A dive into "notable MENSANs"

People who boast about their IQ are losers.

-Stephen Hawking

For those who don’t know, MENSA is an organization where the requirement for membership is scoring in the top 2% in an IQ test. The number of eligible people worldwide would therefore be around 160 million. MENSA has around 150,000 members. This means that only about 1 in a thousand people eligible to MENSA actually join up.

In this youtube clip, David Mitchell points out that people already think he’s smart, so why would he try to join MENSA? He is already perceived as intelligent from his wit and nerdy demeanor, so getting MENSA membership would add very little. On the other hand, if he failed the test, he might feel bad, or have people realise he’s not as smart as he appears. He claims that the type of people who join MENSA are the people who have high IQ, but don’t appear to be smart.

I work as a theoretical physicist, apparently one of the professions with the highest median IQ out there, and nobody here would ever consider joining MENSA. Why would we? A PHD in physics is a far greater achievement than answering a bunch of quizzes. We care about things like prestigious journal publications and nobel prizes. If someone in physics is bragging about having a high IQ, we would probably give them the side-eye. Like, no shit you’re good at math, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.

To be fair to MENSA, there is another reason you’d join, besides bragging rights: to hang out with other smart people, and play games and do puzzles and stuff. But on this front, it has to compete with like, your local board game club. And on the talking to smart people front, people in intellectual fields can just talk to their coworkers or uni buddies. So this aspect also lends itself to non-intellectual fields. Although according the podcast my year in mensa, these days the main force in MENSA is an unmoderated community dominated by Trumpian fanatics.

To explore this further, I did a skim through wikipedia page: List of mensans. There were only about 113 people on the list. This isn’t meant to be a serious or rigorous study, just a general feel for what the list is like.

People whose names I recognised:

The first point is that not many of them are super-famous. I only recognised 12 of them by name, and 3 more by reputation. I would guess the most famous person on the list is Jimmy Saville, and not for good reasons.

Scott Adams: Dilbert creator

Isaac Asimov: Highly famous Sci-fi author

Jean Auel: author who’s name I’ve seen around

Jack Cohen: author and biologist that co-authored “science of discworld” series

Geena Davis: actress with familiar name

Buckminster Fuller: futurist that the buckyball was named after

Chris Hadfield: famous astronaut

John Mcafee: Creator of antivirus software with a spotty record

Joyce Carol Oates: some author

Jimmy Saville: famous entertainer and pedophile

Roger Zezlany: scifi/fantasy author.

Markus “notch” Perrson: creator of minecraft.

There were a few more whose names I didn’t recognise, but I knew about them from their work, such as the guy who cheated on who wants to be a millionaire, The inventor of the Monty hall problem, and a famous escape artist.

People who engaged in unethical behaviour

One of the things I noticed is that there was quite a lot of dodgy or unethical behaviour. I have no way of telling whether or not this was disproportionate, as the article is not a random sample. I would guess the vast majority of mensans are not horrible criminals. Certainly not everyone on the list is equally bad either. Warning for discussion of bad things like sexual assault:

Charles Ingram: Cheated at “who wants to be a millionaire” through a rigged system of coughs.

South korean rapper Park Kyung:

On September 20, 2020, an anonymous person who attended middle school with Park wrote a post on Instagram accusing him of committing school violence, specifically towards students with special needs.^[47] Park released an apology via social media on September 29.^[48]

Adrian Cronauer, Sergeant and disc jockey in the Vietnam war:

In October 2014 the (NCRC) filed complaints against Cronauer and the Cronauer Law Center with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The NCRC alleged that Cronauer had engaged in mortgage scams under the guise of offering assistance to property owners threatened with foreclosure. Cronauer consented to disbarment rather than contest the matter, which means that the facts and circumstances of the admitted misconduct remained confidential.

British Tv personality C J de mooi

On 21 September 2016, De Mooi was arrested at Heathrow Airport in connection with claims, made in his autobiography, that in 1988 he had punched a drug-addicted mugger and thrown him into a canal in Amsterdam.^[25] De Mooi was detained under a European Arrest Warrant issued in the Netherlands.^[26][27] A judge at Westminster Magistrates' Court declined the extradition request on technical grounds, on 24 October 2016, saying that no UK arrest warrant had been issued.^[28]

Mike Carona: A corrupt sheriff that was convicted of witness tampering and sent to jail for 5 years.

isaac assimov : I was bummed to find this out:

Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A'"^[182] (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, Asimov's habit of groping women was seen as sexual harassment and came under criticism, and was cited as an early example of inappropriate behavior that can occur at science fiction conventions.^[183]

Alfred George Hinds: A famous escape for breaking out of three different high security prisons. Changed his ways and became a mensa member later in life.

Jimmy Saville: Famous entertainer and serial pedophile.

Cyril Burt: an IQ researcher who appears to have fabricated data to support his claims:

However, Mackintosh himself, then Emeritus Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge, summed up the evidence against Burt in 1995, saying that the data Burt presented were "so woefully inadequate and riddled with error", that consequently "no reliance (could) be placed on the numbers he present(ed)", and went on to confirm his agreement with Kamin's original conclusion, that Burt had fabricated his data.

John Mcafee:

In October 2020, McAfee was arrested in Spain over U.S. tax evasion charges.^[8] U.S. federal prosecutors brought criminal and civil charges alleging that McAfee had failed to file income taxes over a four-year period.^[9][10] On 23 June 2021, he was found dead due to an apparent suicide by hanging in his prison cell near Barcelona shortly after the Spanish National Court authorized his extradition to the U.S.^[11][12][13] His death generated speculation and theories about the possibility that he was murdered.^[14] McAfee's wife, Janice McAfee, said she did not believe McAfee died by suicide.^[15][16]

Mensans with weird beliefs

The other thing I looked for was whether they held weird, obviously incorrect, or pseudoscientific beliefs. The following is just the stuff I was able to find on wikipedia, it’s quite likely that the true number is higher.

Roland Berrill: the cofounder of Mensa, was into Palmistry, phrenology, astrology and Dianetics.

Ruben talberg: is a sculptor who seems to be into magic:

Talberg's oeuvre deals with antagonistic positions such as Nature & Alchemy, Asymmetry & Dynamics or Eros & Thanathos. From the beginning of 1990 he intensified his interest for Jewish mysticism and magic. On extensive journeys he collects new impressions that in turn shape the base for new manifolds. Talberg's life-time production is limited to 888 manifolds. His credo: "Finis Coronat Opus Magnum." According to art theory Talberg founded Neo-Fluxus, which is based on his manifesto 1995. The core ideas originate in Heraclitus “pantha rhei - everything flows” and TAO, the philosophy of flow, which also hold true for his Manifolds.

Scott adams: The Dilbert creator went full Trumpist, including the apparently serious statement that if biden is elected, republicans would be hunted and down and killed.

John mcafee: predicted that bitcoin would hit a million dollar price by 2020: (although in fairness, he may have just been lying in order to pump n dump)

Minecraft creator notch pearsson is a full on right wing nutbag who has tweeted in support of Qanon

Grover Krantz: is an anthropologist who mainly studied Bigfoot.

Arlan andrews: Sci fi author: The list of publications include things like “psychic aspects of UFO’s”, and writing about “ancient hydralics” in “atlantis rising”. Haven’t checked the articles though, so can’t be sure he believes in them.

Gareth Penn Went kind of nuts about the zodiac killer, repeatedly accusing someone who (probably) didn’t do it.

Brian J ford: publicised the “aquatic dinosaur” hyptohesis, generally considered to be wrong:

In the April 2012 issue of Laboratory News, Ford put forward the idea that all large dinosaurs were aquatic, arguing that they were too large and heavy to be land animals.^[20] Recent oxygen isotope analysis and taphonomic changes show clear evidence for a semi-aquatic lifestyle, however only for the Spinosaurus, so far no sauropod or ornithischian has been conclusively shown to be semi-aquatic,^[21][22][23] although the small ankylosaurian Liaoningosaurus has been suggested to have had such a lifestyle.^[24]

Lack of scientists and engineers

Given that engineers and scientists generally have high IQs, it’s interesting to see how many actually join MENSA: Looking for scientists and engineers, I count:

2 biologists, 3 engineers, 2 chemists, 4 inventors, 1 biological anthropologist (that studies bigfoot), 1 sexologist, 1 astronaut, 1 economist and 1 fraudulent psychologist.

Most notably, there are zero physicists or mathematicians on the list. No nobel laureates, no heads of state, no fields medalists, etc.

In contrast, there are 16 actors and 10 authors. I should note that the nature of being “notable” skews the results here. The average actor is way more likely to get a wikipedia page than the average physicist.

Conclusion:

Summarising the results of this brief dive:

15/113 are famous enough that I have heard of them.

9/113 have weird beliefs mentioned on wikipedia.

10/113 have unethical behaviour mentioned on their wikipedia page

16/113 did some sort of science/engineering.

0/113 did physics or math.

What does this tell us? Not much, honestly. First, this is not a random sample of Mensans, it’s only the ones on a particular wikipedia page. Second, this is only information I could get from a quick skim of wikipedia: If someone believed in fairies but didn’t state so publicly, I wouldn’t see it here.

I think this at least backs up the hypothesis that people with obvious intellectual accomplishments tend to stay away from MENSA. It also shows that high intelligence is not a surefire shield against weird or wrong opinions or bad behaviour.