Absolutely.

As a genuinely smart person I can do that for myself for free. 😏

I worked for 40 years at a company that made most of NASA's rocket engines, and a host of other impressive technology. There were many, many geniuses there - lots of literal rocket scientists, and leaders in fields like materials science and chemical engineering. One thing I learned early on was that most of the true geniuses looked down on people who mentioned being members of Mensa. It was like a red flag that the person cares too much about being perceived as smart. People who care so much about that put more energy into fostering the image than actually contributing.

My intuition is that "smart" is a vague word that means a lot of things, but almost all of those interpretations are generally seen as a positive and respectable. The idea of being respected is inherently appealing, so if we entirely conflate the colloquial meanings with a very specific meaning that can be measured accurately on a linear scale, well then you can just show people your good number and take a shortcut to being revered without having to actually behave in an observably respectable way in front of other people.

A person taking an iq test has experience with claims of being smart being met with skepticism, so the next idea is that a third party would help clear up that misunderstanding. They're not paying to be told they're smart, they're paying for the certificate from a third party to back them up.

My guess is that overlooking the obvious issues is more about desperation than anything else. No one calls someone intelligent to convey that they can score high on a specific test that measures nothing meaningful. It also should be very natural to ask whether other people might find reason to doubt the value of a certificate. Not doing any investigation into these thoughts is pretty fucking stupid, but stupid to the point where I think there has to be a certain level of desperation to not see them at all.

Yeah I went to take that same test to see how high it scored, and flex on this chud with a higher score. "Free test" then charges $15 for results. Screw that, I'm not doing that for a bit.

But for those who are curious, it's a pretty straightforward multiple choice pattern recognition test. It's not really difficult at all. Pretty sure I got every question right in like a quarter of the allotted time. It's really funny that he described it as "time crunching" and "adrenaline pumping".

I think it's more they want a proof that they aren't bragging or crazy when they do feel like they are surrounded by morons. Not sure about the need to show off though. That seems silly. We got both kids tested at the behest of the school so it's an officially recognized test (WPPSI-IV) but I didn't need a test to tell me I have clever kids. Nor do the teachers after about five minutes chatting with them, usually. But it was useful to get them sorted in the upper class when there was a doubt. Also it was nice to have some fine grained detail and an actual statistical value of just how different they are. Something I try to keep in mind when dealing with them on the daily. In France we use the term "High Intellectual Potential" and that's really all it is : potential. It's up to me not to waste it and help them flourish now. So far the teachers also see it and the best they can to also help them flourish but clearly the public school system is barely equipped to grow that potential when there are so many kids in difficulty. A single "social case" kid in a class can fuck things up for everybody around them, it's a fucking nightmare...