m e ns a i n te r n a ti on a l j o u r n a l

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Mensa Chinas Chairman, Ayawawa Yeung

the story of a 65-year-old organizations newest emerging baby...

Our Past The history of Mensa in China is a long and complicated one. Over the years, there have been several unsuccessful attempts to form Mensa China. Each time the failed attempts faced the same major hurdles: 1) Members were scattered throughout China; travel time and costs were prohibitive 2) Only voluntary work was allowed and no private financial assistance was permitted 3) The local chapter must form a non-profit organization from the outset. Faced with these difficulties, the early members struggled valiantly to create an ideal organization. But despite a lot of time and money spent, the membership stayed at about 50 and no breakthroughs were achieved by the volunteers for nearly a decade. This all finally changed when we attended the IBD meeting 2010, in New Zealand. At this meeting, we were able to meet with Michael Feenan and Executive Committee members face to face. From the meeting, we learned that the formation of a non-profit organization was not on the critical path to being recognized. We also learned that many other national chapters had employed full time staff who could then be relied upon to deliver on various work. Upon return, the membership raised funds amongst themselves,
mensa international journal february 2012

mensa china
hired some full-time staff and began the work to become accepted as the newest chapter in Mensa. We quickly completed the minimum requirements for recognition and submitted our application to ExComm. Soon after the IBD meeting, Mensa China was officially recognized by ExComm as an emerging National Mensa. This gave us legitimacy by having a direct link from the MIL website to our website and also enabled us to test and recruit members on our own which paved the path for us to move forward to the next levels of national certification. Our Present After holding our elections in May 2011, the new officers of the emerging Mensa China began to work to expand our membership and set an internal target to achieve Full National Chapter status by the 2012 IBD meeting. We devised a membership recruitment campaign that combined television, print, social media, and campus seminars. From the publicity and marketing efforts, the website has received over 1,000 candidate requests for testing. In the next few months we will be busy handling the testing and conversion of successful candidates into our permanent memberships. Our Future How big will Mensa China be? The

theoretical limit of 2% translates to a membership of 26 million people. Just achieving 1% of that limit would be 260,000 members, which is double the current membership of all of Mensa currently. In China, achieving the minimum numbers for membership will not be our problem. Instead, we will have to carefully manage the growth of membership. This will be achieved, mainly by limiting our testing and targeting potential candidate groups. Limiting membership for the first few years will have a few big benefits. Firstly, we will be able to organize controlled growth. Activities can be planned, websites can be built, and many procedures can be carefully written to prevent abuses in the future. All this can happen without dealing with the unplanned chaos that can come from viral growth. Secondly, we hope it will result in a more balanced membership as regards gender, age groups and professional background. Lastly, it enables us to create benefit from unmet demand and improve the pub-

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licity and value of the Mensa brand. In the years to come, we would like to emulate the success of the Mensa brand in the larger countries. As Mensa China expands, we will begin to attract the attention of the central government. Before they start to restrict us in any way, we will have to convince them that we are a well-managed and well-behaved social organization. The work process to get on the good side of government is a long and difficult one, but it is the way of all successful organizations in China. However, in a country where a single factory can have 1,000,000+ workers, Mensa China will have to have some impressive membership numbers for us to be noticed. Well be looking forward to this day soon! Sherman Chui sherman.chui@hotmail.com

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supplementally
Potent Microbes Science News, 24 September 2011, p. 17. Panda Poop May Hold Biofuel Key. Panda bears eat bamboo, which is hard to digest. Cows have four stomachs to deal with their diet of pasture grass. Pandas do the job with just one stomach. According to scientists at Mississippi State University, this is possible because the cuddly black and white bears possess a unique population of microbes that break down cellulose for them. These microbes are similar to the ones that live in termite guts. If scientists can duplicate the enzymes these bugs use, it will be helpful for both waste disposal and energy production. Rock It YaleNews 10 November 2011. Oldest Rock Art in Egypt Discovered. (Antiquity, December 2011) Contributed by Stephen Darnell. Pharaohs started running Egypt 5,000 years ago. But people lived along the Nile before that, and they left rock art behind. Yale scientists, along with a team from Belgium, have been using a sophisticated dating method known as Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) to discover that the images of aurochs, wild cows, and human hunters seen there are 15,000 years old. Thats approximately the same age as the famous Lascaux cave paintings in France. In fact, the style of the images is similar to those seen at Lascaux. In OSL dating, researchers expose rock surfaces to a particular color of light, and the rock then glows in a different color. The brightness of the glow tells them how long ago the sample was last exposed to strong sunlight. Bully for Jupiter Astronomy Magazine, 11 November 2011. Giant Planet Ejected from the Solar System. Contributed by Lee Helms. Computer simulations of the formation of our solar system dont work right when astronomers assume that only the known solar system bodies were present. But, if they add another giant planet at the start, everything works very well. Jupiter tosses the extra giant out of the system, and all the other planets settle in nicely the way we see them today. This model is supported by the discovery of many orphan worlds in interstellar space that dont seem to belong to any star system.

Puny Plague Science News, 19 November 2011, p. 18. Plague Bug Wasnt All That Fierce. (Nature) Scientists have sequenced the DNA of bacteria recovered from victims of Europes black death, and they find that the plague bacterium wasnt very different from its modern relatives. The medieval plague organism was probably not more ferocious than the bacteria we live with. It was able to wipe out half of Europes population in the 1300s because of a combination of starvation, crowded cities, and a bumper crop of rats. The weather suddenly turned cold and wet, ruining crops and starving the population whose health wasnt good to begin with. So the plague didnt have to be very potent to do its damage.
mensa international journal february 2012

john blinke Johnb44221@cs.com 06

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Intelligent Intuition
The heart has its reasons, which reason cannot know. ~ Blaise Pascal Have you ever seen or heard the following: You know more than you know you know.? Is it true and might it easily be used as a proposition in a rhetorical debate or logic/semantics discussion? Could I just know that the sentence is true because I have a gut feeling that tells me so ever be a valid argument? Could your intuition ever be suff icient? Thomas Hally scrutinises the notion...
How then does intuition work? When we think in images and we In order to avoid confusion at the feel, we are experiencing a function outset, let us distinguish between of the subconscious mind which is instinct and intuition. The current called intuition. Sensual thinking, essay is about intuition, not instinct. as intuition is commonly called, is Briefly, instinct is a genetically the expression of images, visions programmed behaviour that the and feelings, brought to life and human species shares with anisometimes into creative, artistic mals. Instinctual behavior is not expression. The poet Stephen the result of learning, and it can Spender called it the logic of imbe seen across all members of a ages. It is not words we are lookspecies. Intuition, as defined by the ing for, but rather sensual associaOxford English Dictionary, is the tions or feelings. Sensual thinking ability to acquire knowledge withis commonsense thinking, not out inference or the use of reason. only for poets but for all of us. Undoubtedly, there are many defiComposer George Antheil nitions of intuition, but most are strove to write his music following problematic. The conscious act of his inner pattern, his inner logic. reflecting on intuition is precisely The practice resulted in musical what intuition is not. Intuition is form. Mathematician Norbert your brain on autopilot processing Weiner discovered that his bodinformation out of the conscious ily feelings, his sensual thinking, awareness that it is operating. In could act as temporary symbols other words, intuition is nonconheuristics, right-brain processes, for a mathematical situation. No scious (or subconscious) thinking. instant emotions, nonverbal commatter how private or how intimate Cognitive science is uncovering a munication and creativity. Cognitive the memory, an imaginative articulafascinating and complex subconscious scientists and psychologists tell us tion of images and feelings follows. mind, a mind that even the Grand that thinking, memory and attitude This sensation, metalogic or super Master, Sigmund Freud, never told operate on two levels: the automatic/ logic, has its own rules. us about. In this mind, thinking does intuitive level and the conscious/ Conceptually, metalogic is very not take place consciously, but rather deliberate level. This two-tiered close to intuition, if not intuition subconsciously. Thinking occurs out concept is more commonly referred itself. Words rarely accompany of sight and out of mind - conscious to as dual processing. intuitive insight. We see, we get the
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mind, that is. As cognitive science uncovers our intuitive functions and powers, scientists are conducting studies of automatic processing, subliminal priming, implicit memory,

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picture; we feel, and, somehow, we just know. And what about womens intuition? Women tend to excel in nonverbal sensitivity. For example, research suggests they surpass men in discerning whether a male-female couple is genuinely romantic or a posed pair of phonies. Some men are more empathetic than the average woman, but the intuition-gender gap appears real. More than men, women base knowledge on intuitive and personal grounds, and they tend to be more subjective in their preferences and decision making. There is strong evidence that women are better at encoding and decoding nonverbal information than are men. This evidence has frequently been cited as a possible evidence of a womans intuition. In addition, the hormone oestrogen, present in greater quantities in women than in men, directly affects the amount of DA (dopamine) released into the striatum. Mermelstien and Becker (1005) suggest that Greater DA release into the striatum in conjunction with reward should lead to the development of stronger representations of P (Predictor) > R (Response) relationships that form quickly, this resulting in [apparently superior] womens intuition. The mysterious and much-stereotyped concept of female intuition appears to be more than just a cultural myth. We rely on intuition for rote tasks; but what about more complex situations? Business people and stock market buyers and traders commonly make gut level decisions during the process of high-stakes decision making. All of us make sound judgments about food and relationships using our nonconscious processes.
mensa international journal february 2012

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However, conscious, reflective thinking often sabotages our preferences, and we end up making the wrong decision. Although intuition is a big part of decision making, the negative side of this consciouslythoughtless and sometimes oxymoronic ability of ours may unleash itself with blind fury and lead us astray when we least expect it. People sometimes fool themselves, and even the most intelligent people make predictable and costly errors. People from all walks of life and all social strata can be victims of illusory intuitions. Studies suggest, for instance, that people mispredict the durability and intensity of their emotions after a romantic breakup, losing an election, winning a game and being insulted. Because intuitive thinking is nonlinguistic, it sometimes very difficult to express ones thoughts to others. Perhaps mind melding and machines capable of transmitting inner experience will be common someday For the time being, however, we must be satisfied with our somewhat frail and limited intuitive functions and capabilities. Since intuition is a reliable way of knowing and it is valuable in many circumstances, we should not fear not knowing every reason why we feel the way we do. Nevertheless, analyzing our fully conscious thoughts then reflecting critically is a very useful practice. Happily, our intuitive decisions or preferences are usually correct without further analysis or consideration. Although there is no substitute for analytical

We see, we get the picture, we feel, and, somehow, we just know.

thinking and gathering information about any task or situation we confront, there are times when we can comfortably (and unconsciously) shift our brains into cruise control. In conclusion, our intuition reinforces our professional and personal expertise, our creativity, our love and our spirituality. We think smarter knowing we have learned from our erroneous decisions, whether they be fully reasoned decisions or intuitive ones. And intuition can be quantified or measured to a certain extent. It is intuition that prompts many of us to vote for such-and-such a candidate in an election. Again, as we have seen, intuition can err. Irrespective of previous bittersweet experiences using our intuition, we must listen to our unseen mind as it whispers creatively, searching for the right phrase, the right metaphor, the right story, the right formula and the right hypothesis. Let us emulate poet Stephen Spender and others who attempt to understand their visual, auditory and sensory inner sanctums, those who can express in this way their sometimes Nobel or Pulitzer Prize-level ideas. And remember, contrary to Pascals heart, intuition just may have its logic which reason can recognize and respect. A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

(Thomas Hally can be contacted at and discussion.)

tjh@thomas-hally.com for further reference

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