Superior intelligence is so overrated

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Intelligence is beneficial but not sufficient for pretty much everything. In the human domain, "social skills" and "empathy" matter far more, and the 'human domain' dominates pretty much 'everything': employment and relationships.

But, for academia, technological progress and technical accomplishments, intelligence is really great! Much of what I've accomplished and created would've been essentially impossible without my towering IQ. However, I'm still pretty poor with people, which has been adversely affecting my ability to pass group-based classes and gaining the favor of critically important people, generally, and I predict it might also effect my longterm employment. But, for everything else, I'm doing great!

Also, one shouldn't get the impression that IQ and people skills are mutually exclusive as the reverse tends to be true: generally more intelligent people tend to possess better people skills. It's the negative outliers of a given level of intelligence that tend to fare worse than others (Or those tending towards the bottom end of the distribution curve.).

They aren't mutually exclusive. In fact I don't think there's any correlation at all beyond that people at either extreme of the bell curve have worse people skills. I haven't seen any evidence that less intelligent people have less people skills than more intelligent people. They seem to be able to interact with each other quite seamlessly.

I always liked the quote from Harvey: "Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be," - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant."

I realize that quote may be near heresy to a few on this forum, I've noticed there's some with AS who feel nice is the ultimate swearword, since courtesy is tantamount to lying and thus an NT evil. I'm not saying all smart people are jerks, but the kind of people who value intellect above any other trait because it's most important to always be right, they generally are neither fun nor remotely healthy to be around long-term. I'd rather laugh at silly jokes with someone of below average intelligence than suffer through an angry lecturing genius who will rage on at the slightest thing - although I'd also laugh at silly jokes with a nice genius. So I try to be nice to the people in my life even if I don't really understand them or they're wrong or sooo slow it's excruciating... it won't change my IQ, but it makes life easier and it does make them more likely to be understanding towards me in turn.

Intelligence can be used to sharpen the senses and carve out a tolerable path in life, or it can be used to glue a fool to his eccentricity, and isolate him from the rest of humanity. Let the bearer be the judge of his wits, and it's uses; he'll surely suffer its sins and misuses.

The correlation is probably too weak to be noticeable in ones daily experiences or it might be negligible, but it seemed the Termite study showed that verbally gifted youngsters tend to have better social skills than ordinary kids (That study might be biased.) and IQ is correlated positively, however weakly, with standard EQ tests. Also, working memory is thought to be a somewhat good predictor of social skills and working memory has a good correlation with IQ -- see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-t ... l-11342947. Here's the take from it:

"The research suggested that individuals with good working memories tend to have better jobs and relationships."

Of course, those with social impairments, like disorders affecting communication (nonverbally or verbally) and social anxiety, will tend to have less "people skills" since communication is a large factor of that regardless of their working memory.

I agree, intelligence is over-rated. I'd rather be hung like a Shetland pony and look like a stud so I can bask in physical pleasure and self and other-admiration. At least, until I get bored.