", in this case, would just mean "above a score of 100". Everyone claims a score above 100. So, maybe I am right. Nah, too easy. Let's try "most" (more than 50%) are "probably gifted".

Now, there are many definitions out there of what "gifted" means and it is a very difficult-to-define term. For the sake of argument, let's use something simple: "gifted" is "the top 10% of the population" for IQ. Statistics tells us that 95% of all results will fall within 2 standard deviations of mu. Mu for IQ is 100 and a standard deviation is 15 points. This means that 95% of all IQ's should fall between a score of 70 and 130. Note that this would be the middle 95% and a score above 130 would not put you in the top 5% of the population. No... It would put you in the top 2 1/2% of the population.

So, since I am (according to some members of this forum) an 'elitist snob' who doesn't know anything about IQ tests or the gifted population, and my claims (that most members of this forum had "above average" and "probably gifted" -- top 10% -- IQ's) were outrageous, then the numerous claims of IQ's above 130 -- i.e. falling in the top 2 1/2% of IQ's -- have got to all be lies. Surely, if the members of this forum are only slightly above average, the reported scores should fall between, say 98 and 108 -- not mostly in the 120's and 130's.

So, if we all lied, then you could stand by the claims that A) I don't know what I am talking about when it comes to intelligence -- people here aren't all that smart and B) I don't know what I am talking about when it comes to intelligence testing -- this IQ test is accurate.

Oh, but in order for that argument to hold up, I would have to be right about an awful lot of things about giftedness and IQ scores -- and that suggests that maybe I have the aforementioned expertise in this area which sort of undermines the argument that I don't know what I am talking about. Besides: I did not lie. I really did score 140 on the silly test.

Which brings us back to door number 2: maybe I do know what I am talking about -- and did know it a few weeks back, too, when I was generally being dimissed by most everyone here for my "outrageous" claims that this forum has a lot of rather smart people in it and that fact is one of the underlying causes of egomaniacal arguments wherein neither party wants to back down and admit they might be wrong -- kind of like THIS argument -- because a few hundred gifted people (who are all used to being one of the smartest people in the room) have had few opportunities to interact with a large number of their peers and learn to genuinely respect differences of opinion and differing viewpoints as valid. If so, then, in their individual subjective experience, if someone disagrees with them that person is usually wrong. This experience -- of consistently being right and having to prove it to people who aren't smart enough to readily see it -- conditions gifted individuals to stubbornly assume they are ALWAYS right and to stubbornly refuse to back down until you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are, in fact, wrong.

Hey, folks: I really am not trying to be obnoxious. I do know that this is hard to take -- being wrong when you are not used to it because you are so smart.

Oh, sorry, there I go again with my ridiculous claims that most folks here have brains...

surely, you, of all people, are too smart to believe that...

"Eppur si muove."

PS: can I see a show of hands of all the folks whose IQ's are below 70, thus bringing the average IQ for the forum down around average. That would be another way to prove that I am wrong on both counts.

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Footnote: Although the phrase "Eppur si muove" was not linked in the original version of these comments, I have been meaning to add an explanatory link for some time. My husband translated the phrase for me as "It moves all the same".

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