I was never an IQ fundamentalist, but I have always believed that intelligence matters. All things equal, people with above average intelligence have better life outcomes than people with below average. And regardless of what you think about the recent AI hype, generally speaking a society with more intelligence is better off than a society with less.
Anyway, when I was younger I prided myself on being smarter than most people. My SAT score was in the 97th percentile. In 11th grade I remember a teacher telling me that, based on a recent test, my IQ was 132. High enough to get me into a selective college but probably not Harvard. Yay me.
That was more than 40 years ago. Since then I’ve learned the hard way that intelligence only gets you so far. I was not an especially good student1 in college. After graduation it took me several years to discover that I like and am good at creating software products. From there I was able to carve out an interesting career, but — consistent with my test scores — not one in the 1%.
All this is a setup to tell about a few days ago when I took an IQ test I found on Reddit. In order to reduce bias and work in all languages, it consists entirely of pattern recognition. Here is the first question.
At first I felt like I was doing well. Slowly the questions got harder and the patterns more intricate, so they took more time for me to solve. But I hung in there and felt confident in most of my answers until I got to this:
Something about the lines scrambled my brain. I felt like I was seeing something wrong. I did not want to look at these pictures at all.
If I had a higher IQ perhaps I would write a good metaphor about seeing cracks in reality, or recursive Borgesian structures, or the crucifixion. Alas…
I did not like this question, I did not want to spend any time thinking about it, and my willpower to stick it out had vanished. So I just kind of guessed. There were several more like it, and I guessed on all of them.
Mercifully, I finished the test about five minutes later and received a score.
My IQ is 101
That’s right, I scored just a hair above average.
Twenty years ago this would have been very distressing. Thirty years ago it would have caused an existential crisis. I would have questioned my life and whether I was even fit to continue living.
My self-worth revolved around intelligence. I did not want to be average. I did not want to be above average. I wanted to be whip smart. I wanted people to notice that I am whip smart. I even wanted them to be intimidated by how smart I am.
But now?
I'm not like them, but I can pretend
The sun is gone, but I have a light
The day is done, but I'm having fun
I think I'm dumb
Or maybe just happy
A big part of the reason I struggled in college is that I’m an alcoholic, and I got drunk an average of at least three times a week. I figured out I’m an alcoholic by the time I was 20, but I did not stop. Most of my struggles in life have come from that. I’m sober now, but there were many, many years when I was not. There were consequences.