Kathryn Paige Harden || Genetic Inequality, IQ, and Education

be here too. I feel like we've been planning to talk to each other about this book for such a long time, so I've been looking forward to this one. That's true. That's true, And there's lots of areas of interest, overlap areas such as intelligence and the role of nature, nurture, free will, responsibility. There's so much, there's so much to unpack, and you know, I think we could kind of do a layer by layer. I think that's the best way of tackling the situation. But yeah, congrats on your book.

How are you feeling about how it's been received. Congrats on the New Yorker profile as well. Yeah, you know, I've been I honestly, I've been surprised, I think, you know, especially as the author of a first book and an academic press book. I really didn't know what to expect in terms of just, you know what, we're going to be my opportunities to talk about the book and get people excited about it. And the New Yorker article obviously kicked off a lot of attention. And so I will

confess to you I'm a little tired. I think I was a little bit delusional about how much work it is to promote a book. And I'm also teaching my class this semester, so it's a pretty busy season right now. But it's a good problem to have to have the opportunity to talk to so many different people from different perspectives about what I'm trying to accomplish with this book.

So yeah, you know, before we get to what you're trying to accomplish and all the juicy bits of the book, I just want to just start with this question that I think that this concept that's so misunderstood, and that's this concept of heritability. Yeah, it's amazing how many people use the word heritability. It's synonymous with inborn, you know, unchangeable. It comes with like a whole network of things that

that actually shouldn't automatically be associated with it. So let's dispel some of these misconceptions right off the bat before we get into anything else. Yeah. Yeah, So, I mean heritability is an old term, right, you know, dates from the early twentieth century, and it's really about to what extent is the variation that you're seeing in a group of people that you're measuring due to the genetic differences between that. So, you know, you can describe heritability very simply.

It is a statistic of genetic variation over total femotypic variation or total trait variation. But you're right, it activates so many ideas of if something's heritable, it's innate, or it's determined, or it's bound to be a certain way sort of regardless of the environment. It's immutable, or it's invaleable,

or it's inexorable in some way. I have written a paper in the Annual Review of Psychology where I try to reframe that a little bit and I talk about it in relation to another statistic that we often use, which is the Genie index. Right. So, the Genie index is a measure of how much wealth is concentrated or income is concentrated in the hands of few people versus equally divided, and that's a statistic that can totally change. It doesn't mean that there's anything about that distribution of

or income that's like preordained or destined. And we do see that genie indexes change in countries over time. They differ, you know, from from country to country. It is a

snapshot of what is, but not what could be. And heritability works very similarly, which is in this group of people that I've studied, individual differences and something whether it be height or intelligence or personality are related to genetic differences between them, But it doesn't give you information about what could be if there's something about that society or group of people that was different, or what it would be if you studied a different group of people of

the population. We're different, and so separating genetics can make a difference without genetics being destiny is just a really hard but I think a really important kind of set of ideas that we're you know, try trying as behavioral geneticist to pull apart for people all the time. Thank you, and I agree, But you know, some people will use the argument you just said as a way of making the argument that the therefore heritability is pointless because it

only applies to a particular population. But as you say in your book, I'm going to quote you, even if heritability estimates are entirely population specific, they remain an important summary of how much inequalities and life outcomes were caused by the outcome of the genetic lottery for that population. So I feel like there's a lot of well, on the one hands, on the other hands with you, which I like because I'm like that too, you know, like I have fifty hands, you know, on the one hand,

the other hand, third hand, fourthing. So you're not saying that, You're still saying that there's important information that can be gleaned from the herotability coefficient within that population, because it's saying something meaningful about what is as well, you know, there is what could be, which is a separate issue we're going to get to today. But you still argue

there's something important about what is. Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting to consider that some of the most vociferous critics of behavioral genetics or the usefulness of heritability the statistics have been from not from social scientists, from from biologists who really I think are tempted to think that if something is not universal, if it's not a law of nature that's true for all people at all times,

then it's not then it's not valuable scientific information. Whereas, uh, you know, as a fellow psychologists, you know that so many of things that we study are socially contingent, socially situated, historically contingent, and so we're interested both in the possibilities of how things could be if our social structures were different, or if we intervened in some way, but we're also interested in the people we've studied, you know, when we're

thinking about like heritabilities are population specific. You know, we've studied from using twins and measure genetic methods. You know, people from America, from the UK, from Iceland, from Scandinavia, from Australia. That's not the whole world, right, that is, that is a narrow slice of global diversity. And also we're interested in what's happening in those societies. Right, So you're right that I'm I'm like you are kind of

both and thinker. It's not everything, and it's not useless either. Great, it's like saying, you know, let's say I'm growing up in a really poor environment where there's not a lot of food. It'd be like saying, oh, well, we don't have to worry about giving them more food, because if we put them in a different environment where they had food, then they'd be fine. So let's just not worry. I mean that and that, and when you put it that way, it sounds ridiculous, right, Yeah, So that was just on

the spot analogy situation. Yeah. So another misconception about the heartabilitic co efficient, which is very common misconspession I see, is people think it somehow means anything about parsing the sources of nature nurture terms within a person. Yeah, which is ridiculous. It's only about it's only a a parsing variation among people. It doesn't have a meaning within a

person because within a person, nature nurture are always intertwined. Yeah, I mean, in the development of any one individual, it's

always nature and nurture. And you know, I give this example in my book where you know, if you went out to eat at a restaurant and someone has said, well, what's more important for your restaurant experience today, having salt in your food or having a chair to sit in like that would be a ridiculous question, right, Like you obviously there's there is the food that you're eating, and then there's the environment in which it's served, and those

are wrapped up together. You can, however, say, if we're looking across restaurants, do restaurants that have we're seating have more dissatisfied customers? And that's a very different question than you know, to what extent is this? Are these things

combining within the development of an individual. So again, heritability is I say, it's both more limited and more useful than its advocates and its critics often a lesh it's giving us information, but about a very particular question, which is, you know, within a group of people at this particular place, in this particular time, what are the differences between them? How are they related to genetic differences between them? Great? You know, I've always a metaphor that will always resonated

with me was nature via nurture. You know, this idea that within a person and again I'm going to zoom in on the within person level for a second, zoom out from the heritability level, but to the within within person level. It seems like you can't separate You know, you can't say, well, you're born with the lucky genes, and let's put that on the side. You're born with

a walky environment, let's put that on the side. It seems like there's some meta luck that involves the molding and the constant interaction and interplay between the two within a person that you can't ever tease those two apart

as two separate things within a person. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, I think this is part of what makes genetics fascinating to people but also dissatisfying to people, is that, you know, when we're trying to retrospect on our own biographies, we're as storytellers, we're trying to say, like, well, it was this and then this and then this, But we don't get to see the counterfactuals for our individual lives.

And so we can tell ourselves stories about how we came to be, but we can never really know for sure. And then science seems to promise some sort of more definitive answer, which is why I think people get fascinated by the study of genetics and relation to aspects of ourselves that we think of as part of our identities. And yet scientists like me are always giving some dissatisfactory answers, which is like, I can't tell you that you are

the way you are because of your genes. I can just say that on average, people are different from one another because of their genes, which doesn't feel nearly as as gratifying to our storytelling selves, I think, as as as we would sometimes want it to be. Yeah, it raises so many issues. One issue that a lot of this raises is what what can one take credit for?

This is a very fascinating question. I sent you a paper by my intellectual hero, Abraham Asloh, he was supposed to be his APA address, and it remained unpublished, on biological injustice and free will. I think I'm going I want to write more about that someday, but I just want to kind of just just riff on this a little bit. He asks, what what can one take credit for in one's life? You know, as you point out in your book, you're like my daughter who's a has

verbal precosity. It's not like she really should take credit for that, you know, But I want to just just to push back in that, because you don't know the extent to which that robal precocity was a result of her I mean genes. I mean you didn't measure her apologic. No, I don't mean that. I'm extrapolating from what I know generally about the heritability special language crop disorders. But again, you know, why does any one individual child turn out

the way they are? You know, I think any parent will tell you that their children feel miraculous and mysterious,

like where did where did this person come from? You know, like she'll say something and I'm like, I you grew in my body and now you exist as a separate person that from me, and you know you were you were your own personal Explaining it that individuality is always impossible, but we you know, to go actually your thing, Like we do know that on average, if you're exposed to a normal linguistic environment in the home, that most of the variability and whether or not you have a speech

language problem is heritable, and so you know, thinking about to what extent, like I think with that example, it would be very strange if we were like, well, we need to hold you know, my childhood struggles with speech, like we need to hold him responsible for that, right Like that that was again I think part of the luck of the draw and so the relationship between genetics

and responsibility is just really really interesting to me. And I think so many of the controversies that we have about herotability are actually really underneath them conversations about who should be responsible for what? Are we passing the book on social responsibility? Absolutely, and what I'm really interested is the other side giftedness, intellectual giftedness and creative giftedness. And

I wrote a whole book on this called Ungifted. That was the title of the book, just trying to understand, you know, this kind of assumption that a lot of schools have that intellectual giftness isn't born to a certain degree, and that we can measure it really early in life and that it doesn't change. You can't become you can't start off unngifted and then become gifted. Is kind an assumption in our education system that I've been trying to challenge that notion. I like to see it more as

a moving target, you know. So, but it just makes me really think about you know, I think people might like you may even in reading your book, I think you fell prey to that a little bit yourself and saying, well, if my daughter is verbal PRECOSSI should I give her credit for that, kind of assuming that maybe that came from the genes, you know, whereas I would actually push back a little bit for the sake of an exciting conversation between us, to just say that, you know, for

some that may be the case, but I actually think we need to leave room in our education models for giftedness to develop in a result of something where they didn't have the inborn or in I don't board, but they didn't have the proclivities to the genetic proclivities that would make it easy for them. But actually, even though even if it did make it harder for them to get there, they still got there at some point, and then we do give them credit for that. So I

want that kind of nuance. Yeah. So I had two thoughts and sort of in in response to that, are

in association to that. And first is I just find the language of giftedness to be so fascinating, like a gift from whom, and I think it relates also to it just kind of a more general thing that I hope we get a chance to talk about, which is like how we think about skill in America and what skills are valuable like I think so often when we're talking about giftedness, there's this kind of implicit assumption that the same skills would always be valuable sort of regardless

of where the child found themselves. But if we think about, you know, which skills are valued by other people in an economy, you know, we certainly overlook some gifts in terms of their talents, and you know, kind of overly fetishize I think some other gifts or some other skills in relation to that. And also, I mean, I think

you're right like that. There's this, you know, in writing the book and using that example of my kids, you know, I'm trying to my intention of telling that story is to try to get at I want to trouble people's intuition that genetic difference is always allied with superiority or inferiority. I think from the perspective of a parent, that attitude of I can these people can be valuable to me in equal ways, even if they differ in skills that

are valued differently by the external society. It could just be really hard to convey in a non abstract way. Whereas I think, thinking about the perspective of a parent, that idea becomes more intuitive. But you're right that they're like, what's missing in that story is change over time, right,

and developmental plasticity, I'm thinking. So the other kind of thought I have in response to this is I had read David Epstein's The Sports Gene a while ago, and then I reread it after I finished writing my book, and I was really struck by how similar some of the content and themes were in a very different domain

of human skill. He's talking about athletics, and he has this whole chapter around, you know, never being the fastest runner at the beginning of the season, but being the person who responds to practice, and what a gift it is in a way to not be the fastest one, because it's motivating him to like put in the work and the effort. And I that part of kind of like plasticity and agency and acquiring skill I think is missing in that description that I have about how I've

seen skill differences in my own family. Absolutely, and I'm a big fan of David Epstein's work and him as a person. He's a friend and a really good guy. So yeah, absolutely, let's let's riff on this a little bit by me quoting Maslow from that unpublished he said, there's a danger in adhering to a single pecking order or a single monolithic hierarchy of superiority and inferiority, which seems like that could come could have come right out of your book too, that that line which is exciting.

Perhaps ultimately each human being is a hierarchy and to himself or herself, because in the final analysis, one's task is to be oneself well, and of course there's no rival in the whole world for this task. I love that. I love the way right. I love that. I love that. I think that's wonderful. I mean, I also think it gets out, you know, so much of so much of the controversies that we have around genetics. I actually don't think they're about genetics. Like we get agitated in conversation.

Genetic starts to get attacked, starts getting attached to traits that are used in an economic system in this kind of strict pecking order of inferiority and superiority. And it's you know, I say this in my book that people are very wary of genetic determinism. And we've you know, we've already talked about like why heritability does not imply

genetic determinism. But I think we also need to be wary of what I call this kind of economic determinism, this idea that some skills will always be can always be inherently more valuable than other skills in this really kind of strict way. And so I love this idea that Mas was talking about, like when we you know, the problem is even that there's genetic differences between us. The problem is that there's a pecking order that's so inflexible and so intolerant of different domains of human skill.

And I really like how you talked about the history of intelligence testing. And because the history of intelligesting is is intimately in America, I want to say, in America is intimately bound up. You know. The goddard, you know, Willis Turnaman had very good intentions. Ben They had really good intentions in France, you know, with the initial attempt at a test. He didn't he never called it the intelligence test. It was the Americans who put that label

on it. He wanted to be able to come up with a test that would help people who needed remediation in an education system from those who didn't need a remediation, kind of sort that out and figure out a better way of figuring that. In France, they never ended up using his test, and he died a feeling like a failure.

At the very end of his life. There's a really poignant essay he wrote where he said, I'm starting to see how the people in the other soil, American soil, are starting to use my test, and it's and it's made me regret that I ever did this. So it's really a sad essay, you know, and very poignant. So in America there really was intimately tied up to the

science of intelligence. Testing, eugenics, the idea of the feeble minded, right, all these things were so people rightly so have a knee jerk aversion to the science of intelligence, which I think is unfortunate considering that I do, and I know you agree with this as well. This is why we're kind of the one hand the other hand kind of people.

There is a legitimate science of intelligence. There is a field that is studying it from an individual differences perspective and finding that it does predict lots of things in life. We can't sweep it under the rug, And there is partly genetic basis to it and which which influenced our

biological aspects that influence our intelligence differences. Yeah, I mean it's very similar to you know, what we were just talking about with heritability, whereas it's not you know, people can respond to the over interpretation of a scientific idea with this kind of pendulum swinging the opposite direction. There's this is useless or can only be used for harm and trying to articulate that both the limitations and the

value of something. So you know, we know that the types of problem solving that are tested by standardized IQ tests do predict things that we care about, including you know, as you know from the Lothian Birth Cohort studies, how long people live. At the same time, they're not markers of all human talent or skill, and we wouldn't want to live in a society in which everyone was you know, very very good at spatial rotation and nothing else like that would be not a society that we want to work,

we want to live in. And so how to recognize both the diversity of skill but also the kind of the fact that we can measure something about people that matters for their lives as it's currently constructed that both and is I think often really hard to convey to people. Yeah so so so exactly this. You know, they ran on Twitter this this what you just said. So people say exactly this. You know, but you know, just to play a little yes end here, improv game. You know,

intelligence is you know, not a measure of human worth. No, this, This is the point you're trying to make here, is that none of these specific heritability co efficients of any individual psychological trait anything is a measure of the totality of a human being or a measure of the intrinsic worth of a human being. Yes, definitely, and I and I would say further, we have to go beyond lip

service to that idea. So when we're thinking about the ways in which labor markets are structured, in the ways in which educational systems are structured, in the ways in which we people have access to the ingredients of a good life, if we're saying that intelligence is not a measure of human worth, then I think we need to consider to what a center is our society set up so that people, regardless of how they end up in their measures of intelligence or in their genes, relevant to

kind of any specific skill have access to those ingredients of a good life. We have to go beyond just saying that we don't think that i Q equals human worth to actually reflecting that in how we set up social structures. I was going to talk about that kind of part two of our conversation, but now you bring that up, I just maybe I'll just dive right into it. You know, it's it's a very interesting argument because it seems to it feels like it feels a little political.

It feels like a bit political. Yeah, I think that's right. I feel like it's hard. It's hard to It's just hard.

There's no way around it about that philosophy of life you have about what what the why we're here on earth to help the vulnerable seems to conflict with other political views or even personal philosophies of what you know, we're here on earth to do, which some people might say, we're here on earth to develop our excellent to put all of our attention into developing our own personal excellence as much as possible, and that that'll have a trickle

down effect on helping the vulnerable. So how how in the world does one extricate Where does the science end begin Yeah, it's you know, it's a really you're I mean, I think you're picking up on such an interesting and valuable tension, which is also related to like, what is your role as a scientist and as a science science communicator to be transparent about your own political values with

which other people might agree. So I think of this project as very much coming from a space in which I have my personal political and moral commitments, and I have a research career around studying genetic difference in a relation to social behavioral outcomes. And I know from long experience that intuitively those two things, which seem really coherently connected in my own mind, strike other people as wildly unintuitive, right, Like,

what do you mean you are egalitarian behavior geneticist. I really think of this project as saying, you know, these are my these are my values, This is how I think the science is consistent with that set of values. I think articulating that as clearly as I can is important for helping shape the larger conversation that we need

to have about how to use genetics. But I don't think that you know, any one scientific finding commits you to anyone political ideology or moral ideaology, so that you know, walking that line. I don't know how successfully I did it in the book of trying to say, you know, this is how I make sense of this, given what I find valuable about you know, given my moral frameworks. You might not share them, but there's relatively few voices that are articulating how these how these things go together.

So maybe you'll learn something from the interpretation of the science or from the way I see the role of luck in human affairs that might you know, expand the kind of space of conversation that we have right now. Look, you bring a fresh perspective to this topic. There is no doubt about it. I uh. In my own career, like with a gift, that I tried to be as impartial as possible, in the sense that I tried to present all the evidence and say, well, what does it

all mean? You know what you know, kind of lay it all out there on the table for us all to look at, and then say, okay, what do we make of the truth now? And so I really back and like what you're doing because I get a similar sense, even even if we don't necessarily agree one hundred percent

with the politics of it. I would say that you're a really important, uh, balancing force for for the study of behavior genetics, and especially particularly the people in the general public who take the behavior genetics findings and then start to use it for their own protocol purposes. And and along those lines, it would be impossible not to mention Charles Murray and the Bell, which you're sick of talking about. You know, you didn't tell me that, but

I'm sure you're sick of it. But we would be remiss not to mention that because I feel like, if it's a seesaw, the sea, the sea, and the sea Saul part on the right is the link between behavioral genetics research being used to discuss the futility of certain social programs and the left sea saw being just like your view, which is is not the opposite. It's just a balance of of you know, look, there is there

is stuff we can do, you know. Yeah, I mean I actually feel like in the seesaw around social social intervention, psychological interventions, educational interventions, I actually feel like I'm not even on the seesaw, like I'm trying to, you know,

introduce a new dimension to this conversation. You know, I really feel like Most of the back and forth has been people one group of people saying because things are genetic, genetic, or heritable, some measure of inequality is inevitable, and our social programs are sort of destined to failure, and another group pushing back against that and saying, obviously we can intervene,

and and genetics are a distraction from that. They're either a moral distraction, or they're a resource distraction, or they are just like un minding support for this, and let's like minimize where where's my point is? I do think interventions can be successful, but figuring out where to intervene that's going to be the most effective's really really hard to do as a scientific problem like politics and morality aside,

like just as a social science problem. Designing successful interventions, especially designing successful interventions that are preferentially benefiting people who are most vulnerable rather than the kind of more Matthew effects. He's a really really hard problem. And so it's not genetics as a distraction from social policy or genetics as

a limit on the effectiveness of social policy. But genetics is a tool for social policy, which I think is a perspective that's really been missing in most of our conversations for decades at this point. Yeah, you know, I've read. I was curious. I went back and read Arthur Jensen's much maligned how much how much can we boost i q's classic achievement in Harvard? Have you read the full report? Have you read this full thing? So I read it. I reread it in preparation for this, and I reread

the Bell Curve. Yeah yeah, and and I wanted to just see things as they are, not as uh yeahs and this and this, and I want to do something. I want to I want to defend Arthur Jensen for one second to a certain carse. I don't think anyone's all good or all bad, right, or everyone's all has the truth, and everyone's either all truth or all wrong. So I reread that report, and and what I got a sense and reading that report is he he says straight up in even the abstract that there are environmental

and their genetic and non genetic influences on intelligence. And he mentions things such as prenatal facts as nutrition, let the pregnancy, maternal stress, and interurine environment has an effect on infinite intelligence. And he says post needle environmental influences have not been found to markedly effect IQ, with the exception of extreme misolation. So there's maybe where he goes

a little arright. But well, something that is fair that both him and Murray point out is that even if we could acknowledge that intellgto intelligence differences between one person and another, we're not talking about groove differences yet between one person another has a genetic basis and has an environmental basis. No one has actually ever come up or have found a program that has substantially increased IQ. So to a certain degree, they're actually right in that, right.

I mean, have you discovered anything, any large scale program that has substantially moved the needle on G or general intelligence? Yeah, I mean I would push back against that. I think we have evidence. The thing is is that they're pretty broad brush things, right. So, like we clearly know from some adoption studies that you know, being adopted into a wealthy family relative to staying in the like the home environment by your biological children, by your biological parents. This

is that can can learn er. Turcheimer study that use I think Swedish registry data from a couple of years ago does appreciably increase average IQ scores. And then I also think that, I mean, this is very much the Heckman point, which is that even if things don't move IQ,

they might move other things that we might care about more. Right, So, do we really care about measured IQ scores or do we care about labor market involvement or avoiding contact with the criminal justice system or kind of other sort of ingredients of a good life adult outcomes not so much

measured IQ scores. So, and then there's also Elliott Tucker, Drab and Stu Richie's meta analysis of just the effects of education on IQ, right, so, staying raising the compulsory school leaving age or I think we're going to see a lot of interesting research in the week of COVID related schooling disruptions about how formal schooling and different forms of alternative schooling have affected trajectories of cognitive development. So I don't think the message is that nothing has been

shown to work. I think it's more of those really cludgy you know, being adapted into a wealthier family or going to a school longer. What are the key ingredients of those? Can they be replicated? Can they be scaled? That's the part that I think is really challenging to do, but I would I would definitely push back against the idea of focusing only on a Q scores as our metric for successful intervention. Oh and I completely agree with that,

and I not those points are excellent. I'm trying to see if we can give the benefit of doubt at all to the Jensen and Murray in this in the sense that their focus was intelligence and there and maybe they were being good scholars at the time, you know, in a sense, in a sense Jensen was was brave for saying a lot of things. He was saying based on the available evidence, on what is the current evidence. This is I think from the sixties he wrote this paper.

It was sixties or seventies, the current the available based on the available evidence base, and I'm only going to

focus on intelligence. He made the point that a large scale, socially governmentally sanctioned program has significantly if you improved it now, if you were wanted to be a good scholar, and you probably would have come to the same conclusion right in, if you're rating that report, given the were only focusing on intelligence, you were only you know, So I'm just trying to give him a little bit of the benefit

of doubt. I went, we're gonna get to a group differences in the second and where I give him less much less of a benefit of a doubt. But I think that you know, even uh, you know, Charles Murray and the Bell curve, you know, he uh, he stuck to a lot of the available evidence, which was nice, and he did even in the group differences section, did say we need to be worry about about extrapolating this too much to the group differences level. So I thought

that was interested. Just rereading his report, I was like, that's interesting. But it is a good exercise to go back to the primary sources rather than you know, as you know, what you think someone has said and what they actually said when you go and read them or

not not always the same thing. I I mean, I think it's a good point too, in in and in the ways in which I think sometimes the response to Jensen and then Murray has been counterproductive, which is, if someone is blending things that are definitely true, could be true speculative and contentious, there's a temptation to throw the baby out with the bathwater, to say that all of this is bullshit. You know, all of this is wrong, and I you know, this is going back to our

conversation about intelligence. So often the response to the Bell curve was like, there's nothing, there's no real science of intelligence. Heritability is meaningless. We can't study anything with IQ test scores, and I think that's counterproductive because it's so easily countered, right, Like, it does not take that much of a Google scholar search to find that IQ test scores predict things that we care about in populations. So you know, I've definitely

this is an ongoing project. But I think thinking about, Okay, here's an argument that's causing me ajuta, Like I'm responding negatively to it. What is the what is the falsehood here? And what is the truth here? So that I don't back myself into a corner where I'm saying really intellectually indefensible things. And obviously that's always a moving target and

I could always be doing better with that. But you know, I think the extent to which the Bell curve points out that you can measure a que and it predicts labor market outcomes, backing yourself into a corner saying that IQ doesn't predict labor market outcomes doesn't really do you much good. I think in countering the arguments that maybe people find the most objectionable about murraicisis absolutely so let me just lay out the argument I made on and

un gifted. Because I try to lay out on the table all the available evidence and say, well, where do

we go from here? You know, it seems to me like probably futile, But I would go Stephenna, say, our red herring to focus money on large scale, socially governmently sanctioned programs to specifically target IQ or general or even the G factor, you know, general intelligence, that it would be much much better use of resources to help with individual students self actualization in their own way, in their own time, their own developmental trajectory, their own dreams, desires.

You know, you have a lot of these intellectually precocious kids and gift education classrooms that are bored out of their mind because we're treating them like there are these robots where the only thing that's value about them is their IQ score, when what they're you're really yearning for is meaning, purpose being things that are fundamentally human things we don't need to separate out a special room for you know, the purpose room, and then kids who don't

have the purpose, we don't need to be doing that. You know, there's something fundamental human that we all have.

So you know, my one on the one hand, On the other hand is that on the one hand, I've published data up showing that the correlation between G, the G factor extractedly extracted from a large battery cycle of IQ tests, and an academic achievement factor extrapolated from all the different areas of acatic achievement is the leading correlation is zero point nine to sixly, like, that's that's what's

put that on the table. Let's put it the twin project. Like, we give people in our sample a battery of executive function tasks, which are very basic cognitive ability tasks, as you know. So we give them twelve EF tasks that top working memory, inhibition of dating, and switching, and these are things like the end back right, So these are things that are not the direct target of instruction by schools.

A general fractor of executive functioning in our sample is nearly one hundred percent, is over ninety percent, and Naomi Friedman and her group a Colora have replicated that finding. So we're seeing this in you know, very highly heritable general factor of how well on these computer based lab based tasks children you know, regulate and switch their attention

and can keep things in working memory. Recently, my graduate student just completed a project where she obtained official school transcripts from all of the kids in our sample, and that include their their Star test scores, right, so the tests that they have to be take at the end of every year, mandated by the state of Texas. I talk about this result very briefly in the book because

it was still in progress. But what we find is about a half to three quarters of the variation and kids star test scores is related to heritable variation and executive functioning. Right, So we have this thing that's testing, yeah, like what you know, that's curricular tide, how you are learning the math, that'sa on your third grade classroom, and then we have you know, these working memory tasks, updating switching tasks, and a huge chunk of the variation executive function.

We do see evidence of the kind of SES disparities that are commonly that are you know, well known, but those SS disparities are much narrower than what we see for executive function. Relationships. So all of that to say, I am not in any way surprised by this academic achievement. General intelligence we see that very consistently across across school districts,

across schools, across schooling systems. Is that the sort of things, the sort of problem solving and cognitibilities that are tapped by these standardized tests are really similar to you know, individual differences and what you're learning in school. And I just don't think that we've had a conversation about how to make sense of that from a policy perspective. Yeah,

you're quite right. And I also really resonate a lot with the argument about flatting the hierarchy, because you know, I would argue that while these questions exist, we we create these correlations to a certain degree because we created tests unwittingly that are basically IQ tests, thinly designed, and then we said those are the gating mechanisms. Those are, and we created a hierarchy. If you score high in

those gating mechanisms, you're worthy of doing anything in your life. Really, I mean that to the extent to which education is a opens doors, and it's a very large extent to which higher education opens doors we created this system. So you know, that's why I'm all about a self actualizing school.

You know that treats all students as human first. And yeah, well so I would add to that self actualization And by that I mean actualization of the talent and skills that you both that you want, you know, as a developing autonomous agent like find and intrinsically interesting and valuable and that you feel like as your path towards you know, contributing to society. That needs to be matched by those

self actualized skills finding a place in our economy. Right, so you know, to say, we want you to self actualize your skills, but to be in a country where we have, for instance, like very poor labor protections for many forms of work, is encouraging the actualization of things that then make people vulnerable to you know, I think forms of social oppression and and and so we need both.

There's both the self actualization. But then how does that self those self actualized skills find and net to a life that isn't precarious, that isn't deprived, that isn't a press that isn't exploited. The word that I'm looking for in labor markets Uh, those, I think those two things have to go together. Dare I say transcendence matters. That's the that's the argument of in transcend is that self actuation is really just a bridge and when done right,

it's purpose, it's functions to erase itself. That's that's a mas that Maslow said in a beautiful essay, it's functions to erase itself because it's a it's it's making such an impact on the world in a positive way, helping society that there is no boundary anymore between self and world that when done right, when done Yeah, that's a beautiful idea. Yeah. Yeah, this is why I'm such a mass that I need to make it talk talk about

too much. But uh, but it just it resonates with my own sort of inherent Uh I don't I don't want to use the word inherent in this discussion, but my ownness sort of intrinsic value system. Okay, So I do want to talk about group differences. You say that we must not fear that any statistical result on group differences will compromise a commitment to anti racism and racial quality.

Why is that? Gosh, such a good question. So I think of the you know, the anti racist Project and the racial equality project as being again it's about do we have a system where everyone can both in your words, actualize the skills and the talents that they have and that they want to develop, and also that those skills and talents can be connected to the world in such a way that they live a life of you know,

security and lack of exploitation and lack of oppression. Oftentimes, there's this idea that again, the hierarchy that we've currently constructed around certain forms of skill is inevitable, and so you know, the goal is to try to equalize everyone with regards to this one fetishized skill, which are like the types of problem solving that are tested by a Q task. And I think that's a really limited vision for what equality means. In some of my talks, I

and I briefly talked about this. In the book, I talk about like, as a very concrete example, the Americans with Disabilities Act, where we're seeing you might differ in your functioning, but you are entitled to equal enjoyment of and use of this place of public accommodation. And so I'm going to recognize difference and what I'm equalizing here is your ability to participate as a citizen, your ability

to inhabit space that uphold and reflects your dignity. I think if we take that frame, and what we're trying to do is create a society in which everyone can participate and contribute, the question of, uh, what are the causes of average group differences and measured psychological characteristics becomes a lot less important, right, It's just it's drained of

a lot of its toxicity. Uh So, rather than thinking the race is set up, this is the This is the neoliberal economic race that we're in, and we need to we need to debate why some people compete differently in that race, differently than other people. Let's interrogate the race to begin with. Let's interrogate the systems of competition that gate access to to sharing and wealth to sharing, and prosperity to sharing in uh, you know, access to leisure and access to that care. That's the thing that

I think we should be interrogating. And if we set up those structures correctly, I think the question about you know, the I think the group difference, this question loses a lot of its loses a lot of its negative potency very interesting. Thank you for leting that out. That argument.

Do you think that there could be any valuable information gleaned once we know more, once more data, large scale data and across different cultures comes out on you know, genome wide association studies, for instance, once the data comes in more on group differences, do you see any valuable insights coming out from that? I mean, I think that, I mean, of course there's going to be more valuable

insights as we get more data and more information. And I think that the you know, the direction of g WOSS and how it's been conducted within kind of narrowly defined and ancestry groups, and what people think that they will find as they do more kind of large scale population genetic studies is you know, it's such an active

area of dialogue even within population geneticists right now. Again, I want to come back to are we using the question of cause, like what's causing group differences to deflect us from the question of figuring out what we need to do to structure society regardless of the cause of differences between people. So generally, I think that the lesson of genetics has been like it's full of surprises and

it's you know, it moves in unpredictable directions. I personally don't think that we're going to find, even with lots of more data, any sort of condensing smoking gun about genetically caused differences that fall on racial lines. Like that's my prior, and I also I think wonder about how

much how useful i Q tests could be. I mean, I cite the work of Harriet Washington in my book, you know, as there's more attention paid to like what she called environmental racism, as there's more attention paid to the ways in which the environments of children are unequal with regards to their exposure to toxicounts, to their exposure to the impacts of climate change. I think it's going

to become a thing. There's a possibility that we're also going to learn a lot more on the environmental side too, if we if we invest resources into that. Yeah, you know, you've made a good point. I've play on sham Harris's podcast.

It's a point that the weight uh Flynn, you know, of the grade of the flint effect also has has made you know there is a there does exist a significant on average IQ difference UH in America Africa between African Americans and whites, that difference does exist, but that doesn't say that the cause of the genetic environmental makeup

that it would account for that difference. And it could be that once you remove all the environmental disadvantages and forms of racism and forms of all these things that are whole suppressing that score among African Americans and average, you may actually find is a scientifically open question, which people like Murray don't ever open up, that possibility that African Americans actually score higher on app You don't know, we don't know, so why would you so it kind

of by assuming that it's going to come out some day that there is they're always going to be lower to me is kind of like implicit. Like if I was like on the there on the stand and I was a lawyer, I'd be like, you're admitting some sort of unconscious mind. Yeah. I think that there can be some sort of ugly racist views sort of lurking under people's fear of genetics sometimes because it's like, well, what are you afraid that we're going to find exactly? I don't.

I think a lot of times people's fears around where the science will go can mask some can can be kind of indicative of some of their own prejudicial priors. I think that's right. I also would say that no scientific find that ever comes out is going to justify racism, and I think that's a point that needs to be made as well. I mean, what's the worst case the

worst case scenario. Let's say that, like, all this data does come out someday and it shows we look at the readout and it shows that all the stereotypes are true. I'm trying to I'm just like being cheeky and coming out, what's what's the So we would read the read out and it's like none of that would justify anything. That the racists are still going to be racist. It's not like the race just are waiting for that data to come out so that they can start being racist. They're

already racist today. And it's also not like you are waiting for the data come out to decide you're still going to be you. You're still going to care about help treating individuals individuals and helping people who are vulnerable. Right, So, in a sense, in a sense, in a really like I'm trying to really like zoom in really close to this the heart of This question is what is that? What is the data on group difference ever really gonna matter?

This is the question I'm trying to get to. Do you see I'm saying, yeah, I mean, I guess you know. One way I think about this when one thought that keeps kind of running through my head as they hear you talk, is well two things. One is it is just amazing to me, like what a black hole of gravitational force the subject of group differences is I know

of any data? Right, So you know, I've written a whole book that's taking on any number of controversial issues, and the one thing that I say at the very beginning that I cannot really speak to is racial differences. I am talking about. It is not a genetic construct, right, It's a social construct that's correlated with ancestry, but isn't strictly genetic. And all of the studies that are in my book are about people who are of European genetic ancestry,

who would all be racially identified as white. And yet there is this this association where it's I think it's even stronger than the like heritability is innate association, which is that if you're talking about genes. You must be talking about race, and I just I just want to reflect on that, right that, like it is, it is

kind of inescapable part of our discourse. And I really do feel, like, you know, on the one hand, clearing up misperceptions about what the kind of work I do has to say about quote unquote racial genetic differences is important. On the other hand, I just think there's so much more heat than light in this subject, Like it's just so much, so so speculative in the absence of real evidence, and so corrosive to thinking about what we do with the information that we do have that you know, I

don't really know what to do with that. I just kind of want to reflect on that as a as an observation about the conversation we point point very well taken, and I would nothing I would like more than to now transition to about taking equality and your proposals about that. But I will say and we will transition to that.

But I will say that because it is such a hot topic and because so many people, you know, in a way a certain segment of people have controlled the narrative around that topic, that I think it's important for people like you and dare I say, me and others who would like to think through the you know, the practical, meaningful applications of this research in a way where the goal the explicit goal. We're not shy to say we want to help people. The goal is not just you know,

some people say, well, I'm a pure scientist. I just let's look at the readouts and it will speak for itself. I don't think that the data ever speaks for itself. Particularly, I don't think the data on group differences will ever speak for themselves. So I think there's a certain responsibility there. But I hear you, and your point is taken. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if anything, the pandemic

has shown us that data never speaks for itself. Right, data, There is data, and then there's how that data is interpreted, and how it's used, and how it's met with skepticism, and how you know, we in every area of science, the data is doesn't stand separate from the communication, interpretation, and used to which the data is put. Yeah. Yeah, excellent, excellent point. So let's talk a little bit about this, uh, this this great synthesis which is the heart of your book,

and that's really what you're passionate about. It's not like you were passionate about writing this book because you wanted to talk forever about group differences, intelligence and the genetic basis of it. Well, you're really passionate about about really moving the conversation forward through this great synthesis, which is grounded in what you call anti eugenicism. Being an what does it mean to be an anti eugenicist? You out five principles? This really kind of I think this is

really what you're passionate. Is correct me if I'm wrong? Yeah, So, you know, I think of eugenics. Eugenics and genetic difference are so tightly wound up in the popular imagination and in the imagination of scientists themselves that it's hard for us sometimes to imagine that we can observe genetic difference is in socially valued outcomes without that being inherently eugenic.

And so when I'm describing anti eugenics, I'm trying to say, what are the kind of flaws or assumptions the bad ideas wrapped up in eugenic thinking, and then what is the response to them, And in a particular, how can we formulate a response and a framework that isn't we just shouldn't be doing this research, right, Like, let's just you know, I don't think there's putting the DNA genie

back in the bottle. I don't think that there is undoing the knowledge which people already have that genetics makes a difference for people's lives lives. So given that and given this eugenic history, how do we move forward? What

are the next steps? So? I think one of those ideas in eugenics was around we already touched on, was this idea that genes are destiny, that if something, if someone has a certain set of genetic characteristics or predispositions, you know that the effects of that are sort of written in stone and they can only be changed through you know, biological means that the social programs or social

policies will be ineffective at fixing them. Right. Whereas I think of anti eugenics as saying, Okay, given that we have data on genetics and human outcomes, what are the mechanisms by which that happens that will give us opportunities for intervention via social policy, or via psychotherapy, or via

new education. The second kind of big framework of eugenics that's very hard for people to kind of step away from and see, is this idea that genetic difference means genetic inferiority and superiority, and that's a pecking order we

were already talking about. This. Is why I talk about my own family so often when I talk about this, is because it's easiest often for people to see how difference does not translate into differences in worth when they are thinking about their own kids, or their own siblings, their own own families, where you can see, well, maybe it is because of genetics that I have struggled with this relative to my sibling, or one child struggles more,

but I don't. One of my children is not more valuable to me than the other one, Right, So I think separating difference from hierarchy is a really important component of anti eugenics. And then the third part is thinking about, well, like what policies proceed from those ideas. The atrocities in the United States where we're thinking about our eugenic history, were about justifying abridging people's freedoms, particularly their reproductive freedoms,

most notably involuntary sterilization laws. When I was a grad student of the eu VA I had a practicum year at Western State Hospital in Stanton, Virginia, which is where they used to do sterilizations of women, you know, well into the middle of the twentieth century. So that history

is there, it's real. You know, carried Back, who was the the the subject of the Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case, the infamous one that's you know, three generations of imbeciles, is enough that upheld the constitutionality of sterilization laws. You know, she is buried at Charlottesville, which is where I went to grad school. So that history is very real.

What is the opposite of that? So if eugenic policy is I'm going to draw in genetics to justify abridging people's freedoms to justify inequalities and resources and welfare, the anti eugenic policy is one that guarantees equality of freedom's resources and welfare or sort of regardless of the outcome of the genetic lottery. And by that we don't mean that everyone is necessarily going to make the exact same

amount of money. Right Like the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act is not saying we are going to equalize income. It's saying we're going to equalize people's ability to participate in a public space. And I think that metaphor can be extracted out to think about not just participation in physical spaces, but in economic spaces and educational spaces, in access to healthcare spaces. Anti eugenics is ultimately about can we make social structures that are good for everyone, regardless

of the hand that nature dealt them. That is what I think of is a kind of a good litmus test for a good social structure. I love it. So what is the new synthesis then, and why do we need it? So? I mean, I think the new synthesis is exactly what I just told you, which is separating, you know, genetic difference from genetic hierarchy and thinking about using genetics as a tool to identify targets for intervention

rather than as a barrier to intervention. I think it's necessary because the science is accelerated so rapidly, because we can observe these differences, we can observe them easily. We have this really power tool. If we don't come up with a new scent ass then we're trapped in the same dilemma that we've been in for decades, which is, let's try to understand what works for kids without taking

some account this major source of variation between them. And let's try to convince people that genes don't matter when they already know that they do and they can see evidence of that in their lives. And I just don't think that's a very successful strategy moving forward. Yeah, I agree, and I love what you're saying in the In the main theoretically, I want to zoom in on what this would mean practically to take into account a child's genes. I really want to double click on this because I've

been critical. I've been critical. I've looked at the current data a linking trying to predict individual polygenetic traits to their educational and the predict that it's too too weak, you know. I mean, look, the scientists get excited when you see, like at a group level, like, oh, we found a point three core relation and statistically significant. Okay, that's great, Okay, but it does suggest we shouldn't sweep under the rug the role of genes. But when you

look at individual prediction, it's not that great. I wouldn't want to I wouldn't want to hang my hat on being able to decide whether or not a child was born with quote unlucky genes based on just their polygenic score. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah? No, And I totally agree with you. You know, I think a lot of times, you know, most of our correlations in psychology

are in point three land, right. You know, if we know, if we know that your family had this income in this year, that's correlated at around point three with your likelihood of graduating from college. So that makes that introduces a new kind of interesting litmus test of is what someone proposing they're doing with a polygenic score, would it be sensible if it were the same proposal for a different social science variable, one that we ordinarily kind of

are used to thinking about in psychology socio economic status? Yeah, yeah, socioeconomic status. So let's say you had a column in your data set that was your classic this is my compositive occupational status, income, and educational attainment of parents, and it's correlated at point three with kind of everything in your data set. Is what people are proposing to do with polygenic scores, would it still makes sense to do if instead that you were doing it with this sas variable.

What's clarifying about that is the applications that are less

sensitive to uncertainty. So, if you are doing a big study of parenting practices and trying to figure out which one of these are correlated with academic achievement, it is routine to control for social class, right, Like, it would be impossible to get the study published without control and for social class, because there would always be this question about like, well, is this you know, is this about this parent or is this just like an indicator of

rich versus poor families? And it's a really massy predictor it's only correlated point three, but it acts as a filter of how we're a bust. Are these associations to this kind of just like really broad brush stroke thing if there was that, but in an attempt to control for genetics, and this doesn't even have to be necessarily a polygenic scores, Like, is your correlation between parent behavior

and child outcome still there? When you are looking at a sample of adoptees versus you know, kids raising their kids being raised by their biological parents. Does that solve the problem of how hard causal inferences in psychology? No? Like, does that move the ball towards addressing a problem that's been pointed out for decades and still is a really glaring flaw at the heart of a lot of correlational

psychology research. Yes it does. And so a big part of what I'm saying about taking genes into account is you already do this. You already use massy social science variables to try to control for things, and now you have a new layer of information, why are you using it. That's a big part of my suggestion to my fellow psychologists, my fellow researchers. I hear you, and I share the frustration that social scientists, particularly like sociologists, never control for

genetic variables. I don't think I've ever seen a sociology study where they're like, let's talk about the sociology of crime, but let's, you know, control for their polygenics score. So look, I completely agree that this new synthesis is going to have to take serious that they're merging data in behavioral genetics.

I guess what I'm getting stuck on is the the population level prediction goal and the individual Uh, Like, I'm really getting into the into the nitty gritty of like the concrete policy implications for you know, because in school, in our school education system, we do sort kids. You know, you make the gifted education program if you score this cutoff on an IQ test, we sort you into special

education if you're have a learning disability. I've argued that kids can be twice exceptional, you know, they can be both gifted intellectually and have a learning disability, and we completely haven't haven't made room in our education system for

twice exceptional kids. So I guess just I'm trying to think of your very worthy anti eugenesis uh goal, but just on the ground practically in school, because, for instance, I read Katherine Astbury and Robert Poeman's book g Is for Genes and are very different than a lot of

you see what I'm saying. You see what I'm saying. Yeah, So when I think of I mean, I say this as one of the principles in the back of my book, which is like, given how uncertain polygenic scores are, uncertainty around their prediction and the opacity of their mechanisms, it's really a mistake to think of them as diagnostic tests

about people. There are a source of information about environments. Actually, So when you say, okay, right now we track people into gifted programs, I immediately go to Well, that's been a target of policy experimentation. You know, Let's let's give everyone a giftedness test. Let's get rid of gifted programs entirely. Let's change the age at which we have gifted and talented programs. We see the same thing for math, Right, Let's de track math. Let's change how we track math.

Let's detract math for ninth and tenth grade and then retrack it in the eleventh and twelfth grade. What's so interesting to me scientifically is thinking about genetics as a tool for seeing who is being helped and who is being hurt by these policy changes, because by measuring someone's genes, you're getting a set of information about them that is not reciprocally affected by the policy change that they were

associated with. Right, So this is I mean, this is related to what a ton of people in intervention and education are talking about, is the heterogeneity revolution. Not just thinking about what are the average treatment effects of things, but what are the individual differences and the responses that

we're seeing to education. Those things can be closing genetically associated gaps, they could be widening genetically associated gaps, they could be keeping them exactly the same and moving the mean they'd be having no effect whatsoever visa be genetics, and we don't know anything about that information. So that is the part where I feel like, you know, I give an example in my book of an evaluation of this UK policy reform that happened a long time ago

that raised the school leading age. That was able to show that it worked on average to reduce body size, but that was very small, but it had a much bigger effect amongst people who were at hygienetic risk for obesity, And we would have missed the fact that even though it hasn't any of any effect on average, it's helping the people who are most at risk for HIGHBMI the most. Without that genetic information, that sort of thinking could be

applied much more regularly when we're thinking about education. But again, that's using genetics as a tool for telling us something about our environment, not as a tool for telling us something about an individual kid. Gosh, there's so much and everything you just said, so much, it's so rich that there's various components I need to break down for a second.

So one major difference as I see it, between kind of your argument and the Pullman Aspbury argument is I could see them more inclined to want school psychologists to now have readouts of the apologenic scores of the students to help inform what track they put them in, whereas I don't see you as making that recommendation. I'm not really advocating for like any sort of like little Tommy has a lower apologize or a little shoozy sort of thing.

I think of it more like, you know, like if you go to like the What Works clearing House, which is a website created by the Institute of the Department of Education, and it's basically like a list of well, here's outcomes from RCTs, like is there any if you're a school district or you're a school administrator and you want to know, is there any evidence that me, you know, using this math curriculum in pre K has an average treatment effect that isn't zero for numerousy and first grade.

You know, you could see that on what we're in it grades like the quality of the evidence. What it doesn't tell you is anything around for whom is it working right? Is it narrowing income gaps? Is it widening income gaps? And we see that there are for reasons we don't understand genetically associated inequalities between people. So I don't think that the school. You know, in my ideal world, the school administrator is not like, oh, we're personalizing the

education for Tommy versus Suzy. They're singing, Yeah, this math curriculum, I know, it doesn't seem like it has a very a fact or it almost looks zero. But the analysis of head and eighty shows that it's it is working for the kids who are most at risk for poor outcomes. So that's the one we should go with versus this other intervention that you know might have a bigger average treatment effect, but it's just exacerbating inequality for instance. We

don't have that information right now. Yeah, I hear you, and and I think there's just no way around the politics of this at the end of the day, because the question is what is the focus. Now, I'll sell what I was with you. You said let's give everyone a gift in this test. I was like, I'm with you, And then you said let's get rid of all gifted talented programs, and I was like, I wasn't with you there. I mean, I'm just talking about people of the proposals

that have been thrown around right. Oh yeah, you're saying, if you look districts in America, what are they doing right now? Are saying, let's give everyone to get a talented test, Let's get rid of gifted and talented, let's change you know, these are things that are being proposed in our you know, radical experiments that are being done in education right now. Yeah, yeah, so you weren't are

you weren't advocating for getting rid of gifted talent? I advocated saying that there's already experimentation with these types of things happening. Who is being served and who's not being served by those? Gotcha? I think that America has never reckoned with the equity versus excellence. I don't even know what to call it, because as I don't want to live in a zero sum world where we either have equity or we have excellence, you know, I think we

need to work on and nurture both. You know. I think that with a lot of these kids that are falling between the cracks, we almost act like the best we can do with them is to remediate them, as opposed to, well, are they capable of excellence? You know? So that's why I think that aspiring to to excellence and having gifted talented programs, but that allow all children and the opportunity is the way forward as opposed to completely acting those programs and only focusing on remediation. So

that's my own sort of view. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think you're right that there's this inherent tension between tension.

That's the word for it, thank you. Yeah, tension between focusing on the absolute levels of skills we want this individual child to have, you know, the most ability to do academic things as they possibly can, and the distribution and relative ordering of people's level of educational skills, and then there's also kind of a tension between are we focused on you know, the few people that are going to be at the highest level of performance or you

know that making worrying about the floor, basically making sure that all children have a minimum. And I agree with you that I don't think that those are necessarily opposing goals.

But when you start thinking about heterogeneity of treatment of facts and who's being served by our policy changes, I think you're absolutely right that they do surface these these tensions and these maybe more implicit conflicts that people have about really like what is the point of education, you know, is it about is it an equity promoting institution, or is it an you know, getting as some few people to a certain level of technical skill that they are

going to be, you know, inventing things that push society forward. Both of those things are true, but they can kind of mash up against each other around certain policy decisions completely. Perhaps I will put the last word here to because it's just it ties together. So much of what we talked about today, victory or success in life should not be defined in terms of someone else's defeat. This point

must be stressed. I also syndicate that there are so many different kinds of quality, so many kinds of capacity, and so many jobs to be done, that virtually anyone can be very good, even in the ordinary social sense, that is successful in hundreds or thousands of different ways. Therefore, we all can be proud of our accomplishments and become autonomous and self actualizing. Psychological success is a non zero

sum game because everybody can win. Rather than seeking to defeat someone else, is better to seek excellence and perfection in one's own accomplishments. So I kind of wanted to end on that note and say thank you, thank you Page so much for putting forward this egalitarian geneticist view that you have, this new synthesis, this anti eugenicist idea. It is a much needed counterbalance. But really I think

synthesis is the better worth than counterbalance. It really is a synthesis of a lot of different truths that exist on both the left and right side of political ideologies. So thank you so much, and for thank you much for having me. This was a really thought for booking interview and I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to this

episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.