The reason it's a social and political question is that if you aren't in an emergency situation, it's much harder to tell what your capacity for help is. It isn't infinite, but it could probably be more than you're unthinkingly willing to allocate. It's plausible that people are being neglected for no good reason.

I'm not saying it makes sense to plan as though resources are infinite, but but it can also be a good heuristic to ask "what would we be doing if we cared more"?

A friend who is generally the smartest person in the room wherever she goes went to a Mensa meeting once. However, she was there as the girlfriend of a member; she hadn't passed their test. As a result, the members just talked right over her, which was very much their loss.

Yeah, I know this thread is even older than when corndog found it, but I only just found it.

Re membership for CV purposes - I tend to agree with Asthana on this, although situations alter cases. If the prospective employer wants a quality that they may associate with relatively high IQ and you have no other evidence, then membership of or eligibility for Mensa may be useful. The trick is not to be seen to be boasting so much as giving evidence of having sufficient smarts for the job.

As for social membership, if you qualify and are a bit of a social misfit then membership can be really helpful. A combination of relatively high IQ and other socially isolating factors during childhood made it difficult for me to connect socially as an adult, and membership of Mensa helped, both by providing a social environment in which there was one less difference between myself and my peers, and by helping me put high IQ in perspective (there are some pretty dumb people in Mensa).

Not all Mensans are social misfits however. My experience (in Australian Mensa) was that it was a very heterogeneous group, with a high level of mostly rational non-conformity and open-mindedness.

Unfortunately, Australian Mensa had too low a population density to maintain a vibrant social environment at the time I was a member, and eventually was not worth my while due to financial reasons (yeah, I'm an underachiever).

I'd definitely recommend anyone who might be eligible to at least experience Mensa, and to bear in mind that the local chapter may not be representative. Try going along as a guest a few times, and if you don't fit in then probably a) Mensa is not for you, or b) the local chapter of Mensa is not for you. Of course, you may fit in and still decide that there are other groups where you fit in at least as well and would rather put your energies.

And yes, the bar is relatively low - because you only need to be in the top 2% in ANY recognized IQ test, probably as much as 5% of the population could qualify, although those who only just scraped in through this loophole would be likely to find membership less satisfying, and would be more likely to drop out - especially the ego trippers who could then claim that Mensa wasn't good enough for them.