Comments by "Digital Footballer" (@digitalfootballer9032) on "I Took an IQ Test to Find Out What it Actually Measures" video.

IQ is a strange thing. It's definitely an indicator on your ability to learn and understand new and complex matters. A high IQ alone will not get you through life successfully, there are people with average or below average IQs that are more ambitious, more socially adept, or just plain willing to put in the extra work to learn something complex even if it is harder for them. I have an extremely high IQ, I've taken a number of tests and it has put it anywhere from the mid 140's up to in excess of 160. I usually just say 150 because I tend to like to round down if not entirely positive. I don't think I'm better than anyone else because of it, I wouldn't want to be any other way, but yet also it makes some things in life difficult. I was an average student in school overall but an absolute whiz at math. I have an average job with a very average income, I am an accountant, and a fairly low paid one at that but I work for a small business and I like my job. I am not necessarily better at my job than the others. I'm descent but experience means a lot and other more experienced people on the job know more than I do. My curse is that where an average person can pass by studying and excel by studying very diligently, I can pass by doing nothing, and excel by studying an average amount, but since it was always easier to do nothing that's what I did. I got B's without ever cracking a book, so why bother trying for an A when a B was essentially automatic. Yes, a piss-poor attitude. Where the high IQ thing can burn you also is where most people want to talk about sports and entertainment and current events, I like to talk about philosophy and the universe and existential stuff and most people have no interest. I bury myself in channels about this kind of stuff and comment on it. But I am also very extraverted and have a very good social life. I manage that by restraining my "inner geek". It's a very odd existence to say the least. Some might accuse me of being lazy but I'm not, I am actually a very hard worker, I am just not ambitious. My dad always used to say "that's good enough" was my favorite saying.
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Sounds to me like you have what they used to call attention deficit. I have it too, and I also have an IQ around your level. It's actually very common among highly intelligent people. The reason is because you are thinking on a different level than everyone else around you, so all the stuff geared towards them is uninteresting to you, so you drift off, and you don't care. Your school fucked up bad handling it like they did. You should have been sent off to a small focused gifted group, not special ed. It's a sad story and I can only say I'm sorry you went through it. Brilliant minds, unfortunately, are often tortured minds. Society is built around conformity, especially in institutions like education, and is geared towards keeping all the "normies" in line. They have a hard time handling someone different. I didn't suffer the same circumstances you did, however I can somewhat relate because though while they always recognized that I was gifted intellectually, they constantly labeled me as a "bad attitude" and always wanted to "counsel" me. People like us are just square pegs in a sea of round holes. There is nothing wrong with us, it's just that idiots don't know how to handle it.
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Most highly intelligent people are also very independently minded. School, work, and society in general is very hierarchical, rigid, and conformist in nature. School has to be to keep a pace adequate for people of all intelligence levels. Out in the adult world that's a factor too, but also there are a multitude of sociological reasons as well as just plain dumb people in positions of power that want to keep themselves at the top and keep others down. I have suffered the same problem throughout my life. "Bad attitude" was stamped on about every academic record I ever had. It's like they expected you to be an overachiever and threw you under the bus if you were capable but not interested. I never studied, ever, and was a B student. Had a studied a little I could have had straight As but I didn't care. Math was the one exception, I could actually ace every math class without doing anything literally. And I liked math. I didn't care enough about any of the other subjects to bother.
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@robertjamestaylor9261 I guess to be around like minded people, but in reality it isn't even the case in my experience. I am not in Mensa nor would I be interested even though I would qualify, but I am talking about back in school. I was in all the honors classes, at least to start, and I hated it. I despised all the little overachiever geeks and had nothing in common with them. Yeah I was supposedly the second highest IQ in my class but these people repulsed me mostly. I ended up dropping down to regular level at everything except for math and I just took those classes with the regular level kids in the higher grades because I was ahead a couple years. Junior and senior year I took college math courses at the local community college, and only because my parents made me. I always felt an air of arrogance around that group and I am not that way at all. Don't get me wrong I like discussing intellectual subjects with other intelligent people, but the honor society crowd always rubbed me the wrong way. I was flat out told by my guidance counselor that the reason I never got inducted was because of my poor attitude. My reaction was what has two thumbs and doesn't give a crap, this guy. I guess I kind of proved her point 😂
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Same here. Mine is very high, and it's been a curse for me rather than a benefit. Life would just be easier if I didn't analyze the crap out of everyone and everything and just rolled with life like someone of average intelligence.
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I watched a 60 minutes news magazine segment years ago about what was at the time believed to be the person with the highest IQ in America. I don't remember exactly what it was but i believe it was 200+. The guy was a bouncer at a bar and did not come across as intellectual at all, although was somewhat eccentric and you could definitely tell he was intelligent but i would have never guessed that level of intelligence. Yet another reason i think for the most part the tests may very well measure intelligence to a degree, they certainly don't measure ambition or success. Supposedly I have an extremely high IQ, according to tests, yet I am much like that guy. I have a very humble job, i was a "B" student in high school and a "C" student in college. Maybe I am capable of more but it just never happened. Hence why I don't put much stock in these tests, and very rarely will even say what my score was because people will think I am either bragging or lying, but I just don't think it means much and don't want to use it as a way to try to make myself sound superior.
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