"What?!"

That's the most likely utterance of someone who sees the bigfatbrains.com domain for the first time.  It's usually incredulity over the conceit of it that creates the shock factor.  But consider a slightly different angle on this.  Suppose for a moment that conceit is not at the root of it.

Most people who read this are aware (some more than others) of the room in which they sit and not much more.  But a BFB sits in a room in a building on a property in a city and/or county in a state in a country on a continent on a planet in a solar system in an arm of a galaxy in a local cluster in a universe that could be one of many that phase in and out of each other and they are aware of all of it. 

We're also aware of not just our own past, this moment, and maybe the next few to come, but the history of the universe, the history of our species, and a vast sea of possibilities that could've been all of our own alternate histories, this moment in all its extreme detail, the implications of every action we will take in this moment, and a vast tree of anticipated effects and resulting choices, limits, successes, or failures that will be set into motion at every turn from this moment forward.

This makes everything a bit more complicated. 

The High Cost of Genius...

...is being crazy.  In one way or another, once the cognitive reasoning abilities reach a certain point, something goes wrong.  Many of us have some sort of obsessive compulsion, social anxiety, dissociative disorder, degrees of autism, or some combination thereof.  We can solve unbelievable problems with amazing focus and tenacity, but we often have little or no ability to manage our personal lives.  Likewise, we are often unemployable because we can't fit neatly into "corporate culture".  We very often have to operate as contractors but we're seldom good at simple administrative tasks so we have to hire handlers for ourselves.  In short, with all of our problem solving abilities, the one hard-to-reach solution set that proves our humanity is the management of our own lives and relationships.

All of this makes us seem weird to "normal people" and even to each other.  If we try to be honest, we're called conceited.  If we try to be humble, we're called patronizing.  If we try to just stay out of it, we're called reclusive.  If we try to be helpful, we're called egotistical control freaks.  If we try to have a sense of humor about it, we're called smart asses.  And if we dare complain about any of it, we're called even worse.

Most People Will Lose Interest Before Reading This Section

And as BFB's, we think that's fine.  Reading isn't for everyone.  As a matter of fact, it's for almost no one.

But that brings us to the point of this site.  BigFatBrains.com is a place for BFB's to "just hang out".  It's good for anyoneto have a sense of community and we're no exception to that rule.  We spend a lot of time feeling isolated in the world because we are isolated.  Since only one person in every thousand or so qualifies, we don't really have much opportunity to bump into each other.  With the wonder of the Internet, we have a better chance to get to know each other.

There are other groups for really smart people, most famously MENSA.  The unfortunate thing about those groups (and probably this group in time) is that they become corrupted by predatory exploits.  Most BFB's are a little gullible by nature because we just don't connect with what it is that drives someone to be power hungry.  We never see it coming when our personal struggles are used to lens our abilities into weapons against humanity.  Vigilance against such exploitation is a charter directive for us here.