[The Wind Breezes]

TL;DR: is a high IQ car club a good or bad idea, and what should the cutoff be?

I live in a major city and there is always a car, truck or bike meet going on every night of the week. Some of them are gigantic with hundreds of participants and all the dumb shit that accompanies a group like that. It should go without saying that the things these people do, could be done better and more safely.

So, for a thought exercise let's consider a car club where entrants must meet a minimum level of intelligence. This brings us to the first issue, which is that it's unclear what cutoff would make the most sense: it's best to be as inclusive as possible but the most interesting things tend to happen well inside the top 1% of ability which would probably be way too restrictive even in my large city.

How can you screen people? Many potential candidates will have already taken a intelligence test with high g-loading, including the AFQT, SAT, and standard IQ tests. Not all prospects will have taken one of these tests but it's disproportionately likely that the very bright will have taken at least a SAT as those people are very likely to try college. SAT is not as heavily g-loaded as you would like, but there may not be any realistic alternatives.

Let's return to car meets. What's the point of a car meet? Sure, there's the show, the meet and greet, the brag, the trading. But, the interesting things are the hooliganism and street racing. The problem with current car meets is the people doing this stuff appear to have little to no concern for the consequences of their actions and proceed accordingly.

The advantages of picking a group of hooligans and street racers from the top centiles (or top centile) of cognitive ability are obvious: for a given degree of driving skill, and with a little planning, these folks are likely to get away with doing some really crazy shit, while drawing less attention to their activities. Reasons for this include better judgement, greater knowledge of police procedure, and considerably more robust employment of technology to defeat radar, lidar, and even track the helicopter. That custom configured, homebuilt autonomous aircraft could be used to help or even supplant spotters goes without saying. The idea is to avoid scrutiny, not evade the authorities after they make contact.

That all sounds pretty good until you realize that what's being described is a criminal conspiracy. So are regular car meets, but the degree of poor organization and large quantities low-hanging fruit means the cops don't need (or care) to go there. Yet. So, the paradox: although the highly intelligent are, ceteris paribus, much better suited to carry out the kind of "action" that goes on at a car meet, they are also much less likely to ignore the potential consequences of participating in what is essentially a crime ring, and would probably be...uninterested in participating. The whole thing falls apart. That's not to say that these smart people would necessarily be against a little hoonage as long as it is more loosely organized.

I am interested to hear what the forums think of a car club of the cognitive elite that does NOT make an effort to significantly organize illegal stuff. Would there be any point to it, or would it be a bunch of dry, self-interested autists blathering on about the powerpc instruction set or exactly how many microliters per stroke are ideal for a LS1?

What should the cutoff be for a high IQ car club? Is it a good, bad, or terrible idea? I'm leaning toward terrible. Your thoughts are welcome.