My girlfriend is a teacher who will rant for HOURS on how angry standardized testing, not just IQ tests, make her, and how badly it is going for her "babies".
@@alex_lll Anthropologist here. The thing is that you need to take more of an individualistic approach since often different cultures teach different types of socialization at different stages, so "standardized" doesn't really help, so should be left up to experts in childcare who have cultural and diversity sensitivity training. Asking a child to fill in bubbles rarely does much to make such assessments. In fact, there is a really great series about how this one child psychologist managed to assess different children on their learning abilities without using standardized testing. I can dig that up. "Secret Life of Children." I believe is the program. She didn't create a right or wrong, just a different way to approach it.
@@alex_lll This asks the wrong question. The concept of "learning performance" is not really coherent, to be honest. Let alone "consistent" learning performance.
38:18 I got around 700 on my first SAT and around 900 on my second SAT in the critical reading portions. Then, I finally managed to pay to go to *ONE* SAT prep class that was held in my high school library and got the 1100 I needed for scholarships. I realized then that poor SAT scores absolutely have to do with lack of access rather than lack of “intelligence”. Like most things, it’s a class issue.
My class valedictorian was not street smart and she was kinda shocked I scored higher than her on our first attempt at SAT. She kept taking it about 6 times to get a higher score than my 1140 which I did no prep for other than my usual knowledge I got from attending school. Maybe I could have creeped towards 1600 If I actually picked up prep books and studied how the tests are structured.
I got a 1300 without practicing and honestly that was low for my school. Thing is, my high school required it's own test to get admitted so everyone there was either a natural test taker or they did a lot of test prep.
The situation leading up to taking my SAT test was very stressful, and I still made a 1290 because I had a bunch of SAT prep courses my senior year of high school and I happened to be a good test-taker. For a long time that score nagged at me because I thought I could've done better if the situation would have been better. It was massively important to me at the time because I was an arrogant little shit who's ego was built on my "intelligence". Years later, after I got into the real world and got knocked on my ass a few times, I finally realized how BS it all was, and how little "intelligence" and standardized testing really matters to, well, literally anything.
My best friend was consistently getting C-Ds in high school because her parents never motivated her or gave her any resources. We studied together for the SAT. I got a 2250 (this was back when writing was still a section, there’s where I lost the majority of my points haha). She got an 1860. My other friend, who was getting As and Bs in her honors classes, got a 1540. It’s bullshit. It’s another way for the wealthy to launder their intelligence. It’s not a test for anything other than “did you have the time, resources, and knowledge to learn how to take this test?” It’s not actually testing general intelligence or knowledge. It’s testing your ability to memorize a testing style.
My dad was given an IQ test to test for early onset Alzheimer's, he scored in the 170s. He always laughed and said it wasn't a fair assessment because he was a math professor and spent his entire life training for the type of questions they asked on the test.
In highschool I was a horrible test taker. The problem was my attitude. I didn't want to be in school or I wanted to fight the power. But my capacity to learn is more vast than I was being given credit. My skill is finding the answer not knowing the answer.
As a person with ASD, IQ test just made me anxious. I never did good in work, have a tendency to forget things if I’m not interested in the subject, and would forget to do my work overall. I remember getting punished for not remembering things as a kid.
I'm autistic, but was undiagnosed in school. I was constantly getting in trouble for being disruptive in class when I got bored. I was usually treated as difficult rather than differently abled. My mom knew that I was smart and just bored, so asked if I could test to be put in gifted classes when I was in 3rd grade. I remember being pulled from class to take a test without any explanation given, and I also remember getting bored halfway and not giving as much effort. They said that I tested above average intelligence, but still five points short of the lowest cutoff for getting into the gifted program. So I was kept in regular classes until high school. I know that if they had told me what the test was for I would have been more motivated to keep my attention on it, but they seemed to think that telling me would change the results (duh). My mom thinks that they just wanted to keep me down since she was the one that asked for the test, and not my teacher, who didn't like me due to my disruptions. If I had been put in the gifted program I would have been in a much smaller class with more one on one teacher time and self-paced learning, which I do better with. But no, let's keep me in the normal class where I get bullied for being different...
what's even MORE aggravating is that, especially with online testings when doing online classes, you're not told WHAT the right answer is to the one you got wrong. usually, you learn by making mistakes; that way you allocate enough concerted effort to commit it to memory while leaving the one you're 100% confident in being correct(and it says you are) on the back burner. and tryna find the answer inna dry-as-toast textbook for the right answer is like finding a hay in a needlestack.
When I was in grade 6, I scored in the top 20 kids on the standardized IQ test for all of Ontario. Flunked out in a year because I kept acting out. Was told my whole life how much potential I had and that I was a disruptive menace. Never realized the intellectual potential; leaned into the menace instead. Untreated #ADHD is a bitch.
I think that's one of the phrases we hear the most from other people, how we are wasting potential because we can't sit still and pay attention or are just daydreaming away, I'm 30 and sometimes someone still tells me I'm so intelligent but I'm doing nothing with my life, it's always a pleasant experience.
I've been told time and time again that I had so much potential and that I just needed to apply myself. I was more of a class clown than anything which only in my senior year of highschool was I diagnosed with ADHD and depression.
At a certain point, being told 'you have so much potential' feels like chains slung over your shoulders as you tread water. All that redundant intellectual capacity paired with rhetorical potential leads to sloth, in my experience anyway. Sometimes I wish I was told I was dumb and would have to work harder than everyone else just to get by; you know what I mean?
oh you think you would have been better off doing all that homework? it was a scam we were incapable of falling for is all. I didn't do my homework either and i'm fine. they just want obedience
I’ve never been so happy to click on something, I swear half my downvotes on Reddit are from me factually explaining how IQ tests are bunk and shouldn’t be used as they are in modern society. I feel like I’m going crazy sometimes, it’s nice to see Adam address it!
"as they are" is probably a good conveyance. There is likely still a lot of misconception towards the whole link, partly because of the limited discussion and language used
It has to be said that the fact that you're a Black woman trying to explain this stuff is for SURE going to make it worse for you, no matter how demonstrably and objectively correct you are. ❤
IQ tests aren't bunk. They obviously do measure something, as a person tends to get similar results when they do repeated tests. The bunk part is expecting IQ test results alone to be a very good predictor of general real life competence.
@@giveussomevodka Um. "Measure something" is fucking _useless_ though, unless you know what that "something" is...? Like, why would you come up in here and defend IQ tests like this?
I commented already, but the guest mentioned "Social Emotional Learning" is such a huge aspect of education. Like asking kids, "Why do you think your teacher was frustrated that you were disrupting their class?" And many of them cannot extrapolate it. So I always contextualize it as, "when do you feel frustrated when teaching your little siblings things.
Stress and or anxiety absolutely drops my IQ by at least half, the poorer you are the more likely you are to have both. Something rich people and their superiority complexes should consider.
Rich people know that. It's why rich people at times take drugs to avoid exam nerves and whatnot. And it's why rich peope that really, really care for those perfect exam scores tend to do all kinds of over the top prep work that has zero real world utility and is meant exclusively for the purpose of doing well in a single abstract test.
There was a study that showed being in poverty reduces your iq by 10 points. Again, being poor causes people to score 10 points lower. This is likely due to the stress caused by poverty. Yet there are still people out there who believe that being stupid makes you poor, and that being in poverty doesn’t affect one’s ability to plan and think critically. To them, I say: go fuck yourself.
Its the cortisol released by the stress but many people manage to get trough that phase during an exam by working on a easy task first if available to regain confidence. Ashwagandha with Black Pepper isn‘t that expensive and ist said it makes more streß resistant.
42:00 that's me, i was held back a class for this reason, I have ADHD and instead of saying 'he's bored, let's challenge him' they said 'he's childish, a daydreamer, let's hold him back 1 year to grow up a little' and it was bad..
I think Adam should do "responds to comments" videos for ones like he did on AI and mergers. Those videos cover a lot of interesting and rich topics and I think there's usually some good counterpoints against him or expanded commentary agreeing with him shared in some of the comments to those videos. And I'd definitely prefer picking smart comments to give a follow up opinion to rather than picking dumb ones for easy dunks.
I'm married to a kindergarten teacher. There is one thing that educated parents predicts -- that's how involved the parents are going to be involved in their kids' education. When she meets with parents, the parents she wants to meet with never show up. I think there is an issue here -- the parents without a university education are less likely to have the 9 to 5 job where they can meet with the teacher... they work too hard, for too little reward to be able to invest the time in their kids' education. Our system is designed to keep people in their lane and it works generationally. The powers that be don't want this to change.
Adam’s assessment of the Mensa club thing cracked me up. That’s exactly how I felt after a year of participating in the GATE program. We just sat in a room and thought about how smart we were and did nothing productive or interesting. I dropped out of the smart kids club because it was boring.
I did a report on Charles Binett on my first year of psychology and he's one of the most tragic figures in the story of psychology regarding how his work has been misused
I’ve passionately hated IQ tests since I was in high school and teachers decided to test everyone. Then they made me keep taking test because my scores were all over the place. I started to feel like a freak show, and we ended up moving across the country partially because of it. After that I just made up a score to tell people when they asked that was around whatever they said. It was so comforting to hear this discussion.
10:30 I've always found Mensa to be hilarious in concept. If you're paying $79 a year for a certificate saying how smart you are, then you really aren't smart enough to be deserving of said certificate.
Mensa's requirements for entry are actually not even that exclusive. They have this reputation for being a club for hyper-intelligent people, but 1 in 50 people are eligible. So even if you aren't eligible you probably passed by a couple of potential mensans the last time you went grocery shopping.
Watching this i didn't expect it to hit soo hard. I'm someone made with donor sperm. I copped "you are so intelligent" growing up so was never given help i needed. Grew up in a poor working class second gen immigrate family. It was unfortunately a horrible fit. Emotionally neglected and abused as they had no clue how to handle someone so different to them. Plus their generational trauma they had and passed on. I finally met my donor his kids and other siblings. Most have degrees, well settled in life and are so intelligent. Most grew up in wealthier white collar homes. Engaging with them was the first time it was just easy to communicate not such effort i had always experienced. If you need a demographic to show environment is a huge factor even when you have the same genes the donor conceived community would be a good one to look at. We may as well be lab rats for something we actually can choose.
I'm so glad she mentionned stress as an intelligence blocker, it's so true! We're much better at analyzing and solving problems when we're not stressed. I see intelligence the same way I see sports: we're not all going to become olympic games champions but we all can practice and improve.
41:50 That's kinda what happened to me in 2nd grade. I was incredibly hyperactive, constantly drawing during lectures for stimulation, constantly moving around, hyper focused only on select interests. The teachers quite literally sat my parents down and said, "We don't know what to do with him. He's not stupid, tested alright, he just won't pay attention.", and they chucked me into lower level classes where I was even more bored, but at least there it was acceptable to not even pay attention lmao. Anyway, I despised that school, and pleaded to my parents that I be transferred anywhere else going into 4th grade. Thankfully, they made that happen. Just another public school, same income bracket, etc, but this school was more focused on working with children as opposed to punishing them into behaving 'correctly'. What do ya know? My grades instantly improved. I was less stressed, because the environment was better, and I wasn't singled out for my hyper activity, and the teachers were more focused and understanding. I was allowed to draw in class when I only needed to hear a lecture, and boom, all of my test scores shot up. I began to actually enjoy school, but that initial experience at my old elementary school instilled so much emotional confusion, shame, and guilt, that I'm still processing to this day. I'm thankful I got out when I did.
I find it hard to believe that the people/organizations who oversee the American education system don't know what the fundamental problems are (they should, because there are plenty of books/ essays/ academic journals, as well as easily accessible statistical data from around the world that cover it). If they were truly interested in making it better, there are a variety of teaching methods from around the world, that produce vastly superior results, which could be implemented in the US. I think the the US education system is functioning exactly as intended. Kids from wealthy families are able to attend private schools, inherit family business/networking connections, and can learn how to handle/invest money from their parents. The financial "elite" don't want competition. They want to maintain their "elitism." So, it makes sense, from the perspective of economic "elites," that public schools prioritize "standardized tests," and focus more on memorization/ regurgitation than on developing students' critical thinking skills. I mean, those factories aren't going to run themselves (at least not until they have perfected a way to replace all workers with robots and AI systems, anyway) and when that happens, they will probably just nuke the entire planet, hop on a rocket and fly to their luxurious AI run space colonies with Jeff bezos and Elon musk....
I tested high on one of those tests they give you before starting you in kindergarten. From them on, I was placed on the fast track to academic success. Except I was a more visual and less linear thinker. The idea of what a number was was a completely foreign concept for me and was the last one in the class to learn to tell time proficiently. My mom did teach me to read before I was in kindergarten... (I guess it helped with all those word problems.... Lol) yeah. I was in first grade math while I was in kindergarten and hating every moment of it ...
The second I heard "Rutgers University" I knew I had to stick around to watch the whole video since I'm currently a student there (on an extended medical leave of absence). Can't wait to return. I always love hearing professors and APs from rutgers being brought on or referenced to as experts, which is something that I have been seeing more and more often the past 5 years.
When I was a child I was psychotic and ungovernable on account of ADHD and stress and the school gave me an IQ test. I scored pretty high on it but no one was proud of me, my parents held it against me, like it was proof I was intentionally obstinate and I should know better. The school put me in the gifted program and after a couple weeks they put me in Emotionally Disabled class instead because I couldn't work with people, probably for the best but the whole experience really messed me up. I got a big head feeling smarter than everyone else but I hated myself for it
I think there is value in standardized testing. Every child is unique and the concept of assessing certain potential seems powerful. I'm on the autism scale and there are things I get and there are things I don't get. That isn't just environment. We seem to fail quite a bit at providing environments that help children to thrive. Humans are complicated and we really know so little about ourselves.
I think in discussing genes as separate from the environment, people often forget that genes are part of our environment. We often discuss DNA as if it was a software code only interacting with the environment in so far as they have contingencies planned in to interact with it, but really they're a long chain of nitrogen bases, working through physical processes to produce proteins or regulate their shape. I was reading a paper the other day that looked at a gene expression and noted that it was impacted by how close physically it was to a histone (because while bound directly to the histone, there was no space for it to be transcribed). So in that in that case it didn't matter if the gene was present or not, but rather if there were 40 or 400 repititions of a non-coding segment directly next to it and that was determined by another part of the stand which was actually capable of moving itself around the genetic code and seemed to only serve to insert other copies of itself elsewhere in the gene. It's not then possible to abstract genes out of the environment, because they're part of the physical environment of which the body is made and prone to up-regulating, down-regulating and sometimes even just breaking themselves.
How good are you at thinking VS How good are you at thinking WHILE emotionally compromised? Which is "smarter"? One simple example of the mis-identification of the concept "Intelligent".
I needed this confirmation! I wasn't a dumb kid, but I struggled like crazy with the things that I didn't learn at home *because for most of my life I grew up in neighborhoods and school districts where poverty was the norm.* Once my family made enough money to move to a middle class neighborhood (my father had to climb the ranks in the military for a while to get this), I had major academic catch-up to do! I had to work twice as hard to get to a place that would make colleges look at me. I took summer classes, got tutoring, went for part-time work, volunteer work, school sports clubs... All because I started behind my middle-class peers. If I hadn't done so much reading and drawing as a kid just because I enjoyed it I honestly don't think I would've bothered trying to get better. I would've thought I was just dumb and that was my lot in life. There are so many kids left behind because of circumstances outside their control and it really pisses me off. I got lucky when my dad got a promotion. Not everyone does.
There's plenty of research that moving low income students into high performing school systems at very young age, like 7 and under the outcomes are the same as any student at the school. If you move a high income student to a poor school, their outcomes are the same as any rich kid.
The US education system is designed to embed economic differences and perpetuate poverty by denying the poorest communities decent opportunities in education. The poorer the community the greater the state funding is needed for education.
that is exactly why it is only considered a valid measure when people haven't trained for it - and the reason why people are not allowed to take IQ tests several times in a certain time span. and also the reason why professionals who do iq tests change the tasks with every test.
People were just reaching the highest heights their genetics could reach trough advancements made in food and water security as well as access to information which once reached would make average IQ to stagnate at the same level which will certainly be higher to IQs historic record but any "gains" made is just an illusion people were always smart like this it's just inequtable distribution of recourses which made IQ of majority of humans to appear lower than their genetics could provide at its maximum, IQ could also drop depending on the winds of sexual selection, IQ being genetic isn't something that was pulled out of ass of some fat academic who just wanted to oppress everyone these are undeniable facts because women who were artificially impregnated with genetic material of a man with high IQ produced children with high IQ this couldn't happen if genetic component is not a thing, but case can be made for IQ being completely unreliable when it comes to predicting outcomes you cannot predict a persons sucess just based on IQ this is nonsense, you cannot predict their height or level of mastery in any subject, it has no predictive capability.
I always thought that we'd already moved on from IQ tests. It would be a bit like taking MBTI as a true measure of people's personalities, or using tarot cards to predict the future.
I took an IQ test as a child with ADHD because the counselor was worried that I was growing bored in my classes so it would benefit me to be in the talented and gifted program. I just missed the cutoff, which was disappointing at the time...but now I'm relieved because of the horror stories I've heard from other ADHD adults who were in those classes and got even more pressure to achieve with their high functioning label than I did. My family didn't have a lot of money and my parents didn't graduate from college, but they were so desperate to give my brother and I a better life that they pushed us to work really hard in a system that was already rigged against us. They meant well...but I suffered for it along the way. I have really mixed feelings about it. I wouldn't be where I am today without factors of my upbringing...but I would never put my children through that.
The idea of IQ being the one determining metric for one's intelligence falls apart even if you go back to Piaget's theory of multiple intelligences. By now, even that might be outdated, but I'm sure we all know people who are brilliant at some things and terrible at others. We've all heard about the brilliant physicist who can't remember the order of the alphabet without singing a song intended for children. From my own experiences, ask my father a math question, and he'll just blink at you, but he has a great deal of musical and artistic talent, he always helped me when I struggled with writing in school, and he once dismantled an entire garbage disposal into each of its individual parts just to get a client's ring out of it, then PUT THE THING BACK TOGETHER AND IT STILL WORKED. Yet, when he was in school, he got bad grades, and was written off as just another loser, and the unfortunate side effect of that is that it encourages anti-intellectualism in a LOT of people who've been put through that.
I try to avoid categorizing peoples levels of intelligence. To me it seems like it is a word that people use to try to label a superiority over others, most often people define it in a way to make themselves fit the definition of intelligence, perhaps even the lady in this video. My research paper for a college sociology class was about racial biases on I.Q. test. The French educator Binet never called his test an intelligence quotient. Some people at Stanford University tweaked Binet's test, and they called it an intelligence quotient.
On the value of standardized testing: Growing up, there used to be a "physical fitness badge" you could earn every year in gym class, not sure if this is still a thing. I ran Cross Country, so, naturally, lapped everyone (literally everyone in the class) running the mile ... but I guess I wasn't considered physically fit by the test because I couldn't touch my toes or do a set number of pull ups (with my gangly long arms). lol
That fitness test was a nightmare for me. I had the opposite experience. I have the "floppy" kind of cerebral palsy. It's not immediately noticeable from appearance, but there was no way I could ever even think about meeting any of those yearly requirements - except the toe-touching. I honestly dreaded those tests. They seemed custom designed to make me feel like absolute crap about myself.
In England and Northern Ireland some areas have a test called the 11-plus which is taken by primary school children aged 10/11 to determine whether they go to a grammar or a technical/comprehensive secondary school. It is partially modelled on IQ tests and has been abolished in many places due to being terrible. If you got to a grammar school you will often experience better quality of schooling and be in a social environment composed of students who are mostly middle and upper class. This is why passing the 11-plus can give a lower-income child some social mobility if they manage to pass. Thing is, you need to be taught how to pass the test. It is impossible to pass if you have not been shown how to answer the questions. Also, the pass/fail score (England only) is normalised depending on how well your local cohort of fellow-test takers does and how many places are available in local grammar schools. This means the test scores are ambiguous and you can't compare between schools. It also means that if you have more boys-only grammar schools than girls-only grammar schools, girls are less likely to go to a grammar school even if they get the same scores. You end up competing against your classmates in a manner which exacerbates class inequity as those who can afford the study packs and tutors get to go to better schools. I moved to England just in time to have to take the 11-plus meaning I had no idea what it was or how to do it. I was a low income student in an upper class primary school where almost all of my classmates had been receiving tutoring for several years. If you did not pass the other students would look down on you - even though a set number of students could not be allowed to pass by the nature of the scoring system. Although I passed (barely - thanks Ma for the hours and hours spent at the kitchen table), none of my siblings did and the difference in quality between the school I went to and the schools they went to is shocking. Some people make a whole lot of money off of these standardised tests. We need to put an end to it - all children should receive equally good education.
Thanks Adam for also posting your episodes on TH-cam! I love listening to the podcast but also like to have youtube on while I work. Now I can always listen to your amazing content and learn more every day.
I tested high. I am very fast at picking up new skills and I have a significant mechanical aptitude. I get bored with everything, can't stay doing the same job for more than 5 years. I forget to eat, can barely do my own laundry, and I'm miserable person in general because I overthink everything. IQ or at the very least what we think IQ means is bullsh*t.
That's typical of someone with adhd or autism. Maybe the problem is not that IQ is bullsh*t, it's just that you can have low or high IQ independently from other things impacting how your brain functions. Maybe we should stop using a screwdriver to punch nails in the wall and ranting about it being far from ideal. Or we should study, learn and talk a lot more about neurodiversity so more people could see the difference between a screw and a nail.
A farmer from medieval times would be considered less than a moron on our modern iq test. Conversely, every one of us would die a painful death in medieval times/conditions, as our advanced knowledge would be useless without the pre-manufactured means at our immediate disposal; while that same farmer, in those conditions, would be able to provide for his clan and kin.
My son was evaluated by the public school system and entered into the gifted education program at 5, and my daughter was literally yesterday, evaluated by the public school system and will also enter that stream. My partner and I have never pushed our children to learn the things that might have contributed to this specifically, however we also never underestimated them; if they wanted to learn something we would do our best to help. We see the kids who get pushed by 3rd party testing, and their children into these programs, and that is _obviously_ fraught with major issues. These poor kids are under the weight of the world with a responsibility that is _categorically_ unfair. Often the gifted education program is looked upon as a status symbol, but wow that's a poor position. This is _special education_ for kids who will do poorly in the regular program. The best analogy I've seen is that it takes the same effort to build a house for everyone, but someone who has been "gifted" will have an expectation that exceeds the normal, _and_, they will expect to do the same job with less work, which is impossible. I agree we all have infinite capacity to learn and become intelligent, people need to understand that being "gifted" is a stream of learning that targets a specific learning need, not a badge of honour.
Nope, you’re obviously smart, I suspect you are aware of that, and it only substantiates the heritability thesis. Not saying your kids have more value than any other human, but, they will have advantages that intelligence brings. Maybe they will grow up to watch smart TH-cam videos too.
I had a huge test I failed the first time, last year. I studied a bit, and smoked a joint right before going in, and I passed. This stuff you do Adam is great, it’s like therapy.
Same. I would always score top of my state in the standardized tests. I stopped taking math classes. Now I can barely multiply. Everything takes practice.
As someone who was in special ed for 90% of primary school who now has 2 degrees, is working on a 3rd, has a creative writing certificate from the Iowa Creative Writers Workshop (ever hear of Kurt Vonnegut?), and have a classically trained voice - ya don't say. Helps that half my expertise is psych, but good to see this information is becoming more visible.
The school I went to really took all of it to the next level and only let the wealthy families' kids into the AP programs. I qualified for them but they would not let me take them and they wouldn't say why, but when you look at who was in those classes and who wasn't, it was only the wealthiest kids in the school, and there wasn't a single wealthy kid in any of the 'lower level' classes, no matter how much those kids struggled. Their parents just paid for them to get extra tutoring and help, and some of them barely passed with Cs and Ds even with all that help. It wasn't about who could handle the workload or what the kids actually needed so they could learn at the pace they needed to learn at, it was entirely about who had the finances to keep up a certain image (that of being on top) and who didn't. I was so deeply bored in school, I was never challenged, and that hurt me in the long run because I didn't develop good studying skills, or skills for doing homework, or skills for how to deal with educational struggles. I didn't do well in college because of it. I mean, I didn't do poorly, I got a 3.2gpa in the end, but that wasn't good enough to get into a Master's program, so it's not good enough.
I never knew that the IQ test started out as the French looking for kids with learning difficulties. So the test started with the aim of looking for students at the bottom 5% out of the total being tested. Yet they turned it into a measure of intelligence and ranking overall rather than just outliers. So it went from being a relative test to one with fixed points?
The only value to IQ tests that I've found is in identifying those obsessed with them as people to avoid. I took a battery of them as a teenager in a gifted program and came away with that very guarded attitude.
There is clinical value to IQ tests when someone is trying to figure out how they might be different and/or what areas they may need help with. They're not good as a single indicator, but large discrepancies between subscales in a standardized IQ test can lend evidence and help clinicians figure out whether someone may have something like a learning disability, neurodevelopmental disorder, or what deficits they may have from a traumatic brain injury, and can help with determining what type and level of help people might need in certain areas. There is significant value to IQ testing when it's used for that purpose and not as a factual indicator of someone's potential.
@mastelsa I am well aware of the theoretical clinical value, for some clinicians. That is only something I've read about though. Perhaps, I'm just privileged to have only seen IQ tests used solely to exclude disabled, neurodevelopmentally challenged, and neuro-atypical people from the services that they desperately need/needed. These mythical clinicians and the associated "significant value" you mention sounds interesting. How much does it cost to buy in?
I steer far away from people who brag about their (usually online) IQ test scores. They tend to be somewhat narcissistic and have a significantly inflated perception of their own abilities. There is a reason why brilliant individuals like Einstein were and are often so humble; they knew their own abilities and did not need a number to validate themselves via. To them, intelligence is a process and a skill that one develops throughout their life, not a birthright.
@@markromine5103The only price I'm aware of would be checking your privilege and opening your mind to the possibility that something you dislike isn't entirely bereft of value. Maybe getting a TBI would help!
I remember in high school, even though I was in all honors classes, that two of my friends who were in normal classes, were way smarter than me. One, I spent a lot of time tutoring her on any subject she had trouble understanding the concept of, had a great sense of taking care of others where she loved and babysat all of her nieces and nephews. She loved spending time with them, having a great sense of family, protected them like a fierce Mom lion, and it's where she only cared about spending her time. She could've cared less about school. The other, the daughter of a police officer, had a lot of street sense and sized up people in an instant. She wasn't shy about calling people out. I was lacking in both of these qualities, being torn where my responsibilities lay and constantly being shown how gullible I was. These were two of my best friends and I envied and admired them. I struggled in those honors classes; they didn't come easy to me. I only breezed through geometry and chemistry. Everything else, I studied at least three hours every night, after chores and after everyone else went to bed. A few years ago one of the questions posed to us by our high school reunion committee was, "What do you wish now you did differently in high school?" I can remember thinking, "I wish I goofed off more and didn't take life so seriously." Perhaps, that would have given me the break I needed in between studying. This was a great discussion. Thank you.
Studies have shown that when you give a small child an IQ test, the result is more closely related to their parents' IQ scores than the child's eventual adult score.
Really appreciate all the in depth topics you cover! You and your guests never fail to demonstrate how flimsy these concepts are that society at large takes totally at face value.
When my IQ level was first tested, my levels were all over the place. On the one hand, I had intence puzzle abilities. On the other hand, I had a bad memory, and I had speaking problems. For years, I used training video games to help out with my mental issues and tried to get the best that I could afford. There is also the food that I intake, which makes a difference.
So the way that responsible clinicians use IQ testing is to specifically look for large differences between the different subscores like you're describing. Those large differences _can_ indicate things like learning disabilities, localized traumatic brain injury, or certain neurodevelopmental disorders like autism, and *when combined with input from parents and teachers and patients* can help indicate what areas someone might need significant help with and what areas are strengths to focus on. They should absolutely not be used as a concrete indicator or determinant of someone's intelligence or potential, and there's a growing trend to report discrepancies but not actual scores in reports and medical records in order to help prevent that.
As someone who often gets great scores on any test because I think they are fun, and people assumed I was smart because of it, I totally agree these tests are BS... I feel like a lot of people will say that it's just people with low scores that want to call them BS but no I know people smarter than me that get test anxiety and for me it's like the opposite, I am a good guesser and just think multiple choice tests are fun and am great at jeopardy because useless trivia is fun for me, but a lot people when asked to answer a question quickly will freeze up in the moment even if they know the answer, which is why those reporters go around asking simple questions to prove that everyone is stupid now days are a complete misunderstanding of how brains work, you go up to someone who is out shopping casually and ask a random question quickly with a camera in their face and they are most likely going to freeze out of nervousness, not understanding that is actually stupider than the people who make fun of those people in the videos honestly
I'm really surprised that they did not touch more on the difference between the socioeconomic differences in education. The children of white collar workers hear vastly more words per day than the children of blue collar workers. Children with larger vocabularies are seen as more intelligent. The children of blue collar families are also discouraged from asking questions and expanding on what is being taught, they just do it while, children of white collar families are encouraged to do the opposite. There is also the fact that education is more focused on making good workers than actual education. Also, there are cuts to liberal arts and that negatively impacts the ability to critically think and analyze situations or media for biases and inaccuracies.
A think I find freaking amazing about these morons who say "oh no, we/the people we simp are just born superior, the genetic part is definitelly real and definitelly huge, much more important than environment" is the sheer voluntarily ignorance and lack of putting one and two together. Your brain is 2% of your body mass, but it consumes 20% of the energy supply. And a lot of that energy comes from/requires oxygen to be used, that is why we breath it constantly or we die. It gets special treatment too, but that biology/science class fact is enough here. You'd think that knowing that very complex and complicated thing is the major reason you need to be constantly consuming so much energy just to run on autopilot, that maybe providing it with the very bestest of supplies and conditions will lead to it developing better, and being maintained better, than providing it with shite harmful supplies, or just no supplies. And this is a thing you can experience within a day yourself. You go to place with bad air, you get dizzy, brain fog, etc. (it is the whatever gas poisoning creeping in, even if slower than it would be required to kill you). You're tired you don't think as well, you're more forgetful etc. You're sick or wounded, same thing. You hungry, gods, literally no one tries to think on an empty stomach if they can avoid, because it just doesnt work so good. And with all these personal experiences, ditching even the basic science fact even, they don't even consider that maybe, just maybe, the coditions matter a bit for how smart you can perform at any given time or throughout your life in general. Nah, must be just the genes.
I've always though intelligence is the ability to learn and adapt , either from your own experiences or observation of others (reading or listening/watching real time)).. not any capacity of what you know. It's so broad. that many people, even the majority would fall into the intelligent category.
The best description of intelligence I have heard of is that intelligence is like an elastic band and we have different elastic bands that have different lengths they can be stretched to which is what education and learning do.
There's so many crappy podcasts out there, and new crappy podcasts popping up every day. This is not one of them. These podcasts are so great, im glad I was able to wade through all the crap to find this gem. Thanks Adam! Please keep on producing this great content!
A anecdote that might also inform the discussion. In grade 4 (in something like 1976), my homeroom teacher wanted to "hold me back", and perhaps put me in a program for kids with cognitive deficiencies ("mentally challenged kids" I think they called it then). My mother was convinced that I wasn't suffering from cognitive deficiencies, even though my academic performance was pretty poor, so she lobbied to have me tested. I was tested by a psychologist, and it turned out that I had an IQ in the top 1.5% of the population. I definitely was suffering from boredom in schools, and likely suffer from ADHD (I'm finally getting assessed later this month, in my mid 50's). I'm pretty confident that if I had been held back, my already up and down experience with academics would have been much more sour. Had I been born a few years later, I would have also likely been diagnosed with ADHD in school, and might have had an academic career that both matched my curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and with my cognitive abilities. IQ tests aren't perfect, and were less perfect in 1976, but they were, and to the best of my knowledge are, the best available way to assess the sorts of cognitive abilities that they claim to test, and when used appropriately, they can make kids' lives better.
Feels like an age old debate of "not a panacea" meaning "useless." IQ strongly correlates with depression, for example. It has useful applications. Abusing any tool to justify your own terrible actions results in a bad time for a lot of people, and I appreciate you calling it out.
IQ correlates with depression the same way peanut butter correlates with jelly. That is to say it doesn't outside of anecdotal data such as a PB&J. If you want to determine whether or not you are depressed, you take a depression test. Truth of the matter is IQ was created by the Eugenics movement which is nothing more than a bunch of racist pseudoscience trying to justify why rich white people deserve to rule over everyone else. From everything I've seen IQ has literally no useful application whatsoever as it attempts to quantify the unquantifiable and intelligence comes in many forms that can't simply be graded or observed.
@@sloanekuria3249 There's plenty of clinical utility to IQ testing. The way that responsible clinicians use IQ testing is to look for large differences between the different subscores, which can indicate things like learning disabilities, deficits from traumatic brain injury, or certain neurodevelopmental disorders like autism. When combined with input from parents and teachers and patients, a full set of IQ scores helps to shore up certain diagnoses and indicate what areas someone might need significant help with and what areas are strengths to focus on. They shouldn't be used as a concrete indicator or determinant of someone's intelligence or potential, but saying there's zero utility to modern IQ testing is just not true from a clinical perspective.
35:06 "Don't you wanna be an optimist about it?" No! They don't! Because optimism is a feeling and the ideology of people promoting those ideas is to negate the importance of any emotion*, because emotions lead to will and will leads to change. And change is bad for whoever is comfortable. *except reactionary emotions, those are great. You can totally be outraged that others want stuff to change. Because you are outraged on behalf of facts! /s
I scored the Highest score on an IQ test in Elementary school.....They put my black ass in a special needs class!!!?? They were trying to keep me from growing, learning and bettering myself!!! They wanted me to think I was dumb or stupid!!! lol...smh
This already happened with Dr. Michael R. Jackson's deconstruction of Warne's claims in "Misrepresents the Science: Review of Russell T. Warne’s In The Know."
I took the SAT twice in the early 00s, spring of my junior year (11th grade) and fall of my senior year (12th grade). 610 math/780 verbal the first time; 700 math/770 verbal the second time. I never took any prep courses or did any SAT-specific study; literally the *only* difference is that my cohort had a shitty math teacher in 10th and 11th grade, and our 12th grade math teacher spent the first month or two of class consolidating concepts that the 10th/11th grade teacher had failed to instill. Then I see these charts that are like "Here's the IQ that corresponds to X score on the SAT" and I'm like ... you really think my *innate intelligence* grew in 6 months to the equivalent of a 90-point jump on an SAT score? No, it was just better teaching!
Shaun has a two and a half hour video on the book "The Bell Curve," which is mostly a thorough debunking of the concept of IQ. The main reason why IQ tests don't accurately measure intelligence is because INTELLIGENCE ISN'T REAL. It's an artifact of a particular form of statistical analysis. There's simply no reason to believe that there's a single, quantitative, measurable characteristic underlying performance in disparate domains such as math, memory, reading comprehension, decision-making, etc. General intelligence doesn't exist. We only think it does because of 200 years of racists trying to convince us it does. Shaun's video is great, btw. Even at 2.5 hours, it never gets boring.
IQ tests and generation labels are some of the most annoying pseudosciences that people still use today. Like I know we like being defined and part of a group, but lets pick other things.
The real problem is people judge others and treat smart and dumb people differently (I mean like elevating smart people above them and pushing dumb people to a level lower than them). Smart or dumb, we should treat people like .. people and humans. Taken to the extreme this becomes eugenics and segregation
Whether IQ tests really measure intelligence or not is irrelevant. We cannot deny the predictive power of IQ test results. High IQ test results predict lower mortality, higher income and wealth etc. This means IQ tests have pragmatic value regardless if they actually measure intelligence or not.
@@xiaokourou IQ test results predict much more than that as I stated in the OP. For instance: high IQ scores predict low mortality, and low IQ scores predict higher frequency of crime.
@@sloanekuria3249 Morality and crime is not class status. And IQ predicts these, it's not a mere marker. You simply don't know what you're talking about.
I failed my ACT test with a 300. I never took it when I was in high school. So I took it after I gotten my Associates degree and went to University. Ironically my grades kept going up the longer I went to college. I even made the Presidents's List a few times. That was pretty cool, but the thing I found odd with the ACT test was that it was A, B, C, and D for every question. That made no sense, since in real life there's no A, B, C, and D to a problem, because you have a problem with machine, so you have to analyze the circuitry of the machine. You can use a computer to help troubleshoot, but you're doing data gathering and developing a conclusion to which component went bad. Sometimes you can't tell with computer, now you get down and dirty, and pull a part off a machine. Take that encoder off the motor and turn the shaft see if it turns smoothly. Those tests should be written. That's how find creativity and intelligence of an individual.
I went to school in a wealthy farming community and my parents were perpetually told that I was bored and gifted. This was the case from kindergarten through senior year. As an adult, my anxiety took over the adhd and almost ruined my life. I wasn’t properly diagnosed as adhd and autistic (but masked well all my life) until my mid twenties. I wasn’t properly medicated until age 32 (this year). It’s like people using an child acting out as an indicator of boredom is misinterpreted neurodivergence. Being born female in a society that didn’t believe that girls could have autism or severe adhd, I think that’s what set me back the most. I’ve spent my life trying to figure out why I do certain things that others don’t do, why I can only focus on a book to read when I WANT to, why I space out so much, and why I isolate myself so much.
TO be fair, the kids getting tracked into HVAC repair were the real lucky ones. You'll never be out of a job, it pays extremely well, and no student loans.
Loved all of this! Hearing Adam's story about being seen as bored and put into AP classes reminds me of a recent epiphany I had. I'm dating a teacher now and I joked to her about my stories as a kid of teachers always reprimanding me for talking even when I tried to explain that other kids keep talking to me and find it funny that teachers only blamed me. One day she was like, do you think it could have been a racist bias going on. It was the first time I had even thought about it in that context. As a kid unless it's the blatant racism we saw on TV I hadn't figured out that adults like teachers could be racially biased too.
It's pretty interesting that not everyone learns the same way. I found that to be sort of true for me. I just never got school until high school. It's like I was just unplugged, going through motions that didn't make any sense to me and were thus a waste of my time. I'd rather be reading a fiction novel (which I was most of the time). In high school I decided that crap counted then, but while I aced every midterm and final exam, I still did poorly because I refused to do homework. In my mind it was for people that needed it and since I was acing my exams, I clearly didn't need it even though it was a 3rd of the grade. Because of that, while I could have got straight As, I got Ds. Then later I decided to go to Airframe and Powerplant school to become a certified Aircraft Maintenance Tech (because by this time I discovered was gifted mechanically and wanted to leverage that gift). I did try a semester at community college before that and figured out I was going to be much better at that than in high school before I quit, but A&P school was an entirely different animal. I felt like I was learning information that directly related to my goals, not some abstract stuff that I may or may not ever use. I ended up graduating 2nd in my class and it might have been first if I hadn't had some issues with my practical sheetmetal skills. Sheetmetal is a bit like sculpting. There's a artistry to it which some people have a talent for and some don't. I didn't so my grade took a hit on that class, even though I dropped back to take it a second time. Fortunately it is a skill that could be honed through practice but I didn't truly master it until I was employed and doing it every day for a year or so. Long story short, earning my AS degree in Aircraft Maintenance Technology was a breeze compared to earning my HS diploma. I can't help but think that if primary and secondary schooling was more real world goal oriented instead of about cramming a bunch of abstract knowledge into a child's brain as a secondary outcome from the primary purpose of teaching then they must conform (that was my view on homework being a 3rd of my grad and a part of the reason I refuse to do it) since conformity is the enemy of innovation, IMHO.
You often fill the enclosure you are put in. I was put in the AG program in elementary- middle school. My mom fought for me to get in. I didn't get why until today hearing this. I did not take school seriously in high-school though and didn't do AP other than one class because it was boring and I didn't believe I was going to have a future. I was certain I was going to die young due to the violent death of a parent when I was very young. I didn't realize I was going to make it until I turned 28 and started getting my shit together.
my experience with the TAG program in grade school was offputting. I opted out of it before long so I could be treated like the majority, though i was placed in an advanced math class. I didn't like being segregated with only a few other kids , to a quiet part of the building, to answer lots of questions and take lots of tests. when i changed schools after 6th grade, we missed the enrollment period and the placed me in a remedial math class :P
I remember when I was in kindergarten I had balancing issues and didn't know how to do basic stuff like skip so I basically failed the cognitive test for something dumb like spatial awareness. They put me in with actual mentally challenged kids for that whole year because I failed the test because I was clumsy.
My experience as a young child (6yo) growing up in Albany GA in the 90s. We were bussed into a predominantly white school. I was severely disciplined for literally nothing. I was publicly scolded by a middle aged teacher one time because a boy was disgusted that I dipped my cookie in my milk and I was paddled by the principal because some girl lied and said I did something to her which was never explained to me what I did. The principal called my grandmother and told her I was misbehaving and she of course gave her blessing because that's what her generation did. It was horrifying this guy was like proud of it he had the paddle mounted on his wall like a trophy. I cried, not because it hurt, but because I knew I was innocent and nobody believed me.
I took iq tests twice. First time was when I was depressed and got low score, another time when I was an adult living alone and got a high score. It cannot be very scientific if its only done over a few days, mostly in the written word, and doesnt account for mental health. Many of these tests look more like a caste mechanism for sorting people under the assumption that there isn't enough room in the desirable careers and so needing an excuse to reject hundreds of applications while still claiming meritocracy. I dont think people vary much in intelligence. Almost every person I was told was dumb actually just had other factors going on in their life. The worst being a kid in grade school who was in special ed, but actually just needed a hearing aid. This applied to me too, when I was almost homeless I knew there was gossip about me being an idiot. Turns out getting surviving when broke takes a lot more mental resources than a comfortable middle class lifestyle. I had no energy left for self development after getting food water shelter.
The Capital City of Australia is Canberra, which was made for the purpose. In 1901, the colonies of Australia federated, creating the Commonwealth of Australia. Rather than declaring Sydney or Perth or some other existing city a Captain, they decided to build a new capital city basically from the ground up. To do so, they had a contest in which over a hundred architects submitted designs. The winner was Walter Griffin, a Chicago based Architect and part of the Garden City movement. The Garden City movement sought to solve the problems of Victorian Cities through urban planning, zoning and in particular the use of Greenspace. As such, Canberra is widely considered a beautiful city.
Fuck that competition bullshit amongst rich people. They should've just hired skilled workers in the architect industry who were of indigenous descent and other local designers from Australia instead!
Fuck that competition bullshit amongst rich people. They should've just hired skilled workers in the architect industry who were of indigenous descent and other local designers from Australia instead!
Having an "above average" IQ, this is kind of a bitter pill to swallow. Still, there's more to life than numbers supposed to quantify the unquantifiable... a three-digit number that determines which table you sit at in the lunch room... far too much power invested in that number. Far too much. That, and credit ratings.
I'm coming into this off an essay about autistic emotions and the utter bunk that is still widely believed about autistic folks, and this is seriously the perfect next topic.
I definitely feel like I learnt this lesson the hard way. I am nuerodivergent, and I was undiagnosed in primary and high school. I often missed assignment, misread them and missed the point or did badly understanding through the explanations given. I was placed in all of the "lower" classes, and discouraged from doing "challenging" year twelve subjects. They dissuaded me from doing year twelve English. Because I am in Australia, however, I could still go to university. I am doing a bachelor of arts, doing relative writing and sociology. I have a high gpa that is allowing me to study philosophy oversea on an exchange, and have been softly invited to do honours. And I spent years believing that I was stupid, when it turns out that my brain just didn't like the way school is structured.
Yep, IQ tests are bullshit. I’ve got a 145, and I’m sort of academically smart, but a friend of mine with a 110 is majoring in three subjects in college at age 15. It makes no sense.
The argument in this episode seems to be: set up the straw man that "the IQ test" is a perfect measure of all intellectual abilities and then attacking it. I guess that this is your best argument against IQ as a meaningful measurement.
😃 I can't WAIT to watch this video. I've always known IQ tests were garbage largely because I scored reasonably high on them. Yet I couldn't learn another language, judge distances or direction, or develop the skills and muscle memory to be a good musician or great athlete. I could never learn to enter people's hearts to become an author or orator. Pattern recognition isn't the measure of a mind. I look forward to learning about this. ❤🧡💛💚💙💜
It still takes practice and deep concentration to learn a skill. I think the test only really determines general mental acuity and cognitive potential.
IQ tests are only useful when you compare subtest scores to identify cognitive strengths and weaknesses at the time the test was given. Too many extraneous factors affect how well you do to make any sort of value judgments. Also, "average" on the test does not equal a "C" grade.
As a person w/ADHD and an FSIQ of 140+, I'm not NEARLY the "smartest" person that I know... Not by far. If my scores are valid (from a psych) then it highlights the inequities in our system... How many people are being held down by society vs "being stupid"
That's an excellent take on the subject of intelligence. I've always thought about how effective IQ tests are in measuring intelligence, but I've never looked into it. I've always thought that adaptability was the best and fairest measure of intelligence, which kind of falls in line with the Professor's study.
My sister and I was given an intelligence test when we were young kids in the early 60's as was the tradition then.... I barely bumped the numbers indicating the potentiallity of being a genius, while my sister came in as "just average". .... Our dad used that as a point of contention between us most our lives... I think the whole test method was flawed because my sister constantly shows genius levels that are astonishing, where I "has the dumb" on regular basis. Conclusions, I really have none
But not solely determined doesn't mean that genetics don't play a part. Not that IQ is accurate or a good measure in any way. Also, obviously intelligence isn't necessarily simple enough to easily compute. Not that the interview is bad, but is there a reason to interview a sociologist over a psychologist on something that generally is much more used and designed by psychologists? I mean, I'm a computer scientist, but I wouldn't interview another one on say chemistry, even though that has a large effect on electrical engineering. Not to say that her views are wrong, but I wouldn't say someone with expertise in sociology is inherently qualified to be considered an expert on psychology. Kind of disappointed honestly, your old show seemed to pick people with expertise in the actual subject.
How does this blend with the notion we have in the last half century that post secondary education is the responsibility of the child? (and on a related topic, onerous school debt). It seems like if we just said "education is a debt society owes its members" we could get to affordable education for life but obviously we're not moving in that direction.
I scored incredibly well in math all the way up until college calculus. I failed it miserably the first time because I didn't have the /skills/ needed to learn it in college at 18. I failed it a second time for reasons I can't remember. I passed it a third time because of an excellent professor who taught it in a way that it finally clicked, but that was at a community college, and the credit didn't transfer to my university. So the fourth time, I got to the point that I was doing derivatives in my head just to challenge myself and see just how impressive Tesla's ability to do math was. Every so called "genius" I've ever heard of falls into one of three broad categories. Marketers who convinced the world they were geniuses, often by stealing the hard work of others. Obsessive individuals who spent more time and effort than anyone else pursuing a narrow set of skills that our society values. And people who put in a lot of work, generally breaking cultural taboos and sometimes laws in order to gather insights that their historical peers couldn't because they stayed within those boundaries. Not one of those types of people is inherently special. Humans are universally very stupid. But by misusing our wetware enough in the correct ways, we can learn to do things that no amount of evolution could have done.
Many of these tests are based on "knowing" things. And when it comes right down to it, "knowing things" is a matter of opportunity. So, what they are really testing for is who's had the best opportunities to learn things.
If the test is a test of knowing things, then it's not an IQ test. The IQ tests I took in school were about pattern recognition and spatial reasoning, and those are the things an IQ test is supposed to measure. What's annoying is that basically all online IQ tests are completely garbage. I have never found a way to take another real IQ test after the one I took in school. So it seems like it really is a class problem. I'd probably have to pay hundreds of dollars to get another real IQ test.
I agree wholeheartedly with the main points of this discussion: standardized intelligence tests of any sort are biased, there is a huge environmental impact on intelligence, and how we define intelligence is often biased and counterproductive. But to ply the Devil’s advocate, is it really unreasonable to expect that components of intelligence (processing speed, working memory, dual tasking, etc.) might have a genetic component? Sure, everyone improves in optimal conditions, but just like the height example used, some groups simply might start on a bell curve that is farther to the right or left vs. the bell curve another group. Are “smart” people inherently better people who deserve more resources than “dumber” people? That seems like a more nuanced approach to the topic that doesn’t ignore a reasonable hypothesis because it does seem racist at face value. What if it leads to genetic therapy that can improve recall and processing speed, even as we age? Is it still racist and bad if we strive to share this equitably or perhaps even preferentially to those who score lower on those metrics? Again, I loved the main points of this article, and really enjoyed the nuance and context it brought to such a pervasive and ingrained part of our society. I would have preferred if the counter proposal was explored more as a hypothesis made in good faith rather than dismissing it outright because it sounds similar to the views of some nasty people in history.
My girlfriend is a teacher who will rant for HOURS on how angry standardized testing, not just IQ tests, make her, and how badly it is going for her "babies".
> standardized testing
Right, but how do we measure babies' learning performance in consistent way?
@@alex_lll Anthropologist here. The thing is that you need to take more of an individualistic approach since often different cultures teach different types of socialization at different stages, so "standardized" doesn't really help, so should be left up to experts in childcare who have cultural and diversity sensitivity training. Asking a child to fill in bubbles rarely does much to make such assessments. In fact, there is a really great series about how this one child psychologist managed to assess different children on their learning abilities without using standardized testing. I can dig that up. "Secret Life of Children." I believe is the program. She didn't create a right or wrong, just a different way to approach it.
@@alex_lll This asks the wrong question. The concept of "learning performance" is not really coherent, to be honest. Let alone "consistent" learning performance.
As a former special ed teacher, YES
Way too much of my job was wrapped up in this bunk
@@alex_lll Why would we need to
38:18 I got around 700 on my first SAT and around 900 on my second SAT in the critical reading portions.
Then, I finally managed to pay to go to *ONE* SAT prep class that was held in my high school library and got the 1100 I needed for scholarships.
I realized then that poor SAT scores absolutely have to do with lack of access rather than lack of “intelligence”. Like most things, it’s a class issue.
My class valedictorian was not street smart and she was kinda shocked I scored higher than her on our first attempt at SAT. She kept taking it about 6 times to get a higher score than my 1140 which I did no prep for other than my usual knowledge I got from attending school. Maybe I could have creeped towards 1600 If I actually picked up prep books and studied how the tests are structured.
I got a 1300 without practicing and honestly that was low for my school. Thing is, my high school required it's own test to get admitted so everyone there was either a natural test taker or they did a lot of test prep.
The situation leading up to taking my SAT test was very stressful, and I still made a 1290 because I had a bunch of SAT prep courses my senior year of high school and I happened to be a good test-taker. For a long time that score nagged at me because I thought I could've done better if the situation would have been better. It was massively important to me at the time because I was an arrogant little shit who's ego was built on my "intelligence". Years later, after I got into the real world and got knocked on my ass a few times, I finally realized how BS it all was, and how little "intelligence" and standardized testing really matters to, well, literally anything.
My best friend was consistently getting C-Ds in high school because her parents never motivated her or gave her any resources. We studied together for the SAT. I got a 2250 (this was back when writing was still a section, there’s where I lost the majority of my points haha). She got an 1860. My other friend, who was getting As and Bs in her honors classes, got a 1540.
It’s bullshit. It’s another way for the wealthy to launder their intelligence. It’s not a test for anything other than “did you have the time, resources, and knowledge to learn how to take this test?”
It’s not actually testing general intelligence or knowledge. It’s testing your ability to memorize a testing style.
Is this humble bragging
My dad was given an IQ test to test for early onset Alzheimer's, he scored in the 170s. He always laughed and said it wasn't a fair assessment because he was a math professor and spent his entire life training for the type of questions they asked on the test.
In highschool I was a horrible test taker. The problem was my attitude. I didn't want to be in school or I wanted to fight the power. But my capacity to learn is more vast than I was being given credit. My skill is finding the answer not knowing the answer.
As a person with ASD, IQ test just made me anxious. I never did good in work, have a tendency to forget things if I’m not interested in the subject, and would forget to do my work overall. I remember getting punished for not remembering things as a kid.
if i wasnt interested, in one ear out the other. "behavioral" issues that where punished. set me up for success!
I'm autistic, but was undiagnosed in school. I was constantly getting in trouble for being disruptive in class when I got bored. I was usually treated as difficult rather than differently abled. My mom knew that I was smart and just bored, so asked if I could test to be put in gifted classes when I was in 3rd grade. I remember being pulled from class to take a test without any explanation given, and I also remember getting bored halfway and not giving as much effort. They said that I tested above average intelligence, but still five points short of the lowest cutoff for getting into the gifted program. So I was kept in regular classes until high school. I know that if they had told me what the test was for I would have been more motivated to keep my attention on it, but they seemed to think that telling me would change the results (duh). My mom thinks that they just wanted to keep me down since she was the one that asked for the test, and not my teacher, who didn't like me due to my disruptions. If I had been put in the gifted program I would have been in a much smaller class with more one on one teacher time and self-paced learning, which I do better with. But no, let's keep me in the normal class where I get bullied for being different...
Same and it’s hard because I can’t force myself otherwise.
what's even MORE aggravating is that, especially with online testings when doing online classes, you're not told WHAT the right answer is to the one you got wrong. usually, you learn by making mistakes; that way you allocate enough concerted effort to commit it to memory while leaving the one you're 100% confident in being correct(and it says you are) on the back burner.
and tryna find the answer inna dry-as-toast textbook for the right answer is like finding a hay in a needlestack.
When I was in grade 6, I scored in the top 20 kids on the standardized IQ test for all of Ontario. Flunked out in a year because I kept acting out. Was told my whole life how much potential I had and that I was a disruptive menace. Never realized the intellectual potential; leaned into the menace instead. Untreated #ADHD is a bitch.
I think that's one of the phrases we hear the most from other people, how we are wasting potential because we can't sit still and pay attention or are just daydreaming away, I'm 30 and sometimes someone still tells me I'm so intelligent but I'm doing nothing with my life, it's always a pleasant experience.
I've been told time and time again that I had so much potential and that I just needed to apply myself. I was more of a class clown than anything which only in my senior year of highschool was I diagnosed with ADHD and depression.
At a certain point, being told 'you have so much potential' feels like chains slung over your shoulders as you tread water. All that redundant intellectual capacity paired with rhetorical potential leads to sloth, in my experience anyway. Sometimes I wish I was told I was dumb and would have to work harder than everyone else just to get by; you know what I mean?
oh you think you would have been better off doing all that homework? it was a scam we were incapable of falling for is all. I didn't do my homework either and i'm fine. they just want obedience
Tell me you were homeschooled and didn't graduate without telling me you were homeschooled and didn't graduate.
I’ve never been so happy to click on something, I swear half my downvotes on Reddit are from me factually explaining how IQ tests are bunk and shouldn’t be used as they are in modern society. I feel like I’m going crazy sometimes, it’s nice to see Adam address it!
"as they are" is probably a good conveyance. There is likely still a lot of misconception towards the whole link, partly because of the limited discussion and language used
It has to be said that the fact that you're a Black woman trying to explain this stuff is for SURE going to make it worse for you, no matter how demonstrably and objectively correct you are. ❤
You're not crazy. And not alone either, there's just less of us
IQ tests aren't bunk. They obviously do measure something, as a person tends to get similar results when they do repeated tests. The bunk part is expecting IQ test results alone to be a very good predictor of general real life competence.
@@giveussomevodka Um. "Measure something" is fucking _useless_ though, unless you know what that "something" is...? Like, why would you come up in here and defend IQ tests like this?
I commented already, but the guest mentioned "Social Emotional Learning" is such a huge aspect of education. Like asking kids, "Why do you think your teacher was frustrated that you were disrupting their class?" And many of them cannot extrapolate it. So I always contextualize it as, "when do you feel frustrated when teaching your little siblings things.
Stress and or anxiety absolutely drops my IQ by at least half, the poorer you are the more likely you are to have both. Something rich people and their superiority complexes should consider.
Rich people know that. It's why rich people at times take drugs to avoid exam nerves and whatnot. And it's why rich peope that really, really care for those perfect exam scores tend to do all kinds of over the top prep work that has zero real world utility and is meant exclusively for the purpose of doing well in a single abstract test.
There was a study that showed being in poverty reduces your iq by 10 points. Again, being poor causes people to score 10 points lower. This is likely due to the stress caused by poverty. Yet there are still people out there who believe that being stupid makes you poor, and that being in poverty doesn’t affect one’s ability to plan and think critically.
To them, I say: go fuck yourself.
By at least half? Jesus half of these comments haven't even googled what an IQ test is
Its the cortisol released by the stress but many people manage to get trough that phase during an exam by working on a easy task first if available to regain confidence. Ashwagandha with Black Pepper isn‘t that expensive and ist said it makes more streß resistant.
42:00 that's me, i was held back a class for this reason, I have ADHD and instead of saying 'he's bored, let's challenge him' they said 'he's childish, a daydreamer, let's hold him back 1 year to grow up a little' and it was bad..
I felt this.
I think Adam should do "responds to comments" videos for ones like he did on AI and mergers. Those videos cover a lot of interesting and rich topics and I think there's usually some good counterpoints against him or expanded commentary agreeing with him shared in some of the comments to those videos. And I'd definitely prefer picking smart comments to give a follow up opinion to rather than picking dumb ones for easy dunks.
I can agree with that, yes.
I'm married to a kindergarten teacher. There is one thing that educated parents predicts -- that's how involved the parents are going to be involved in their kids' education. When she meets with parents, the parents she wants to meet with never show up.
I think there is an issue here -- the parents without a university education are less likely to have the 9 to 5 job where they can meet with the teacher... they work too hard, for too little reward to be able to invest the time in their kids' education. Our system is designed to keep people in their lane and it works generationally.
The powers that be don't want this to change.
Adam’s assessment of the Mensa club thing cracked me up. That’s exactly how I felt after a year of participating in the GATE program. We just sat in a room and thought about how smart we were and did nothing productive or interesting. I dropped out of the smart kids club because it was boring.
I loved my GATE program back in the 90s, but we did awesome projects and advanced work. We were active
This episode of Factually and Shaun's video on Bell Curve are the greatest videos on TH-cam regarding IQ topic.
IQ tests measure how good you are at taking IQ tests.
They measure how good you are at it at the moment you took the IQ Test.
And pretty much all other tests.
🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔
Wait until you read the literature on what being "good at taking IQ tests" correlates with...
@@GreyKnight7777 yeah, I am aware ☹️
I did a report on Charles Binett on my first year of psychology and he's one of the most tragic figures in the story of psychology regarding how his work has been misused
I’ve passionately hated IQ tests since I was in high school and teachers decided to test everyone. Then they made me keep taking test because my scores were all over the place. I started to feel like a freak show, and we ended up moving across the country partially because of it. After that I just made up a score to tell people when they asked that was around whatever they said.
It was so comforting to hear this discussion.
10:30 I've always found Mensa to be hilarious in concept. If you're paying $79 a year for a certificate saying how smart you are, then you really aren't smart enough to be deserving of said certificate.
MENSA: My Ego Needs Sustained Attention.
Wait, people are actually paying money for this idiocy? And here I thought they were supposed to be intelligent.
I heard 2nd hand Trump University diplomas are going up in price & are fetching a pretty penny on Trump's merch site .
At the very least Mensa is a great resource for networking. That $79 can make you a lot more.
Mensa's requirements for entry are actually not even that exclusive. They have this reputation for being a club for hyper-intelligent people, but 1 in 50 people are eligible. So even if you aren't eligible you probably passed by a couple of potential mensans the last time you went grocery shopping.
As a PhD linguist, I'm SO here for the Pinker bashing! ❤
All my homies hate Steven Pinker!
yep for sure
I'm not even a linguistics student, but I have friends who are. They've ranted to me, and I'm here with you now.
Definitely Weezer's worst album...
Why does everyone hate Steven pinker??
I heard someone say once that "IQ basically just measures middle-classiness" aaaaaand yep, checked out.
Watching this i didn't expect it to hit soo hard. I'm someone made with donor sperm. I copped "you are so intelligent" growing up so was never given help i needed. Grew up in a poor working class second gen immigrate family. It was unfortunately a horrible fit. Emotionally neglected and abused as they had no clue how to handle someone so different to them. Plus their generational trauma they had and passed on. I finally met my donor his kids and other siblings. Most have degrees, well settled in life and are so intelligent. Most grew up in wealthier white collar homes. Engaging with them was the first time it was just easy to communicate not such effort i had always experienced.
If you need a demographic to show environment is a huge factor even when you have the same genes the donor conceived community would be a good one to look at. We may as well be lab rats for something we actually can choose.
Epigenetics are serious stuff. Generational trauma travels in many ways, but clearly some of them are biological.
I'm so glad she mentionned stress as an intelligence blocker, it's so true! We're much better at analyzing and solving problems when we're not stressed. I see intelligence the same way I see sports: we're not all going to become olympic games champions but we all can practice and improve.
41:50 That's kinda what happened to me in 2nd grade. I was incredibly hyperactive, constantly drawing during lectures for stimulation, constantly moving around, hyper focused only on select interests. The teachers quite literally sat my parents down and said, "We don't know what to do with him. He's not stupid, tested alright, he just won't pay attention.", and they chucked me into lower level classes where I was even more bored, but at least there it was acceptable to not even pay attention lmao. Anyway, I despised that school, and pleaded to my parents that I be transferred anywhere else going into 4th grade. Thankfully, they made that happen. Just another public school, same income bracket, etc, but this school was more focused on working with children as opposed to punishing them into behaving 'correctly'. What do ya know? My grades instantly improved. I was less stressed, because the environment was better, and I wasn't singled out for my hyper activity, and the teachers were more focused and understanding. I was allowed to draw in class when I only needed to hear a lecture, and boom, all of my test scores shot up. I began to actually enjoy school, but that initial experience at my old elementary school instilled so much emotional confusion, shame, and guilt, that I'm still processing to this day. I'm thankful I got out when I did.
I find it hard to believe that the people/organizations who oversee the American education system don't know what the fundamental problems are (they should, because there are plenty of books/ essays/ academic journals, as well as easily accessible statistical data from around the world that cover it). If they were truly interested in making it better, there are a variety of teaching methods from around the world, that produce vastly superior results, which could be implemented in the US.
I think the the US education system is functioning exactly as intended.
Kids from wealthy families are able to attend private schools, inherit family business/networking connections, and can learn how to handle/invest money from their parents.
The financial "elite" don't want competition. They want to maintain their "elitism." So, it makes sense, from the perspective of economic "elites," that public schools prioritize "standardized tests," and focus more on memorization/ regurgitation than on developing students' critical thinking skills.
I mean, those factories aren't going to run themselves (at least not until they have perfected a way to replace all workers with robots and AI systems, anyway) and when that happens, they will probably just nuke the entire planet, hop on a rocket and fly to their luxurious AI run space colonies with Jeff bezos and Elon musk....
I tested high on one of those tests they give you before starting you in kindergarten. From them on, I was placed on the fast track to academic success. Except I was a more visual and less linear thinker. The idea of what a number was was a completely foreign concept for me and was the last one in the class to learn to tell time proficiently. My mom did teach me to read before I was in kindergarten... (I guess it helped with all those word problems.... Lol) yeah. I was in first grade math while I was in kindergarten and hating every moment of it ...
The second I heard "Rutgers University" I knew I had to stick around to watch the whole video since I'm currently a student there (on an extended medical leave of absence). Can't wait to return. I always love hearing professors and APs from rutgers being brought on or referenced to as experts, which is something that I have been seeing more and more often the past 5 years.
When I was a child I was psychotic and ungovernable on account of ADHD and stress and the school gave me an IQ test. I scored pretty high on it but no one was proud of me, my parents held it against me, like it was proof I was intentionally obstinate and I should know better. The school put me in the gifted program and after a couple weeks they put me in Emotionally Disabled class instead because I couldn't work with people, probably for the best but the whole experience really messed me up. I got a big head feeling smarter than everyone else but I hated myself for it
I think there is value in standardized testing. Every child is unique and the concept of assessing certain potential seems powerful. I'm on the autism scale and there are things I get and there are things I don't get. That isn't just environment. We seem to fail quite a bit at providing environments that help children to thrive. Humans are complicated and we really know so little about ourselves.
I think there's value too. I just think standardized and iq tests are just used the wrong way. And for the wrong reasons
I think in discussing genes as separate from the environment, people often forget that genes are part of our environment. We often discuss DNA as if it was a software code only interacting with the environment in so far as they have contingencies planned in to interact with it, but really they're a long chain of nitrogen bases, working through physical processes to produce proteins or regulate their shape. I was reading a paper the other day that looked at a gene expression and noted that it was impacted by how close physically it was to a histone (because while bound directly to the histone, there was no space for it to be transcribed). So in that in that case it didn't matter if the gene was present or not, but rather if there were 40 or 400 repititions of a non-coding segment directly next to it and that was determined by another part of the stand which was actually capable of moving itself around the genetic code and seemed to only serve to insert other copies of itself elsewhere in the gene.
It's not then possible to abstract genes out of the environment, because they're part of the physical environment of which the body is made and prone to up-regulating, down-regulating and sometimes even just breaking themselves.
How good are you at thinking VS How good are you at thinking WHILE emotionally compromised? Which is "smarter"?
One simple example of the mis-identification of the concept "Intelligent".
The deeper you go, the less that word means.
I needed this confirmation! I wasn't a dumb kid, but I struggled like crazy with the things that I didn't learn at home *because for most of my life I grew up in neighborhoods and school districts where poverty was the norm.* Once my family made enough money to move to a middle class neighborhood (my father had to climb the ranks in the military for a while to get this), I had major academic catch-up to do! I had to work twice as hard to get to a place that would make colleges look at me. I took summer classes, got tutoring, went for part-time work, volunteer work, school sports clubs... All because I started behind my middle-class peers. If I hadn't done so much reading and drawing as a kid just because I enjoyed it I honestly don't think I would've bothered trying to get better. I would've thought I was just dumb and that was my lot in life.
There are so many kids left behind because of circumstances outside their control and it really pisses me off. I got lucky when my dad got a promotion. Not everyone does.
There's plenty of research that moving low income students into high performing school systems at very young age, like 7 and under the outcomes are the same as any student at the school. If you move a high income student to a poor school, their outcomes are the same as any rich kid.
The US education system is designed to embed economic differences and perpetuate poverty by denying the poorest communities decent opportunities in education. The poorer the community the greater the state funding is needed for education.
Think bill gates parents would disagree.
Completely agree that it's a meaningless measure. The Flynn Effect is proof that IQ tests can be gamed, i.e., trained for.
No it doesnt.
that is exactly why it is only considered a valid measure when people haven't trained for it - and the reason why people are not allowed to take IQ tests several times in a certain time span. and also the reason why professionals who do iq tests change the tasks with every test.
People were just reaching the highest heights their genetics could reach trough advancements made in food and water security as well as access to information which once reached would make average IQ to stagnate at the same level which will certainly be higher to IQs historic record but any "gains" made is just an illusion people were always smart like this it's just inequtable distribution of recourses which made IQ of majority of humans to appear lower than their genetics could provide at its maximum, IQ could also drop depending on the winds of sexual selection, IQ being genetic isn't something that was pulled out of ass of some fat academic who just wanted to oppress everyone these are undeniable facts because women who were artificially impregnated with genetic material of a man with high IQ produced children with high IQ this couldn't happen if genetic component is not a thing, but case can be made for IQ being completely unreliable when it comes to predicting outcomes you cannot predict a persons sucess just based on IQ this is nonsense, you cannot predict their height or level of mastery in any subject, it has no predictive capability.
I always thought that we'd already moved on from IQ tests. It would be a bit like taking MBTI as a true measure of people's personalities, or using tarot cards to predict the future.
I took an IQ test as a child with ADHD because the counselor was worried that I was growing bored in my classes so it would benefit me to be in the talented and gifted program. I just missed the cutoff, which was disappointing at the time...but now I'm relieved because of the horror stories I've heard from other ADHD adults who were in those classes and got even more pressure to achieve with their high functioning label than I did.
My family didn't have a lot of money and my parents didn't graduate from college, but they were so desperate to give my brother and I a better life that they pushed us to work really hard in a system that was already rigged against us. They meant well...but I suffered for it along the way. I have really mixed feelings about it. I wouldn't be where I am today without factors of my upbringing...but I would never put my children through that.
Neglect of the child, emotional and physical, has a huge bearing on that child's developing intelligence.
The idea of IQ being the one determining metric for one's intelligence falls apart even if you go back to Piaget's theory of multiple intelligences. By now, even that might be outdated, but I'm sure we all know people who are brilliant at some things and terrible at others. We've all heard about the brilliant physicist who can't remember the order of the alphabet without singing a song intended for children. From my own experiences, ask my father a math question, and he'll just blink at you, but he has a great deal of musical and artistic talent, he always helped me when I struggled with writing in school, and he once dismantled an entire garbage disposal into each of its individual parts just to get a client's ring out of it, then PUT THE THING BACK TOGETHER AND IT STILL WORKED. Yet, when he was in school, he got bad grades, and was written off as just another loser, and the unfortunate side effect of that is that it encourages anti-intellectualism in a LOT of people who've been put through that.
I try to avoid categorizing peoples levels of intelligence. To me it seems like it is a word that people use to try to label a superiority over others, most often people define it in a way to make themselves fit the definition of intelligence, perhaps even the lady in this video. My research paper for a college sociology class was about racial biases on I.Q. test. The French educator Binet never called his test an intelligence quotient. Some people at Stanford University tweaked Binet's test, and they called it an intelligence quotient.
On the value of standardized testing: Growing up, there used to be a "physical fitness badge" you could earn every year in gym class, not sure if this is still a thing. I ran Cross Country, so, naturally, lapped everyone (literally everyone in the class) running the mile ... but I guess I wasn't considered physically fit by the test because I couldn't touch my toes or do a set number of pull ups (with my gangly long arms). lol
That fitness test was a nightmare for me. I had the opposite experience. I have the "floppy" kind of cerebral palsy. It's not immediately noticeable from appearance, but there was no way I could ever even think about meeting any of those yearly requirements - except the toe-touching. I honestly dreaded those tests. They seemed custom designed to make me feel like absolute crap about myself.
@@sircharlesmormont9300 Hey - I have long legs and NEVER passed the toe-test. lol Solidarity. (:
In England and Northern Ireland some areas have a test called the 11-plus which is taken by primary school children aged 10/11 to determine whether they go to a grammar or a technical/comprehensive secondary school. It is partially modelled on IQ tests and has been abolished in many places due to being terrible. If you got to a grammar school you will often experience better quality of schooling and be in a social environment composed of students who are mostly middle and upper class. This is why passing the 11-plus can give a lower-income child some social mobility if they manage to pass.
Thing is, you need to be taught how to pass the test. It is impossible to pass if you have not been shown how to answer the questions. Also, the pass/fail score (England only) is normalised depending on how well your local cohort of fellow-test takers does and how many places are available in local grammar schools. This means the test scores are ambiguous and you can't compare between schools. It also means that if you have more boys-only grammar schools than girls-only grammar schools, girls are less likely to go to a grammar school even if they get the same scores. You end up competing against your classmates in a manner which exacerbates class inequity as those who can afford the study packs and tutors get to go to better schools.
I moved to England just in time to have to take the 11-plus meaning I had no idea what it was or how to do it. I was a low income student in an upper class primary school where almost all of my classmates had been receiving tutoring for several years. If you did not pass the other students would look down on you - even though a set number of students could not be allowed to pass by the nature of the scoring system. Although I passed (barely - thanks Ma for the hours and hours spent at the kitchen table), none of my siblings did and the difference in quality between the school I went to and the schools they went to is shocking.
Some people make a whole lot of money off of these standardised tests. We need to put an end to it - all children should receive equally good education.
11-Plus was/is used in many current and past British colonies.
@@IslandArt61 my condolences
Thanks Adam for also posting your episodes on TH-cam! I love listening to the podcast but also like to have youtube on while I work. Now I can always listen to your amazing content and learn more every day.
I tested high. I am very fast at picking up new skills and I have a significant mechanical aptitude. I get bored with everything, can't stay doing the same job for more than 5 years. I forget to eat, can barely do my own laundry, and I'm miserable person in general because I overthink everything. IQ or at the very least what we think IQ means is bullsh*t.
That's typical of someone with adhd or autism. Maybe the problem is not that IQ is bullsh*t, it's just that you can have low or high IQ independently from other things impacting how your brain functions. Maybe we should stop using a screwdriver to punch nails in the wall and ranting about it being far from ideal. Or we should study, learn and talk a lot more about neurodiversity so more people could see the difference between a screw and a nail.
you might have ADHD
A farmer from medieval times would be considered less than a moron on our modern iq test. Conversely, every one of us would die a painful death in medieval times/conditions, as our advanced knowledge would be useless without the pre-manufactured means at our immediate disposal; while that same farmer, in those conditions, would be able to provide for his clan and kin.
My son was evaluated by the public school system and entered into the gifted education program at 5, and my daughter was literally yesterday, evaluated by the public school system and will also enter that stream. My partner and I have never pushed our children to learn the things that might have contributed to this specifically, however we also never underestimated them; if they wanted to learn something we would do our best to help. We see the kids who get pushed by 3rd party testing, and their children into these programs, and that is _obviously_ fraught with major issues. These poor kids are under the weight of the world with a responsibility that is _categorically_ unfair. Often the gifted education program is looked upon as a status symbol, but wow that's a poor position. This is _special education_ for kids who will do poorly in the regular program. The best analogy I've seen is that it takes the same effort to build a house for everyone, but someone who has been "gifted" will have an expectation that exceeds the normal, _and_, they will expect to do the same job with less work, which is impossible. I agree we all have infinite capacity to learn and become intelligent, people need to understand that being "gifted" is a stream of learning that targets a specific learning need, not a badge of honour.
Nope, you’re obviously smart, I suspect you are aware of that, and it only substantiates the heritability thesis. Not saying your kids have more value than any other human, but, they will have advantages that intelligence brings. Maybe they will grow up to watch smart TH-cam videos too.
I had a huge test I failed the first time, last year. I studied a bit, and smoked a joint right before going in, and I passed. This stuff you do Adam is great, it’s like therapy.
As someone that tested at a genius level in IQ tests, I already knew that it was bullshit. I'm a dumbass.
That tracks. The smarter you are, the more you realize you don’t know, but you’re probably good with computers, so that is something.
@@jltsoyowdycjltsoyowdyc1076 just patterns.
"The only true wisdom consists of knowing that you know nothing" - Socrates
No, you aren't. Everyone's a genius. Don't let a number define your intelligence.
Same. I would always score top of my state in the standardized tests. I stopped taking math classes. Now I can barely multiply. Everything takes practice.
As someone who was in special ed for 90% of primary school who now has 2 degrees, is working on a 3rd, has a creative writing certificate from the Iowa Creative Writers Workshop (ever hear of Kurt Vonnegut?), and have a classically trained voice - ya don't say. Helps that half my expertise is psych, but good to see this information is becoming more visible.
The school I went to really took all of it to the next level and only let the wealthy families' kids into the AP programs. I qualified for them but they would not let me take them and they wouldn't say why, but when you look at who was in those classes and who wasn't, it was only the wealthiest kids in the school, and there wasn't a single wealthy kid in any of the 'lower level' classes, no matter how much those kids struggled. Their parents just paid for them to get extra tutoring and help, and some of them barely passed with Cs and Ds even with all that help. It wasn't about who could handle the workload or what the kids actually needed so they could learn at the pace they needed to learn at, it was entirely about who had the finances to keep up a certain image (that of being on top) and who didn't. I was so deeply bored in school, I was never challenged, and that hurt me in the long run because I didn't develop good studying skills, or skills for doing homework, or skills for how to deal with educational struggles. I didn't do well in college because of it. I mean, I didn't do poorly, I got a 3.2gpa in the end, but that wasn't good enough to get into a Master's program, so it's not good enough.
I never knew that the IQ test started out as the French looking for kids with learning difficulties. So the test started with the aim of looking for students at the bottom 5% out of the total being tested. Yet they turned it into a measure of intelligence and ranking overall rather than just outliers. So it went from being a relative test to one with fixed points?
whatever happened to just, y'know, INTERACTING with the child for a good amount of time to figure out what their needs are?
I always tested low until my late teens, now I test very high.
On height tests at least.
The only value to IQ tests that I've found is in identifying those obsessed with them as people to avoid. I took a battery of them as a teenager in a gifted program and came away with that very guarded attitude.
There is clinical value to IQ tests when someone is trying to figure out how they might be different and/or what areas they may need help with. They're not good as a single indicator, but large discrepancies between subscales in a standardized IQ test can lend evidence and help clinicians figure out whether someone may have something like a learning disability, neurodevelopmental disorder, or what deficits they may have from a traumatic brain injury, and can help with determining what type and level of help people might need in certain areas. There is significant value to IQ testing when it's used for that purpose and not as a factual indicator of someone's potential.
@mastelsa I am well aware of the theoretical clinical value, for some clinicians. That is only something I've read about though. Perhaps, I'm just privileged to have only seen IQ tests used solely to exclude disabled, neurodevelopmentally challenged, and neuro-atypical people from the services that they desperately need/needed. These mythical clinicians and the associated "significant value" you mention sounds interesting. How much does it cost to buy in?
I steer far away from people who brag about their (usually online) IQ test scores. They tend to be somewhat narcissistic and have a significantly inflated perception of their own abilities. There is a reason why brilliant individuals like Einstein were and are often so humble; they knew their own abilities and did not need a number to validate themselves via. To them, intelligence is a process and a skill that one develops throughout their life, not a birthright.
@@markromine5103The only price I'm aware of would be checking your privilege and opening your mind to the possibility that something you dislike isn't entirely bereft of value. Maybe getting a TBI would help!
I remember in high school, even though I was in all honors classes, that two of my friends who were in normal classes, were way smarter than me. One, I spent a lot of time tutoring her on any subject she had trouble understanding the concept of, had a great sense of taking care of others where she loved and babysat all of her nieces and nephews. She loved spending time with them, having a great sense of family, protected them like a fierce Mom lion, and it's where she only cared about spending her time. She could've cared less about school. The other, the daughter of a police officer, had a lot of street sense and sized up people in an instant. She wasn't shy about calling people out. I was lacking in both of these qualities, being torn where my responsibilities lay and constantly being shown how gullible I was. These were two of my best friends and I envied and admired them. I struggled in those honors classes; they didn't come easy to me. I only breezed through geometry and chemistry. Everything else, I studied at least three hours every night, after chores and after everyone else went to bed. A few years ago one of the questions posed to us by our high school reunion committee was, "What do you wish now you did differently in high school?" I can remember thinking, "I wish I goofed off more and didn't take life so seriously." Perhaps, that would have given me the break I needed in between studying.
This was a great discussion. Thank you.
Studies have shown that when you give a small child an IQ test, the result is more closely related to their parents' IQ scores than the child's eventual adult score.
Really appreciate all the in depth topics you cover! You and your guests never fail to demonstrate how flimsy these concepts are that society at large takes totally at face value.
When my IQ level was first tested, my levels were all over the place. On the one hand, I had intence puzzle abilities. On the other hand, I had a bad memory, and I had speaking problems. For years, I used training video games to help out with my mental issues and tried to get the best that I could afford. There is also the food that I intake, which makes a difference.
yep same here
So the way that responsible clinicians use IQ testing is to specifically look for large differences between the different subscores like you're describing. Those large differences _can_ indicate things like learning disabilities, localized traumatic brain injury, or certain neurodevelopmental disorders like autism, and *when combined with input from parents and teachers and patients* can help indicate what areas someone might need significant help with and what areas are strengths to focus on. They should absolutely not be used as a concrete indicator or determinant of someone's intelligence or potential, and there's a growing trend to report discrepancies but not actual scores in reports and medical records in order to help prevent that.
As someone who often gets great scores on any test because I think they are fun, and people assumed I was smart because of it, I totally agree these tests are BS... I feel like a lot of people will say that it's just people with low scores that want to call them BS but no I know people smarter than me that get test anxiety and for me it's like the opposite, I am a good guesser and just think multiple choice tests are fun and am great at jeopardy because useless trivia is fun for me, but a lot people when asked to answer a question quickly will freeze up in the moment even if they know the answer, which is why those reporters go around asking simple questions to prove that everyone is stupid now days are a complete misunderstanding of how brains work, you go up to someone who is out shopping casually and ask a random question quickly with a camera in their face and they are most likely going to freeze out of nervousness, not understanding that is actually stupider than the people who make fun of those people in the videos honestly
I'm really surprised that they did not touch more on the difference between the socioeconomic differences in education. The children of white collar workers hear vastly more words per day than the children of blue collar workers. Children with larger vocabularies are seen as more intelligent. The children of blue collar families are also discouraged from asking questions and expanding on what is being taught, they just do it while, children of white collar families are encouraged to do the opposite. There is also the fact that education is more focused on making good workers than actual education. Also, there are cuts to liberal arts and that negatively impacts the ability to critically think and analyze situations or media for biases and inaccuracies.
A think I find freaking amazing about these morons who say "oh no, we/the people we simp are just born superior, the genetic part is definitelly real and definitelly huge, much more important than environment" is the sheer voluntarily ignorance and lack of putting one and two together. Your brain is 2% of your body mass, but it consumes 20% of the energy supply. And a lot of that energy comes from/requires oxygen to be used, that is why we breath it constantly or we die. It gets special treatment too, but that biology/science class fact is enough here. You'd think that knowing that very complex and complicated thing is the major reason you need to be constantly consuming so much energy just to run on autopilot, that maybe providing it with the very bestest of supplies and conditions will lead to it developing better, and being maintained better, than providing it with shite harmful supplies, or just no supplies. And this is a thing you can experience within a day yourself. You go to place with bad air, you get dizzy, brain fog, etc. (it is the whatever gas poisoning creeping in, even if slower than it would be required to kill you). You're tired you don't think as well, you're more forgetful etc. You're sick or wounded, same thing. You hungry, gods, literally no one tries to think on an empty stomach if they can avoid, because it just doesnt work so good. And with all these personal experiences, ditching even the basic science fact even, they don't even consider that maybe, just maybe, the coditions matter a bit for how smart you can perform at any given time or throughout your life in general. Nah, must be just the genes.
It's hard to develop your intelligence when society has developed methods to limit how high up the Maslow scale you get.
I've always though intelligence is the ability to learn and adapt , either from your own experiences or observation of others (reading or listening/watching real time)).. not any capacity of what you know. It's so broad. that many people, even the majority would fall into the intelligent category.
The best description of intelligence I have heard of is that intelligence is like an elastic band and we have different elastic bands that have different lengths they can be stretched to which is what education and learning do.
There's so many crappy podcasts out there, and new crappy podcasts popping up every day.
This is not one of them. These podcasts are so great, im glad I was able to wade through all the crap to find this gem.
Thanks Adam! Please keep on producing this great content!
A anecdote that might also inform the discussion. In grade 4 (in something like 1976), my homeroom teacher wanted to "hold me back", and perhaps put me in a program for kids with cognitive deficiencies ("mentally challenged kids" I think they called it then). My mother was convinced that I wasn't suffering from cognitive deficiencies, even though my academic performance was pretty poor, so she lobbied to have me tested. I was tested by a psychologist, and it turned out that I had an IQ in the top 1.5% of the population. I definitely was suffering from boredom in schools, and likely suffer from ADHD (I'm finally getting assessed later this month, in my mid 50's). I'm pretty confident that if I had been held back, my already up and down experience with academics would have been much more sour. Had I been born a few years later, I would have also likely been diagnosed with ADHD in school, and might have had an academic career that both matched my curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and with my cognitive abilities. IQ tests aren't perfect, and were less perfect in 1976, but they were, and to the best of my knowledge are, the best available way to assess the sorts of cognitive abilities that they claim to test, and when used appropriately, they can make kids' lives better.
Feels like an age old debate of "not a panacea" meaning "useless."
IQ strongly correlates with depression, for example. It has useful applications.
Abusing any tool to justify your own terrible actions results in a bad time for a lot of people, and I appreciate you calling it out.
IQ correlates with depression the same way peanut butter correlates with jelly. That is to say it doesn't outside of anecdotal data such as a PB&J. If you want to determine whether or not you are depressed, you take a depression test. Truth of the matter is IQ was created by the Eugenics movement which is nothing more than a bunch of racist pseudoscience trying to justify why rich white people deserve to rule over everyone else. From everything I've seen IQ has literally no useful application whatsoever as it attempts to quantify the unquantifiable and intelligence comes in many forms that can't simply be graded or observed.
IQ is a tool like a bubble wand is a tool - it makes pretty shapes but has no actual utility. Let it go.
@@sloanekuria3249 There's plenty of clinical utility to IQ testing. The way that responsible clinicians use IQ testing is to look for large differences between the different subscores, which can indicate things like learning disabilities, deficits from traumatic brain injury, or certain neurodevelopmental disorders like autism. When combined with input from parents and teachers and patients, a full set of IQ scores helps to shore up certain diagnoses and indicate what areas someone might need significant help with and what areas are strengths to focus on. They shouldn't be used as a concrete indicator or determinant of someone's intelligence or potential, but saying there's zero utility to modern IQ testing is just not true from a clinical perspective.
35:06 "Don't you wanna be an optimist about it?" No! They don't! Because optimism is a feeling and the ideology of people promoting those ideas is to negate the importance of any emotion*, because emotions lead to will and will leads to change. And change is bad for whoever is comfortable.
*except reactionary emotions, those are great. You can totally be outraged that others want stuff to change. Because you are outraged on behalf of facts! /s
I scored the Highest score on an IQ test in Elementary school.....They put my black ass in a special needs class!!!?? They were trying to keep me from growing, learning and bettering myself!!! They wanted me to think I was dumb or stupid!!! lol...smh
That's fucked. I don't say that lightly. They planned on putting you into that class from the start and wanted to justify it.
A fair rebuttal discussion with Dr Russell, T, Warne would be interesting to see with Adam
This already happened with Dr. Michael R. Jackson's deconstruction of Warne's claims in "Misrepresents the Science: Review of Russell T. Warne’s In The Know."
I took the SAT twice in the early 00s, spring of my junior year (11th grade) and fall of my senior year (12th grade). 610 math/780 verbal the first time; 700 math/770 verbal the second time. I never took any prep courses or did any SAT-specific study; literally the *only* difference is that my cohort had a shitty math teacher in 10th and 11th grade, and our 12th grade math teacher spent the first month or two of class consolidating concepts that the 10th/11th grade teacher had failed to instill. Then I see these charts that are like "Here's the IQ that corresponds to X score on the SAT" and I'm like ... you really think my *innate intelligence* grew in 6 months to the equivalent of a 90-point jump on an SAT score? No, it was just better teaching!
I'm thinking it was you actually took the test more seriously the 2nd time
@@thumper84 I didn't really take it seriously either time (see also: did not study for it at all). Like, what would that even mean?
Shaun has a two and a half hour video on the book "The Bell Curve," which is mostly a thorough debunking of the concept of IQ. The main reason why IQ tests don't accurately measure intelligence is because INTELLIGENCE ISN'T REAL. It's an artifact of a particular form of statistical analysis. There's simply no reason to believe that there's a single, quantitative, measurable characteristic underlying performance in disparate domains such as math, memory, reading comprehension, decision-making, etc. General intelligence doesn't exist. We only think it does because of 200 years of racists trying to convince us it does.
Shaun's video is great, btw. Even at 2.5 hours, it never gets boring.
IQ tests and generation labels are some of the most annoying pseudosciences that people still use today. Like I know we like being defined and part of a group, but lets pick other things.
IQ, briggs myers types, and horoscopes are all equally valid scientifically.
The real problem is people judge others and treat smart and dumb people differently (I mean like elevating smart people above them and pushing dumb people to a level lower than them). Smart or dumb, we should treat people like .. people and humans. Taken to the extreme this becomes eugenics and segregation
Whether IQ tests really measure intelligence or not is irrelevant. We cannot deny the predictive power of IQ test results. High IQ test results predict lower mortality, higher income and wealth etc. This means IQ tests have pragmatic value regardless if they actually measure intelligence or not.
How is that useful if it's just a test for middle class ness?
@@xiaokourou IQ test results predict much more than that as I stated in the OP. For instance: high IQ scores predict low mortality, and low IQ scores predict higher frequency of crime.
@@MonisticIdealism yes, those are class status markers not intelligence or "prediction", you're just a eugenicist
@@sloanekuria3249 Morality and crime is not class status. And IQ predicts these, it's not a mere marker. You simply don't know what you're talking about.
In an artificial world. I look like the disconnected until the table turn.
I failed my ACT test with a 300. I never took it when I was in high school. So I took it after I gotten my Associates degree and went to University. Ironically my grades kept going up the longer I went to college. I even made the Presidents's List a few times. That was pretty cool, but the thing I found odd with the ACT test was that it was A, B, C, and D for every question. That made no sense, since in real life there's no A, B, C, and D to a problem, because you have a problem with machine, so you have to analyze the circuitry of the machine. You can use a computer to help troubleshoot, but you're doing data gathering and developing a conclusion to which component went bad. Sometimes you can't tell with computer, now you get down and dirty, and pull a part off a machine. Take that encoder off the motor and turn the shaft see if it turns smoothly. Those tests should be written. That's how find creativity and intelligence of an individual.
I went to school in a wealthy farming community and my parents were perpetually told that I was bored and gifted. This was the case from kindergarten through senior year.
As an adult, my anxiety took over the adhd and almost ruined my life. I wasn’t properly diagnosed as adhd and autistic (but masked well all my life) until my mid twenties. I wasn’t properly medicated until age 32 (this year).
It’s like people using an child acting out as an indicator of boredom is misinterpreted neurodivergence.
Being born female in a society that didn’t believe that girls could have autism or severe adhd, I think that’s what set me back the most. I’ve spent my life trying to figure out why I do certain things that others don’t do, why I can only focus on a book to read when I WANT to, why I space out so much, and why I isolate myself so much.
Damn, hope things improve for you
TO be fair, the kids getting tracked into HVAC repair were the real lucky ones. You'll never be out of a job, it pays extremely well, and no student loans.
Loved all of this! Hearing Adam's story about being seen as bored and put into AP classes reminds me of a recent epiphany I had.
I'm dating a teacher now and I joked to her about my stories as a kid of teachers always reprimanding me for talking even when I tried to explain that other kids keep talking to me and find it funny that teachers only blamed me. One day she was like, do you think it could have been a racist bias going on. It was the first time I had even thought about it in that context. As a kid unless it's the blatant racism we saw on TV I hadn't figured out that adults like teachers could be racially biased too.
Humans are and always have been inventive, curious, exploring geniuses. We all have really great skills and abilities.
It's pretty interesting that not everyone learns the same way. I found that to be sort of true for me. I just never got school until high school. It's like I was just unplugged, going through motions that didn't make any sense to me and were thus a waste of my time. I'd rather be reading a fiction novel (which I was most of the time). In high school I decided that crap counted then, but while I aced every midterm and final exam, I still did poorly because I refused to do homework. In my mind it was for people that needed it and since I was acing my exams, I clearly didn't need it even though it was a 3rd of the grade. Because of that, while I could have got straight As, I got Ds.
Then later I decided to go to Airframe and Powerplant school to become a certified Aircraft Maintenance Tech (because by this time I discovered was gifted mechanically and wanted to leverage that gift). I did try a semester at community college before that and figured out I was going to be much better at that than in high school before I quit, but A&P school was an entirely different animal. I felt like I was learning information that directly related to my goals, not some abstract stuff that I may or may not ever use. I ended up graduating 2nd in my class and it might have been first if I hadn't had some issues with my practical sheetmetal skills. Sheetmetal is a bit like sculpting. There's a artistry to it which some people have a talent for and some don't. I didn't so my grade took a hit on that class, even though I dropped back to take it a second time. Fortunately it is a skill that could be honed through practice but I didn't truly master it until I was employed and doing it every day for a year or so.
Long story short, earning my AS degree in Aircraft Maintenance Technology was a breeze compared to earning my HS diploma. I can't help but think that if primary and secondary schooling was more real world goal oriented instead of about cramming a bunch of abstract knowledge into a child's brain as a secondary outcome from the primary purpose of teaching then they must conform (that was my view on homework being a 3rd of my grad and a part of the reason I refuse to do it) since conformity is the enemy of innovation, IMHO.
Thank you Rina Bliss and Adam Conover, this is fascinating. Thank you! 😘😍🥰❤
You often fill the enclosure you are put in.
I was put in the AG program in elementary- middle school. My mom fought for me to get in. I didn't get why until today hearing this.
I did not take school seriously in high-school though and didn't do AP other than one class because it was boring and I didn't believe I was going to have a future. I was certain I was going to die young due to the violent death of a parent when I was very young. I didn't realize I was going to make it until I turned 28 and started getting my shit together.
my experience with the TAG program in grade school was offputting. I opted out of it before long so I could be treated like the majority, though i was placed in an advanced math class. I didn't like being segregated with only a few other kids , to a quiet part of the building, to answer lots of questions and take lots of tests. when i changed schools after 6th grade, we missed the enrollment period and the placed me in a remedial math class :P
When she said "We're all individuals" my brain immediately went "I'M NOT!"
I guess my strength is memorizing Monty Python movies haha
Wonder how you'd fare against a well-trained crew of French taunters...
@@kenlieck7756 Probably RUN AWAAAAY
I remember when I was in kindergarten I had balancing issues and didn't know how to do basic stuff like skip so I basically failed the cognitive test for something dumb like spatial awareness. They put me in with actual mentally challenged kids for that whole year because I failed the test because I was clumsy.
My experience as a young child (6yo) growing up in Albany GA in the 90s. We were bussed into a predominantly white school. I was severely disciplined for literally nothing. I was publicly scolded by a middle aged teacher one time because a boy was disgusted that I dipped my cookie in my milk and I was paddled by the principal because some girl lied and said I did something to her which was never explained to me what I did. The principal called my grandmother and told her I was misbehaving and she of course gave her blessing because that's what her generation did. It was horrifying this guy was like proud of it he had the paddle mounted on his wall like a trophy. I cried, not because it hurt, but because I knew I was innocent and nobody believed me.
I took iq tests twice. First time was when I was depressed and got low score, another time when I was an adult living alone and got a high score.
It cannot be very scientific if its only done over a few days, mostly in the written word, and doesnt account for mental health.
Many of these tests look more like a caste mechanism for sorting people under the assumption that there isn't enough room in the desirable careers and so needing an excuse to reject hundreds of applications while still claiming meritocracy.
I dont think people vary much in intelligence. Almost every person I was told was dumb actually just had other factors going on in their life. The worst being a kid in grade school who was in special ed, but actually just needed a hearing aid.
This applied to me too, when I was almost homeless I knew there was gossip about me being an idiot. Turns out getting surviving when broke takes a lot more mental resources than a comfortable middle class lifestyle. I had no energy left for self development after getting food water shelter.
The Capital City of Australia is Canberra, which was made for the purpose. In 1901, the colonies of Australia federated, creating the Commonwealth of Australia. Rather than declaring Sydney or Perth or some other existing city a Captain, they decided to build a new capital city basically from the ground up. To do so, they had a contest in which over a hundred architects submitted designs. The winner was Walter Griffin, a Chicago based Architect and part of the Garden City movement. The Garden City movement sought to solve the problems of Victorian Cities through urban planning, zoning and in particular the use of Greenspace. As such, Canberra is widely considered a beautiful city.
It was because of a fight between Sydney & Melbourne as to which should be the capital. The resolution was a city between the two.
Fuck that competition bullshit amongst rich people. They should've just hired skilled workers in the architect industry who were of indigenous descent and other local designers from Australia instead!
Fuck that competition bullshit amongst rich people. They should've just hired skilled workers in the architect industry who were of indigenous descent and other local designers from Australia instead!
Having an "above average" IQ, this is kind of a bitter pill to swallow. Still, there's more to life than numbers supposed to quantify the unquantifiable... a three-digit number that determines which table you sit at in the lunch room... far too much power invested in that number. Far too much. That, and credit ratings.
I'm coming into this off an essay about autistic emotions and the utter bunk that is still widely believed about autistic folks, and this is seriously the perfect next topic.
I definitely feel like I learnt this lesson the hard way. I am nuerodivergent, and I was undiagnosed in primary and high school. I often missed assignment, misread them and missed the point or did badly understanding through the explanations given. I was placed in all of the "lower" classes, and discouraged from doing "challenging" year twelve subjects. They dissuaded me from doing year twelve English.
Because I am in Australia, however, I could still go to university. I am doing a bachelor of arts, doing relative writing and sociology. I have a high gpa that is allowing me to study philosophy oversea on an exchange, and have been softly invited to do honours. And I spent years believing that I was stupid, when it turns out that my brain just didn't like the way school is structured.
Yep, IQ tests are bullshit. I’ve got a 145, and I’m sort of academically smart, but a friend of mine with a 110 is majoring in three subjects in college at age 15. It makes no sense.
Yeah my Sister got 100 but she has a university reading level.
The argument in this episode seems to be: set up the straw man that "the IQ test" is a perfect measure of all intellectual abilities and then attacking it.
I guess that this is your best argument against IQ as a meaningful measurement.
😃 I can't WAIT to watch this video. I've always known IQ tests were garbage largely because I scored reasonably high on them. Yet I couldn't learn another language, judge distances or direction, or develop the skills and muscle memory to be a good musician or great athlete. I could never learn to enter people's hearts to become an author or orator. Pattern recognition isn't the measure of a mind. I look forward to learning about this. ❤🧡💛💚💙💜
It still takes practice and deep concentration to learn a skill. I think the test only really determines general mental acuity and cognitive potential.
What a brilliant guest. Fantastic interview Adam, love the channel.
IQ tests are only useful when you compare subtest scores to identify cognitive strengths and weaknesses at the time the test was given. Too many extraneous factors affect how well you do to make any sort of value judgments. Also, "average" on the test does not equal a "C" grade.
As a person w/ADHD and an FSIQ of 140+, I'm not NEARLY the "smartest" person that I know... Not by far.
If my scores are valid (from a psych) then it highlights the inequities in our system... How many people are being held down by society vs "being stupid"
That's an excellent take on the subject of intelligence. I've always thought about how effective IQ tests are in measuring intelligence, but I've never looked into it. I've always thought that adaptability was the best and fairest measure of intelligence, which kind of falls in line with the Professor's study.
My sister and I was given an intelligence test when we were young kids in the early 60's as was the tradition then.... I barely bumped the numbers indicating the potentiallity of being a genius, while my sister came in as "just average". .... Our dad used that as a point of contention between us most our lives... I think the whole test method was flawed because my sister constantly shows genius levels that are astonishing, where I "has the dumb" on regular basis. Conclusions, I really have none
But not solely determined doesn't mean that genetics don't play a part. Not that IQ is accurate or a good measure in any way. Also, obviously intelligence isn't necessarily simple enough to easily compute. Not that the interview is bad, but is there a reason to interview a sociologist over a psychologist on something that generally is much more used and designed by psychologists? I mean, I'm a computer scientist, but I wouldn't interview another one on say chemistry, even though that has a large effect on electrical engineering. Not to say that her views are wrong, but I wouldn't say someone with expertise in sociology is inherently qualified to be considered an expert on psychology. Kind of disappointed honestly, your old show seemed to pick people with expertise in the actual subject.
How does this blend with the notion we have in the last half century that post secondary education is the responsibility of the child? (and on a related topic, onerous school debt). It seems like if we just said "education is a debt society owes its members" we could get to affordable education for life but obviously we're not moving in that direction.
I scored incredibly well in math all the way up until college calculus. I failed it miserably the first time because I didn't have the /skills/ needed to learn it in college at 18. I failed it a second time for reasons I can't remember. I passed it a third time because of an excellent professor who taught it in a way that it finally clicked, but that was at a community college, and the credit didn't transfer to my university. So the fourth time, I got to the point that I was doing derivatives in my head just to challenge myself and see just how impressive Tesla's ability to do math was. Every so called "genius" I've ever heard of falls into one of three broad categories. Marketers who convinced the world they were geniuses, often by stealing the hard work of others. Obsessive individuals who spent more time and effort than anyone else pursuing a narrow set of skills that our society values. And people who put in a lot of work, generally breaking cultural taboos and sometimes laws in order to gather insights that their historical peers couldn't because they stayed within those boundaries. Not one of those types of people is inherently special. Humans are universally very stupid. But by misusing our wetware enough in the correct ways, we can learn to do things that no amount of evolution could have done.
It is refreshing to hear people talk intelligently about intelligence.
Many of these tests are based on "knowing" things. And when it comes right down to it, "knowing things" is a matter of opportunity. So, what they are really testing for is who's had the best opportunities to learn things.
If the test is a test of knowing things, then it's not an IQ test. The IQ tests I took in school were about pattern recognition and spatial reasoning, and those are the things an IQ test is supposed to measure.
What's annoying is that basically all online IQ tests are completely garbage. I have never found a way to take another real IQ test after the one I took in school. So it seems like it really is a class problem. I'd probably have to pay hundreds of dollars to get another real IQ test.
I agree wholeheartedly with the main points of this discussion: standardized intelligence tests of any sort are biased, there is a huge environmental impact on intelligence, and how we define intelligence is often biased and counterproductive.
But to ply the Devil’s advocate, is it really unreasonable to expect that components of intelligence (processing speed, working memory, dual tasking, etc.) might have a genetic component? Sure, everyone improves in optimal conditions, but just like the height example used, some groups simply might start on a bell curve that is farther to the right or left vs. the bell curve another group.
Are “smart” people inherently better people who deserve more resources than “dumber” people? That seems like a more nuanced approach to the topic that doesn’t ignore a reasonable hypothesis because it does seem racist at face value. What if it leads to genetic therapy that can improve recall and processing speed, even as we age? Is it still racist and bad if we strive to share this equitably or perhaps even preferentially to those who score lower on those metrics?
Again, I loved the main points of this article, and really enjoyed the nuance and context it brought to such a pervasive and ingrained part of our society. I would have preferred if the counter proposal was explored more as a hypothesis made in good faith rather than dismissing it outright because it sounds similar to the views of some nasty people in history.