This will be a very tricky post to write, mostly because it’s a touchy subject. But also because it can be understood and interpreted in very many different ways!
I’ve spent a very long time reading different posts, blogs, articles and research on problems in communication. You see I have this frequently occurring problem in communicating and it drives me mad when sometimes you seem to talk about the exact same thing with someone, but however many times I try and say the same thing, I just end up in a dead end and the other person doesn’t understand me at all. I try and try to rephrase and clarify and simplify and explain. I use simple words, difficult words, I use metaphor examples and I try using three bulletpoints. Sometimes I even make excell sheets or draw small pictures with crayons. Still, NADA mutual understanding. Like the world we live in suddenly would’ve been drained of intelligence*
After all my reading and researching today I’ve realised why the shoe doesn’t always fit, with some people. It’s all about numbers. Not that we should communicate in numbers (tried and tested that one as well! Check) it’s about points and numbers away from each-other. The further away, the harder to communicate and understand each-other.
In easy words it’s like this! If your IQ** differentiates more than 2 sd (standard deviation points) from the person you’re trying to communicate with, you’ll both have extreme difficulty in understanding each others way of thinking and expressing yourselves.
So this does explain a lot! Think about it! If You look at this diagram below and then keep on reading further to the statistics.
Under 70 [mentally retarded] — 2.2%
70-80 [borderline retarded] — 6.7%
80-90 [low average] — 16.1%
90-110 [average] — 50%
110-120 [high average] — 16.1%
120-130 [superior] — 6.7%
Over 130 [very superior] — 2.2%
(please note that the statistics text is copied from here, and I feel that the words in the brackets does sound pretty 1930’s, but I might be wrong, they might be written by someone 2 sd points away from me!)
Back to the chart and the theory of 2 sd’s. This means someone with an IQ under 70 wont be able to very clearly understand someone with an IQ over 100 (difference is 2 standard deviation points, 1 sd is 15 IQ points). The percentage is quite small, so let’s look at the bell shaped curve and decide that it’s completely accurate (which it probably isn’t but let’s pretend, the marginal wont be very large anyhow) Say if someone’s got an IQ under 100, he or she would represent 50 % of the world population who would not be able to communicate with 3.3 % of the world population. Oh shit, that didn’t sound as overwhelmingly revolutionary as I had thought.
Well ok, let’s look at the statistics again. Let’s say we draw a line at IQ 85 (low average) and 115 (high average) that’s exactly 2 sd points. This shows that 16.95% of the worlds people wont be able to communicate with another 16.95% of the people. That’s like every third person in the world having communication troubble!
Now there’s an answer to my question!
I finally get it. The original answer was a bit more forgiving, you can read it here:
“For example, if your IQ is say 145, the way you communicate when talking will in some sense be fundamentally different from someone whose IQ is less than 115 or greater than 175. This is not to say that its impossible, only that it actually takes cognitive effort to translate what you’re saying into a suitable cognitive frame of reference for the other person’s consumption. This is similar to the difficulties in communicating with someone from a completely different cultural background, albeit different details.”
So maybe there’s some hope still. And I will not tell you any of my vital numbers. Except maybe 80…. but that’s not my IQ.
So are you an Einstein? Try his own test here. He said himself that 98% of people wouldn’t be able to solve it. He forgot to mention that the ones who managed to solve it would only be able to communicate clearly and understandably easily with 5.55% of the people in the world.
*Intelligence is a person’s capacity to (1) acquire knowledge (i.e. learn and understand), (2) apply knowledge (solve problems), and (3) engage in abstract reasoning. It is the power of one’s intellect, and as such is clearly a very important aspect of one’s overall well-being. Psychologists have attempted to measure it for well over a century.
Sonja Catani Blog 