/pol/ considers how the average individual can recognize a highly intelligent individual in public situations:
What are some signs that show someone has a high IQ? The kind of things you can notice within moments of meeting or by spending a few hours with someone?
I have a few anecdotal ones:
- Friendly, but detached. Like they know they have to play the social game but don’t find it important (they have better things to think about).
- Can hold a conversation on a wide range of topics.
- Suddenly light up when esoteric topics come up – they are energised whereas before it was just going through the motions (even their going through the motions is higher level than most people’s high effort)
- Have a habit of cutting through the crap and saying things very clearly and succinctly. This often shocks people around them with its accuracy.
inb4 IQ score. I don’t give a fuck about that – I’m talking IRL signs which don’t involve asking someone’s IQ like an autist. inb4 is successful businessman/tech guy. Hell no. It’s the midwits that thrive there. I am one.
It’s rather refreshing – and slightly suspicious – to see a midwit who is sufficiently self-aware and modest enough to distinguish between his own superior intelligence and VHIQ. Especially when he is clearly observant enough to recognize some of the genuine signs of high intelligence.
For me, the first sign is always the eyes. Highly intelligent people tend to have a penetrating quality to their eyes, particularly when they aren’t interacting with anyone and aren’t aware they are being observed. It’s often described as “intense” or “lively” by others, and can provoke instinctive reactions such as widening eyes or a physical retreat. It’s also how the highly intelligent can quickly recognize one another. Consider the way that a fictional version of Vladimir Putin is described.
At the time, the tsar was not yet the tsar. His gestures did not then convey the inflexible authority they would later come to acquire, and though his gaze had some trace of the mineral quality we recognize in it today, it was as if veiled by a conscious effort to keep it under control.
Most VHIQ and UHIQ adults know that they will get along better with people if they don’t force them to confront their intelligence. If someone who is not observably shy or lacking in self-confidence, whose posture conveys a high level of self-assurance, tends to habitually avert their eyes or avoid making eye contact, that is a possible indicator.
There are, of course, other indicators. But the eyes are a fairly reliable one, particularly if you see them change from one state of awareness to another in the literal blink of an eye.
One thing to keep in mind is that highly intelligent people always know it. Some will rub your face in it. Others will desperately attempt to conceal it. But the midwit myth of “the smart person who doesn’t know how smart they are” is nothing more than a Gamma coping mechanism. The reality of the VHIQ is the inability to credit how totally fucking retarded the average individual is.
It’s arguably even worse for the UHIQ, since the VHIQ usually has a basic grasp of how the average mind’s logic functions. The UHIQ can’t even understand that.