If this is true, then why do we find so many introverts in online forums?
A. We don't really know what introversion and extrovsion are.
B. The higher the IQ, the more likely they are to qualify for the label "introvert."
So in at least some cases, it's possible smart people just give up on trying to connect socially because they get a lot of negative feedback from other people and it's mostly downside for them, so they stop bothering.
Most people marry people within about 10 IQ points of themselves. If you are "introverted" because talking at most people is an extremely negative experience due to you having a high IQ, it's not unrealistic to shoot for finding a means to connect with someone of similar IQ in hopes of establishinga relationship. If your IQ is high enough, odds are good they will also be labeled "an introvert" by the world.
Please note this is not saying "introversion indicates high IQ." That's not what it says at all.
I did volunteer work eons ago for tagfam.org and I test as a middle-of-the-road extrovert but spend a lot of time in geeky circles where most people are basically painfully shy and many people interpret my middle-of-the-road extroversion as "God, what a ridiculous attention monger!!!!!"
I've gotten enough negative feedback over it, I spend less time on forums than I used to. I'm not an introvert but even I eventually give up on bothering if it's mostly downside.
Of course it’s also often the case that introverts are simply low social status and thus find social interaction generally unrewarding. In that case pretensions of high intelligence are usually just a coping mechanism.
My completely unscientific experience (n=1) of having a major mental health breakthrough and “becoming” and extrovert after years testing as an introvert tells me a few things.
1. For a variety of reasons, some people have extreme difficulty making mutually supportive connections and/or have no service familial attachments
2. There are compensating structures in the form of small safe groups that are lower risk or share a common yet outsider connection (obscure music, complex systems, historical or obsolete collections etc…) that lend themselves to a different “pace.”
3. In some cases, a combination of factors, mental health issues, lifestyle and life issues etc… mask a self love that can represent as something shameful in being expressive and thus after perceived or real rejection or failure many people just give up trying to put the effort in and become comfortable in that lifestyle.
That’s in the best case however, and assumes you can find an affinity group. Unfortunately it’s getting harder to get people together cause everyone’s just trying to survive they don’t feel like they have time to spend building community.
I also know of a case of a bright child who consciously chose to stop playing to the crowd after they started school because it didn't go good places.
People act like extroversion and introversion are some kind of hard wired internal set point and seem oblivious to the myriad ways humans get taught to be one thing or another and that some people change in reaction to outside influences.
Later I learned if I want to be part of the party. I needed to check my brain in a lock box and not let it out until the social event is over. A social event is about meeting people and good feelings.
Bitcoin. Investing in Beanie Babies. Selling your house and becoming a digital nomad? That’s wonderful. You are living the dream. Other platitudes.
I used to take it all seriously, and that didn't work.
So I don't take anything seriously, and I lose interest.
I have not figured out any balance whatsoever. I don't know how to "shoot the shit" anymore.
Another aspect is that the IQ grades a very specific set of capabilities. I usually get a result between an armchair and a fly (I am not particularly proud of that, but it does not exactly reflects my capcities :))
It may be tha introvert people, rather calm in their heads, are better at analyzing the patterns you typically find in these tests (wildly guessing)
A search gets me this:
However, while introverts are a minority group in society, they form the majority of gifted people. Moreover, it appears that introversion increases with intelligence so that more than 75% of people with an IQ above 160 are introverted.
https://highability.org/the-gifted-introvert/
My understanding of that comes from when I was involved with gifted organizations online.
I’m also an introvert. I like to communicate at my own pace. Online forums allows me to do that. I can leisurely check for progress on the discussion where I participate, or don’t check at all, after adding my two cents.
The technique is to control everything, basically.
Interaction with real people is a shared experience; something very different.
I find writing is more cerebral than verbalizing. I can take an idea, interrogate it before putting it in writing - and then read, edit and re-read it before posting.
Also - have you considered the number of introverts not posting in online forums vs those who do?
The cited definition from Wikipedia is rather vague and I'm not sure it's entirely accurate. I've always understood introversion vs extraversion as being about where you derive social energy, rather than gratification. I consider myself an introvert. A weekend spent socialising with friends is very gratifying to me, but it is also exhausting, and I am likely to want to spend the next weekend chilling on my own.
Obtaining gratification from one's own mental life in a significant way, that you do not desire to communicate with others, or that you only like communicating through text where you are free to imagine the personalities of the people you're chatting with, should mean one probably suffers from a personality disorder (paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal etc.).
If you were to have a partner where you still primarily obtain gratification from your own mental life, I can't imagine how this partner could feel any love from you, if your priority is to be alone with your dreams most of the time.
It does not.
> If you were to have a partner where you still primarily obtain gratification from your own mental life, I can't imagine how this partner could feel any love from you, if your priority is to be alone with your dreams most of the time.
Exactly ;)
George: "Maybe the two of us, working together at full capacity, could do the job of one normal man."
With respect; why? 40 years ago the future looked very different. None of you felt urgency regarding global warming, faced the same cost of living fiasco, spread of drought, fire, mass migrations, political instability, and whatever conspiracy driven idiocy social media will unleash next.
There is no divine mandate humanity carry on a particular way. No reward for sticking it out with these entitled, self aggrandizing creatures.
It's defeatist. I feel you, sure- but it's like religion or politics- to each their own.
It seems like many people get into relationships for financial reasons, so this should be a motivator if anything.
I’m sorry for your loss. I’m glad she so enriched you. :-)
Could it be just healthier and wealthier men getting ringed more often?
>> forget things or miss appointments
Don't see how that is a problem in the age of smartphones. If you insist on a person, you can hire a virtual assistant for way cheaper than a wife.
Introverted men, on the other hand, often just don't pursue women, especially if they have low testosterone (or sex drive) as the OP probably does. Since in most cultures men are expected to do the initial approach, this can translate into very long spells (decades or more) of singleness for them. Even worse, introverted men are often very bad at reading women's signals. Those are often quite subtle, because for extroverted men interested in dating (the majority), women just don't need to signal that much to get results.
Can you post the sources you're relying on here? I want to read more on this.
There is also no measured connection between being an introvert and having low testosterone.
And in fact around 2/3 of all psychological research cannot be reproduced. Take any psychological claim with a giant pinch of salt.
1, 3 and 5 feel like super common sense to me, were you asking for sources on that? I'm asking mostly because I wonder whether my intuition is completely off when it comes to these things, or if there are people who live in completely different realities where women are expected to make the first step, more women approach men than the opposite and men really don't need to signal interest because they get so many offers.
Introverted women probably get hit on more ("more offers"), but using that to conclude that they see better outcomes is like saying it's a good thing that my dating life is successful because my inbox is filled with unsolicited dick pics.
If you're unemployed and you get an offer a week, you're better off than if you didn't get any offers, even if those offers aren't great. Options > no options.
I'm an introverted man and all 4 women that have hit on me in my lifetime have been those I didn't feel similarly about. I imagine the ratio for women is similar. Just because she can jump back into the sea, doesn't mean she can summon new types of fish.
*women tending to date men older than them and vice versa does mean that in an increasing population there might be more women in a particular dating pool than men than one would otherwise expect, but there might be negative feedback in the form of more pressure for age-reverse relationships to take up the slack
In my experience, women absolutely have an easier time getting partners, and there's no contradiction. It's just that a few men are taking all the girls - always been this way (notice how many places used to even enshrine that in law by allowing marriages between one man and multiple women - quite a few countries to this day) and probably will never change.
The word he's searching for could also be "asexual". It's recently been added to the increasingly cumbersome LGBTQIA abbreviation, so it's good it's getting some more attention.
This really got me thinking after recently coming across it:
"The mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled." ~ Plutarch
Health maintenance was one; somebody else in this thread has already commented on married men living longer. It works both ways, too. Each partner keeps tabs on the other, notices problems, encourages them to stick to health resolutions, etc. Plus you both are much less likely to forget things or miss appointments, because the other one is there to say, "Didn't you say..." or "Weren't you going to...?" and so on.
There were other, more subtle but still powerful effects. In general, I and my wife, as a couple, were a bolder, smarter, more adventurous "person" than either of us was alone.
So my advice to Rosenstock would be to seek another dedicated introvert. Of course it's hard to get their attention...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion
"Introversion is the state of primarily obtaining gratification from one's own mental life". There is a considerable popular literature on the benefits and drawbacks of being introverted.