Todd Rose (Part I) || Rethinking Intelligence

fulfilling lives in a thriving society. Prior to Populace, he was a faculty member at Harvard University, where he founded the Laboratory for the Science of Individuality and directed the Mind, Brain and Education Program. Todd is the best selling author of Dark Horse in the End of Average, and his most recent book is called Collective Illusions. What you're about to hear today is part one of a two part series. Todd and I had so much to talk about that

we had to split it up into two parts. Today you'll hear our common interests in redefined intelligence and the amazing, amazingly important work Todd has done along those lines. Todd has argued that we really need to move away from these traditional metrics of measuring intelligence and valuing general cognito ability and what he refers to as jagged profiles, which all of us have. You know, all of us have amazing areas of strengths and amazing areas of weaknesses or

profound areas of weaknesses. So I really like Todd's model of looking at intelligence because it really does emphasize the point that there's no such thing as average. So, without further ado, I'll bring you Todd Rose. Hey, Todd, it's so great to have you on the Psychology Podcast today. Hey, thanks for having me. Scott. I wanted to talk to you for quite some time now, and on this podcast.

I love your work. You know, we're obviously going to talk about your new work, but can I just start a second and go back to your original work and the experiences you had in education, because I know we really bond over that, and would you mind kind of talking a little bit about how you felt as a as a student. Are you okay talking about this or

are you kind of you've moved on. It's funny, you know, you and I have very similar stories, and in my case, you know, I was a professor for quite a long time, got my doctorate, from Harvard. But before that, I was a high school dropout. And it's funny, it's at this i'd say, when I say a high school dropout, I actually failed out with a zero point nine GPA, which I kind of feel like now that like you have to work really hard to do that poorly, like, but

you have to be willful, willful. Yeah, yeah, like it just just to not even get the social promotion right out of it all. But you know, not too long after filling out, my girlfriend who's still my wife today, found out she was pregnant, so we were I was like high school drop out with a kid on the way, and you know, it's just look what I experienced through most of education was just how poor of a fit it was between this sort of standardized institution and me

as an individual. And for a long time I just internalized that as something wrong with me. And it wasn't until out of sheer desperation I was able to go to get my ged, go to college, figure out how

to make it work for myself. And then I ended up at Harvard working with a guy n in Kurt Fisher, who was like this preeminent scholar, Yeah, in this science of the individual and realized that actually so much of it was more in the design of the institutions that were built around an average person that we now knew

didn't exist. And so it really actually made me quite angry because I felt like I'd internalized so much of that poor fit as a reflection of me and my abilities, and so that really fueled me in terms of wanting to really dive into this new science and understand individuality and what that means for not just education, but like it's already transforming you know, things like nutrition, you know, cancer research and treatment, you know, all precision medicine, so

you know, out of personal experience, you know, fuel intellectual curiosity that led to my career. Yeah, thank you, Todd. I was wondering if you'd be okay with us dedicating this episode to Kurt Fisher to the memory of him. He passed away recently and may he rest in peace.

I've never mentioned this on any of my podcasts, but when I was deciding for grad school where to go to grad school, the two places I was deciding was to either I was accepted to work with Kurt Fisher at Harvard where Robert Sternberg at Yale and that was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make, but so easily I could have ended up at Harvard and have been your colleague. I'm not saying you made it, you made a bad choice, but it could have happened. Yeah, yeah,

look like I mean it. It was like I'm so I'm so glad to to dedicate Yeah that it's Kurt was a brilliant scholar. My life would be completely different without as a mentor. You know. I dedicated End of Average, one of my previous books, to him, and he just he was such a kind person too, like just just such a wonderful human being. So thank you. Agreed, Absolutely agreed. And his work was pretty revolutionary in the field of

phenominal psychology and his thinking about intelligence. And that was the main inroad that I had with him, was I was this like twenty two year old kid who's like, I wanted to redefine intelligence. So I didn't know how, but I wanted to. I was like, we got to read inteligence and I I didn't have it all figured out yet, not like I have it all figured out out.

But what I really liked about his approach was this kind of like very it was like micro like looking at the moments, the full process of the creative process and at a really detailed level that allow us to more fully capture what it means to be human. Could you maybe talk a little bit about his approach that he pioneered, the mythological approach, which is quite innovative. Yeah, So his specific theory was dynamic skill theory, right, and to your point, like it was situated in broader dynamic

systems theory. And you know, it's so funny because psychology in general is one of the few fields that was born out of statistics in some way, right, Like it's like, but statistics is funny, right, because my dad, who's an engineer, he said, you know, it's really funny about psychology. It's like the only field that he felt like that uses math that abstracts away from the phenomenon you're actually trying to understand, right, Like you're trying most psychology is about

understanding individual human beings. Otherwise we're be sociology, right, and yet we rely on statistical methods that absolutely cannot tell you anything about individuals. They can tell you about groups, and then we just assumed that it says something about individuals.

And so Kurt was part of a small group of people who were starting to think about the application of dynamic systems theory in some of these or these methodologies that were capable of modeling individuals and thinking about how that you could scale up an entire science that gave you generalizable statements starting with individuals and Kurt's Kurt's application of that was to development, which is kind of funny, right, because the development is by definition change, right, and yet

we're using methods that are incapable of modeling change, so you know. And so what was so fascinating and amazing about Kurt's work and I actually think dynamic skill theory was so far ahead of its time that it will be it was will look it will become more and

more mainstream as the years go on. But his ability to model an individual with their full complexity, right, the multi dimensionality of a human being, and import certainly in context, right, because so much of psychology abstracts away from the context, and we talk about personality types or things like that, And what Kurt was able to show is it just you can't describe behavior that way. And if you start to take person in context, seriously, not only can you

get accurate statements, your predictive power goes way up. And so I just you know, it taught me a lot about how to see the world. And man, I just I can't say enough about it. Just how grateful I am to have been able to be in that kind of intellectual environment. Not so much Harvard, although I liked Harvard. That the environment Kurt created the way he would push

us to think for ourselves and do big things. And then one of the things he did that was so remarkable was when he founded the Mind Brand education program with Howard Gardner, he intentionally said, we are never going to be at each other's throats. So many other programs pit students against students, and he created a culture with norms where we really had each other's back and we

were proud of each other. And to this day, you know, just the friends that I have that were I'm not trying to make you feel bad for making the wrong choice, but I feel I know, I'm like, does that make the wrong choice? I'm on your podcast, so something went right? Yeah, but it no, it's wonderful. It's really wonderful to hear about that. And I'd like to double click a little bit on your unique contributions as well, which have been

very significant. We're obviously both standing on the shoulders of the giants that are Kurt Fisher, Harro Gardner, Robert Sternberg, etc. But I love your own way of thinking about this. To answer this question about your own theory, I want to go in by asking this, do you see any value to the standard psychometric model of like you testing? Do you see any value in the standard model before we get to your model? I do not, Look, I mean, I guess that might be too harsh, right, Like, here's

my problem with it. It's like what are we trying to do? Right? Like so much measurement we forget, like what really is our goal? And a lot of the standard psychometric models, you know, they made assumptions about human beings that are demonstratively false now, right, so we can forgive them, whether they realize that back then or not.

And most of it is really about trying to compare people with either other people or a hypothetical average person, right, so that you get a nice spell curve and we can say something about your relative rank. Okay, look, is there some value that I don't know? I don't see a lot of value in it. I'm open to the idea that there's some value that I'm just blind to.

But what's frustrating to me is in my mind, whether in education the point should be the cultivation of human potential, the cultivation of uniqueness and potential and helping people convert that into contribution. In that case, I need to know more about you as Scott, your your aspirations, your abilities, and from my perspective and from Kurt's perspective, who I

learned it from. You're not separating ability independent context is kind of a silly statement, right, and so I want to know who you are, what you care about, your what we would call like a jagged profile of abilities, and then work like crazy to create an environment that really fits you so that you can develop your full potential make your best contribution. If that's the aim, then

a lot of traditional psychometric models don't they fall short? Right, I guess is the most generous way I could describe it. Thank you for elucidating that. I love the idea of a jagged profile. The psychometrics can still help you understand a person's jagged profile, though, right, Because I got a lot of educational opportunities in inhibited, like a lot of things were shut down for me because of my global

IQ score. But interestingly enough, a couple of years ago, my friend Rex Young, the neuroscientist of intelligence, He's like, I don't buy that you're stupid. I'm gonna I'm wanna look at your brain. And so I went to University of Mexico and I and he gave me an a full battery IQ test. He gave me a brain scan everything. And the conclusion which I wished my ten year old school psychologist looked at, is that the real interesting data

was in the jacket profile. It was it was the fact that I really stuck legitimately at visual mental rotation. It's true, and I could own that. But I'm and I say this with all due humility, but this is objective, verbally gifted, verbally gifted. So they totally missed that. I mean, even though I loved writing, I loved I wrote novels when I was eight years old, nine years old, but all that was ignored, All that was ignored because of the global IQ score. So I think this is your

point right to a large degree. And what's great, here's the thing and so now I'll come back from the extreme because I think you're exactly right. Look, when we think about yeah, so it's funny because we've known that since the very first days of IQ testing that when when you look at sub scores and their patterns, right, there's just massive individual variation, and we just willfully ignore that. Right, Because here's the thing. One reason why I believe we

ignored it is it's very hard to rank patterns. But I can rank a single score. And if what I'm trying to do is rank people, I just what do I do with a jagged profile? Right? But what you see is and what we find is like this is true. You know I wrote about it an end of average. Whether it's body size or mental abilities, people all have these jagged profiles. Meaning like so something like body size is not one dimensional, right we think of it that way, small, medium, large,

extra large. It doesn't work that way. Really, that's just a shortcut because of production constraints. Right, So everybody's on the high end on some aspects of like size is multi dimensional. And what's fascinating is is that those dimensions just don't correlate with each other like we'd like to think they do. So it means that you're going to be high on some things, in the middle on other things,

and on the low end on other things. Right, everybody like and you know, the US Air Force learned that the hard way in the fifties when trying to design design fighter jet cockpits, right, that that didn't really fit anybody. But in the mental space, you know, to your point, So, the most interesting thing to know about you is the jagged profile. Right, And this is not to say that people don't have weaknesses. Of course we all do. Everybody does.

And so now, so understanding that profile starts to tell me something. But then the question again is what am I trying to do with that information? And traditionally, and maybe it's not the psychometric methods so much as the intention of the people that we're creating them. It was like, I don't really care about that. I just need to find the people who are sort of gifted who deserve more resources. Right, It's like a sorting mechanism. Okay, so

let's take even the jagged profile. Well, if you ignore context, then you're still in trouble. Right, So what I'll share a story because it's funny because people think it's a good thing for me, but it's just it's hilarious. So remember that on the gr like, I don't know when you took it. When I took it, it had you know, quantitative verbal and then they had the analytical reasoning, which I don't think they have anymore. But it's like, and give me these questions, like I was, Oh, yes, it

was brutal. I got almost a zero percent on the analytical and the same year they switched it, they added the writing thing, and then I got almost a perfect on the writing. So I was able so lucky to not submit the zero percent. The story is in the Gifted. Actually I have the story and unlifted. It's unbelievable. Right, So here here's my story. So I am. I have gone from a high school dropout zero point in n GPA.

I am about to graduate from Weaber State University with a three point ninety seven Honor Student of the Year. My advisors said, you should apply to grad school. I'm the only person in my family to ever go to

grad school. There. Back at that point, I didn't know anything about that, and I had to take this standardized test, and I suck at stantidaized tests, right, well, I went on Saturdays to these prep sessions, and I was taking all the practice exams and like you, so I finally got up the quant score and the verbal score took like reasonable, you know, okay, I won't be laughed out

of the room. And up until two weeks before I had to take the actual exam, I had never scored higher than the thirteenth percentile on the nather cour reasoning because it was just I could not get my head round. It's like armor, John has four rows and things, and corn can't be by peas, and peas can only be second whatever. And then it'd be like, okay, what's planted in row three, like third from left. I'm like, I know, wow, I don't okay. So here's what's crazy. There is a

real point to this. So I'm sitt here thinking, okay, well, I'm just not analytical right, like it is what it is. But I'm certainly not going to get in grad school. Probably not. You were not going to yell with a zero on this. And I was like, so I'm at my parents' house trying to say because we lived in a four hundred square foot apartment with kids, so I had to go there to study for it, and I was so frustrated two weeks before I to take it

that I flung my pencil across the room. You shouldn't do that, right, I control myself, but like as my dad walked in and about hits him and he's just like, what's wrong with you? And I finally told myself like I don't get this, and I'm really frustrated. And he's an engineer by training, and he walks over and he looks at it and he goes, well, that's a degree of freedom problem. And I'm like, yeah, that doesn't help me.

I don't know what that is, right like, and he says, he said, well, how are you trying to do that? And I tell him I was trying to dot my head and he said, well, you have terrible working memory, which is definitely true. He said there's a visual way to do this, and he said look and he shows me this this diagram. He said, use that And I tried it on one problem and it was really easy and I'm like, that can't it can't be right, Like,

it can't be that easy. But all the answers I had in the back, you know that every other answer they kept working for So I went to my to my tutor and I said, hey, look my dad told me I could use this. Does this work? And he goes, well, yeah, I guess you could use it. I just don't need to. That's what he told me. I'm like, wait, okay, so no kid, there's no kidding. I go two weeks later and I only missed one question on the entire analytical

reasoning section. Wow, you went from thirteen yes. And so here's the thing. One story could be, look how smart I am in terms of analytical reasoning. The other story, and the one I think is correct, is that there's no such thing as aptitude that doesn't involve strategy. And it's like understanding that someone with my jagget profile with poor working memory, a strategy that is related to doing it in your head was going to make me look incoonfident.

But getting the right strategy applied to my individuality and suddenly I look like the smartest person in the room, like I never forgot that right. And it's again, it's not about me being smart. It's about recognizing that we all have jagged profiles, and those jagged profiles have they are good in some context, poor in others. But there is always a strategy that can work for you, and we don't teach kids that right. Like, so I try

something I don't do very well. Well, I'm not very good at it right, And to me, that's whether they amend it or not. That's the legacy of a lot of the psychometric approaches and the way we've chose chosen to use them in society is we're left thinking that we're smart or dumb mediocre, when in fact, as Kurt Fisher would have told anyone who would listen, the truth is a lot more complicated. Absolutely. When I was an undergrad, I was I studied with Herb Simon on the expertise

approach and my senior honors thesis. Never again, I've never talked about a lot of stuff I'm telling about today on this podcast, but I think you'll appreciate this. My senior honors thesis, I was looking at isomorphs. I was fascinated with the idea of isomorphs, and I wondered, if you give people like patterns on IQ tests like ABC,

what's next? You know, and they get harder and harder, and you take people who are musicians, but you just convert to musical notes, but it's the same exact pattern. Is there a correlation between your ability to solve it once you have the expertise versus the IQ type item?

And I found the correlation was very low. So people could when they if there were musical experts and they heard the same a complex pattern in music, they were like, oh yeah, dun duh, dun duh, the next one is but they couldn't get the same one right if it was just in numbers, you know, it's there were isomorphs. And so I think this relates to what you're saying to a certain degree, you know. And that was senior

honors thesis. That's amazing. Yeah, and so think about just think about, like what I took away from all this research is we have woefully underestimated human potential, Like just wolfully underestimated. And maybe that was okay in a standardized industrial society that really didn't have a lot of use for divergent intelligence and diverse outcomes. They just did what

do you do with it? Right? So what we were doing is trying to come up with tests that could sort people into their social roles, right and dole out reward and opportunity. Accordingly, in the sort of Frederick Taylor scientific management model, that world is gone now and we all know that things like creativity and passion and purpose matter. They matter. And what we're seeing is it was our assumptions about human potential that guaranteed the outcome as we

were getting. And I look, I'm not saying my view of potential is not I'm not saying everybody's Einstein. I'm not. I mean, the jagged profiles would suggest that we all have some limitations. Like I love I would, I would love to play in the NFL. I don't have the ability first of it, like it'd be great. Right, you've broad shoulders. You could be aligned back? I do, I could, I could, okay, may maybe maybe I could be aligned right, I should broad shoulders. I'm six feet tall. I do,

thank you, And I've been working out. I really appreciate notice of Scott. I can tell, but I can like, here's here's here's what I Here's what I'm saying. Everybody is capable of excellence of some form, everybody, and we do not know in advance what any one person is capable of accomplishing. We just don't you know, you think about the longitudinal studies using i Q trying to pick.

They predict some things, which is middle management. They're really good at predicting like who will do well in the system we had created, but they miss so much brilliance. And I don't think that that kind of approach is a good national strategy, right. I think that if where we're headed is trying to intentionally cultivate the full potential that people have. You need a different frame than the assumptions that underpin traditional psychometrics. Yeah, well, Todd, I couldn't

agree with you more. I feel like I'm your brother. Yeah, No, I'm just followed. This is good, No, this is like I'm like, I feel like we're part of the same family here and lovely everything you just said. What do you think teachers can do? And realistically in a classroom, teachers are incentivized to get their students up to standards, right, So what can we do to equip teachers with the capacity to transcend that? Yeah, teachers right now are in

the hardest position of any profession that I know. And here's why they are operating in a one size fits all system when that's not really why they got into teaching anyway. I don't know any teacher that was like, what I really wanted was classroom management right and teaching to the test. They're stuck there. Meanwhile, what we've seen in our own data at my think tank is privately a revolution in terms of what the public wants and expects out of education. So they don't want better, they

want different. They want a system that is doing the kinds of things you and I have been talking about, and they really do. It's across all demographics. That's different, not better, right, And so teachers have a really tough job here because in the constraints of the system as it's structured, it's next to impossible to do the things we're talking about. That doesn't mean we can't make progress, right,

and we don't. We don't have to write off a whole generation and say, well, look, the next generation we're going to get it right, will transform the system. I think there are three really important things that we can do. The first is actually doing something for teachers, which is this a lot of human variation that matters when it comes to education is pretty systematic, right, It's not idiostocratic, it's not one off people very naturally let's just take

something like their reading ability. In every classroom in the country, kids are going to vary in their reading ability. Well, if you know that in advance, that design the environment to accommodate that variation, create flexibility in the environment. Education is one of the few industries that still incentivizes average based design. Think about it. We call it like developmentally appropriate, which sounds good, but it just means what does the average kid of this age know and can do well

with our digital technology phrase? Oh, it's just so, it's it's I you too. And it's like, so you take something take something like Universal Design for Learning, which is it's this is something that is in federal law that so any school, anywhere, any district can do it. It was created by someone named David Rose, who's no relation to me, but was mentor of mine. That says, here are the dimensions of human variation that matter for learning,

and here's how you design for them. Right, So if you actually have that built into any curriculum, that's the first step, right, Like, it's like, there should be flexibility here, and we know how to do it, and it's unacceptable that we don't. Second is there's no substitute for the human relationship. None. Like I'm a big fan of technology.

I think there's things that tech can do better sometimes, especially in the mastery space, but that should always be in service of freeing up time for the teacher student relationship and the student student relationship. I'm sure you probably have stories too for all the bad things I had in school. I am sitting here right now talking to you in part because when I got to college, I had phenomenal individual mentors and teachers who made all the

difference in the world. Right So, And the third thing is is thinking about student aid agency a little more self determination. I'm not saying Lord of the flies, and whatever the kid wants to do, they get to do. But you can get a really long way seeding a little bit of control to kids, right Meaningful choice is motivating kids persevere on things that they have a say in.

Right So, I look all those things we can do right now, and I think if we treated teachers with the respect they deserve to say, Look, let's show you what we know about development, about learning, about intelligence. Let's help you see that in the kids that are under your steward ship, I think we can get a long way. Meanwhile, those of us that are operating on the system instead of in it, can do our work and trying to transform that system so it is actually working along with

the teacher and a and on behalf of students. But again, I think we can do some things right now that we're just not doing one hundred percent. And I love the things that you're saying. There's a gap in the interpersonal story, though, I want to elucidate for our listeners. Now, you said you were a high school dropout. Now we fast forward and you just said you were in college.

So what happened there in between? I'd like to say it was like super intentional, but it was like for two years after dropping out, I worked a string of minimum wage jobs, like the kind of jobs you could get if you don't have a high school diploma, right, and it culminated, you know, I was the four to thirty person in the morning at Einstein's Bagels. I sold television's cell phones like I literally with my wife we had a paper route, like my wife was selling blood

plasma like, you know, just to get by. We ended up on welfare. That's bonding, which yeah, yeah, that is bonding with Hey, honey, ready for our paper route, not too weak from giving blood. But you know, I the last we were on welfare, which was a pretty humiliating experience in and of itself and really shaped a lot of the news I have right now about, you know, the way we treat people who face poverty. But the job I had before I made this change, there's no kidding.

I was giving enemis for a living because as a home help associate, because it paid a dollar fifty more an hour than the job I've had, and I needed the money. And listen, it's it's it's honest work and somebody has to do it. I'm just glad it's not

me anymore. And was that like a professional dominatrix context, Yeah, that would have been great, that would have been This was this was people who couldn't get out of the house and needed that help, and they didn't want me there, and I didn't want to be there, and you know, so you know, at the time, a lot of my on my wife's side, they were really frustrated me, and rightfully so, like I'd just taken their daughter from them,

like and I couldn't see the whold of job. And my father in law said he actually told me that I know the problem is that you're lazy, and I started to internalize that, like maybe that's just me. And luckily my dad I happened to share that with him a day and he said, you know, I don't think

that it's that you're lazy. I think that you just always have to be motivated, because he said, like, when you're motivated, you're as good as anybody, and when you're not, you're not and there's like no in between, which is definitely true. He nailed that I would be the worst employee on the planet unless I really care about what I'm doing. And he said, you know, there's a path for you where you could make good money doing things that you love, but you can't get there where you

are right now. And he said, you probably either need to start a business or you need to go to school. And since I had thirteen dollars in my bank account, which is probably a lie, I don't think it less than that, I was like, like, I know the first thing about business, So I said, well, you know, and here's what's really cool. So I chose to get my ged and go start at night school at Weaver State,

which is an open enrollment school in Ogden, Utah. And it's funny when I graduated as an Honors Student of the Year got into Harvard. The first time a reporter ever talked to me was around this story. And the first question she asked is like, wait, hold on, why would you have thought it would be a good idea to try your hand at school again? And I just like it never dawned on me that like my absolute failure,

like would suggest that I couldn't do it. And the reason why is my dad was the first high school graduate in our family, and he was a mechanic. And I remember when I was in grade school, he came home and he said, look, I think there's something more for me. And he decided he was going to go to school at night while he worked during the day and become and he became a mechanical engineer and he

just retired. And I have to say, he always hates it when I brag about him, So sorry, Dad, if if you're listening, that he has he went and became a mechanical engineer, worked at Auto Leave, and he has so many patents on airbags. He is like responsible for so many innovations in that field that have saved so many people's lives, and it's like to recognize that. And

I lived through that. I saw us go from living in a rural part of the country, solidly working class to becoming a middle class and you know, and and I saw it change him as a person. And so when it came time to thinking about my own, like how do I turn my life around? It was in some ways a lot easier for me than it was for him, because I had a clear model, right, an example of the awesome power of education to transform lives

and life circumstances. So I went to the same school he went to there and wow, where did you go to college? Weaver State University, Ogden, Ogden, Utah Wildcats. You know, uh, Damian Lillard. Yeah, So we've got some, We've got some, We've got some good ones there. But it was very cheap. But even then I couldn't afford very much. My family and even my in laws cobbled together what they had. They said, this could get you through through one year,

but if you can't get a scholarship, that's it. And so it was really out of desperation that I had to figure it out. And the best advice my Dad told me was that listen, you should listen to other people, but we should go ahead and assume that whatever you were doing before it didn't work right. So like I just knew that I had to I had to figure out how to make it work for myself. And it became really clear that knowing who I was and making decisions based on that was the way forward. I can

tell you one there's one story. I'm just chewing up scenery here, but where that changed my life forever. And in this frame of understanding your individuality and creating that fit you know, it's about two years in de Weaver State. I was doing fine and I had I was sitting in a big auditorium in a history class next to my buddy Steve, and I was kind of complaining about how boring that class was because I couldn't get out of it was a required class, big auditorium, and it's

just the worst cun situation for me for learning. And he says, well, man, this is nothing compared to what I got myself into. And he tells me he's in this thing they called the honors program, And in my mind, honors was just the same stuff, only more work, right, so I was like, that's a sucker stuff, like who would do that? But no, no, he's like he's like, no, no, that, no, you got it wrong. He's like it's so much worse. He's like, there are no tests you have to you know,

you just have the right stuff. He's like, can't hide in an auditorium. They're small rooms. And he's like, I'm not even sure they're right answers. All we do is debate things. And I was like, this sounds amazing, like amazing, right, So I was so impulsive. The class ends and I rush to that. The honors program is above the library at the top of the hill, and I go right in and I tell the secretary, a woman named Marilyn Diamond,

I'd like to be the honors program. And she said, well great, let me let's let me get you an appointment. So luckily the director's right there sees me, and he says, okay, great, you want to be in the honors program. He's like, I said a few questions. We're really proud of this program, And how did you do on the A C. T that was the you know, we we took that to the SAT And I told him the number which you know, I was the lower end of the curve. And he

goes to his credit. He goes, well, don't worry, not one's good at standay's test. What was your high school GPA? Like this is no kidding. There we go, this is no kidding. Nine. Yeah, I said point nine and there's no joke. He says, what point nine? I said zero point nine? And he was so nice about it, but he goes, look, look, you can't be in the honors program, right. And he didn't say this, but I heard we had a standards so you can't be in the honored pram, right,

And I was like, I hadn't. I hadn't thought it through. So I just rushed up there and I'm just sitting there and I just wanted to crawl in a hole. Right, So I'm like, okay, I'm sorry, thank you so much. I stood up, I reached across the desk, shook his hand, and I went to leave. And I walked out the door and Marilyn Diamond, the secretary, her desk was right by the door, and I walked past. She reached out and grabbed my arm and she said, hey, I heard

the conversation. If you want this don't take no for an answer. And I was like, wait, you can do that like you can like and she said just sit sit on the couch and don't leave until he lets you in. And I sat there and it was it felt like forever. The director came out to he's like to go teach a class, and he's like, what are you doing? I said, I want to be in the honored program. You can't be in the honored program, right.

And he came back and it had been a few hours all told, and then he pokes his head out and he says, you know, Todd, come back in here. And I went back in and he said, listen, tell me why you want to be in the because I don't get it right. And so I explained to him what I've learned about myself and why I thought this was a good fit, even though in truth I should have been in remedial classes in a lot of places, right.

And he said, look, I can't let you in straight in, but what I'll do is I'll give you a provisional status. And here's what I mean. You choose one honors class, and if you do well, I'll let you take another one and we'll go from there, and so I chose wisely. I was like, okay, I got to pick something. I really it was called Plagues of the Modern Era. First of all, it almost made me Vegan. I couldn't meet

bad but I did really well. It was such a perfect fit and so and so you just do this and then suddenly again I'm graduating as the honor student of the year. And like for me, it's like on paper, you'd say, well, obviously someone who literally literally had to take remedial math because I filled algebra three times in high school, And you know, why would you think honors would be a better fit. But you realize that's because we still think about this kind of thing like ability

in this old way that is just completely hamstrung us. Right, And so it is the honors program right for everyone, of course not It certainly wasn't right for my buddy Steve, who was plenty smart. Right for me, it was perfect, and it prepared me for Harvard in a way that nothing else could have. And so you know, for that, it's like both tells me a lot about context. Again. But then also back to these relationships, right, And I'll tell you something so funny just to end this part

of the story and let you talk for a minute. Right. So I came back just a couple of few years ago, back to Weaver State because they were giving me an award for you know whatever, not completely screening about my life. And Marilyn Diamond was there, and she was in the audience, and I thought, well, what a great opportunity to acknowledge this person and their influence, because in my mind I had held her up as this she saw something in me, right, And and I told the story that I just shared

with you, and they asked her to come up. And the first thing she says is, you know, I don't remember that, and you don't remember that, like this is like the most important thing, And it wasn't because I was that forgettable. It turned out that almost everybody had a Marilyn Diamond story. She did that. She was that kind of person. She believed in people's potential and she took action on it. Right. So, I, you know, I'm

so grateful for the life I get to lead. Right now, it would be the height of arrogance to pretend that it's just about some innate ability independent of situation and including other people and their willingness to believe in me. Yeah. Yeah, I'm really glad we went. We went down that rabbit hole, so to speak, because it's so profound and I have chills. It's really speaks to this thing I'm trying to understand my whole life, which is what is the real intelligence?

You know, there's this idea that if you measured on the IQ test, that's the real intelligence, and then if the person shows any intelligence outside of that, it doesn't count. And it's such a narrow way of thinking about human potential and it's limiting. It's so limiting. It also can create, as it did for me for many years, an imposter syndrome kind of thing. Because in a similar story, I'm

very much relating to your story. I was rejected from Gifted ED because mike qu score was not high enough. My senior year of high school. I wanted to go from special Ed to Gifted ED, so I tried again the gifted and they rejected me because mike u score. But the Gifted ED teacher let me in unofficially my senior year and she told me at the end, she said, you're the most gifted, not actually gifted person I've ever had in my gifted head classroom, which gave me an

imposture syndrome, because it's like, then what's the real what counts? Right? Do you know what I mean? Something really profound here. You know what's funny is Benjamin Bloom, you know, invented mastery learning. Yeah, once said he had a student who was studying the way we admit into gifted programs using IQ tests, and she asked him about it, and he said, that is exactly how ungifted people would select for gifted programs.

Like it's like the worst possible way to do it. Yeah, And never until that they did was no so so interest because again, when you have a bell curve, there's always somebody that's in the top five percent. Even if nobody's very good at something, somebody has to be the top. And it means that there's a lot of people, like everybody could be good at it, but somebody has to

lose on those measures, right. And what they found in that research, if I remember it correctly, the gist of it was this, which is when they studied randomized trials about like how you how people selected the gift programs

using IQ using other metrics. The one that won out in terms of kids get in there and do really well and stay in was literally showing kids what was required and letting them choose for themselves, because like, if you're not good at something and you don't care, you're not going to take on the extra burden that comes with the work and the Gifted program? Are you kidding me? Right?

But I just never forgot that. It's like, like, so, so it turns out that the kids themselves were better at deciding whether they should be in the Gifted program than any other test we've created. I love that. I love that so true? Well were you were you in special education as a kid? Like, what was your diagnosed? If you can reveal that, no, so what was going

wrong with you there? Yea, yeah, so the guy was always like hyperactive and you know whatever, like which, to this day it bothers me to no end, this whole disease model of this. We've pathologized natural human variation. It doesn't mean that some kids don't need help, including medicine whatever, but it's just garbage to treat it as if we're

talking about something like cancer or something like that. Anyway, So I like, I have terrible working memory, and yeah, I'm I'm a little overactive, and rather than accept, you know,

I'm really grateful I had. My mom is the most stubborn person I know, and in the best possible way, right grew up in an ultra religious, rural part of the country where women weren't really viewed in the same way that you know, they should be viewed, and she wasn't taken any of that right, So I learned a lot about fighting for yourself from her and not accepting other people's definition of who you are. And so, you know, take the working memory thing. I now believe I'm probably

the most organized person that I know. And I was incredibly disorganized. You wouldn't believe when I was in when I was in school younger, as a kid, I would literally sometimes do my homework and then forget to bring it back to school, right like, you know, I just like I couldn't organize myself and manage my time. Well, what changed for me is when I was in grad school, actually I was I better get a handle on this, and I studied not from a deficit standpoint, but elite

Like what do people like CEOs? So how do they manage these incredible uh you know, daily workloads, and I found you're probably familiar with getting things done right if you're not completely changed my life, you know it's it's but it was written for executives because the thing about working memory, right is it's not we all have terrible working memory. It's a limiting thing on purpose theologically, it's

not like we have it. But what's interesting about working memory is it's called like catastrophic loss of information, which it doesn't matter if you have this much or this much as soon as it overflows. It's not like a glass with a little bit skilling over the network files. Right. And so what I learned from this was you could build a system with your technology and your habits that offload and automate so much of this. And to this day that's how I live my life. I'm and I

have it on my phone. I have it, and it just it changed everything for me. And so to me, this gets back to like, if you just see it as natural human variation in context with strategies tied to that, you can figure out a way to turn even things that are deficits into strengths. And I wish like we

don't think of it that way. We don't teach kids to think of it that way, because we're still locked into this silly idea that there's some innate ability that some smart people can figure out in advance and decide who gets resources, who doesn't, who has, who deserves opportunity who doesn't, and that that approach is demonstratably wrong, right, and so anyway, I'll get off my high horse on that, but you know I don't get off My life and your life probably too, is a testament to this way

of thinking about human potential. And sometimes when people hear my story and they're like, well, look, talented people find a way through, and I'm like, cool, that's okay. That makes me you're telling me I'm really talented. Okay, But like I look at it and go, yeah, that's not really the takeaway, because I can promise you, for every one of me or every one of you, there are so many other people that didn't have the same opportunity, didn't have the same relationships, and have never had the

chance to live up to their full potential. And it doesn't just affect them and the kind of fulfilling life they can lead. It affects all of us because we're all missing their contribution. Yeah, absolutely no, here here, here, here. What do you make of the correlation though, between IQ and so many societally outcomes, and I mean there is

a whole nexus. I wrote an article called IQ and Society for Scientific American about this because it's so hard to untangle the correlations and look at cause because we set up a society where that gating mechanism allows you the even opportunity to get to the next level, and then we kind of create that system then we say, look, old people with IQ's are the only ones who are allowed at the top. Right, So I just wanted to nerd out with you about that a second. What are

your thoughts? Two things? Correlation is wildly misleading because the right number there is actually like an R squared number. Right, it's variants explained, and correlation I think gives the impression that you're explaining more than you really are. So let's take something in psychology, because when we talk about the correlations,

you're usually talking about somewhere point three point four. If you found a point five, you'd probably do cartwheels, right, like, I mean, correctly if I'm wrong, because you did the work. So okay, let's take a correlation of point four, which in psychology we would call that's a that's a pretty good correlation. Right, you are explaining exactly sixteen percent of the variance. Now if I said it that way, what would your takeaway be? Your takeawayuld be maybe we don't

really know what's going on with this phenomenon. If all you can do is explain sixteen percent of the variance. If your mechanic said, listen, I am an expert. I can explain sixteen percent of what goes on in your car, you would not pat them on the back and be like, yeah, good job. Right, So that's the first thing. Let's just be clear. Second of all, if you think about in normal human nature, you have what's called dynamic stability, right, which is variation of the input so like a human being,

and variation in the environment. Right. When you take and standardize something like the environment, which we did, which we've done for the last one hundred and something years. Right, as soon as you reduce the variation in the environment, it starts to make variation in biology look predictive. Right, So like for example, if I decide, if I decide, everything is a reading test, which that's most of school right like then, and we know that people naturally vary

in terms of reading ability. Reading is something we literally made up. It is artificial. It's not like language which you can just acquire. You have to be taught how to read. Right, people vary. Well, if everything is a reading test, then genetic and neurological variation related to reading ability will look predictive of a whole bunch of outcomes. And we can pat ourselves on the back and say, look, how good of a job we did. We've discovered what

causes all these accomplishments. But that's not really the whole story. What you've done is figure out what correlates with an outcome that you have artificially constrained. Right, So you know, we do this over and over again, and you know it's it's funny. It's like and we think we're learning. And I'm not trying to dismiss it, like I think

that it's not that there's nothing there. But to me, what I'm looking at is what if you look it the other way and say, if I believe everyone has the ability to be excellent at something, and my job is to create the environment that cultivates that so we all benefit from it, then I would be trying to understand human variation not from a selection process, but from a design process. Right, how do I accommodate the widest

range of variation possible? So those that was a long winded way of saying, Look, I think those correlations are true, and I think they are both wildly are explaining a lot less than we believe they are because we talk about correlations that are square, And the right takeaway when I see those correlations is how much of that is just a function of artificially standardizing an environment that didn't

need to be standardized. Yeah. Yeah. This has been one of the hardest things for me to reconcile in my career because of my own I know my personal experiences, and I know the experience of so many people who have fallen through the cracks because of the standard program. Yet I also am aware of the science of IQ, and I don't want to sweep the actual science under

the rug at all. So trying to reconcile all this has been very, very, very difficult, because you know, people will come back and you and say they as they have come back to me and say, well, you know, science, if you can predict that much experience variance explain. That's that's actually more than almost any other construct in the entire field of psychology variants explained. But then we could say, well, well, then maybe what the field psychology sucks? That's an indictment

of psychology. Listen. I did my post. I did my post off at the Center for Astrophysics, the Harves Smithsonian Center for astro Physics, where I got to work with really amazing astrophysis who also used things like multar aggression and other things. And in that field, if you don't have an R square of like, if you're not explaining ninety nine percent of the variance, go home, right, forget it.

Whenever we whenever I would bring it, I'm like, look at the model we've developed, and they're like, you can only explain twenty percent. And they're like, you're you don't under stand the phenomena that the phenomenon that you're actually investigating. Go back to the drawing board, right, And I just feel like it's like, I'm not trying to dismiss like I think we've made important Contriversis I think I qus measuring something right. I am just of the opinion that

I don't know what the value proposition is. I just don't. I think if we go back to what we talked about earlier, which is if I was going to use an IQ test, if some parent or teacher said should I give this kid an IQ test, I'd say, if you are using it to identify a jagged profile in order to understand strengths and weaknesses the pattern in order to create a better environment that allows them to thrive,

then go for it. If you are using it to decide whether this kid is worth anything at all, than you are misusing that tool. You said something very key there, you said, use it to help them thrive. That's what's missing from even like so the CHC model you know, could tell Horn could like Carol, you know, and then they have like the they have other like new ones within the psychometric world. Yeah, they argue very much. They

argue very much. So Kevin McGrew has argued we need to de emphasize the goal like you score and pay attention to patterns of strength and weakness on the test, but the emphasis is usually so we can help get them the remediation they need. The step you took was a different step which I'm on board, I'm ready there with you, brother, which is like, Okay, can't we do better than that? Can we do better than just using that information of their jagged profile to help them remediate?

Can't we actually use a broader set of information about the human to help them thrive and self actipize. And by the way, like, it doesn't mean that that people aren't going to need remediation. Sometimes, of course they will, right, right, And I love of course no, me too, And look, I think it's really good and I think that so there is a remediation aspect. But think about when we go to that path all view of human variation, those kids end up being the only kids who spend most

of their time on things they're not very good at. Like, I don't know any model of human excellence that starts with find the things you suck at and have to work on those and spend no time on the things that you're passionate about or actually good at. Like what

kind of advice is that? Right? And I'll tell you one thing that really blew my mind is when I was, yeah, in grad school, Like I was part of a project that back to this universal design for learning that it was for like sixth grade science notebook stuff, right, like the increased Science And it was a randomized trial of traditional science notebooks versus this digital version that had embedded all those flexibility like vocabulary support, different ways of representing

the same scientific information. And it was being done in South Carolina as one of the states, in some schools, and like there was this one kid who was profoundly reading impaired, like profoundly read impaired, and the teacher had said she had signed up. She hated technology, but she was willing to willing to do this if it could reach this kid, because she's like, he's got a scientific mind, right, And I'm telling you, like, if I weren't part of this,

I wouldn't have believed it. But over the course of twelve weeks, we kept getting reports about this kid doing

better and better and better and better. When we went back and did final observations, I walked into the classroom, no kidding, and they were in their science doing their science work, and probably half the class was huddled around this one kid's desk and he was like holding court, like he was explaining everything to people, and it was like it turned out he was so dang good at this, but because he was struggling to read and everything was

a reading test, he looked like he didn't much about science, right, and he had started to internalize that, And all we did was removed that artificial, arbitrary obstacle. We already know that he's struggling to read. Okay, so this kid definitely does need remediation. That's a part of my point, right,

that's not going to fix itself. Fine, but it turns out he's really gifted in this science, and everybody knew it, right, And all we did was remove the arbitrary obstacle, right, And so I feel like, you know, I'm not someone who's saying everybody is amazing and no one ever has to struggle or no one has limitations. What I'm saying is when we have too narrow of a view of human potential, it just drives us into a ditch. And

we don't need to do that. And the work of the work you've done the folks like Kurt Fisher, so we know a lot more about not only the nature of human potential, but what it takes to cultivate it in a way that I believe is scalable. And so to me, the thing that's holding us back from having that kind of society is not our technology, not our

know how, but our will to do it. And so I get a little, you know, frustrated, because I'm just like you know, I want people to have the same kind of experiences that you and I have had, Right. There is nothing better. I know, we've talked about this before. It's amazing to live the kind of lives we're living. I mean, we get a wake up every day and pursue the things we're passionate about, right, And I'd like to believe we're making some contributions. And I want that

for everybody. Beautiful, beautiful. And another step towards that direction seems to be expanding the whole idea of what counts as a strength, right because in a school system there's such a focus on the cognitive right, like like it's hard for IQ test makers when they look at their jagged profile of like of like GFGC like fluid intelligence Chris to think, well, there's actually a broader array of what counts as a strength as a human, right, Like

what about compassion? What about right? What about you know, authenticity? What about you know what I mean for me, I've found things like talent and even intelligence. While I know they are real as constructs, I find them not a good starting point because to me, it's about contribution. Like, what I want is a society where people are doing things that are fulfilling to them and making their best contribution.

And in my view, your best contribution is likely and things that are most fulfilling are going to be are going to be related to your own individuality, things that matter to you, things that you're good at. Right, And so I'm like, how about we gelt acknowledge that for the last one hundred years, we've tried to play this game of pretending we understand what human potential is and how to select for it, And if we're honest with ourselves,

I'd say we are mediocre at that at best. And it's one thing when you're doing that with your own life. It's a whole other thing when you are condemning entire generation of kids to our assumptions about what human potential is.

I don't think that's fair, and I don't think it is even it's demonstratably fault and so it is unacceptable to me as a scientist to continue with assumptions that we know are incorrect when it has real world consequences for people's lives, both individually and collectively, because again, we

are missing out on enormous amounts of contribution. And so if we can get past that and realize a better assumption, in my mind, is that everybody is capable of excellence of some kind, and that because of the complexity of human beings, no person is smart enough to know in advance what any one person is capable of doing. But we do know the conditions that everyone needs to be able to thrive, and we can work like crazy to

ensure that every kid in this country has that. Todd, I couldn't agree with you more and I would say you've made a major contribution, not just thinking a little bit of contributor. You have a lot of humility, so it's been for me to say this, but you really have made a major contribution. I just love the way

you're moving the needle on our thinking. However, I'm now in a bit of a quagmire because we just spent an hour and seven an hour talking about I should have predicted that we would once we got started on this. This was a long time coming. Should we hold off on a discussion about Collective for another time. What do you do? What do we do with this? If I were king for a day, this is what I propose. I would love to do a part two because I

think Collective Illusions, let's do that. The book that's out now is really important and relevant to the time we're living in and I'd love to give it. And that gives me excuse to come back and talk to you, So I if you want to do that, I will come back this whenever you tell me to, and we'll do part two. I love it. Why don't we in the next month schedule a Part two recording, and then what I'll do is I'll release You'll you'll be two full weeks of the Psychology podcast. I'll release them back

to look at that. So we'll have part one and then the following part Part two. So you'll it'll be a lot. It'll be great. It'll be great. That'll be amazing. Okay, well, let's do it. I'll prioritize it. I'll make the time

as soon as you're ready. Beautiful, Thank you Todd so much for being my podcast today and for your your just humility, passion, spirits, intelligence, intelligence, really extraordinary intelligence and uh and uh, you know, being on being on the show today, Well, thanks for having me and to all our colleagues who do really good work in in psychometrics and intelligence. You know, forgive me for you know, being a little passionate about it. I do appreciate the work

that's going on. We may have different assumptions, but there's a lot of good work by honest, decent people, really intelligent people that you know, I don't want to dismiss out of it. But of course, of course they'll get over it, or we'll hear we'll hear about it, we'll hear about it on Twitter. Thanks Todd, it was a real pleasure. 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 thusycology podcast dot com or on our YouTube page thus Ecology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.