18: Straight Talk about IQ

have Christopher Sabri on the podcast. Christopher is Associate Professor of psychology and co director of the Neuroscience Program at Union College, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Neurology at Albany Medical College, and a research affiliate at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. In his book The Invisible Guerrilla, co author with Daniel Simons, presents the results of research no Attension and other cognitive illusions. He also writes the new column game On in the

Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much, Chris for being here today. Thanks for having me here. I really liked the title of that column, game On. Did you come up with that? And I had nothing to do with it? I gave them several suggestions and they were all summarily rejected and the editors picked a better one. Do you find that happens. Has ever happened to you before with like an article you wrote where they just like put this title that you're not happy with. I mean, obviously

you're probably happy with this title. But in the past, though, yeah, that happens, I would say fairly often, although much more often than that, the title that the editors come up with is either better or probably result in more people reading it, which ultimately is what you want. I don't want to be writing stuff for a general audience or a popular audience and then have them not read it because the title wasn't sexy enough to make them click

or something like that. So I've never complained to the editor that I can recall and told them to change the title, or told them I didn't like the title or something like that. But there's certainly been haven't been some times when I thought I had come up with something really clever, but it just didn't, you know, didn't

make it in at all. What would be your limits though, in terms of quick beat, like where do you draw a line like if they're like click here, you know for naked penguins dancing, like would you be like not happy with that? And then it's and then it's my article about replication and psychology or something like that. Yeah, well, I think I would be I think I would be

unhappy with that. I've seen some articles published where the title definitely actually contradicts, you know, what's being said, or makes or overly exaggerates the claims that are that are being made. And I think if the if the topic is science or behavioral science, or anything about you know that has even remotely to do with critical thinking or rationality or public policy, then the author should go back and say, you know that that title is misleading. And

I think some some authors don't do that. I actually think probably academics who write for a popular audience are probably a little more sensitive to that because normally they write their own titles for journal articles, and they write

the abstract and so on. But then when when when when the you know, when the editors of a newspaper, magazine or website sort of write the write the search engine text and all and all that stuff, I think you shouldn't go back to it and make sure it's it's accurate, because otherwise, you know, ninety nine percent of the readers will just read the title. They're never going to read past that, so they might think that Scott Barry Kaufman is saying something ridiculous when actually that's not

what you said in the article. That's just what the editor put there. Yeah, and it's particularly frustrating when it takes all the nuance that you've spent your whole career working on out of it. So that happened to me in that case. And they took an excerpt from my book I Gifted in Slate and they called it basically the excerpt was about how we need to be more sensitive to the kinds of tests we use to assess learning disabilities and we need to like basically we need

to like use the test more sensibly. But they called it why IQ tests are useless. And it's so funny that they also, probably, you know, shortly after that published, you know, articles by me and Zach Hambrick about why why i Q tests are so great? You know. So it's not as though they're even trying to push a consistent line, right, they're trying to get people to read the articles. Yeah, that's exactly. And you probably don't want to be on the record as saying IQ tests are useless.

So did you ask them to change it and did they did they change it? I'm really trying to remember. I guess I need a Google to really remember if it was changed. I do think I did make a request. I was like, this is a bit strong in my experience.

They're actually pretty sensitive to that. But it could be that I write It could be that the publications that I write for, you know, happen to have editors who, you know, either care about getting those things right or maybe care about having me write for them again, whereas there might be other websites that basically it's a difference between making money and losing money whether they can write an outrageous headline, and they might not be as receptive

to that kind of to that kind of author feedback. I don't I don't know. I haven't really read into that yet. Yeah, their incentives might be different. Sure, Well, since we open I kind of just opened up this can of worms with IQ. I mean, why not, why don't we just dive into that topic? And there's a lot of topics we could talk about, but I think this is a good one, one of the good ones. Yeah.

So you've done research some really interesting recent research on the genetics of IQ, finding that a lot of the genes that prior researchers have found are statistically associated, even though they're obviously very small effects, you found, they don't really replicate. Is that right, that's true. So the short story is that, you know, we've known for a long time that that IQ whatever you think it corresponds to in the real world or whatever the right sort of

dictionary definition of it is. Whatever it is that IQ tests are measuring, is measured, you know, across the population very reliably, and it's always found to be significantly heritable. It's one of the most heritable behavioral traits that we know about. So we know that from twin studies and

family studies and so on. And for about fifteen years people have been doing what are called candidate gene studies, which are studies where they think about a particular gene that, because of something known about its role in brain function or biology, you know, might have something to do with differences in intelligence between individuals, or at least in you know, an IQ test scores, and so they'll they'll collect a sample of people and genotype a bunch of them for

some variants of this gene. Often these these genes are kind of things you think about, like dopamine related genes or you know, genes involved in the synapse or something like that. And the study will report the results of genotyping one gene. It'll say, well, lo, and behold, the people who have this particular variant, you know, score one point seven iq points higher for each copy of that variant that they have, or maybe even more than that. And this was significant p less thon point zh five.

And what it turns out is that most of those results just purely do not replicate at all when you use a much larger sample. So these sample sizes are typically in the dozens to hundreds. Several colleagues and I I think we maybe had fourteen authors on this paper ultimately put together three data sets with about ten thousand total subjects and tested ten of these genes and found that basically none of them replicate. One of them replicated once in one sample, but then basically in the opposite

direction another sample. So those kind of cancel each other out. And that literature is basically follow false positives, as a lot of the literature that you'll find that say, you know, there's a particular gene associated with trust, or a particular gene associated with altruism or a particular gene associated with neuroticism or something or something like that. Almost all of them.

That research, I think regrettably is represents false positive results. Yeah, and some people could falsely like, especially how it's portrayed in the media, some people could falsely think that result suggests that there is no genetic component to intelligence or genetic component to IQ, and instead it suggests that it's like much, it's going to be much more difficult to find the ones, the many many, there's never going to be a single gene that replicates. Do you think it's

a power issue? Do you think it's probably a combination of issues. What are some of the issues on the table for you? Right, So, it's a mistake to think that if we haven't found the gene for X, that that means that X is not genetic. Right, So, so X, you know, a trait could be genetic without having any one gene. In fact, most genetic traits are not single gene traits. Height is a perfect example. Right. Everybody knows that height is heritable and its genetic, and everybody accepts

that obviously. You know, your height down to the millimeter is not determined by your genes. There's also diet and you know, and other exposed environmental exposures and and and so on them make a big difference. But within a population, most differences in height seem to be caused by differences

in genes. But we found out through you know, gradual research by a lot of great researchers that this is because there are hundreds or thousands of genes that affect height, and each one, you know, gives you a fraction of a millimeter basically, you know which is which is not

not very much. And our work and the work of especially of the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium, which which is really doing all this work with respect to behavioral traits with the largest samples, that work has found that the same is true for behavioral traits. So, you know, any any typical behavioral trait we think is based on hundreds or thousands of genes, each one of which has a very tiny effect. It's not to say that you can't be extreme on some trade because of a single gene.

So there are many genetic variants which cause intellectual disability, you know, formerly known as mental retardation and so on, score cause cause scoring very low on on IQ tests like super you know, super low, like off the charts low, and that you know, fragile X. You know, there are many many are even known by by the names of genes.

But we're talking about sort of like normal range variation doesn't seem to be caused by single genes or just a handful of genes, but hundreds or thousands, right, And again that doesn't mean that there is an environmental component as well. I just want to make I want to you know, I thought this podcast could be really good to kind of like talk about lots of misconceptions about lots of this stuff. So even if there is a there there are is a genetic component to i Q.

I don't think that's in doubt at all. That doesn't mean that that there aren't a lot of genes involved. A lots of those genes UH are certainly interacting with each other as well as the environment. So so so so some people might like incorrectly con coul that just because of a genetic pone there's an environmental quote or

that these things can change. What are your own personal thoughts on the changeability or trainability of IQ and do you think the current methods are for lack of a better word, crap, Well, there's a lot so that there are a lot of issues in in in what you and what you went over untacked some of it, yeah, so let me yes, so let me try to unpack those a little bit. I guess one of them is that it's certainly true that all traits, pretty much all

behavioral traits are affected both by heredity and environment. The proportion may vary, and it's also important to keep in mind that you know all measures of the effect of environmental variation, which is which is mostly it turns out

how individuals environments differ from each other. The effective family environments generally seems to be a pretty small and behavior genetic studies, so basically, the effect of which family you're raised in is smaller than the effect of all the other different environmental exposures you have in your life, which in turn tends to be smaller than the cumulative effective genetic variation. But that is all with respect to sort of our current you know, our current social and cultural

arrangements and our current technologies. Right. So the classic example of this is eyesight. Uh, you know, visual acuity would is very visual acuity is very heritable. But of course we have this technology called glasses and contact lenses which basically you know, change everybody's effective vision back to the

normal range. Even though just you know, in a world without glasses, then some people would see very badly, and you know that would be determined mostly by genes, right, But in a world with glasses, you know, where if everybody has access to glasses, then everybody's vision is is

quite corrected. So you could imagine some technology which is like eyeglasses but for the brain, which sort of like ramp up everybody's brain function, you know, up into a level where everybody's within this narrow band like pretty much able to read the eye chart. Like we're all able to read you know, the first like five lines of the eye chart and that's enough you know, for successful functioning. And you know, in life, you can imagine that technology

for height, you can imagine that technology for IQ. You can imagine it for you know, for anything. It hasn't you know, unfortunately, it hasn't been discovered yet. I think what's unfortunate kind of is that people seem to think or want to believe that the ability to raise your IQ, you know, whatever IQ actually is, people seem to want to raise it, and they seem to believe that the ability to raise it is a lot simpler and more

easily to discover and readily available than it is. So you could go back to like the Mozart effect, right, just listening to you know, uh Mozart's music for ten minutes, you can go to uh, you know, playing you know, certain kinds of you know, video games, or training, certain kinds of you know, boring repetitive cognitive tasks like working memory, or you know, running current through your running electrical current through your brain to stimulate your PDS. The idea, yeah, yeah, yeah,

transcranial direct current stimulation. Right, I mean there's there's all kinds of these these fads and in general, you know, the results of I think there are two interesting things about the results of those. One or that they have trouble replicating. Also, so often when independent labs try to replicate that that research, that they can't do it. This is what happened with the Mozart effect, this is what

seems to have happened largely with working memory training. And the other thing to consider also is that making someone's score go up on an IQ test, uh is not the same as increasing their general intelligence. Right, So an IQ test is a good indicator of general intelligens you know,

in some environments. But imagine an environment where everyone had all the answers to the test, right, Well, then it would no longer be a measure of intelligence, wouldn't be a measure of anything in fact, because everyone would get every question right, right, So that would just drop to zero sensitivity. Or imagine a world where you know, half the people you know had bought the answers to the test and the other half that people didn't even know

they were for sale. Right, Well, then you're going to get you know, then the IQ test is no longer valid. Right. So it could be that if you if you make people better at taking IQ tests, it might not translate into an actual increase in intelligence, right, Not necessarily, I want to just clarify it. Not necessarily, but it is possible,

actually that increase in IQ is indicative. Yeah, it's possible. So, for example, the increase in IQ over the last one hundred years or so that comes from the Flint effect I tend to believe is real. Some people laugh at me for that, and some smart people do and other people think it's an artifact and so on. But I sort of take seriously the idea that you know, the average twenty year old today is significantly smarter in some real sense than the average twenty year old one hundred

years ago or fifty years ago. I agree, and I would I would I would narrow that down of fluid reasoning as being of critical development as opposed to maybe more like vocabulary and things of that nature. But let's talk a little bit about about the concept of intelligence and the measurement of IQ. First. The first question I want to ask you, do you think IQ is the

best measure we have today of intelligence? And do you see any other things that that are missing in the IQ test that you think do belong under the umbrella

conceptually of intelligence? I think, I think you know. It really of course depends on how you define intelligence, right, So if you're going to define intelligence as you know, any kind of useful ability you know, then no. If you're going to define intelligence as something close to traditional definitions of it that have been used in the field

of psychology, then yes. And I think it's it's it's it's almost inevitably the answer is yes, because you know, I Q tests have sort of evolved almost by natural selection, you know, in a way to optimize the measurement of those things. Like when when you make an IQ test, you know, you get rid of the items that don't load on, you know, on the first factor, if you want to make a one measure IQ test, I mean

you deliberately, you know, construct them that way. So it's almost tautological that they you know, that that that they measure you know, intelligence as defined in some traditional way. But what I sort of don't like. What I sort of don't like is I don't like very much the use of the term intelligence as a generic term for you know, any desirable skill. So I use the word social intelligence myself. I think there are sort of some

legitimate uses of that. But once we start saying there's emotional intelligence, there's practical intelligence, there's social intelligence, there's kind aesthetic intelligence, there's all these things mating intelligence, right, I mean I I sort of you know, I sort of get the point there that like, you can do these things better or worse. You can have you know, there's certain you know, skills and abilities and so on which

will make you better worse at these things. But I think we lose something when we just call all of those things different kinds of intelligence. Now, you know, maybe there are you know, I'm sure there are reasons, you know, to do that, but I think it I to me, it obscure is a little more than that it helps.

I think I've softened my tone a little bit on that somewhat, you know, like I'm willing to use the phrase, I'm willing to use the phrase social intelligence because I sort of, you know, I've come to believe more and more that you know, there is a distinction within the brain.

And I'm going to speak very broadly, you know, I'm not going to speak as sort of like it's any kind of detailed neuroscience level that I that I can't back up with citations, But I think there is pretty broadly a distinction between neural systems that seem to have, you know, evolved for the purpose of thinking about other people, and neural systems that seem to have evolved, you know, for the purpose of doing more abstract, you know, general

kinds of reasoning. So an IQ test might be a very good method of assessing the function of one of those particular neural systems. One of my current research projects is to try to develop better tests of quote, social intelligence, which I conceptualize is like assessing the function of that other you know, that other network in the brain, or that other that other collection of brain regions. But all that's but all that said, and sorry to sort of

keep on, you know, rambling here. All that said, I think it turns out that intelligence as measured by IQ tests, you know, whatever brain network is supporting that, and brain networks is supporting that and so on, is incredible turns out to be incredibly predictive of you know, a wide range of outcomes in present day society, you know, from you know, occupation, job performance, income, education, mortality, lifespan, I mean,

all kinds of things. And there can be very complex pathways by which it is predictive of all those things, right, Like why does intelligence predict longevity? There could be lots of different reasons for that. But if we ignore that, if we ignore you know, those facts, we're going to wind up making wrong conclusions in all the policy we come up with about things like health, you know, and and you know, financial savings and you know, social organizations, schools,

you know, and so on. I think I think we can't sort of pretend that you know, that doesn't exist or it's not a significant, you know, factor to take into into consideration. We shouldn't say that it's everything, but but nor should we pretend that it's nothing. So you said a lot of really good things there. I agree.

I agree with an awful lot of that. I think a very tricky thing something's been difficult for me in my career is that I started off I wanted to learn as much as I could about intelligence, and I didn't step out into the real world at all. So I still you know, there was a there was a period of let's say ten years where I like did the most I try to do the most rigorous science I could, try to publish in the most highest scientific turnal articles and just understand what is the you know,

biological and environmental basis of IQ. I studied with you know Nick Macintosh at Cambridge, who wrote I think the best textbook on the topic. By the way, he agrees, he would agree, he would He's he just passed away recently, unfortunately, but he would agree with you that that there's value in separating talent from intelligence, you know, specific talents from the general concept of intelligence or the concept of general intelligence put in differently, so you would say there's value

in that. So I spent a good ten years trying to really study us up and then I, you know, got into this, this this very fascinating world called education where you have so many kids falling between the cracks, and there are so many reasons why kids are falling between the cracks. One major reason, I think is because of our of the teachers conceptualizations they bring to the classroom of of what are the indicators of potential or what are the indicators of what kids are capable of achieving.

Do you think there's benefit because I do think there's benefit in an education context, and I still try it. By the way, I still published papers, and I still talk about the construct of intelligence. But when I enter the world of education, I see value in having a broader conceptuization of intelligence that at least allows for different,

like different indicators from students that we could nurture. Well, not every concept that comes from scientific psychology, I think is necessarily right for sort of you know, direct insertion into any particular outside context. I mean, I'll give you an example. I'm not sure we're learning much directly from neuroscience, from cognitive neuroscience, from fMRI. That should really make a difference at all in how we in how we teach children. I think one day we will, but I'm not sure

we're there yet. And yet it's sort of like the hot thing from my outsider's perspective, you know, educational neuroscience and and so on. I'm not sure that you know, I'm not sure that that's you know, that that's really you know, applicable. And also the fact that something as a construct like general intelligence predicts significant variation across you know, thousands of people in occupation or something like that, you know, obviously doesn't mean that for any one person it sets

up or lower bounds. And I think that's that's a clear mistake that people make, you know, over and over again, is they they don't really quite appreciate the variability. Like if if you have someone who scores you know, if you have someone who scores you know, ninety on an IQ test, they're less likely to get a PhD in psychology than someone who scores you know, one hundred and thirty. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. So the mistake is

to say, well, you're doomed. You know, you're never going to go any farther than this. And admittedly, people who you know studied IQ and you know, in you know, fifty, you know, sixty eighty, one hundred years ago, you could see these tables, you know, even even maybe more recently that said, like, here are the occupations that are suitable for you, you know, based on your test score. Right, But there's so many things that could have could cause

low test scores. There's so many other you know, traits that could be important. There's so many other ways they could combine in any one person, you know, different ways of doing the same job and so on. It's it's

sort of too narrow a conception for that. But at the same time, you can't throw you can't, you can't throw it out as a social you know, as a social science variable, as a social science variable, it's incredibly powerful, you know, and explains a lot about the way our present you know, present societies you know, are organized in function.

But that doesn't mean that for any one person, you know, like look at you know, look at someone like Bobby Fisher, like you know, Bobby Fisher World chess Champion, like essentially was was schizophrenic. And I think a lot of people in chess are only now sort of coming to grips with that. You know that he was at least schizotypal, and you know probably you know, a very high but a very high functioning schizophrenic, like the best chess player ever.

You know, it is something that's considered a very cognitive, intellectual you know, pursuit and so on. I mean, we science, you know, behavioral science is never good at explaining one person. Like how does behavioral science explain Hitler? Nobody? You know, you can't, like, you can't explain Hitler by doing surveys and calculating correlations and so on. You know, it's not gonna it's not gonna happen or even probably looking at

his brain. Well right, yeah, you know, I mean it's it's this goes back to like a long standing you know, argument about what's right level you know of analysis in psychology and so on, Like you can't really understand how the brain works by looking at the neurons. It's even harder when you're trying to understand one person. Right, And the thing with Bobby Fisher is very interesting because schizotippy is correlated with apohemia, which is the human tendency to

see patterns that don't really exist. Right, that he was like a master at like actually seeing patterns that have seeing patterns that do exist, that he's built up through many years of expertise. Well do you see my point? So I'm like, yeah, although uh in yeah, yes, and

so in chess. So apparently you know this, This again speaks to the idea that you know, a lot of a lot of things that we can become experts in are really about domain specific learning, you know, not necessarily about any kind of limits set by our general intelligence

or our personality traits. Right, So I'm sure that Bobby Fisher's ability to recognize patterns in chess, you know, was probably largely independent, almost entirely independent of his ability to recognize patterns in whether the Jews are controlling everything in

the world and ruining his life. Right, those two kinds of patterns are really different patterns and probably governed, you know, you know, governed in some ways by by by different you know, systems, or at least all the chess knowledge he learned was sort of like probably encapsulated and set aside from, you know, from all of his other thinking difficulties, which manifested themselves more and more as his life went on. So that's right, that's that's I think that's probably the explanation.

And you see that with John Nash as well, although well and his math suffered, his math suffered, I think, well, or if you if you right, okay, so if if you become completely psychotic, right, it's going to be hard to actually like devote time to you know, doing your

work and so on. But but again going back to intelligence, right, I think it stands to reason that you know, someone who's starting out, you know, as someone who regularly scores one thirty on IQ tests will probably find it a little bit easier to become a chess grand master than someone who regularly scores a lot lower than that. But it doesn't mean that the lower scorers can't do it, or that they're somehow you know, incapable or whatever. So

you know, there's talent and there's experience. There's there's both of those. There's both of those things, right, Yeah, so we can we can include general intelligence as a talent, just like you have any other kinds of talents. There's no reason why that source of human variation isn't just another talent, and it has meaningful implications in a more

broader sense than maybe some other talents. You could have like some sort of hierarchy of generality of actually you do, it's called this, you know, like you can have like at least for in terms of general in terms of cognobilities. It's a hierarchy, right. A lot of people don't aren't

aware of that. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna I was gonna actually say CC, but I was thinking like, well, no, it's how nerdy do we really want to get but that But that's just the idea that that there are sort of like more specialized abilities which are probably served by sort of more specific regions of the brain, but that those tend to be correlated a little bit, so that you have sort of like the second order you know, the these second order factors which contain several of those,

and then you've got you know, higher order you know, uh, general factor. It's very It's not that I don't think it's that complicated. It's that complicated. Well, that's that's a funny statement. It's both it's both incredibly complicated and and at the end of the day, not the complicated at the same time. So you know, part of my day job is I'm on a like a mission. I don't know that's too strong of a word, but I can't

think of any other word in its place. To come up with a new test of imagination that is, has set differential predictability and has his value and utility above and beyond an IQ test. Now, such a test, it's going to be very hard to for to not to have some saturation of G or general intelligence. Absolutely, but there I do believe there are there are skill sets and mental capacities there that are always partially distinct, so that that's one of our things we're trying to do

as well. And I'm okay, by the way, this is really cool, Chris. You've said you've softened your views a bit on Yeah, I've softened me too, in a in a in it in the opposite direction, in a sense, yeah, no, in the opposite direction. So I am okay now actually different and I I'm gonna be in record saying this

right now. Differentiating between general intelligence and creativity. I'm okay differentiating those too, because to me, or at least general intelligence and imagination, because I think you know what I would say, in like in a public spheres, I think, you know, general intelligence involves a whole set of cognitive proceeds that are very good at ascertaining what is you know, learning,

you know, what is reading, comprehension, et cetera. And I think imagination is a set of partially overlap non overlapping set skill sets associated with what could be that kind of that kind of thinking. So I'm actually okay differentialing these two. But by the way, that's a big that was the imagination different from creativity in your in your view?

And I'm sure of curious about what because people, of course have been trying to come up with creativity tests for decades and with sort of somewhat unsatisfying results, and you know, in my view, they they you know, they have some reliability and so on, but they just don't really seem to, you know, I don't know, get at the core of something. I could. They just leave me with sort of like a vaguely unsatisfied feeling even after I use them in my own research. So I could

pletely agree. And so we're funding We just selected sixteen research projects three million dollars total to for there to be new innovative ways of measuring imagination. I'm really excited about some of the approaches. We're gonna have our big press release of the projects. You can see where they are soon, so I can't mention them just yet, but

I at least they go beyond. So we wanted to make sure that for most of the proposal, for all the proposals, that they went beyond divergent thinking in some way. You know, there are diversion thinking tests like how man uses are there for a brick? So I agree with that. Now, let me tell you the way I've been thinking about this, because we just got a paper accepted in Nature Scientific Reports that I think presents the framework in a way

that makes sense to me. So you could I view creativity as a combination of general intelligence and imagination, or at least the interaction of the two large scale of brain networks that are differentially associated between those two with those two constructs. So we could think of the executive attention network as really strongly tied to variation in general intelligence. Right,

there's so much research supporting that. But we also, you know, the recent discovery of the default mode network or I call it, you know, in a q qt C way, the imagination network is associated with a different source of variation, and I think that that's a source of variation that is part of creativity. It's necessary. I think it's necessary,

but not sufficient for creativity. So what you see in people with schizophrenia is very difficult executive functioning, but they are up the kazoo on their default mode network functioning. They're like a walking default mode network. They have trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy and fact, which, like b A ten, we know is super important for that right, Like the you know, the very tip of the prefontal corte of the frontal cortex is crucial for distinguishing fantasy

and reality. So those who are just really really creative are are have a very strong capacity to be very flex and switching between these modes of cognition. So that's sort of how I viewed. I view a creative creativity's umbrella sort of thing that consists of general intelligence as well or executive functioning as well as imagination. And I view imagination is necessarily but not sufficient for creativity. So it sounds like I should have applied for it. Sounds

like I should have applied for one of your grants. Yeah, yeah, if anyone turns if anyone turns it down, you can always throw a hundred thousand my way. I'm kind of doing something similar, you know, really with with social intelligence right now. And incidentally, I think, you know, the default the default network is in a little bit one of the way one of those Worshock tests, right, Like, for some people it's the mind wanting network. For some people

it's creativity, imagination. Other people it's social. You know, it's sort of like what what does this do? It seems like it's everything, But i Q you know, is another way of you know, when I think about sort of like what would you know, what would a large scale brain organization have evolved to do? Yeah, I'm not so sure about imagination and creativity. I think I could be convinced, like someone who had really thought that through very carefully

might be able to convince me. But I'm it's easier for me to convince myself that, you know, think thinking about other people might have been the evolutionary purpose. Now maybe you can harness a network you know that's useful for thinking about other people and now think about objects and you know, and and you know, animals and imaginary

things you know, and so on. I mean, I'm not a good enough evolutionary psychologist or evolutionary neuroscientist to sort of sort all this out, but I think it's interesting that sort of this default network is sort of like, in a way, captured so much imagination, you know, captured so much of people's imagination and and made them you know, think about it in so many in so many different ways.

One thing I did want to say is, uh, you know, I think you know what one metaphor that I find kind of useful for thinking about you know, intelligence as as as defined by general intelligence or IQ, is it is sort of your ability to use your brain to

operate your brain like a computer. Uh, you know, so your your ability to do the things that computers are good at, right, like remember lots of stuff for a short period of time, you know, easily assimilate new information, uh, you know, do calculations, you know, step by step, go through things you know, like you know, juggle things you know, and memory and so on, all all the kind of stuff that you know, most animals can't do and and humans are actually really bad at, you know, you know,

a ten year old can program a computer to do most of these things better than humans can do, but there's a lot of variation and how well humans can

do them inside, you know, inside their own brains. And that's what you know, IQ is measuring, And maybe there's so much variation in it because it is a relatively recent evolutionary development that we have sort of a domain general working memory, and we're able to learn the meanings of lots of different things and just sort of store them forever in our lives, like vocabulary words you don't forget,

you know, and so on. A vocabulary test, it turns out, are great great IQ tests, as are you know, tests of basically juggling mental operations like you know, working memory and and so on. But you could write a computer program and like ten lines that could that could kill any end back working memory task, you know, as high as you want to go, right, So it's your ability to like use your brain as though it's a ten line computer program. You know that you know, that's that

simple and that complex at the same exactly right. But that but turns out like that's really easy for silicon chips to do and really hard for the brain. All of its marvels and wonders to do, you know, compared to something like recognizing faces or even you know, predicting whether Scott's going to be happy or sad at the end of this interview or something like that. You know that those things are much easier, even though computers would

have no idea how to do them. You know, that's because that involves messy emotions to really answer that question. This is this is and I think that's where things you know, it's actually a great segue into intuition. What a perfect segue. Actually, let's let's segue into like intuition. Let's segue in artificial intelligence and try to understand what are the why they to that puzzle you just pose. So, I mean, this is a topic that I'm im mentally

fascinated with. I mean, most people don't realize this because I never I never mentioned this anymore. I never did anything with a degree. But I have a degree in human computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon, and I was there was a time when it was a time in my life when I was like obsessed with with AI and like you know, and and accusing human computers and all that stuff. I don't know what happened to that Scott.

But all my friends went off and got like six figures, you know, jobs right after undergrad and I went to grad school and made like one figure. But they're not they're not here interviewing me today. That's exactly right, that's exactly right missing out. So so Jeff Hawkins has this theory of intelligence. I don't know if you've read his book on intelligence, have you? I haven't. I haven't read it yet. I've sort of heard of the actually always

one of the many books I own but haven't read. Okay, Yeah, so he he really argues that tells all comes down to pattern recognition. He's really big into this, this idea of and and pattern recognition. As we know, like our inteligence is very good at visual I wouldn't say really good, but you know it's it's it's okay at at like war level pattern recognition, it gets very but you know, our vision system is like infinitely better, right than an

AI computer. So but there's like there's pattern recognition that's conscious and there's pattern recognition that's unconscious. And this was the basis for for my dissertation. I was fascinating to see if there are individual differences and impulsit learning, which I think is another form of pattern recognition. And and what was by the way you were, you were immenseally helpful back then we're talking like ten years ago, like the first time we ever talked, and you're very supportive

of my dissertation. So I really appreciate that. And you know, I just I was fascinated to find that in pussit learning, individual difference in PUS learning are independent of individual differences in IQ, at least somewhat. And there's there's actually been further research on this topic. Some people have replicated some of those findings, and people are still doing research on statistical or individual differences in statistical learning. So but this

suggests to me that we have these different systems. We have like this this intuitive probabilistic system that automatically soaks up like the probablistic real structure of the world and stuff. But then we also have this conscious system that we have like access. It's almost like IQ or general intelligence or fluid reasoning, like people really got Raven's advanced progressive matrices are able to somehow like access consciously to make a decision. Do you see what I'm saying, it's it's

very interesting. Yeah, I think you know, the kind of intelligence if Hawkins says that intelligence is patterned recognition, to me, the kind of intelligence he's talking about is the kind of intelligence that lies behind you know, what we might call, broadly speaking, intelligent behavior, sort of the things that animals are able to do, you know, to survive and thrive and so on, you know, involves a certain kind of intelligence, right,

recognizing their food, you know, recognizing their predators, recognizing their mates, you know, you know, doing motor behavior. Like, there's all kinds of incredibly complex stuff that is hard for computers to do, and it's legitimate to call that a kind of intelligence. And that's what artificial intelligence has been trying to get computers to do for a long time. Right. It turns out that the things that that we call intelligence,

that are measured by intelligence tests, you know, easy for computers. Yeah, are pretty easy for computers, right. You know, so that the early you know, AI guys made a little bit of a mistake when they said, if we could just solve computer chess, you know, then we you know, game over. Right. Well, it turns out that was sort of like round one

that was like the easy level. Yeah, exactly right, that was the easy level of the game, you know, And even with all the progress in deep learning and so on, you've still got you know, networks that are trained to recognize cats, but then they you know, they misclassify, you know, completely other things as cats and so on. It's it's it's it's a hard yeah. Uh, it's a hard problem. But I think it's legitimate to call that intelligence of

a kind. And and by the way, I think your your finding was was exactly was exactly right about uh, you know, psychometric intelligence IQ tests not being very related at all to implicit learning, and I think there are many other cognitive abilities abilities of the brain which are not related to IQ, you know, so that this is you know, I I don't know if you ever go on quorra, the website Quora or not, but there are a lot of people on Quora who always ask questions

about i Q as though they have the lay view that sort of IQ is you know, the only thing that determines the mental ability of a person, Right, It's sort of like IQ is everything there. And I don't know sort of why they why they think this, Yeah, uh, but it's clearly not the case. Right, You've got implicit learning. I've I found a while ago that face recognition and I'm many replications of this face recognition ability is not related to UH to IQ. UH find you find variation

in that you present that in my class, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's you know, they're all like they all have small correlations, right like when you mentioned earlier, sort of

like the saturation of general intelligence. These things I've been working on coming up with these social intelligence tests, and it turns out it's really hard to make, you know, to make a test of any kind that people who you know, score high on IQ tests don't also have a little bit of an edge, you know, don't seem to have a little bit of an edge on But some things are just much less related to intelligence and

others and implicit learning and face recognition. I think a lot of the things that come from the default mode network. You know, well that's what I'm that's what i'm that's what I'm working on now. But but if you look at the ways people try to measure, you know, social ability, you know, those tests do low I mean, those tests

also measure intelligence. I think that's method variance issue. I think you mean because they're asking questions that are come back words no, no, because there are things that tap executive that rely heavily on executive functioning, they're like on they're still on the spot time. You know, most of them are time tests, so I think you still get you get the executive function you know aspect in there

as well. That's why I think I get the sense that it's I get the sense that on time tests, you know, wouldn't make like taking out the timing wouldn't really make that much of a difference. What about like actually like putting people though, like in front of each other is what I'm saying, Like, if we're talking about like social interactions, like I want more tests that where

you actually like have people interact with each other. So I'm my here's my view, and it's it's not really based on too much data, but but my view is that you know, you're right in a sense that a test of looking at pictures and pushing keys is going to be you know, probably more g low, more more

of an IQ test. Even if the pictures are human faces and the keys correspond to you know, emotions, that's probably going to be a bit more of a measure of IQ than having someone interact and seeing like whether they, you know, with someone else and seeing whether they you know, you know, make the right decision or something like that.

But still, even in that latter case, you know, like face to face interaction very naturalistic and so on, I think you're still going to find some effective of general intelligence, not zero, You're going to find some effective general intelligence. So that's something about what's kind of fascinating about it, the idea that there is this sort of something that general I mean, you know, like if if you if you control for everything else that you can possibly think of.

I bet you know Michael Jordan was a little smarter than the other basketball players, you know, I mean, you know, maybe maybe you know I shouldn't, you know, I shouldn't contradict myself and try to explain individuals right and so on, But I bet you would find that, like the players just score more points, you know, across all levels of basketball, are probably on average a little smarter than the players

just score fewer points. And why why would that be? Well, maybe they spend time reflecting on how they played, and they're better able to sort of remember and think through like some strategic aspects of the decisions they made. And it's not all a physical game, you know, and everything

involves some kind of mental challenge. And the idea that we can separate out, you know, executive function, working memory, you know, planning and things like that from from other things is a little bit of a myth because almost everything humans do involve some of those some of those things. Wow, you said so many different things that, Holy cow, Chris, Chris, Chris.

First of all, I'm really glad that you made the correction when you made the Michael Jordan example and then and then phrased it in a more scientific accurate way, because I you know, you know, the saying I'm very passionate about is wholeheartedly not assuming you know someone's potential, an individual's potential for success or something just based on the IQ score. So but but I think that you're probably correct when we're in terms of averages. So I'm

glad you made that quick correction. The second thing, so I think that you know as much as I've studied G and really trying to understand what the G factor for listeners, the G factors general is basically general intelligence the thing that I've I've learned is that it is so general because almost everything we do in life that

doesn't involve being completely asleep taps into executive functioning. So I think that you're in a deep sense, you're absolutely right, Like, it's very it's gonna be very hard pressed to find any awake activity that doesn't involve some level of conscious integration of holding something and working memory of you know all, and you go down the list of all the kinds

of cognitive functions that comprise the G factor. So I think in that sense, it's very, very difficult to find any test that doesn't significant or doesn't have a positive relationship to G or general intelligence, which is in a large reason what spurred me for my dissertation, and is that I was like, could maybe something unconscious, you know, be the thing? Could that be the thing? So so so I think I think we're on the same page

with that. Yeah, And this could have something to do with why you see things like, you know, general intelligence

being correlated with longevity, you know, or with health. Right, there could be lots of pathways, but one of them could be something as simple as you know, the better your executive function and the working memory, your working memory, the less likely you are to forget, you know, to transfer some piece of information from your nurse to your doctor that you thought you should make sure the doctor hears, you know, when you're in the hospital after an accident

someday or something like that, and you accumulate enough of those, you know, incidents over a lifetime where you know a little bit of a you know, a breakdown and working memory or executive function or something like that cause you to like forget one thing or transpose one thing or something like that. And you know, the build up over a long period of time, you know, could be you know, could be significant. And that's that's I think you you make.

You know, you make the excellent point that there's there's always a role for proper executive function in almost any you know, waking activity. You could be doing it, except perhaps when you're not aware of Right, That's that's exactly my point. That's exactly your point, right, you know. Yeah, And I think that it does matter though the dependent measure that you're what you're what you're trying to predict.

So what I found really interesting was this paper that Colin Deung and I and uh and other corburetors published in Journal of Personality recently showing that i Q was essentially irrelevant to predicting artistic you know, predicting variation in artistic creative achievement. And I think that's that's a non trivial finding. Do you know what I mean? Because I mean, I mean there might be some scientists I think it's a trivial finding. But I think you and I would

agree that. You know, there are so many different ways of expressing yourself in this world, of adding value to this world, of doing great in this world, and they're they're differentially related to how much they recruit general intelligence

brain structures. Yeah, well, I think this is a good time to go back and and and and for me to go back and say that when I say that, you know, if I assert that I bet they're is some small contribution of intell general intelligence to creative achievement, it doesn't mean that I'm saying that that's the biggest contribution. It could be that it's like, you know, five percent of the variants or something like that, or two percent

of the variance or something. It's just that it's not it's not going to be zero and and I'll bet you that. I mean, by the way, I just met Colin recently. He's a great you know, he's a great guy. Uh, you know, he's you know, you're you you know him, you know a thousand times more than I do. But he does really interesting stuff. You should have him on if you haven't yet, and uh plan to. I think that, you know, even in that case, like I think we have to be worried about we have to be worried

about things like range restriction and measurement. Right, So, like if if we measure creative achievement, you know, some of the ways of measuring creative achievement, as you know, involves sort of like counting up external recognitions of creativity, like, right, did you ever win a prize? You know? Did you

ever sell a work? You know? And things like that, and the ability to sort of negotiate, you know, that environment of you know, and during contests, you know, remembering to do things on time, you know, getting your work done and so on might be separate from the level of creativity, inspiration, technical skill, all of those things. So you know, it could be another case of where you know, when you when you try to you know, measure the

relationship between two things. It's still going to sort of be there because because of the same you know, sort of thing we've been talking about. But that doesn't mean that, like your IQ score should have any sort of determination over whether you decide to pursue art. Right now, that would be the stupidest thing in the world to decide whether or not to pursue art because of your IQ score.

I would be more likely to use the basis the extent to which you have artistic talent, but maybe even not then I probably would get some hate mail from artists for saying that, But but I would be more likely to use that as an indicator than i Q. You see, I'm saying, yeah, it's, it's, it's and it's there's some Well. The other thing, of course, is that there's so much of a huge you know, compared to how well you do something the first time you try it,

or even the first ten times or twenty times. There's such a huge range of what's possible, right, I mean we know that. Like, look, so someone learns how to play chess. You know, they get a rating of one hundred on the Chess rating scale, but then ultimately they could get a rating of twenty or twenty five hundred, and what that means, every two hundred points means you've got a three to one chance of beating the person

two hundred points below you. So you go from one hundred to three hundred, you've suddenly become good enough to win, you know, seventy five percent of the time against your old self. And you go to five hundred, and now

it's seventy five percent. And they are like so many levels of that that humans can get to just with the brains we've got, right that probably don't have that much to do with intelligence, Right, it's good to start out being a higher IQ person, but you know, the higher the high super high IQ person playing is first game of chess, you know, compared to the low IQ person playing his first game of chess is no difference compared to like once you've literally learned how to do

something with the first time you do it, there's so much of a bigger jump than you can make, you know, through training and practice and you know and experience and so on, than the variation you would see just in in the level of you know, incoming talent that people have that it's it's the talent cannot possibly be a limitation.

You know, it's only a bye. It's only a it's only a bias or a nudge, you know, in terms of what you how easily you learn things and pick up on them and so on rate of learning you I agree. So one of your this is related to one of your critiques of the ten thousand hours rule. I'm putting this in close, but you can't see it because there isn't video. I mean you could see it, but my listeners can't see it. Yeah. So, by the way, I can't find in ch Anders Eriksson's papers he uses

that term. It looks like something that Malcolm Gladwell coined. So this tech and I think Ericson has an article even where he says, like to stop blaming this on me, it's journalists who do did it correct? Correct? And now you had this a little bit of a of an intellectual version of a boxing match with Malcolm Gladwell. I

found that that very very interesting to watch. I was like eating my popcorn, you know, like this going one of your criticisms of the way that that pop or popular writers including Maquebwell, has represented the ten thousand hours or the nature of success. Well, you know, what are some of your abeasts of that? I think you I think a lot of things you already said relate to it, but I thought i'd give you a chance to speak

more openly about that. Uh. Well, I guess as far as the ten thousand hour rule goes, I think it's you know, from what I know, it's one hundred percent correct, and we shouldn't blame that on on Ericson. Maybe he said something like that to Gladwell wants an interview or something like that, you know, or maybe it was Gladwell's you know, you know, way of summarizing how he interpreted,

you know, Ericson's work. I do think Ericson is pretty far out, you know, on the tip of the view that you know, the nature doesn't matter, that there's no such thing as talent for basketball players or something, yeah, or something is nature yeah yeah, yeah. Well, in in this well, in in this debate, it would would be would be grouped in the same you know, in the

same place. So I do think Eericson, you know, for all his protestations, you know, he does take a very sort of extreme environmentalist, you know view, and then about particular kinds of practice being all that matter and so on, And from from the work that I've seen, it seems like, you know, there's a lot of variability in how much deliberate practice people put in to reach master levels of skill.

And one wonders, then, what explains why some people can get, you know, in four thousand hours to a place that some people take ten or twelve thousand or other people never get to? You know. Then we're back to talent and you know, and and and other things in preparation for preparation for learning, and you know, and and so on. And I thought that, you know, one of the you know, I thought that Gladwell's book Outliers, which is where he wrote about this, one of one of his very many

best selling books. And by the way, I own and have read every one of his books, and I will buy every other book he ever publishes, and I will read it. So because I personally always find out about interesting things from any well written book, you know, about social science or psychology or whatever. I find out things I didn't know before. I think you have to go and check up on them, you know, and like look at the sources you know and make you form your

own opinions and so on. But I find them very enjoyable ways to learn about stuff. But in that book, so in Outliers, I think he does, you know, he puts a big thumb on the scale of you know, environmental factors determining people's ultimate success, when he doesn't really and I think he doesn't really give you know, much

attention to variations in talent or cognitive ability. And it's in fact really hard to do a study that would actually let you disentangle those things, because if you do a retrospective study of people who achieved very high levels of performance, you may well find that the chess grandmaps put in more deliberate practice than the mere chess masters,

you know. And what could explain that, Well, maybe it's the extra practice that made them into grand masters, or maybe they were doing better at the game early on, so that increased their motivation to practice more, you know, or they started out with more talent, you know, and that made it easier for them to put in the practice because they were getting higher returns from the practice, because the more talent enables you to get more you know, learning out of a one hour or a two hour

three hour study session. Or something. There's so many things that I think the data don't really let us explain, so we can't settle on sort of like one extreme interpretation and then build our build our lives and our social arrangements around that. That's part of my objection. I guess that's great. I thought I was going to be like disagreeing with you more. I don't know why I thought that, but no, I mean, well, it could be.

It could be that when I you know, it could be that on Facebook and on Twitter, I say things you know more, you know more more and more categorically than I do in longer and longer conversations. I don't cry on Facebook. I feel like everybody else, everybody else is always so happy on Facebook. I'm just trying to balance it out. Look, you know, I want to bring something up with you that's kind of been half baked on my mind, but I want to try to articulate it.

Something that's been bothering me about the way that researchers, scientists use the equate i Q with the word intelligence, or they'll say like smart, you know, They'll they'll go into shorthand and start saying smartness or brain power and stuff. Well, hopefully scientists don't use the word brainpower because it's a horrible word. But yeah, I feel like something that bothers me personally about that from a justice perspective and also from a truth perspective, is I'm not convinced that the

low end of that poll is stupidity. I actually think that we need a new scale of stupidity where the high end is maybe like low stupidity, do you know what I mean? But but so for me, for general, So for me, for me, low general cognitive ability is not aquivalent of stupid and I think that's something that is a really I think it's it needs to be said more, you know, especially with how we treat children

and treat people with certain IQ scores. You know, I think there are people with lower IQ scores that you know, I think that there are people with high IQ scores that are incredibly ignorant and say really stupid things in a consistent alpha reliability sort of way. And as far as I'm concerned, no matter how like hi your Q are is, you're stupid, you know, in my view. So anyway, this is this is the first time I've ever kind of talked about this out loud, but I'd love to

hear your thoughts if there's any sense to what I'm saying. Well, I guess I have two thoughts. One one is that you know, the language we use in you know, casual conversation among adults, you know, is not necessarily the language we want to train, you know, children to use to

think about the world. Right, So if if I say, you know, if I if I say, if I say to my wife, you know, boy, you know, you know so and so something stupid today at work work, that's much different from you know, encouraging your children and not correcting when they say, oh, that kild never does you know, that could never does well in the vocabulary tests. He's stupid, you know, Like, those are two completely different you know things.

And I think it's okay and and I think it's okay to use you know, negative and critical words and so on when we're you know, when we're talking, you know, when we're talking as adults, and especially when we're talking about you know, acts, acts and not people, right, because even the smartest people can do stupid things, you know, and uh and and so on, and it's it's it's nice to have caller for language and not to be sort of like trying to take care with every word

we say and you know, and sterilize all of our sentences, you know, so that they can't possibly offend even people who aren't listening, you know. So uh, you know, so that's that's on the one hand. On the other hand, I think if I were making a stupidity scale, I would make the high scores be lots of stupidity, right, like let's go all the way and like, let's make

the high scores be lots of stupidity. And maybe what you're talking about is sort of it reminds me of like the inverse maybe of Keith Stanovich's you know, rationality, you know, attempt to measure rationality. I'm not sure, Like I really admire, you know, Keith Stanovich is one of my favorite researchers. I admire you know, everything he's done.

I'm not sure he's going to have really that easy a time ultimately disentangling rational decision making from IQ because the kinds of problems that that look at, you know, rationality and decision making are very heavily verbal and involve you know, manipulating quantities and thinking about functioning or thinking about things that typically you know, are acquired in like late college or graduate school curriculum, you know, like probabilities

and things you know, and things like that, right, you know, So I'm not sure he's going to succeed there, but I think conceptually he's in the right place in that.

You know, you can imagine all the geniuses, you know, at at Lehman Brothers, you know, who blew their blew theirselves up, you know, through a series of what probably it's fair enough to say we're stupid decisions, right and maybe you know, and maybe characterizing in more granular detail what was stupid about those decisions might be a little better than calling them stupid, you know, maybe lack of foresight, you know, impatience, successive risk taking, you know, failure to

consider alternative options, you know, be you know, following the herd. I mean, all of those things are kind of things maybe that you know, can be characterized in some ways as facets of stupidity in the modern in the modern environment. That's just the example that comes to mind. You may you may have completely other ones in mind, but certainly those guys were all scoring high in IQ tests. They

wouldn't have got hired by Lehman Brothers. You know, most of them if they weren't people who scored high on IQ tests. But the way you're talking suggests that you do it tie IQ so fundamentally to the words smart and so I would actually challenge a little bit of what you said in the sense that, like, you know,

the idea of like smart people doing dumb things. In my view, if you're doing a lot of dumb things like like like I don't care what your IQ score is, Like you're like that, like like to me, you're no

longer qualified to be smart at that point. Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm willing to I'm willing to divorce the two at some point, you know in the real world, Like like stupid as stupid does would be like a really like shorthand way of saying that, Which is funny because I'm quoting this, this is actually very fitting to my point. I'm quoting Forrest Gump. There then he say

stupid is what stupid does. And you know you see a lot of people, Yeah, you see a lot of people like with loroll i Q. So, I mean a lot of their implication here is that you can see people with the will IQ be I think you can still be highly intelligent, so I think, or at least be highly smart and and but of course we're me

and you. When we're using these words like we were's kind of like a wink wink, like we know that we have the scientific knowledge to be able to just differentiate, like we we both in the same page of what general intelligence is. You know, I'm just conceptually saying, I don't think that your general cognitoobility needs to be so innomly tied to real world conceptions of smartness and stupidness.

I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Well, maybe what needs, maybe what needs to happen, is that that it would it would be nice if we could wave our wand and sort of you know, make people in general, like all the people on Quora who are obsessed with IQ, you make them more aware of the reality of what I do test measure and what that and what that

construct you know, means and doesn't mean. And I personally like tend to when I throw around the word smart, I'm sort of meaning, you know, intelligent in the sense of, you know, scores well on measures of general intelligence. But but you know, the language is language, and there are you know, twenty different definitions for smart. Yeah, I'm sure,

just like that's not exactly my definition. Yeah, and so that's exactly your But I wouldn't I would use that, But I wouldn't use that in I wouldn't use that in you know, I wouldn't use that even in writing a popular book or a popular article, you know, let alone in the classroom or in a journal article. You know, I wouldn't say, you know, I wouldn't. That's just a way that I sort of tend to think about it. And maybe one reason I do is because I I

do try. You know, one thing I think I've learned from behavioral science, from you know, all the time I've been in behavioral science, is it's sort of like a constant it's a constant struggle to try to think like a behavioral scientist in everyday life and not you know, and not think like and not think like, you know, just a regular person. And it's not to say that

regular people are dumb or anything like that. But behavioral science, if if it means anything, means that we have learned some things scientifically about human behavior that we should then be able to turn around and use in our lives. So you know, I try to think about intelligence in daily life as the kind of intelligence that's measured by IQ test, because that's a very productive, you know, branch

of behavioral science. And that's why I think I get a little bit bothered when people use intelligence to sort of mean, you know, any any any equality that that's good, that you know, that that that we like about about people, or that helps them, you know, solve some of their problems. You know. I would never say that my electrician has

electrical intelligence, right, you know. I mean, even if he's a really the best electrician in the world, I would say he's a really good electrician, you know, he's incredibly

skilled at his job, you know. Or I might even say he has a lot of talent, you know, you know, if I think for some reason that he's the kind of electrician you know, who was always talented at this although I'm not really sure where I would get the evidence for that, because all I can see is like, how, you know, what kind of job does on my house. But I like to try to be a little bit

more precise in you know, in that way. So you know, but I agree with you that it's it's a it's a horrible mistake, you know, to call people stupid because they seem to be the kind of people who would score low on IQ tests and you know, and especially even even worse to you know, differentially treat them that way, you know, with respect to like opportunities. And so unfortunately, there's got to be some you know, there's limited resources,

right there's there's there's scarcity. You know, economics is a real thing, you know, so there's got to be some allocation of resources. We don't you know, we don't have unlimited resources for everyone. But you can, at the same time just say that, like how people score on tests, you know, set some kind of sealing or rules out you know, rules out possibility, which is all the more reason why we needed we needed to do the testing intelligently.

And that that's my whole point, you know, that's a big point, is that we need to be really intelligent how you know, what kind of data we are gathering and what kind of questions we're trying to answer to solve for person's needs. You know, I jokingly, but not half jokingly, but I made some day do this. I was talking to Adam, when I was talking to Adam Grant, and I said, people would be shocked but to hear this.

But I think I want to write a book someday on why IQ matters or or or like write a book on like I just IQ because I and basically popularized Nick McIntosh's book because like, I'm so well ground I'm so grounded to like like knowing that perspective and knowing what it is when scientists are talking about it. And these misconceptions, by the way, you know, they drive me bonkers too, Like these there are so many misconceptions.

I actually think there would be great utility and value for me to put aside all of my you know, maybe political beliefs and humanitarian and activist beliefs for for a moment and and talk about what the science of IQ means. And then maybe in the last couple of chapters maybe add in back in all that stuff and and and say what the implications are for activism. Anyway,

I might do that something I've thought of. I've thought of writing the same the same book actually, And you know, one one point that I think is important, you know, it would be important to make is that, like, let let's say you're doing you know, a sociological study or something like that, and you're trying to you know, understand you know, why do some people you know drop out

of school and some people not or something like that. Well, you could load all kinds of predictive variables into your your model, but if you didn't put in, you know, some measure of IQ, you'd probably be missing out, you know, on some relevant factor. Right, it's not going to explain everything. But if you don't include that in your model, you know, this is just the way, this is the way most

varied analysis works. Right, If you don't include that in your model, you may you know, you may put weight on things that you know don't have the effects you think they do in you know, in the actual in the actual world. So you know, but at the same time, that doesn't mean that there couldn't be some other world in which things were different. Right, So so IQ was incredibly important for understanding like the world we have, but

it doesn't you know, determine everything about the world. The future would be just like saying, like, you know, myopia is incredibly important for understanding you know, maybe you know how people did in life, you know, five hundred years ago, but then once they invented glasses and they became available for everybody. It no longer determines those things. When we're talking about group averages, we're talking about individual variation. You know, it is really uh, you'd be you'd be you'd be

wise to put iq into your regression variable. But when it comes to within the variation and all the different ways that an individual person can mix and match, you know, things to achieve things in life, then you start getting some very individualized short of intelligence. So anyway, I don't

know if that makes sense at all. I think there's a lot of misconception to correct, you know, about this concept of intelligence, because it has for some reason, you know, gotten into everybody's like every day thinking about you know, about the world, and that it can have a lot of you know, that can have a lot of consequences that they're not thinking straight about it. So I'm one

hundred percent with you there. I really appreciate this interview, Chris, and I'm going to spread this far and wide because maybe maybe this will help, you know, correct some misconceptions. So thank you so much for your time today. Okay, I'm looking forward to hearing it myself. Thanks for having me Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just

as performing a foker, look you write it. If you don't, as read the show notes for this episode or here past episodes if you go to the Psychology Podcast dot com