How could intellect, or the ability to reason and understand things ever be a problem connecting socially? If it's a problem, then it's not intellect but rather a lack of something. I would suggest it's a lack of intellect, or the lack of understanding the people around you and being able to find common threads of interest. This isn't a problem of high intellect. Everyone has absolute loads of things in common with every other human on this planet. If you can't connect with another human, it's not because of high intellect.
It's exhausting explaining things to others that seem obvious to you, or holding back for fear of completely alienating other people. Doing so is essential for relating to the rest of humanity, but at some level it's not being true to yourself, either. Romantic relationships can be especially difficult if you are looking for an intellectual equal.
Intelligence isn't the only measure of a person, though. Wit, humor, and empathy are also very important. Humor and empathy, at least, aren't always paired with deep intelligence.
I don't think it's about wanting to be an intellectual (evidently, IQ has very little to do with that), but rathe about finding someone who might also be able to think in the same way you do, and socialize and talk with them.
I've found that there are people with whom I can share many thoughts and concepts as they pop into my head, and they will "get" it, maybe not agree, but they have the capacity to entertain my idea, bad as it may be. I find that kind of socializing very pleasant, and I much prefer it to "talking about weather and current events in sports and popculture" which also have it's place, but which can be discussed with a much broader selection of people.
And that's just me, and I'm not one of the smart ones, but if I can feel like that, I can only imagine that someone in the top 1 percentile would feel something similar, if stronger, and thus would need to make an extra effort to find such company.
If you don't feel like this, it's just very likely that you already have this need met from someone around you, and you've just never noticed?
I think intelligence in general is not exactly what makes you do well with people, it's more of a certain type of intelligence that has no direct relation to what (most of us) consider intelligence.
I myself consider to be really intelligent and even attractive, although my interest in relating with people is really low and thus it's difficult for me to interact with strangers. I'm bad at this kind of intelligence that makes you good at human relations.
Almost everyone is an outlier along some dimension and almost everyone has genius intellect if you measure their intelligence by what is important to them, but not to others. You can choose to interact with people based on what you have in common or you can choose to interact with people based on their relative shortcomings in the few things you're very good at. The latter approach, while quite tempting, often results in the kind of loneliness and isolation you talk about.
You wrote earlier:
"I've often found that groups proposing to be built of smart people are often as not built of over-opinionated pretentious people who've come to believe they are intelligent through one way or another. It's why I've avoided high-IQ societies and the like."
Why are their reasons for believing that they are special invalid, while yours are valid? I think they came to believe in their own high intelligence much the same way that you have. It validates something and fulfills some need. Grownups talking incessantly about their intelligence are like retired athletes who never made it in the pros talking about their stellar scouting reports placing them above those who had successful professional careers. If they didn't make it, the scouting reports were wrong. Don't assess yourself like society assesses children.
I wonder if intelligence and propensity-to-learn gaps are major causes of social isolation among us here. I feel that they are two of the most important factors affecting my social life, from childhood up to now. The times I felt less socially isolated had always been when I studied or worked among some of the more intelligent and eager-to-learn people. And it gets more pronounced as I grow more mature and have spent more time learning and thinking.
I found this out a few years ago and thought it might be pertinent to my situation:
“Observation shows that there is a direct ratio between the intelligence of the leader and that of the led. To be a leader of his contemporaries a child must be more intelligent but not too much more intelligent than those to be led… But generally speaking, a leadership pattern will not form—or it will break up—when a discrepancy of more than about 30 points of IQ comes to exist between leader and led [1]
I grew up in a developing country with inadequate educational system, to put it mildly. I have always done well academically, ranking top 10 nation-wide in two middle school exams. I got impatient and skipped two years of high school to attend a local college, which is considered a 'good' one. (I picked it for personal reasons, while having the 'national entrance exam' score high enough to pick the top university in the country.) I became increasingly aware of how much most people think differently in those years, as I could ace most analytical tests without putting much efforts and my friends struggled. We remained good friends but we shared few interests and not much in common intellectually. (I can perform most other activities, like sports or dance, fairly well given the little amount of time I spend on them, but I find most of them boring.)
Then I got a scholarship to study in a top 10 CS graduate departments in the US. I found out that there are many more people who share my interests and we can interact on equal terms intellectually. I moved back to the country after graduation and started to suffer social isolation again.
I dated someone who is a bit above average in intelligence but did not have the patience to explain everything so we parted away soon after. I had since have trouble finding people who I can be myself with in most respects intellectually and can explain my thought process concisely and get them to give interesting responses back in turn. For friends, it's not as big a problem since we usually don't have to see each other that often; but for dates, I think it might be a problem after a while. (Please let me know if and why you disagree. It would be helpful.)
Earlier this year, I went back to live for a few months in a very intellectual city with a top university in the US and felt like I could connect with people around me again. Unfortunately, it will take quite a bit of efforts to move there permanently.
If anyone has a differing perspective and interpretation that I have, please comment here. I'd love to connect better with the 'intellectually average' people as well.
Is there something wrong with talking about the problems associated with intelligence? They certainly exist and I think most intelligent people are familiar with them - but whenever I see them brought up they get casually brushed off with comments such as yours. I can't see how they're categorically different than any other set of problems.
It's not only intelligence. The success of humans depends just as much on their social traits. Can groups cooperate? Can they have division of labour? Without that, you're not going to get far even if you're super smart.
Those aren't problems with intelligence, they're "problems" (insofar as they are problems, debatable) with things like social anxiety, inability or unwillingness to read social cues, superiority complexes (or inferiority complexes) etc. None of these are intrinsic to having an enormous capacity to learn, as multitudes of smart and charismatic people will attest. Part of this is also a matter of self-perception. Hey, lots of not very smart people also like to talk about their topics of interest beyond the appropriate span of patience. Plenty of them worry about that tendency as much as those burdened with Promethean intellect as well; plenty of them don't.
Long, long ago, I came to the conclusion that intelligence was inversely related to sanity. Not a scientific observation, just that people who I knew who were very smart also tended to have difficulties in more ways than the people I knew who had typical intelligence. Typical issues were depression, insecurity, difficulty relating or communicating with others, ... Certainly you can find people with these issues in all groups who have these attributes, and certainly there were many very intelligent persons who had their shit together, but issues seemed to be more common among the very intelligent persons.
Here are a few patterns I've seen in studies or surfaced:
1. Intelligence is an ability to observe, gather feedback based on past observations, and see patterns at a speed much faster than others at a lower general level. The growth in insight can be exponential, but it also means you start thinking at levels of abstraction and patterns that are layers above people at other levels. You struggle to communicate.
2. High Intelligence is not correlated with high moral or other views - at its base, it means speed in some directions an individual is prone to have. If they find a career path that allows them to speed in that direction, they thrive, if not, you see a lot of psychological challenges over time.
3. Socially, the higher your IQ, the more likely you are to skip steps in explaining your thoughts and to be misunderstood because your thinking might be several levels of abstraction above the people your're talking to. People at the 150IQ general level are rarely happy working with or friending people below 120. Given a propensity to specialize it a field rarely touched by others - one can get quite lonely in their thoughts and lose the social skills needed to develop normal friendships. Unless you are lucky enough to be surrounded by peers, you may be very unhappy. That unhappiness can shift to negative, downright trolling behaviors for some people.
4. Given the above, a lot of potential is lost. For every Einstein, there are likely several hiding in corners wondering what is wrong with them.
I've been thinking about and working on prototypes for a platform that would be helpful to unite people with niche and advanced interests, so they can collaborate freely. Would love to connect with others interested in the topic. (Edit: typos)
Sure, but analytical intelligence surely doesn't get in the way of social intelligence I wouldn't think. So my statement holds in that case where you lack some type of intelligence.
I can't see any reason that someone who is really intelligent at technical things couldn't be just as socially intelligent. They probably just don't have as much practice with social environments when compared to technical problems.
How high an IQ are you talking here? I have a moderately high IQ (~130) and being able to explain complex topics to family and friends in a simple enough way that they understand it is one of the things I enjoy most, probably because having a basic summary then the meaty material is how I best learn complex topics.
I don't think humility, empathy, and high IQ are mutually exclusive, though given some of my experiences with smart people I can see why you might think that way.
If your IQ is very high or very low, you likely have not spent a whole lot of time practicing things and pursuing things that typical people have. So the shared social language and thread of common experience that people depend upon to relate is limited.
You really don't think there's a single problem that might arise when someone were to have a large capacity for learning? I mean, sure, perhaps these problems aren't unique to people with higher intelligence. And perhaps they're correlated with other parameters, like social anxiety, etc. But surely becoming more intelligent can exacerbate these types of problems, no?
I still find the behavior odd. If someone says "I feel awkward around people because I'm short" no one responds with "that's not a problem with being short, that's just social anxiety". But when someone says "I feel awkward around people because I'm smart" suddenly everyone has an issue.
Intellectuals suffering from a crisis of meaning should ask themselves a sincere question: do I rely on relative intelligence as the core of my identity? When you frame the question that way, a number of obvious problems with that identity come to the surface:
- You will never be the smartest person in the room in every subject. There is simply too much to know, you'll never know it all, and others are better at learning different things.
- Being smart is no guarantee of success. To be successful, it's more important to learn how to interact, influence, delegate, etc.
- Any kind of identity based on comparison with other people is doomed. You will age, your ego will take a hit when someone else seems better, etc.
Everyone needs a stable identity. A more sure identity for intellectuals is to define yourself as someone who cares. As an intellectual, you probably enjoy solving problems and you are probably capable of great empathy. Build up those qualities in yourself without comparing yourself to others. That's a way to happiness.
I think you're only looking at "smart people" as people who want to share how smart they are. You seem to be ignoring the social isolation that can come with it. Your interests might no be similar to those around you, if you're a child you might be able to meet others who are different in the same way, etc.
I very rarely discuss IQ since so many people are hostile to it. A high IQ makes you different. Sometimes it's subtle, like as an adult you'll typically have different interests compared to a lot of peers, and other times it's far less subtle, like when you're a school aged kid and you're always made to feel different (FYI most school aged kids don't want to feel different).
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