If somebody has an IQ of 150

Lack of intelligence in the IQ sense is neither our big social problem, nor the thing that I sometimes find frustrating when dealing with others (especially online!). It's lack of open-mindedness and cognitive flexibility. There are many fairly intelligent people who are basically unable to incorporate new facts that conflict with their views, once they have settled on them. They could understand a reasonably subtle argument on a topic they knew nothing about, and hence had no strong pre-existing feelings about. But try a comparable argument as a rebuttal to some set of ideas they've already settled on, and it's like talking to a wall. Suddenly, they're functional idiots; they're incapable of using the intelligence that they do possess in order to reason to a proper conclusion.

To cite an example that I hope will not be political dynamite, there are a lot of people who were taught that being gay is a choice. Here's a conversation you can try on them (I'm stealing this from some TV show):

Q: When did you choose to be straight?
A: [Some form of acknowledging they didn't.]
Q: Why would anyone choose to be gay, given all the downside involved? Since you didn't choose to be straight, doesn't that suggest that gay people didn't choose to be gay, since it has far more drawbacks than benefits (if any)?

People's ability to respond to this argument varies widely, and does not seem to be correlated more than mildly (if at all) to intelligence. You can even find people who are perfectly capable of understanding all the biological evidence that sexual orientation is not a choice, and actually have them understand all the evidence, and their response is to essentially reject or deny it and maintain their belief that it is.

What's particularly worrisome and frustrating about this trait is that it's apparently immune to self-reflection. You can tell people that they are not engaging with your argument and not even responding to the points you are making, let alone effectively rebutting them, and they will respond by repeating their initial "argument" (opinion, statement of incorrect facts, or parroting of something they heard on the radio or saw on TV), often for the fourth or fifth consecutive time. (I think we've all seen this on these message boards!)

When Congress becomes effectively controlled by such people, you get a country in deep trouble.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.

According to the last IQ test I took, mine is 125. And yes I do. I weep for the future of humanity.

What bothers me personally is not that people are not always particularly bright, but that even highly intelligent people are often terrible at critical thinking. And they often have little to no knowledge of science (unless they actually happen to be scientists themselves), yet they somehow think they know everything.

I think this world would be a far, far better place if we taught everyone critical thinking and scientific skepticism from a young age. Critical thinking is a skill that has to be honed, and you don't need to be exceptionally intelligent to have a good BS detector. However, people who are generally intelligent but who have not spent time honing that skill set tend to think that they cannot be fooled, and that they do not deceive themselves as others do.

In fact, the opposite is true; smart people tend to be more imaginative, and more capable of performing acts of mental contortion. As such, they tend to be better at defending any intellectual position they happen to be invested in, even if that position happens to be the wrong one.

And on top of that, there's also the aforementioned Dunning-Kruger effect; laymen are less capable of recognizing how little they know about a subject (because they don't know how much they don't know), so they very confidently vastly overestimate themselves. Meanwhile, highly knowledgeable people are aware of all the uncertainties and subtleties in their field of knowledge (they know how much they don't know), and therefore underestimate themselves and display less confidence.

Anyway, those kinds of things lead to much more stupidity in the world than just having a low IQ.

I wouldn't know. My IQ is only 142.

Yes. Consider the fact that there are already many fans of You Tube videos and clip shows on television that show nothing but guys getting hit in the balls.

well. i would say no, even though my iq is only in the 135 - 140 region. i believe that it is much more dependent on the arrogance and/or ignorance of the bearer, rather than iq itself. also, i would assume that there is a higher percentage of average people who THINK they see the world like this (everyone else is an idiot and does idiotic things), than there is among really bright people - who, more often than not, do realize that world is a complex place and even them don't have a reliable solution for most of current challenges
but than again - it goes back to the nature of a person, arrogant person would think they have a solution and everyone else is an idiot. and usually would push his solution forward, regardless of smarter people that might be in his way

i at least try to avoid quick judgments and opinions of the people i know to be stupid. on the other hand i still know that i am no genius myself (and frankly, almost no one is - i have never met a person profoundly smarter or more intelligent than me, except for brian greene, the 1 % that we both share, he on the top shelf, me on the lower one, is really slim and theoretical also)

pardon my english, i tried to be brief, hopefully understandable as well

I've never taken an IQ test but I continually scored high in state exams that measured proficiency compared to age/grade. In 5th grade I was reading and comprehending at a college level. My math, in comparison, was never on par. I am also (self-diagnosed) dyslexic. I know that there are people with less intelligence than me, as well as many who are vastly more intelligent than myself.

With that in mind, I'm sure I seem idiotic to those who are smarter than me, as those who aren't as smart as me seem idiotic. I think this movie is more symptomatic of the level of education declining, not the lack of intellectual ability of the masses. We are culturally dumbed down, allowing ourselves to believe things because it's just easier than questioning and reasoning and understanding.

It is cliche, but our need for instant gratification is making us less educated, less intelligent, and less intellectual as a whole. You can blame industrialization and the loss of connection to the land, but that's a conversation for another place.

Make sure that your children read...everything. from the "stupidest" *beep* to Samuel Clemens. Turn off the tube and electronics and connect. That's one step away from Idiocracy.

Please ignore any misspellings and grammatical errors as I am typing this on my phone. Thanks :)

I have an IQ of 91 and that's how I see the world