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.