What do fellow rationalists think about Mensa?

Mensa has a fairly low cutoff. If you attended a prestigious college or grad school, work in a profession or in the sciences, or even hang out with scientifically or philosophically minded people, chances are you've already been a part of groups with higher aggregate IQ's. I wouldn't bother.

I enjoyed Mensa. I went to weekends away, and evenings in the pub. I met some nice people, and some crushing bores. I took the test initially to try and boost my social life. I do not think I had more intellectual discussions than I do with work colleagues.

Sir Clive Sinclair for a time hosted weekends in moderate hotels, with dinner parties. So I have enjoyed a couple of long general discussions in a group of about a dozen including him and Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute, and he is still one of my best name-drops.

When I foolishly disclosed to an employer that I was in Mensa, every time after when I made a mistake he would say, "Mensa strikes again!", mockingly. I think being in Mensa does not give a useful signal.

I have kind of lost interest. I have other social groups to join with. The magazine in Britain is not interesting.

I was in Mensa years ago -- most members I met were under-achieving smart people.

In my experience, putting Mensa on your CV doesn't really signal what you think it signals. It's not a terribly high bar (relative to a lot of other signaling mechanisms), so to me, adding Mensa to the CV signals that (1) you're insecure enough in your other accomplishments that you think you need the Mensa membership or that it adds something useful to the signal you're sending, and (2) you're un-smart enough to think the credentials required for admittance are in fact impressive. Neither of these is a signal you want to send.

In other words, all the truly smart people are too smart for Mensa, so it's probably a waste of your time. You don't want to signal that you are smart enough for Mensa; you want to signal that you are too smart to care about it.

Mensans were around as smart as a small regional science fiction convention, say. That didn't really do it for me, and after a couple of meetings I gave up. Your mileage might vary.

The place I tried did seem like it might be able to provide community, FWIW.

Has anyone heard of putting IQ test scores on a CV? I haven't, but I'm young and don't know a lot about other labor markets.

A friend who is generally the smartest person in the room wherever she goes went to a Mensa meeting once. However, she was there as the girlfriend of a member; she hadn't passed their test. As a result, the members just talked right over her, which was very much their loss.

IQ is well correlated with job performance, so if you think the potential employer cares mainly about future performance (and knows what he or she is doing) include your IQ and that it qualifies you for Mensa. However, I suppose that most people who review applications would see a reference to IQ/Mensa membership as a downside. Mensans manage to be seen as both elitist and low status at the same time. They are usually smart people (mostly smart men actually) who have lower status jobs, so I doubt they would be very useful professional connections.

As to whether joining Mensa might have intrinsic value to you, I don't know. I think they mainly trade puzzles with each other.

Do these people who say they wouldn't join Mensa because the people aren't smart enough, not join any groups of people less smart than Mensans? No hiking club or soccer team?

If you enjoy what they do, then go for it. I don't know what they do.

Yeah, I know this thread is even older than when corndog found it, but I only just found it.

Re membership for CV purposes - I tend to agree with Asthana on this, although situations alter cases. If the prospective employer wants a quality that they may associate with relatively high IQ and you have no other evidence, then membership of or eligibility for Mensa may be useful. The trick is not to be seen to be boasting so much as giving evidence of having sufficient smarts for the job.

As for social membership, if you qualify and are a bit of a social misfit then membership can be really helpful. A combination of relatively high IQ and other socially isolating factors during childhood made it difficult for me to connect socially as an adult, and membership of Mensa helped, both by providing a social environment in which there was one less difference between myself and my peers, and by helping me put high IQ in perspective (there are some pretty dumb people in Mensa).

Not all Mensans are social misfits however. My experience (in Australian Mensa) was that it was a very heterogeneous group, with a high level of mostly rational non-conformity and open-mindedness.

Unfortunately, Australian Mensa had too low a population density to maintain a vibrant social environment at the time I was a member, and eventually was not worth my while due to financial reasons (yeah, I'm an underachiever).

I'd definitely recommend anyone who might be eligible to at least experience Mensa, and to bear in mind that the local chapter may not be representative. Try going along as a guest a few times, and if you don't fit in then probably a) Mensa is not for you, or b) the local chapter of Mensa is not for you. Of course, you may fit in and still decide that there are other groups where you fit in at least as well and would rather put your energies.

And yes, the bar is relatively low - because you only need to be in the top 2% in ANY recognized IQ test, probably as much as 5% of the population could qualify, although those who only just scraped in through this loophole would be likely to find membership less satisfying, and would be more likely to drop out - especially the ego trippers who could then claim that Mensa wasn't good enough for them.