Intertel

Some months ago I applied for membership in Intertel. There was some technical problem with the website and I decided to abandon the venture, as my interest was not that great anyway. A couple of days ago I received an email from an Intertel officer, which eventually had the effect that I decided to join Intertel after all.

In contrast to most of the other high IQ societies I am a member of, Intertel membership is not free of charge. The annual fee is USD 35. I also had to fill in a form in which I was asked about, among other things, my educational level and my religious views. That reminded me that after all, formal education does play a role in our society and it was not totally in vain that I completed a doctorate.

And yet, this is old-fashioned. Society has changed very much in the past few years. In the groups at Facebook where I occasionally spend time discussing about things that interest me, nobody cares about degrees. What matters is whether what you write makes sense.

I also wonder whether Intertel actually discloses its list of members to other members, and whether there are events in the German-speaking countries. According to Wikipedia Intertel has 50 members in Germany and Austria. Not many but still enough to fill a round table.

All in all, however, I have the feeling that I have joined something old-fashioned and somewhat obsolete.

Intertel is supposed to be the third largest high IQ society after Mensa and the International High IQ Society. About the latter, I have read the following (https://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/oct/26/highereducation.uk):

Haselbauer, a 28-year-old New Yorker with a big smile but virtually no hair, used to earn a lot of money on Wall Street but found the work intellectually stultifying. After trading stock options for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, he wanted to discuss books or religion, but found that his colleagues preferred football or cars. He thought about joining Mensa, the best-known club for clever people seeking bright companions, and sent off for a home test. He passed and was invited to a supervised test, but by this time he was getting bored with the process.
'I thought, in the day of the internet, is this the most efficient way of doing things? All those delays and waiting around for results. I wanted to sign up for a high IQ society that wasn't like that, but then I looked around and there were none.'
That was three years ago [the article is from 2003]. Then he did what most clever New Yorkers with money would do - he started an internet venture called the New York High IQ Society.

Nowadays there is no reason for founding a high IQ society to discuss about religion or books. You can find plenty of discussion boards about virtually every subject on the Internet. Searching for a group that focuses on a particular topic is far more efficient than gathering high IQ people, since even high IQ people might have other interests than you have.

So, probably my joining Intertel was a waste of money, but let's see, maybe I will be proven wrong.