I’m moderately bright. I get embarrassed when people call me a genius. I’m not a genius. I have met enough people who are scorchingly bright to know that I am not them, nor do I want to be them.

Could it be that the higher up you are on the IQ scale, the more difficult it becomes to recognize even higher IQ’s?

No, because high IQ people very readily recognize even higher IQs. It’s the 105 to 115 crowd that doesn’t.

The midwits, however, rule the academy. Which is why Curtis Yarvin is correct: you have to get out.

There are three rules you need to remember if you want to survive grad school.

Rule (a) is: never go to grad school before you’re either old enough to drink, or old enough to have had a drink. Rule (b) is: never go to grad school without first having had a real job, that is, one which you for some reason were once tricked into actually giving a crap about, at least up till they hired that horrible woman with the bad hair. Rule (c) is: never stay in grad school.

Since I have broken only (a) and (b), and managed to restrain myself on (c), I feel that while I am certainly nothing special in the world, I have some right to present myself as scarred but not devoured.

The best thing is to do your research, and, in these fallen times, stay away from the managers and the tea room.