My IQ runs to the high 130's but I do not consider myself a particularly fast thinker. I tend to make better connections and have more of an idea what to do with them than most people, but the connections don't come especially fast, especially under stress. For me at least, integration and synthesis of information and verbal expression is what I'm "better" at, if I can work at my own pace. I suspect it's different for everyone. Also, I know people with high IQs who have terrible judgment. Knowledge and wisdom are very different things.
My wife's IQ tested to 180 on the old scale back in high school in the late 60's. Statistically there are only about 75 or so people in the US who are that smart at any given time. I called it "scary smart". She seemed to be able to see right through stuff that distracted me, and get right to the heart of matters. It is hard to know how much of it was brains, how much of it was heart, and how much of it was her intuitive side. But it was mind-boggling.
Neurological illness knocked her IQ down to 102 eventually. As her health deteriorated, she lost short term memory and had a lot of "brain fog" and it was terribly frustrating for her. At the end there were times she couldn't remember what my name was. The interesting thing though was that up to the day she died, there was still some part of her intellect intact and it was still extraordinary. In moments of lucidity she still had keen perception. It just wasn't sustainable or reliable anymore.
In my experience most extremely intelligent people (IQ > 145 or so) tend to have missing personality circuitry, lousy relational skills, or are very impractical in applying their thinking. Linda's combination of smarts and wisdom is very much the exception. Very few blind spots. In that she was even rarer than her IQ suggested.
Sh_t. I still miss her, don't I?
--Bob
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