A high school friend of mine aced the SAT and went on to a Fulbright Scholarship to Yale. He wanted friends because he was supposed to have them in order to be regarded as successful, as well as for the benefit of future social advantage. So, he went through the proper motions to acquire friends and keep them. He wanted to play sports and did, but was a benchwarmer because he was not particularly well-coordinated. Relating to things that mattered to girls was a real puzzle for him but he studied that most of all, and did not succeed particularly well until college. He wasn’t an altogether bad looking guy I don’t suppose, but worrying about his appearance did not occur to him until he realized that girls were not interested, and he never could quite get the look or the approach down pat. It was like an alien dance or something for him.
Was that Sheldon?
That guy sounds like another guy I knew—brilliant financial type, but bewildered in any social setting. His wife (now ex-) once told us that he couldn’t tell when people were angry—he couldn’t read the signs.
I think most of those mensa types are somewhere on “the spectrum” of autism. They’re zeroed in on the narrow band that IQ tests measure, but at the expense of wider experience and perception.
Their narrow focus, combined with indoctrination and arrogance, is the reason so many of them are leftists.