Are you all supremely confident that you're intelligent

firemonkey said:

I've never told a joke.

I'm not really one for telling jokes either, but in my case it's because I'm hopeless at remembering jokes. I can tell amusing anecdotes, but whether other people consider them amusing is an entirely different matter.

Thank you.  Another thing that  may be strange, even for here. I've never told a joke.

firemonkey said:

I'm struggling to answer

Could I suggest a very autistic approach and understand the mechanics of comedy and practice - a but like when Sheldon Cooper was learning about sarcasm:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/whats-so-funny-the-science-of-why-we-laugh/

I think this may be partly down to the poor connections many autists have with their emotions that causes this but also because of many of the social rules that we never really picked up when growing up.

Learning may help you understand and appreciate it better although we will still the be last one to laugh...

TheCatWoman said:

Is it that you fail to understand a joke, or that the "joke" really wasn't funny and you're the only one honest enough to admit to it?

A very good question, that I'm struggling to answer. I do find with stand up comedians/comediennes  there's a large part of me  that  seeks a forensic(for want of a better word)answer as to why x is or isn't funny. On the other hand I'll instinctively laugh at a wide range of things such as Fawlty towers, Marx brothers' movies(especially the earlier ones) and those police academy movies.

Is it that you fail to understand a joke, or that the "joke" really wasn't funny and you're the only one honest enough to admit to it? I'm the same with a lot of comedy, recently there seems to be a trend for humiliation either of others or more often the self, I find them excruciating to watch, fingers scratching down a blackboard painful. I get told I don't have much of a sense of humour, but I do, it's just more QI than Miranda. Plus as so much comedy is about identifying with it, they talk about things I don't understand or have little or no experience of.

Thank you, you are very kind.

I think the missing part for many people and not just those of us with autism, is opportunity. I dont' know how it works in other countries, or how it is now as a young person just starting out in this country, but we seem to be channelled into certain things and it feels as though what and how much you can achieve has been decided as soon as you walk through the doors of reception class.

Having the wisdom to deploy your intelligence is also different for different for different people, it's the intersection between what you've been taught and what doors you can open and will be allowed to open. I'm a hairdresser, an occupation that's often thought to be filled by stupid people, particularly stupid women, or gay men. Talking about holidays is something thats often cited as a reason for stupidity, it's not, its because many clients will tell you all about thier horrible illnesses and gruesome opperation and other things they should really tell their doctors or a therapist, we don't want to know!  Also many people don't know how much science we have to know, everything from care of electrical tools, to the biology of skin and hair, how hormonal changes effect the hair and scalp, the chemistry of many of the products we use and how they interact. We have to know about colour, art and geometry, I never really understood geometry until I did hairdressing, so much of a good hair cut is about angles. We know about running a business, how to manage our time and that of others and we're still called thick, yeah right.

Ages since I've heard any Jethro Tull.

there are many forms of intelligence. in some I excel and in other I struggle. On an IQ test they only focus on one or 2 kinds of "intelligence" and throw the rest under the bus.

I marvel at how a friend of mine knows right away what's going on emotionally with everyone in a room, just by walking into a room and taking the measure of it. I cannot do this at all and have to rely on clumsy questions that can come of as rude. We cannot explain to each other how.

There is also the question of cultural bias and standards of expressing a problem that would be easy if otherwise expressed for some: I, for one, am more visual in my thinking and I excel at math if the questions are expressed to accommodate, but I get frustrated if a problem is expressed in a formula, the language of which, I don't know.  

a wise avenue of approach. I work at somethings that are a challenge if I feel up to the challenge, like language and it pays of. I am much better at the written (typed) word unless I get out and practice spoken words.

You, dear Roy, are amazing with your memory and passion for and dedication to your interests. and so many other ways.

Roy said:

I often fail to understand something like a joke

I've never been good at that.  With a lot of stand up comedians/comediennes I'm thinking 'what's so funny about that?' Ditto a lot of comedy shows.

So was Einstein

Martin said:

However, I have a disconnect between being confident that I am intelligent in the abstract and very deep doubts about my abilities to be useful in the world, my basic 'competence'.

That sums up my experience well. I'm a complete dunderhead when it comes to real life situations requiring the need to be  practical,  but have some reasonably good scores when it comes to high range IQ  tests(yes I know they're controversial). 

I'm not sure where I rank in terms of my IQ, but I consider myself to be of average intelligence. When I was in my late teens, I purchased a 'Test your IQ' book. The fact that I have long-since forgotten my IQ score is perhaps proof that I didn't consider it to be of major importance to me.

To quote the lyrics of a Shania Twain song, it don't impress me much when I hear people saying they have a high IQ. Maybe they do have a high IQ, but I'm more interested in their personality and what they are like as people.

A tune for all of us in this thread:

www.youtube.com/watch

I don’t ever feel intelligent, my IQ is higher than most but I struggle in different ways. I’m not very good at reading or writing, that has often made me feel stupid, I can still remember an English teacher laughing at my spelling of quite simple words. I just don’t see words in the same way as most others, I now recognise that it’s most probably dyslexia not stupidity.

I can do things that neurotypical people find quite hard but then I often fail to understand something like a joke and then feel stupid. I suppose there are many different ways to measure cleverness, I just tend to plod on and not worry about other people too much.

I am confident that I am intelligent. However, I have a disconnect between being confident that I am intelligent in the abstract and very deep doubts about my abilities to be useful in the world, my basic 'competence'. This was much more so in my younger  days. Now that I have an academic and scientific research career behind me, and have published papers that have been cited by other scientists over 1,300 times, I no longer question my abilities to any great extent.

I suspect that it was a confidence issue, many rather dim neurotypicals have supreme (misplaced) confidence in their abilities. However, I think that autistics get so many criticisms in everyday life and social interactions that, even when we are very intelligent, we have been conditioned to doubt our convictions constantly.

I guess...

When I was younger, it seemed important, like one thing I knew I could rely on, in simple terms. I had a sense of control in that respect.

But, since, big, life-changing events have happened, and having intelligence made not a whit of difference to the fact that I had no control over those things at all. 

It matters to me less, now. I'm content to live my life, such as it is. 

Iain said:

I did all the academic overachieving stuff long ago

I was the complete opposite. Had, and do still have, major EF difficulties. Struggled to get things down on paper that were well formed in my mind.  

I've felt a lot happier, and more secure, since moving to be near my daughter.  The off moments are much milder than they were before moving.