midnyte

My brother had surgery yesterday and I babysat him afterward for the day. While loopy he told me that he thinks he may have cheated on an IQ test. When he was 13, he won every academic award in the state of California. He and 4 other students were taken to Sacramento and given a monitored IQ test. The student with the highest IQ won a full ivy league scholarship. My brother tested at 192. This puts him among the top 10-20 smartest people in the world. He won the scholarship but then refused it.

I always wondered why he would not take being set up for life like that. It turns out he felt guilty. He said he was afraid he cheated because there was this one section of the test which had specific complicated instructions. He quickly saw an exploit and a much easier way to complete the section which shaved about 10 minutes off his time vs the other test takers.

I told him I don't really think that is cheating, that is just being smart enough to notice and make use of the exploit and I thought it was probably designed into the test just for top level smart people. He doesn't know.

I wonder what his life would be like today had he either admitted then what he did to see if it was cheating or actually part of the test or had he simply accepted his score and enjoyed the benefits of it.

Not that he does badly for himself or anything but I always think he kind of wasted the gifts he was given. He says he feels being smart never got him anywhere because he just has to play dumb and giggle because trying to explain things to people is exasperating. The whole concepts he bases his reality on are so foreign to people when he tries to say something without context they look at him like he is insane.

I kind of feel bad for him. I can't believe it took him 20 years and a whole lot of drugs to admit that to me. I really don't think he did anything wrong. What do you think?