IQ Is Not Intelligence. WHAT IS?

walking to the gym with my best girl
Melissa I thought I'd say a few words about a conversation I had last night I hate having my collar done up like this I think it looks ridiculous on camera but if I unzip it I'm afraid the caller is gonna gonna click with the mic in anyway I don't want to look like a priest in a cassock you know anyway last night I was talking to Tcat so you heard that conversation star and then you drifted off to sleep and a large part of what we talked about was the nature of human intelligence and the IQ test and that gets a little bit meaning of life II as you know I think it's really important in those conversations to be honest with yourself and others about why you're raising the question the first place so you probably don't hear this as much as I do Melissa just because you're female but there's a lot of male angst about IQ tests and objective measures of intelligence on the internet and a lot of it it's kind of like roughly parallel to left wingers who blame capitalism for all their failings in life like left wingers who feel they should have had a better life they had tremendous potential they should have accomplished more but you know the system was against them that that capitalism as a system is it's keeping them down now and of course you have to sympathize to some extent you know I'm not assuming there are crazy conspiracy theorists in all cases there may be some truth to that they may not have been able to afford university tuition and they may blame the capitalism but there's a lot of kind of generalized anxiety about IQ tests and verifiable objectively real intelligence in the internet and people presenting theories one way or another about it whether the focus is on heredity on genetics and IQ or if it's about other ways of kind of taking the concept of palpable maturity real verifiable intelligence and basically kind of weaponizing it into a political science social science concept using our debates well debates even about democracy who should make decisions in society I guess today a lot of people must feel it's a grave injustice that someone as stupid as total Trump so much power in a sense and we've really seen how stupid Donald Trump is in the last year or so let's see it boys let's walk through the park and sit in the back no but that I didn't even think of that example it's so obvious but you know it's it's really true and I mean like again so again how even gonna measure intelligence in males in Toms case but I'm meshing the most of the day it's it's indicative that Joseph Stalin considered Mao Zedong stupid and crazy if someone else is a completely insane dictator considers you kind of stupid and crazy and you know mouse' dong one of the way she came up in politics was through his poetry and you've got to talk to Chinese people who really know poetry but you know when you do with her like poetry is really bad it's like no no no no there were warning signs here some of his poetry is megalomaniacal I've read that I've looked at his poetry but also apparently just his I think we should probably that French will be okay I think he's not too soon he knows uh but apparently also to some extent when people are doing classical whatever a Chinese poetry which it is it's classical in form you can tell he's just he's just not too bright so but you got to talk to people who really know Chinese poetry to get that gift that air to them so anyway we a lot of us struggle with culturally or politically some sense of questioning about about what is intelligence how is it measured and once you have a measurement like IQ in what ways does it matter so you know spontaneously and talking about this with kicad last night one of the first things I said to him and challenging his assumptions about the IQ test was to ask him do you think there's any relationship between IQ and whether or not someone can paint a great painting now it was a new thought for him and Tcat is definitely someone who's smart enough to understand right away that I don't mean this as a hollow type I don't mean this has one unique example you know the relationship between intelligence and painting likewise there's a question what do you think is a different there's a relationship between this IQ test and any other form of technically convoluted skill whether that's driving or eye any performing surgery as a medical doctor or anything else what you know why why do you think or do you think you know IQ would relate to these things in any in any sense at all and of course really after a moment's reflection the answer is no so my position on the IQ test is that the IQ test tells you one thing and one thing only showed up to the seagulls Segal guests guest starring in my video I'm gonna give him half the Adsense revenue I make about 15 cents out of these videos just say no anyway I think that IQ the IQ test represents one thing and one thing only and that is that it tells you how well a human being can write the IQ test now in the same way that I don't think this isn't unreasonable degree of skepticism if you look at something like a driver's test I think a driving test shows you how well you can write the driving test or perform the driving test so there's a written component on my hand an actual director driving component but I think all of us know even if I've never driven a car in my life I am aware that there's a gap between the real world of driving actual emergency driving conditions and what you encounter what you're tested on in a driving test in Taiwan I mentioned it's especially surreal several people were marketing this to me that the form of driving tests they have there it's exactly the same every time they say it this corresponds to Taiwanese culture it's completely fair it's completely predictable completely consistent and it's completely detached from reality that offeri yeah that's this little miniature obstacle course and you can be a terrible driver and just memorize exactly the sequence of steps you have to do to get through this obstacle course and that's it you know Yeah right right so not not in Taiwan no it's it's it's an indoor closed track kind of thing yes right of course sure sure - so much of course I'm not saying there's zero I'm also saying there's zero relationship but you do the driving test and how you and how you how you would do in real-world conditions actually this does come back to what I'm saying about about IQ versus intelligence in a more meaningful sense because that's especially going to correspond at the low end of the scale so I mean if you're actually blind if you're actually visually impaired if you're actually have some kind of disorder that scatter is your ability to focus and pay attention and that shows up that really impairs you doing the driving test someone at the extremal on someone who's barely able to drive at all sure there's gonna be a strong correlation there between how you do on the test but most were interesting and what most of all are interested in especially in social-political at the high end of deaths nobody thinks Donald Trump is incapable of operating heavy machinery nobody is testing him in the sim I mean you know this more than most a lot of the tests are calibrated whether it's by psychiatrist or for the legal system try to test someone can they be legally responsible for their own financial affairs for example an elderly person is experiencing dementia but even if it's a young person you know what mental age is this person capable of consent in getting married contrary to their parents wishes well if they're judged to have a mental age of six years old they're extremely severely [ __ ] you know they may have a guardian who's able to make these decisions those things get get to school so there there's one realm of intelligence tests that are really aimed at the low in the spectrum but almost that's almost never what we're debating or discussing in these cases what we're discussing instead is and this is this is we get into multiple divisions between what's perceived as intelligent versus what's actually intelligent and what's perceived as for example good painting as opposed to what's actually in a sense good painting for a painting to be a hit painting like a song to be a hit song doesn't mean it's an objective we just we just lived through thank you thank you we just lived through Kanye West having a smash hit song that you know I think is objectively terrible the point is also at any given point a painting or a song or anything else can catch the cash the interest of the public or catch us catch the spirit of the moment and and be a hit and that doesn't does first of all doesn't reflect anything about the objective intrinsic quality of the of the song of the painting and it also doesn't tell you anything about the objective intelligence of the person who created it I think all of us here are willing to admit right away you could be quite stupid in many important ways and still be a brilliant painter still produce aesthetically really pleasing or important paintings now likewise we talk about intelligence and heredity of intelligence most of what's perceived as intelligence and obviously I'm emphasizing that the some extent we don't know oh we ought to question whether or not this really is intelligence a lot of it is incredibly culturally conditioned so what kind of intelligence did I inherit from my father I want to give a quick disclaimer here I think my my father was not just very stupid but really quite insane but nevertheless I was raised by my father for example to really value the work of William Shakespeare to think of seeing Shakespeare performed as an important part of life as a young man as even as a child and that reading Shakespeare was something really worthwhile and valuable and I did so this is not DNA but this is a kind of cultural heredity and I grew up in a culture at Toronto where from an early age I was perceived as intelligent for knowing a lot about Shakespeare I mean just compared to the average person you know that I knew these plays I got these literary and cultural references and and what have you now is that intelligence no I mean I think however you want to define real intelligence these kinds of things right away absolutely challenge that perceived intelligence is going to have any meaningful connection to it to real intelligence and then conversely when you talk about any given test or written format test like the IQ test or the SAT test if you study for and perform well on an organic chemistry test the university a written multiple-choice test an organic chemistry there's no doubt this is testing a certain kind of skill dedication motivation self-discipline memorization etc etc but just as uncomfortable in pretending that my father raising me to value Shakespeare correlates to real intelligence in any meaningful sense I'm I'm even more skeptical that becoming proficient in organic chemistry or proficient in the skills and knowledge you need to do really well on an SAT test is going to is going to in any way correspond to intelligence and in a meaningful sense so my walk of life this is one of the things I said to decad because he's had a very different experience like me I said you know I've known so many people yet we go to the gym I've known so many people who had PhDs who were very proficient in writing tests and who were in a very meaningful sense stupid I'm have to digress into examples and stories but I've known some really really stupid people who didn't just have high levels of formal education but who would obviously Excel the end the type of narrowly focused discipline you need to do well on college entrance exams standardized tests and exams of different kinds of crucial crucial junctions of their lives so maybe I am more skeptical than most or more hesitant than most to get on this bandwagon of pretending that what the IQ test proves or demonstrates is real intelligence and there's a little bit of a parallel here to the fact I always have to disclaim when I'm criticizing modes of activism and protest where I say look I'm not claiming this form of activism has zero efficacy handing out pamphlets I'm not gonna claim there's zero effect of standing around on the street corner handing out pamphlets but I'm saying look let's talk about just how little the the effectiveness is there's something similar here where I have to disclaim I'm not claiming the IQ test is of zero efficacy I've already said I think it's very important to look at that when it's calibrated for degrees of retardation degrees and mental disability that's really important as well we're talking about I have experience with that with my one job that I had where I was working for a psychiatrist or a psychologist sorry and he he did mental examinations on people who were they were trying to decide if they were responsible criminal responsibility evaluations if they were ugly and of the level of intelligence that they were to be held responsible for it that way yeah these tests are important right like if somebody has well right it means something I think most of us know if we've written a lot of standardized tests you could have written the same standardized test two months apart and gotten a very different score and that's gonna reflect how much studying you didn't progress you did and just the little things going on your life if any of us remember writing a big important test oh if I hadn't broken up with my girlfriend that month or if I hadn't gone out drinking a few incidental things in the same way one of the criticisms of the IQ test specifically is that when you look at the same person writing the tests repeatedly over time you get widely different significantly different results for the same person's alleged intelligence so get my point being this isn't really showing you intelligence it's just showing you how well this person can write this type of test or this this particular test so um one of the ray of hope here this came up a million years ago when we did the video together talking about academically adrift so that was a video criticizing what's going on in the university system now one of the theories of Education that's gaining steam right now in the 21st century is called task based learning and I would point out that the flip side of that is tat task-based testing where people are being tested by giving them a more analytical and creative task so in that earlier video discussion which over the fact that they decided to test the aptitude or acumen of these university students by giving them a series of short articles for example a series of contradictory short newspaper articles about a flaw in manufacturing airplanes so short article suggesting that there was something wrong with the engine an aircraft that wasn't clear more reliable was and they'd read some different short articles and different perspectives and then be given some very broad essay questions not writing academic essays but to synthesize and analyze the information and give recommendations about what should be done and I've pointed to most of that I pointed out more recently also that this is gonna give you a very different measure of intelligence and of what intelligence is supposed to be and that is the kind of intelligence we care about with Donald Trump what we care about with Donald Trump or george w bush or mao zedong can you sit down and read a series of short articles with mutually conflicting usually contradictory biased or opinionated information and engage in some kind of analysis and engage in creative thinking and come to sober and insightful conclusions and write them up clearly in your own first language in this case English that that is now but again I'm biased that is one test for one type of intelligence and that happens to be the type of intelligence I care about I I don't care so much about whether or not you can paint a beautiful painting but if we had a painting based test that we had a purely creative purely artistic test that would doubtless measure intelligence and spawn a different set of measurements in another way so look guys um as you guys know I grew up a theist but in some sense Jewish ethnically Jewish Judaism is a whole subculture massively fueled by the idea of being born special being born among the the chosen people and for me the most dangerous and seductive element of this discourse of what IQ and intelligence is the idea that you're born special is that intelligence is something fixed from birth and I think that any really sincere thoroughgoing engaged with these issues is instead going to reveal what we call intelligence it's not just that it's culturally conditioned the example of my father encouraging me to read Shakespeare it's not just a matter of perception versus reality the reality itself is long after question any less words like to revisit this we're not running out of tape it's great to give our YouTube this equals never end okay let's hit the gym and get stupid