Might work, depends on how inconspicuous and patient your were. Certainly not the first time people have been trying to recruit from/take over another organisation. Writing about it on the internet however will make what you’re doing so much more obvious if someone started noticing.
Writing about it on the internet however will make what you’re doing so much more obvious if someone started noticing.
One of the reasons I wrote this in Open Thread, instead of a separate article. :D
But even if they notice, can they prevent it? I don’t think so. If a group of rationalists decides to become Mensa members, who can stop them? If they pass the entry test (in my estimate, 9 of 10 would pass), they cannot be stopped from becoming Mensa members. If they are Mensa members, they cannot be denied information about the new tests, and they cannot be denied contact with the new members. Nothing in the current rules of Mensa prevents this. Actually, the whole “special interest group” system encourages this—of course, assuming that the group wants to remain a subset of Mensa. So we just need to have a subset of rationalists who are both rationalists and Mensa members, and this subset is a completely valid group within Mensa. This is not even exceptional; for example there is a group of Mensa members who love classical music, and I assume nobody expects them to avoid non-Mensans who share the same hobby. In the same way, rationalist Mensans could have meetups with rationalist non-Mensans, and ignore the whole Mensa, except for fishing for new members.
Certainly not the first time people have been trying to recruit from/take over another organisation.
Sure, the same strategy could by used by… well, anyone, unless they are strongly anticorrelated with IQ. But it would be most useful for groups strongly correlated with IQ. Seems to me that rationalists are such group. (I assume that most high-IQ people are not rationalists, but most rationalists are high-IQ people.) Any other groups like this? Probably many of them, for example entrepreneurs, programmers, mathematicians, etc. But each of them already have their specialized communities, probably larger than Mensa, so it does not make sense for them. When we will have local rationalist communities of size comparable with local Mensa, it will stop making sense for us too. But today, we are not there yet (at least in my country).
Might work, depends on how inconspicuous and patient your were. Certainly not the first time people have been trying to recruit from/take over another organisation. Writing about it on the internet however will make what you’re doing so much more obvious if someone started noticing.
One of the reasons I wrote this in Open Thread, instead of a separate article. :D
But even if they notice, can they prevent it? I don’t think so. If a group of rationalists decides to become Mensa members, who can stop them? If they pass the entry test (in my estimate, 9 of 10 would pass), they cannot be stopped from becoming Mensa members. If they are Mensa members, they cannot be denied information about the new tests, and they cannot be denied contact with the new members. Nothing in the current rules of Mensa prevents this. Actually, the whole “special interest group” system encourages this—of course, assuming that the group wants to remain a subset of Mensa. So we just need to have a subset of rationalists who are both rationalists and Mensa members, and this subset is a completely valid group within Mensa. This is not even exceptional; for example there is a group of Mensa members who love classical music, and I assume nobody expects them to avoid non-Mensans who share the same hobby. In the same way, rationalist Mensans could have meetups with rationalist non-Mensans, and ignore the whole Mensa, except for fishing for new members.
Sure, the same strategy could by used by… well, anyone, unless they are strongly anticorrelated with IQ. But it would be most useful for groups strongly correlated with IQ. Seems to me that rationalists are such group. (I assume that most high-IQ people are not rationalists, but most rationalists are high-IQ people.) Any other groups like this? Probably many of them, for example entrepreneurs, programmers, mathematicians, etc. But each of them already have their specialized communities, probably larger than Mensa, so it does not make sense for them. When we will have local rationalist communities of size comparable with local Mensa, it will stop making sense for us too. But today, we are not there yet (at least in my country).