I want to preface this by saying I am trying to stop the doom scrolling. I'm trying to kick my social media addiction, and part of that is Facebook. I fucking hate Facebook. Used to be Reddit, now I've kicked that, but am on Facebook. I hate how it makes me feel, I hate the videos that I find. I feel like it is making me a worse thinker and a worse person. So I want to get better. Additionally, I am very sleep deprived, so this may be unhinged and a bit chaotic. Preface out of the way, I saw a video that pissed me off.
The video in question is from a user that goes by Dr.angelicacashie, and it is fundamentally a long rant about how people with high IQ are just so super special smart that they are unable to connect with others and thus invariably will either be depressed loners who drink to drown out the super smart thoughts or run a billion successful businesses. This is profoundly fucking stupid, and I cannot control my toxicity towards it.
I am someone who she would have described in her video as having an "extremely high IQ". I am tested to be well into the "very superior" range on the WAIS and the WISC (taken at different times, obviously), so I think I can speak on some authority in respect to her broad, generalizing claims in respect to the emotional experiences of those who are "high IQ". I am also autistic, which she frequently dismisses the experiences of, so I can contribute that to the conversation as well. I don't bring this up as a means of bragging, nor do I mean to argue that I am superior in a way that matters to 99% of people, rather I am arguing somewhat the opposite. I do not think my score is meaningful in nearly the same way that she is presenting, nor do I think that it is of any value to understand my or anyone's score in this "neurodivergance" perspective.
With that out of the way, time for a rant.
In the video, Dr. Cashie argues that, due to the statistical difference between someone with an IQ of 70 is roughly equivalent to an average-intelligence person as someone with a score of 130, the substantial deficits we observe below 70 must be indicative of the substantial difference in respect to competency that we must therefore observe in those above 130. In this she makes an error by referring to one standard deviation as being 10, whereas typically the standard deviation for IQ assessments is 15. Minor error, sure, but it is a clear demonstration of the general quality of the rest of the video. In respect to the idea that the statistical difference being equal thus meaning the practical difference also ought to be equal=horseshit. This is just not true and has not been demonstrated to my knowledge, or even could realistically be. Just because we observe a substantial decline in ability past a certain point does not mean that we should also observe a substantial incline of ability in the opposite direction. This assumes that in each point on a bell-curve, each point is not a measure of the distribution of people who make up a respective standard deviation about the mean, but instead an indication of the direct difference in ability of people who are at one or another point. This is not true. If you take a person who scores 100, compared to a person who scores 120, you are going to observe a moderate increase in functional ability. As Dr. Cashie correctly points out, most Doctors are generally in the 120 range, whereas most people are not doctors. However, if you then compare 140 to 160, we are not going to see much the same difference, this namely being that the quality of the measure will be substantially reduced past a certain point due to the lack of data to properly standardize the scoring used. So, if you score 140, you are probably able to do whatever someone who scores 160 is, either way you are very superior. In fact, on the test that I took most recently (WAIS-IV), the last point that has a unqiue, diagnostic identifier is 130. Past 130, everything is classified as very superior. This is relevant, because we observe an even more dramatic difference than 100-120 if we compare 80-60. Someone who scores 80 on an IQ test is below average, but not substantially so. They are not in the range of being substantially impared, and will most likely get by pretty alright in the modern world. But if you take someone who scored 60, we observe someone who has substantial difficulties in their day-to-day life. Clearly, we cannot declare that a 20-point differnce, or any point difference, is roughly equal in terms of ability distribution. It is solely a measure of population. It states what percentage of individuals we would expect to find within a given range, NOT the actual ability of those within that range. So clearly, this point is faulty. But there is more.
She goes on to claim that people who have substantially higher IQs are not going to be doctors, or lawyers, they are going to be drunks, or Elon Musk. This 1) presumes that Elon Musk has a substantially high IQ, I do not believe he has ever been tested, so I would not make a claim as to his IQ score; and 2) presumes that, even within her own hypothesis, that someone with a substantial IQ is not both a drunk and a doctor (see Dr. House in House MD if you want a piece of media that exdplores a similar topic). Now I would argue the entire premise is flawed and founded on flimsy, inconsistent data. Fundamentally, an association between mental health concerns and high intelligence has not been found consistently across various studies that have sought to prove a link, and those that have, are generally small in size (especially in regards to the number of people who are super duper high IQ within those studies). But that's the thing, they are pretty much always going to be small in size becuase of the relatively small population of people who score particularly highly on IQ tests. Thus, we cannot prove or disprove this claim realistically and it becomes non-falsifiable, and we must rely on anecodtes if we are to form an opinion at all. (and as an aside, I am just gonna link my sources in bulk at the bottom of the page. Shitty citations I know, but its 3 am, give me a break). If anything, the studies that I've read have more reliably found an association between low-iq and mental health issues. The exceptions to this are never consistent, often only applying to men with a specific kind of a specific mental illness, or only one mental illness, but the opposite for others. But more importantly, this presumably psychologist, I don't actually know, has made a very obvious flaw in reasoning. She has assumed that the existence of a rule disproves the existence of the exception. She has broadly stated that doctors WILL NOT be high IQ, that lawyers WILL NOT be high IQ, because this would bore them, and thus they would not be able to perform the work. This assumes no hobbies, no mental stimulation from outside of work, and assumes that everyone gets all the mental stimulation they need from work except for the poor super intelligent mega geniuses (boo hoo). I feel like I don't need to explain further as this argument is self-defeating, but I'm going to anyway, fuck you. Take me, for instance. I am not a doctor, I am a therapist and a grad student, but I scored in the "you have never met anyone in this range" range, according to the video I've been ranting about. As did my boyfriend, as did my college roommate, as did my best friend besides my boyfriend. We all met in college, sure, and we all gathered in similar nerdy-political-smartypants crowds, but clearly the argument that "you have probably never met someone this smart" (this is all assuming she is correct with her view of intelligence by the way; argument for a different time), requires one to assume that you have not met very many people. If someone scores high enough such that they are 1 in a thousand, or even 1 in a million, chances are, at some point, in a globally connected world, if you are on the internet, if you interact with random strangers, if you exist in the world we live in today, you have probably met someone who is that "smart". Just statistically, if they are 1-1,000, you have surely met more than 1,000 people in your life. Chances are you have interacted with hundreds of thousands, if briefly. The internet has likely brought this figure far higher. Maybe I'm being pedantic. Maybe I'm too autistic to understand which points of hers are genuine and which are exaggerated for effect. Maybe its maybelline. I don't really care, because I am angry at a video that is wrong and misrepresents me in two different ways.
Like, sure I'm depressed, but its because I have had a kind of depressing life, not because my intelligence has prevented me from connecting with others. My inability to understand others, my difficulties with empathy, my confusion regarding social norms, my "strange behaviors" isolate me from others. And unjustly, much of the time. I could be non-autistic and this smart and I would likely have a lot more friends and be a lot more happy, assuming I also didn't have a fucked up childhood with a bunch of trauma.
I'm probably going to bring all these thoughts together into an actual, proper critique of the ideas presented in the video, but for now I think I'm gonna leave it at this. I'm gonna link the video, along with some sources I grabbed when making sure I wasn't totally off-base when I got initially upset.
If you read this far, sorry about that.
Gale, C. R., Batty, G. D., McIntosh, A. M., Porteous, D. J., Deary, I. J., & Rasmussen, F. (2013). Is bipolar disorder more common in highly intelligent people? A cohort study of a million men. Molecular psychiatry, 18(2), 190–194. https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2012.26
Koenen, K. C., Moffitt, T. E., Roberts, A. L., Martin, L. T., Kubzansky, L., Harrington, H., Poulton, R., & Caspi, A. (2009). Childhood IQ and adult mental disorders: a test of the cognitive reserve hypothesis. The American journal of psychiatry, 166(1), 50–57. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.08030343
MacCabe, J. H., Lambe, M. P., Cnattingius, S., Sham, P. C., David, A. S., Reichenberg, A., … Hultman, C. M. (2010). Excellent school performance at age 16 and risk of adult bipolar disorder: national cohort study. British Journal of Psychiatry, 196(2), 109–115. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.108.060368
Kendler, K. S., Ohlsson, H., Sundquist, J., & Sundquist, K. (2015). IQ and schizophrenia in a Swedish national sample: their causal relationship and the interaction of IQ with genetic risk. The American journal of psychiatry, 172(3), 259–265. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2014.14040516
Breslau N, Lucia VC, Alvarado GF. Intelligence and Other Predisposing Factors in Exposure to Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Follow-up Study at Age 17 Years. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2006;63(11):1238–1245. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.63.11.1238
Wraw C, Deary IJ, Der G, Gale CR. Intelligence in youth and mental health at age 50. Intelligence. 2016 Sep-Oct;58:69-79. doi: 10.1016/j.intell.2016.06.005. PMID: 27642201; PMCID: PMC5014225.
Koenen, K. C., Moffitt, T. E., Roberts, A. L., Martin, L. T., Kubzansky, L., Harrington, H., Poulton, R., & Caspi, A. (2009). Childhood IQ and adult mental disorders: a test of the cognitive reserve hypothesis. The American journal of psychiatry, 166(1), 50–57. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.08030343
Melby, L., Indredavik, M. S., Løhaugen, G., Brubakk, A. M., Skranes, J., & Vik, T. (2020). Is there an association between full IQ score and mental health problems in young adults? A study with a convenience sample. BMC psychology, 8(1), 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-020-0372-2
and finally a link to the video I am ranting about in question.
I stole this meme from here
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