grady@Apple.COM (Grady Ward) (03/15/88)
The Cincinnatus Society is a high I.Q. club whose purpose is to
share speculative ideas among its members through a quarterly Journal
and monthly newsletter. A members' directory is also published semi-
annually and members have access to a computer bulletin board. For most
effective and economical presentation, all contributions are laser-
typeset and printed using the latest desktop publishing technologies.
Francis Galton once remarked that the most gifted person is as far
above the average person in understanding as the idiot is below. It is
not surprising therefore that extremely gifted people, with their
lighting grasp, subtle discrimination and intellectual craving, seem odd
to the person of ordinary perception, who may be color-blind to
extraordinary spectral visions. Indeed, in one study, forty percent of
urban junior high school children with I.Q.'s above 140 failed to be
promoted to the next grade. Many of our members, therefore, are
struggling with social or geographical isolation.
Of course, most of us realize that a single numerical measure of
intelligence is misleading, certainly racist and sexist, and that
Galton's criterion of "eminence," or the general esteem of a culture,
is, perhaps, a more accurate measure of intelligence brought to
fruition. But since most of our members have not yet achieved eminence,
we use the next most objective measure widely available, tests of
general aptitude, to select ourselves. Moreover, we are trying to
overcome some of worst biases of the standardized tests by considering
entrance by essay or other original work. (Perhaps you could contribute
to this investigation!)
There exist several high I.Q. clubs with varying entrance
requirements. Mensa, for example, accepts the top two percent of the
population. The Cincinnatus Society, ISPE, and the Triple Nine Society
accept the top one-tenth of one percent of the population, which for
typical I.Q. tests such as the Stanford-Binet or Weschler Adult
Intelligence Scale, is about the 150 I.Q. level. There also exist clubs
at the one in 60,000 level and the one in a million level, although
there is some controversy about the entrance measures they use, which
are "home-made," unsupervised tests for which the test designers,
usually the founders of the club, receive a scoring fee. Most aptitude
tests that are favorably reviewed in Buros' Mental Measurement Yearbook
have a top end of just around three to four standard deviations, which
works out to about 145-155, with a typical SD. Consequently, clubs
requiring documentation in this range can use well-normed, supervised
tests, which seems to be fairer to all.
Many of the clubs have been shaken with internal controversy and
territorial in-fighting by a few of their most gifted sophists, often
who make a living selling I.Q. artifacts, such as certificates and
"tests." And because of the communication latency of postal societies,
arguments are hard to defuse and rumors to dispel. (No one said smart
people are agreeable or disinterested!) Indeed, the Cincinnatus Society
was born as a reaction to the interminable squabbling of another society
that reduced its newsletter to mediocrity. The Cincinnatus Society has
taken precautions to divert its politicking and "meta" level discussions
about the club itself to an accompanying newsletter and computer
bulletin board. It is analogous to a hierarchy of moderated newsgroups
on USENET, and has produced a very high publication in the Cincinnatus
Society Journal. By putting some of the organic organization problems
behind us, we can concentrate on our central mission: to encourage and
realize genius, or, less pretentiously, just to have fun with each
other's ideas.
Even losing one Curie, or Einstein, or Voltaire into the sea of
the mundane is a global tragedy of opportunity. Although we may not
subscribe to the "great person" theory of social evolution, we believe
that systems of thought are made most coherent when articulated by a
directed individual rather than a group having diffuse interests and
drives. We are always conscious that we are a loose federation of
individuals rather than a monolithic organization.
If you would like more information about our organization, please
write for a free copy of our current Journal:
The Cincinnatus Society
380 N. Bayview Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94086.
-- Grady Ward, Founder.