Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site duke.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!hpda!fortune!amdcad!decwrl!decvax!mcnc!duke!crm
From: crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Flame re: Mensa and appended apology
Message-ID: <5189@duke.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Dec-84 13:37:11 EST
Article-I.D.: duke.5189
Posted: Sun Dec 16 13:37:11 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Dec-84 00:34:59 EST
Organization: Duke University
Lines: 87

Bill --

sorry about the tone of my flame, my keyboard got away from me again...

I (in fact) don't belong to Mensa, although a number of my best friends
do, and for some reason I tend to be sort of protective of them.  I've heard 
a lot of stuff about Mensa in the vein of "... don't trust those people why 
don't they go out and join a softball team or something...."  

But I am still -- well, offended is probably too strong a word;
discomfited? -- by the part of your message about "elitist
organization".  Mensa is not all that much an elitist organization,
since in fact their literature makes the point directly that no-one is
sure what the tests that test IQ are really testing...  My suspicieon is
in fact that a lot of the feelings that people with high IQ's often get
of being alone in a crowd, and of being left out come from some
interaction of a sort of clever hans effect with the teachers (they
train the class unconsiously to regard a student with high IQ as someone
odd) and the usual difficulty getting these people to obey the rules
( a student who already reads well in 1st grade will have a high IQ
score; a student who reads markedly better than the rest of the class
may spend a lot of time standing in a corner for losing his/her place by
reading ahead.)

But I feel that the point I was trying to suggest by the "egalitarian
bigot" question was a real one, in two senses: first of all, the
actually pedantic question of whether or not the phrase "egalitarian
bigot" has a logical meaning in english (I could argue that both ways),
but also a more important second meaning -- I feel pretty strongly that
we in the USofA have taken the original "all men are created equal" and
extended it to include the subtext "and anyone who believes that people
should make choices in terms of noticable differences between people is
immoral or unethical."

I believe strongly that everyone should be equal in the eyes of the law
and in their rights; I feel equally strongly that for someone to make a
choice based on differences between people is within my understanding of
their rights.   As the phrase "such an elitist organization" sounds to
me (that may be a paraphrase), it suggests that Mensans are somehow less
than completely ethical if they choose to associate in a group with
others who meet some specific criterion, especially in this case score
on a class of tests which are supposed to measure intelligence.

It is in this sense that I see the phrase "egalitarian bigot" as having
some useful meaning.  "Egalitarian" because the original argument
involved is an egalitarian argument -- no-one should be excluded because
of some ability or disability -- and "bigot" because by implying that
people are immoral because they choose to associate with others who they
feel may be congenial because of the scores received in an IQ test, you
implicitly deny that they have similar rights to those that choose to
associate because they once graduated from some particular university.

In other words, it seems to me that the implication I read was one that
people of high intelligence (in terms of IQ scores) are unethical if
they make a choice of association based on the hope that others with
similar scores will be congenial associates, and therefore make a rule
for their completely voluntary club limiting membership to those with
similar scores.  Unless you would agree to extend this to ANY voluntary
organization -- that is, unless you would for example suggest that the
Alumni/Alumnae Association of a universtiy is immoral if they refuse to
admit people who never attended the university involved -- I feel that
this is truly limiting the rights of a certain group simply because of
some characteristic they share.  Whether the shared characteristic is
skin color, height, or IQ-test score seems immaterial -- it still seems
unfair.

By the way, as far as the usefulness of IQ test scores go --  I have a
measured IQ high enough that inaccuracy makes the numerical value
meaningless, at least so far as I can learn.  (The difference between
someone with a numerical score of 130 and a score of 170 is much less
pronounced and much more test-dependant that the difference between a
score of 90 and 120.)  While this indicates a certain facility with
mental tricks, it has still not been anything that prevented a really
miserable academic career -- nor has it kept me from phrasing a
moderately good-natured gripe in a way that pissed off a friend.  I
hope you will forgive the phrasing, even if you don't agree with my
argument.

Charlie Martin

of skin color, height or IQ score, 

-- 
		Opinions stated here are my own and are unrelated.

				Charlie Martin
				(...mcnc!duke!crm)