Little Mechanical Minds

The Covert Narcissism, and Genuine Cognitive Dysfunction, of High IQ

Sean McClure
2 min readNov 14, 2024

Many notables throughout history have discussed how high IQ can be a challenge.

From a thread 🧵 posted on X: https://x.com/oldbooksguy/status/1856410652300177816?s=46

In all these cases, so-called “intelligence” is being defined in the contrived modern sense. A byproduct of the Enlightenment’s redefinition of what it means to be smart.

These quotable figures never could see that the “paralysis” is in fact a mental deficiency; one that became rewarded as our “enlightened” society gained footholds.

Few are willing to admit this, because there are societal points to be won when we frame the costs of our “smartness” as some quirky burden we must virtuously carry; a moral responsibility for our tortured genius.

That pernicious obsession with details and causes would be rejected in any natural setting, but has become the hero’s narrative; the cerebral celebrity a post-religious society needs, to satisfy its replacement of deities with some other cause for human progress.

The more we fit nature into our little mechanical box, the more we reward the limited mechanical mind.

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Sean McClure
Sean McClure

Written by Sean McClure

Independent Scholar; Author of Discovered, Not Designed; Ph.D. Computational Chem; Builder of things; I study and write about science, philosophy, complexity.

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