every once in a while, mensa holds gatherings at my school on the weekends. for all the geniuses they're supposed to have, some of them lack utter common sense, as in walking into meetings between me and my advisor. i've witnessed this happening twice, and my advisor said it happens quite a bit.
that time, this mensa guy was looking for a room. it's in the same building, but on the second floor. of course, he comes to the 3rd floor, and just walks straight into our meeting, no knocking. "is this the mensa gathering?" "no" "would you happen to know where it is?" why he would assume that is beyond me. "no idea, we could look it up for you." so we took the time to actually look it up on the internet for him. apparently, he doesn't use the internet very often, because he started saying things don't really makes sense about the internet. after a while, we found the gathering place, and told him how to get there. but giving him the directions took a few minutes, since he couldn't tell north from left. in the end, we told him to get out of the building, enter through a specific entrance, and instead of telling him how to get there from our meeting room.
a similar incident happened on another occasion, but it was a phone call. the person was locked out and apparently couldn't find the entrance that was unlocked.
to me, mensa is just a group for people who have too much time on their hands, and possibly failed horribly at their careers and in need of an ego boost. why else could you explain these pointless gatherings?
that being said, my take on a certain group of high IQ people is that they lie somewhere on the autistic spectrum of things. they have some unbelieveable skills, but also lack some fundamental skills. i find that some math grad students are a little like that... they could be so spacey when they talk to you, but really good at what they do--i.e. prove theorems. in the end, some members of this particular group (not all high IQ individuals in general) serve a particular purpose in human society, or else evolution would have eliminated these genes by now.
the Wii is an epidemic.
