It’s very difficult to assess someone’s intelligence during a brief meeting, but the longer you share conversation with that person, the more accurate will be your assessment. Here are some characteristics I have found in the very high IQ people I’ve met although these are, of course, generalizations that will have some counterexamples. High IQ people are:
• usually open to discussing dispassionately, ideas that differ from their own and are slow to reach certainty on an issue.
• usually seeking information that disconfirms what they believe, rather than attempting to confirm their current beliefs.
• usually more interested in talking about ideas and concepts than gossiping about other people.
• willing to challenge beliefs commonly accepted by the group (tribe) to which they belong.
• likely to mistrust dogma and social norms, preferring to set their own standards of behaviour and follow their own reasoned protocols.
• seldom aggressive in attempting to persuade others to their point of view, but passionate about the goals they wish to achieve.
• usually draw insightful inferences from their observations, identifying the essential elements in a clutter of information.
• are interested in a very wide range of topics spanning the natural and social sciences as well the arts and almost anything of an academic nature. Their reading is scholarly, and they have little interest in tabloids.
Those of “very high IQ” differ from those of “high IQ” mainly in the degree to which they exude the qualities outlined above. Geniuses, on the other hand are mostly identified by their achievements. Before their genius is discovered, they are sometimes seen as weird or socially difficult, and it is only when their ideas bear fruit that people recognize them as brilliant–sometimes posthumously.
