The Triple Nine Society ExCom Memo

January 15, 1996

To: TNS ExCom, Volunteers, and Interested Members

From: Kevin Langdon, P.O. Box 795, Berkeley, CA 94701
            (510) 524-0345; [old e-mail address omitted]

Distribution

Bob Kopp, Editor
John Cooper, Financial Officer
Jacquelinne White, Membership Officer
Kerry Williams, Ombudsman
Hal Darancette, Member-at-Large
Larry Jess, Member-at-Large

Ray Suttles, Elections Officers, Monitor, Greeter
Jim Grzegorowicz, Correspondence Group
Matt Urnezis, Archivist

Memos Included

[The letters from others have not been scanned and prepared for Web publication as yet.]

Vacancies on the Executive Committee

As most of you know, Cyd Bergdorf has resigned as Regent. She asked me to take on the task of producing this ExCom memo. I'm sorry it's been so long, but it's taken time to get the mechanics worked out. For example, I've just recently received the labels I needed to publish this memo.

I'm performing one of the key duties of the Regent, but I do not consider myself Acting Regent, as only this Committee can make such an appointment. Bob Kopp has moved to appoint me Regent for the remainder of the current ExCom term (see his memo included herein); I ask for your support.

It is my sad duty to report that Loren Harris' wife died suddenly on Christmas Day; he has asked me to announce his resignation as Member-at-Large. I'm sure everyone receiving this memo joins with me in sympathy and compassion for Loren and his family.

I intend to number my motions consecutively, starting again with #1 each year. When more than one year's motions are mentioned in the same memo, I will designate them by year and motion number; when only one year's motions are men-tioned, I will use only the number. In quoting motions, I will generally omit the ``I move''; I have been in error in the past, in my opinion, in not framing motions as follows:

I move that: [text of motion].

As the election is nearly upon us, I move that:

* (1) The Executive Committee shall assume as a body the duties of Loren Harris' position as Member-at-Large.

This is one of the three options for dealing with a vacancy on the ExCom prescribed by the Constitution. As a Member-at-Large simply makes and votes on motions, the effect of this motion would be to temporarily reduce the size of this Committee. If I am elected Regent, that would leave an additional Member-at-Large position vacant and we would then need to take action on that vacancy; I suggest that that position also be left vacant, as there's little point in a motion to appoint someone for a few weeks. Of course, I'm willing to entertain other proposals for dealing with the Member-at-Large vacancy, but it may not be realistic to expect that we can act before the election, as it is already clear that the election will be late again this year and we must move forward with it.

I have not forgotten that Kerry Williams requested an exchange of positions with a Member-at-Large, but two people objected that this is not strictly kosher according to the Constitution. As there is very little time remaining in the current term of office, I would like to request that Kerry serve for just a little longer as Ombudsman. If he feels he cannot do so, the proper course would be for him to resign, following which this Committee could consider him for appointment to a Member-at-Large vacancy. As I am currently acting in the capacity of Regent, at least with regard to the ExCom memo, I must withdraw as a candidate to replace him in this position, but Dale Adams' offer to do so still stands, should the need arise.

Bob Kopp has taken over the function of roster maintenance. As it makes sense for the Editor to perform this task, I do not believe we need to take any formal action regarding this.

The Election

I move that we adopt the following election procedures:

* (2) A call for statements of candidacy shall be published in the earliest available issue of Vidya, with a postmark deadline 30 days from the postmark date of that issue. This issue shall also contain proposals for Constitutional amendments, including those I proposed in the last ExCom memo (with certain technical modifications) and any others anyone reading this memo cares to submit, with petition forms to formally place them on the ballot. The forms shall contain a box to check for each amendment supported, so that members may support any amendment or any combination of amendments they wish without the need for multiple petition forms. Members shall be asked to fill in the form and send it to the Editor, who shall determine which amendments have received the signatures of the square root of the membership and are thus eligible for the ballot. The following issue of Vidya shall contain the statements of candidacy, comments on the proposed amendments, and a ballot. The postmark deadline shall be 30 days from the postmark date of this second issue.

There may be other ways to conduct an election, but I believe that the procedures outlined above are reasonable and workable. If we stop to thrash out something else the election will be delayed further; hopefully, no one will vote to HOLD This motion.

Voting members of the Committee: please send me your votes on this motion without delay, as the election is already late.

Also, I'd like to hear from Ray Suttles if there is any reason he cannot perform the duties of Elections Officer for this election. (Cyd's memo lists Ray as ``Election [singular] Officer,'' but the term in the Constitution is ``Elections Officer.'')

Psychometrics Committee

Kjeld Hvatum has done nothing at all since he was designated Chairman of the Psychometrics Committee over a year ago. I suggest that we consider this position vacant and start over.

It is vital that we appoint a new Psychometrics Committee; there is some ambiguity in our qualifying standards, some of the tests we now accept probably should be deleted from our list, there are some errors in qualifying scores, some tests have been retired, and new tests have appeared since we established our list of qualifying scores. Some decisions reached by the committee chaired by Fred Britton several years ago have never been reflected in our brochures and admissions practice (e.g., we voted not to accept age-corrected scores). See Jacquelinne White's memo of December 28, included herein.

Only Paul Maxim, Henry Milligan, and I have volunteered to serve on this committee to date. I believe that we must have people with experience in psychometrics on the committee. I would like to see statements from Paul and Henry regarding their psychometric credentials and request that the Editor publish another call for volunteers in the next available issue of Vidya.

Legal Officer

As Cyd noted in the last memo, Loren Harris and Hal Darancette have expressed concern that John Kormes has provided legal advice to Kent Shultz and that this could lead to a conflict of interest if he became TNS Legal Officer. John has not yet replied to this concern. I would like to hear from him on this point. If John is not able to serve, we should publish a call for volunteers for this important post in Vidya.

Annual Meeting

Cyd has suggested that this year's annual meeting be held in Illinois in conjunction with Halloweem, the Illinois Mensa Regional Gathering at the end of October. She suggested that members of the IQARUS local group might be willing to organize such a meeting. The IQARUS Group has four coordinators; I have added Verlin Allbritton, Lee Arhelger, and Kenneth Rogers to the distribution list for this memo (the fourth coordinator, Pat McGrath, already is on the list). I have also added Wally Gannon, whom Cyd spoke with regarding the annual meeting. I request a response from IQARUS regarding this possibility.

Comments on the November 8 ExCom Memo

I agree with almost everything in Loren's lengthy memo--and his memos are always a good read. We've been over the main point on which we disagree many times and I have nothing to add to that here.

Paul Maxim's idea of a ``Central Registry for High I.Q. Certification'' is such a natural it's a wonder the ISPE didn't think of it long ago. Now even those who aren't listed in the Guinness Book of World Records Hall of Fame can achieve the world's recognition (and adulation) for their incredibly high I.Q.'s. Although I am not a member of the Registry, I resign anyway.

Nonetheless, Paul makes some valid points in his discussion under this heading. I agree with him that it's regrettable that the various high-I.Q. societies have not done a better job of keeping track of admission records; it would be very useful to have statistical breakdowns of scores submitted by both accepted and rejected applicants. This would help the societies to determine actual vs. theoretical distributions of scores on certain tests. As an example of the kinds of problems that arise, Mensa often reports high scores on the tests it gives in a form such as ``170+,'' which creates difficulties for any society whose cutoff is above 170 on the test in question.

It's true that psychometric expertise is in short supply, as I noted above in my remarks about the Psychometrics Committee. What generally happens in almost all the high-I.Q. societies is that committees are established, lists of qualifying scores are hammered out (sometimes too hastily) and then nobody thinks about whether the list is accurate or the changing picture of test availability for many years.

Paul's memo also contains an attack on me, my (so far) principal test, the LAIT, and my psychometric credentials. I responded in detail to his remarks about the LAIT in Vidya #147/148; what it boils down to is that Paul didn't take the trouble to get his facts straight.

I do want to respond to two of Paul's allegations. He wrote:

I have received information to indicate that at least two prominent amateur psychometricians have operated for years on the basis of false credentials, which has resulted in the deception of everyone in the high-IQ community, as well as the Guinness Book of World Records, etc.

Paul has a propensity for citing unnamed sources. Did this information come directly from God or did Paul receive it from some lower authority?

I suppose that I am one of the two ``prominent amateur psychometricians'' that Paul is referring to (although I've actually lost my amateur standing, as I've been paid--though not very well--for my work in psychometrics).

Long, long ago, the Guinness people, after their original mistake of selecting ``I.Q.'' as a world-record category in the first place, made the additional mistake of consulting Chris Harding about listings under this heading. On the basis of information furnished by Chris, they listed both Chris and me as having obtained Stanford-Binet I.Q.'s of 196; I was never consulted.

Chris later claimed that he had told Guinness that these were Binet-equivalent scores, not scores on the test itself, and perhaps this is the case. But the Guinness people should have known that the Stanford-Binet yields too many high scores--by orders of magnitude at the highest levels--and that many people have obtained scores over 200. (Marilyn vos Savant's 228 was hardly the highest ever; there was a recent news story about a boy whose Binet I.Q. tops 300 and I've heard of several other people with scores in the neighborhood of 250.) I took the Binet in high school, but was already old enough that it didn't have a lot of ceiling; I scored 155.

Chris never explained the basis on which he calculated ``Binet-equivalent'' I.Q.'s. I have speculated that Chris was relying on my performance on the experimental Mobius Test around 1980; Chris has neither confirmed nor denied this. The test was not normed at that time, but Ron Hoeflin and I outscored a number of other Mega members by a very considerable margin. A new version of The Mobius Test will be published within the next few weeks by Polymath Systems.

I have written to various high-I.Q.-society journals to set the record straight regarding this matter several times, but old rumors are like old soldiers.

Paul wrote:

Certain members of certain societies (such as Prometheus) refuse to disclose their own IQ's, but have no compunction about excluding from membership in their organization, applicants whose IQ's are equal to, or greater than their own. This once again perpetuates an invidious, inequitable, and (in the final analysis) destructive situation, which undermines the raison d'etre for the formation of high-IQ associations.

Many people feel that disclosure of I.Q. scores is a form of egotistical boasting and choose to keep their scores private. But someone generally examined their scores before they were let into the club. I'm an exception with regard to Prometheus. I'm a member of Four Sigma because I founded it, and Four Sigma members were grandfathered into Prometheus when it was founded. I have not taken any of Ron Hoeflin's tests (but I'm working on his new Ultra Test), so the only scores above the four sigma level I've made are on The Mobius Test and on Alan Aax' (also as-yet-unnormed) Eight Item Test. Maybe I'm really stupid. But I'm not stupid enough not to see that Paul's remarks are self-serving, ignorant, and illogical.

Paul's demand for the disclosure of I.Q. scores reminds me of his earlier demand that the names of voters be disclosed--after they had been promised a secret ballot--so that we could tell whether TNS is wasting money sending the ExCom memo to people who don't vote.

In his August 23 memo, Larry Jess suggested Paul Maxim for the post of Ombudsman. In view of the above, and of his propensity for seeing injustice everywhere but in his own back yard, I do not believe that Paul is qualified to be Ombudsman, a position for which tact and impartiality are important qualifications.

I would like to ask Cyd why the bottom half of John Kormes' memo of September 5 was printed when it was designated ``NOT FOR PUBLICATION.''

Jacquelinne White's December 28 Memo (included herein)

Jacquelinne raises some valid points in this memo, though she may be overly worried about details. We do need to set up some procedures for officers and to establish a streamlined method of providing funding for necessary expenses. Most of our officers do not perform duties which involve a lot of detail, but I would like to ask the Financial Officer and the Membership Officer to draft a set of procedures for handling the business of their offices, to facilitate their interaction with other officers and to provide guidelines for future incumbents. I would also like to ask Cyd to draft procedures for the Chairman of the Executive Committee; I will also attempt to do so. Procedures for the Chairman are necessary whether or not the Regent continues to chair this Committee.

An updating of acceptable I.Q. scores is indeed needed; I have addressed the need to establish a new Psychometrics Committee above.

Jacquelinne has pointed out a practical difficulty: she is not a member of Mensa, so she is not the proper person to place an ad for TNS in the Mensa Bulletin, historically the best vehicle for advertising the higher-I.Q. societies. It would be simplest for John Cooper to place an ad; John, are you currently a member of Mensa? If John can't do it, I would be willing to place an ad, but I'd like to receive a check from John, payable to Mensa, so this can be handled without my having to be out of pocket.

I move that:

* (3) An advertisement for TNS shall be published in the (American) Mensa Bulletin, to run three times at two-month intervals, with the following wording:

Triple Nine Society. The only democratically-organized society at the 99.9th percentile. Journal approximately monthly. $20/year. Partial list of qualifying scores: Cattell Verbal, 173; LAIT, 150; Mega, 24; SAT, 1470; write for brochure. Contact Membership Officer, Jacquelline White, [address omitted]. Not affiliated with Mensa.

This ad contains 50 words. Three insertions would cost $187.50 at the Mensa-members' rate. I think this is a sound investment; we must recruit new members to remain viable in the long run.

More Monkeyshines

As a parting shot, former mailing-list maintainer Clint Williams made my name disappear from the TNS membership list. I only received a copy of Vidya #147/148 a few days ago, after Bob Kopp forwarded me one of the extra copies Clint had sent him.

Outstanding Motions

Under separate cover, I am mailing voting members of this Committee postcard ballots to vote on the following matters:

KL motion #95-9, November 8 ExCom Memo, page 17:

Passage of a motion shall require a majority of votes cast; a quorum shall be defined as four votes cast on a motion.

KL motion #96-1, this ExCom Memo, page 2.

KL motion #96-2, this ExCom Memo, page 3.

KL motion #96-3, this ExCom Memo, page 6.

Bob Kopp's motion #1, contained in his memo of January 5, included in this ExCom Memo, page 16:

Kevin Langdon is appointed Regent, to serve until a Regent is chosen by vote of the membership in the 1996 election.

Bob Kopp's motion #2, contained in the same memo:

The following statement by the Triple Nine Society Executive Committee shall be published in Vidya:

The Triple Nine Society regrets the negative characterization of Kent Shultz by former Editor Clint Williams in the context of the publication of Mr. Shultz' essay, ``The Mind of the Molester,'' in Vidya.

Next ExCom Memo

I anticipate publishing the next ExCom Memo in mid-February. Submissions for that memo should be by e-mail (preferred; [old e-mail address omitted]) or in hard copy form with margins of at least one inch.

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