Conversation with Aníbal Sánchez Numa on Background, Ideas, Scores, and Pacifism: Member, World Genius Directory (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/11/22

Abstract

Born on February 27th, 1985 in Ciego de Ávila, Cuba, Aníbal Sánchez Numa graduated as Computer Engineer in 2012 and as Master in Computer Science in 2014. Having a PhD in Computational Mechanics since 2018, he belongs to the World Genius Directory and Catholiq High IQ Society. He discusses: family stories; an extended self; family background; the experience with peers and schoolmates; the purpose of intelligence tests; high intelligence discovered; the geniuses of the past; the greatest geniuses in history; a genius from a profoundly intelligent person; some work experiences and educational certifications; the idea of the gifted and geniuses; some social and political views; the God concept or gods idea and philosophy, theology, and religion; science; some of the tests taken and scores earned (with standard deviations); the range of the scores; and ethical philosophy.

Keywords: Aníbal Sánchez Numa, background, genius, intelligence, IQ, pacifism, World Genius Directory.

Conversation with Aníbal Sánchez Numa on Background, Ideas, Scores, and Pacifism: Member, World Genius Directory (1)

*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When you were growing up, what were some of the prominent family stories being told over time?

Aníbal Sánchez Numa: My father had a certain precociousness, and in elementary school he skipped the fourth grade, they decided to pass it directly from the third to the fifth. He always told me that his father, despite being a person without formal studies, was an avid reader and he inherited that passion for books and stories, which eventually made him a writer.

Jacobsen: Have these stores helped provide a sense of an extended self or a sense of the family legacy?

Numa: Certainly, my passion for knowledge also began from a very young age thanks to my father and his remarkable library in our home, where since I can remember there were books of both fiction and any branch of scientific knowledge, to which I frequently went while still very boy. I asked to be taught to read at the age of three, and was pleased.

Jacobsen: What was family background, e.g., geography, culture, language, and religion or lack thereof?

Numa: Both my mother and my father come from small towns in our province. My mother has a degree in Mathematics Education and my father in Social Sciences. Both are PhD Pedagogical Sciences since some years ago.

There is some presence of Catholicism on my father’s side, but both were always atheists, although some years ago my mother began to practice Protestant Christianity and I myself was also on that path for some time.

Jacobsen: How was the experience with peers and schoolmates as a child and an adolescent?

Numa: I was very lonely and “weird” in school period. My interests and personality differed a lot from my fellow students, I always preferred to talk to adults over kids my age. I did not understand relationships and social norms, and also I was not interested in following them. I was very bored in class. Fortunately, my teachers were quite understanding.

However, in eighth grade I met who is still one of my great friends and in high school I already began to be more sociable.

Jacobsen: What is the purpose of intelligence tests to you?

Numa: I did the first one 8 years ago because I had an existential crisis. I was very surprised back then to get such a high result. I later met a community of test hobbyists online and signed up for testing as a form of healthy competition for our cognitive skills. Nowadays I do tests from time to time as a hobby and also to get an impression of how my cognition is working at the moment. I find IQ tests very interesting mental challenges, and I love the sense of discovery I get when I find the solution to a difficult subject.

Regardless of the fact that an IQ test to be completely reliable must pass an extensive validation procedure, those created by amateurs or by psychologists without being correctly regulated have a high correlation with the official ones, and the truth is that the people I have met who they score very high in these tests they seem really very sharp to me.

Jacobsen: When was high intelligence discovered for you?

Numa: From a very young age at school and at home I was considered very intelligent. Several people called me “genius” or “gifted”. However, I was never interested in IQ tests, nor did I have any idea what they looked like. Being almost 30 years old I was curious to have an objective impression of my cognitive abilities and I did one on the Internet (the one from Mensa Denmark), and then another. Even though being called gifted had been pretty common for me, I didn’t really feel that way, especially since I was quite slow at many tasks that most people do with ease. Looking for information on the web, I discovered a gifted forum in Spanish and from there I began a process of rediscovery by meeting people with whom I shared many feelings and interests. I had a hard time accepting that condition.

Jacobsen: When you think of the ways in which the geniuses of the past have either been mocked, vilified, and condemned if not killed, or praised, flattered, platformed, and revered, what seems like the reason for the extreme reactions to and treatment of geniuses? Many alive today seem camera shy – many, not all.

Numa: Intelligence is something that has always fascinated human beings, I think for obvious reasons. The word “genius” has a very strong connotation, and I have met both people who do not accept being called that (probably more those who are) and others who would love to have that label (probably more those who are not). In popular culture, genius always has something crazy, unusual, strange, and it is logical, being people capable of such extraordinary things and with so much talent it is clear that they must be very out of the ordinary. Naturally something so valued and at the same time so rare generates very intense reactions, also due to the fact that in reality there is no definition of genius with which we all agree, so everything that revolves around that is very elusive.

Jacobsen: Who seem like the greatest geniuses in history to you?

Numa: I would say that in science the greatest genius in history is Isaac Newton, while as the greatest polymath I choose Leonardo da Vinci. Some other geniuses that I always admired are Archimedes, Pythagoras, Einstein of course, Mozart and Beethoven, and going back to science Gauss is another that stands out a lot for me.

Jacobsen: What differentiates a genius from a profoundly intelligent person?

Numa: I would say that very high intelligence is a necessary condition to be a genius but not enough. Today we have people who solve the most difficult tests in the world and yet they are neither creative nor inventive nor do they produce valuable resources for humanity. Of course, it also depends on the concept of genius used, and since there are several, it is very difficult to have a clear notion of what the difference is. What is clear to me is that the genius must be very very creative, even if what he creates is not considered valuable, exorbitant creativity is something that in my opinion distinguishes the genius from the deeply gifted.

Taking the IQ as a measure, there are those who say that the limit is 140, others 145, and others even 160. But it doesn’t seem to me that this is a good way to define genius, in any case it could be used as a necessary condition to be so.

Jacobsen: What have been some work experiences and educational certifications for you?

Numa: I am a computer engineer with a master’s degree in applied computer science. As a student I was several times a medalist in the National Mathematical Olympics, I participated with good results in other subjects but at a lower level. I was a member of the national math shortlist in 10th grade. I have worked as a computer scientist and a math teacher at the university. I am currently working as an independent software developer.

Jacobsen: What are some of the more important aspects of the idea of the gifted and geniuses? Those myths that pervade the cultures of the world. What are those myths? What truths dispel them?

Numa: Today much more is known of intellectual giftedness and genius than a few years ago. But there are still many prejudices and much ignorance. Many people confuse prodigy with genius or gifted or precocious. I have friends to whom I tell that I am gifted and they think it is the same as saying that I am genius. There are some truths such as being a bit clueless and abstract and thinking a lot about philosophical questions, but many false myths and there are always exceptions as well. Many gifted people are introverts but there are also very extroverts, although I would say that they are quite few. Many people also say that the gifted have a tendency to mental imbalance, something that I resisted to believe for a long time but with the people I have known I have had to accept that something is true, at least there is a significant correlation.

Jacobsen: What are some social and political views for you? Why hold them?

Numa: One of my aspirations as a child was to become a doctor. I have an inclination towards it, perhaps that is why I do not consider correct any political position that does not guarantee access to health services to all its citizens. On the other hand, education seems to me the most genuine form of freedom, so in my opinion the ideal system must also guarantee this to its inhabitants. From what I have read, the system that most closely resembles my ideal is Social Democracy.

Jacobsen: Any thoughts on the God concept or gods idea and philosophy, theology, and religion?

Numa: Religion always seemed to me to be a very effective form of domination and in many cases a business. I’m not an atheist like I used to be, now I’m an agnostic, because I think our mind is too limited to have the truth on this subject, but if I had to bet I would say that there is no God beyond our imagination. As a child I read the Bible and it always seemed very contradictory to me, as an adult I read it again and kept thinking the same thing. On the other hand, I have witnessed, even in my own flesh, phenomena for which I have no explanation, and I do not know if one day I will, therefore the doubt I think will always be present in me. Certainly, I wish that there was a righteous God who would punish the wicked and benefit the good, but most of all that notion seems to me to be a desperate attempt by human beings to find in divinity a solution for what he has never been able to solve. The same happens with the idea of life after death.

Jacobsen: How much does science play into the worldview for you?

Numa: I have loved science since I was a child. I remember when I was very young I used to tell my parents that I wanted to be a scientist when I was an adult, since I greatly admired those great scientific minds of all time. Lately I have read and acquired some knowledge of some possible failures in science, but in general I think that experience has proof that science is the best tool we have to develop ourselves and that is why everyone should respect it and respect the truth it offers, unfortunately not all people do. I think that nowadays there are fewer and fewer children and young people who are interested in science, I have been a university professor and I am surprised to have future engineers in the classroom who never heard of Newton or Leibniz. I consider it somewhat sad and disappointing. On the other hand, these anti-science movements like the anti-vaccines and flat-earthers scare me, to put it in some way, I think they can be very dangerous.

Jacobsen: What have been some of the tests taken and scores earned (with standard deviations) for you?

Numa: Some of my last scores are:

145 sd15 on Numeriq32 (IQExams)

150 sd15 on X-10 (by Zolly Darko)

148 sd15 on Numix (by Miroslav Radojevic)

Jacobsen: What is the range of the scores for you? The scores earned on alternative intelligence tests tend to produce a wide smattering of data points rather than clusters, typically.

Numa: I have taken not so many tests and I have done mainly those I have been recommended for their psychometrics values. My usual range is 140-150 sd15. I have scores of 160 sd15 but I don’t trust those scores as I consider those tests’ quality to be doubtful. My last 8 tests taken all fall in that mentioned range. My minimum in a credible test is 138 sd15 on Mensa Denmark and my maximum in a kind of recognized test is 155 sd15 in Fiqure.

Jacobsen: What ethical philosophy makes some sense, even the most workable sense to you?

Numa: I consider myself a pacifist par excellence. I love the harmony between people. I have always felt very sad about the situation in the world, which in my opinion will never improve much. I have a negative view of human beings in general. I don’t know if man is selfish by nature or the society in which we live makes it so, but certainly the word “humanism” should have another meaning, in my opinion. I don’t think anyone has the solution for this, but I think that in human society, in fact, the same law of animals prevails, “the law of the strongest”, although “force” clearly takes on other nuances among us: money, power , social class, etc., and even intelligence.

Appendix I: Footnotes

[1] Member, World Genius Directory.

[2] Individual Publication Date: November 22, 2020: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sanchez-1; Full Issue Publication Date: January 1, 2021: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.

*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.

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