The useless IQ

Average people do better. Period. Says TheEditor and adds that, for this statement, average is up to 120.

Argue with TheEditor. Prove TheEditor wrong.

One of the recurring themes in education and later working life is what to do with the highly talented, the very intelligent. It is a topic TheEditor finds interesting and sad at the same time.

Because so much rides on it and because it is so abused. The abuse, we hate to say this, comes mostly from the political right, like the Daily Telegraph quote in our post "Alien ice".

There have been decades of debates about how to measure intelligence in the first place, and we won't discuss that here. Whatever the number for you or someone you know is: it is a hugely powerful label. This post was triggered by another instance of such a discussion in the German media.

It makes parents proud, sad or even angry, it can determine what you do in highschool (advanced placement or not), it may be the difference between a great college and a community college. It may make the difference between life and death to an inmate on death row in some US states.

"Coming out" with your IQ -- if you are a male -- may not be as fraught as coming out with your correctly measured penis length but emotionally it is not that different, claims TheEditor.

The weight of this intellectual credit score is such that it can drive you crazy. Letting it all hang out is not a good idea unless you are at a meeting of smarty pants MENSA folks, but guess what, they do not let it hang out. In other social settings, people will try to pin a number on you in different ways. In the US, with a lot of college admission tests, those will be used, especially if you did not go to an ivy league school. For the latter, smarter than average used to be implied before George W. Bush. fried his brains.  

In your standard run of the mill society, material wealth is frequently associated with high intelligence, meaning that in the eyes of the Torygraph and others being poor becomes a synonym for not being smart.
The only accepted exceptions are scientists, including the "nice but socially inept" nerds, and "bona fide" artists.
Wealth can be a shield (I may not be as smart as Stephen Hawking, but look at my wealth), and IQ with or without attached education can be a crutch (I have no money, but at least I am smarter than Double-you).

In Germany, the topic of K-12 schools and "intelligent" students has a darker side. Not only in some discrimination against K-8 and K-10 students but also in the term "Abituriot" (a combination of the K-12 degree "Abitur" and "Idiot) used against the K-12ers.

If you are in the US, you may find employers trying to pin the number on you in interviews using "brain teasers" or tests based on the various ATs. Once your workplace folks believe you are smart, you'll find snickering if you make a dumb mistake. Or you may find your boss getting hostile if you deflect their inquest -- if that deflection is successful, you may have proven to him or her that you are "dangerously" intelligent.

Anyway, after this laundry list of real or imagined issues, why do average people do better on average?

Because being average means that many more people understand you. Not just what you say, even more importantly, more people understand your behavior and your actions and reactions.

TheEditor is fine with being average in a society of average people, by average people, and for average people, because we can admire the cooler folks, yet have have unlimited supplies of politicians, bankers and celebs as targets of satire.

[Update] A friend of the K-landnews requested "one more thing": Even though a few of us are working for evil empires like Hewlett Packard's greed squad or Deutsche Telekom, the overwhelming majority of us is trying to make the little rock a bit more liveable for all creatures.