Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences | Lex Fridman Podcast #302

1. 0:00 – 0:43

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      Let me ask you to this question. Whether there's bell curve or any research on race differences, can that be used to increase the amount of racism in the world? Can that be used to increase the amount of hate in the world?

   2. RHRichard Haier0:17

      My sense is there is such enormous reservoirs of hate and racism that have nothing to do with scientific knowledge of the data that speak against that. That, no, I- I don't, I don't want to give racist groups a veto power over what scientists study.

2. 0:43 – 15:11

   Measuring human intelligence

   1. RHRichard Haier0:44

   2. LFLex Fridman0:44

      The following is a conversation with Richard Haier on the science of human intelligence. This is a highly controversial topic, but a critically important one for understanding the human mind. I hope you will join me in not shying away from difficult topics like this, and instead, let us try to navigate it with empathy, rigor, and grace. If you're watching this on video now, I should mention that I'm recording this introduction in an undisclosed location somewhere in the world. I'm safe and happy, and life is beautiful. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Richard Haier. What are the measures of human intelligence and how do we measure it?

   3. RHRichard Haier1:31

      Everybody has an idea of what they mean by intelligence. In the, in the vernacular, what I mean by intelligence is just being smart. How well you reason, how well you figure things out. What you do when you don't know what to do. Those are just kind of everyday common sense definitions of how people use the word intelligence. If you want to do research on intelligence, measuring something that you can study scientifically is a little trickier. And what almost all researchers who study intelligence use is the concept called the G factor, general intelligence. And that is what is common, that is a mental ability that is common to virtually all tests of mental abilities.

   4. LFLex Fridman2:26

      What's the origin of, of the term G factor, by the way? It's such a funny word for such a fundamental human thing.

   5. RHRichard Haier2:32

      The general factor, it really started with, uh, Charles Spearman. Uh, and he noticed, this is like, uh, boy, more than 100 years ago. Uh, he noticed that when you tested people with different tests, all the tests were correlated positively. And so he, he was looking at student exams and things. And he invented the correlation coefficient essentially. And he, when he used it to look at student performance on various topics, he found they, all the scores were correlated with each other, and they were all positive correlations. So he inferred from this that there must be some common factor that was irrespective of the content of the test.

   6. LFLex Fridman3:23

      And positive correlation means if you do well on, on the first test, you're likely to do well on the second test. And presumably that holds for tests across even disciplines. So not within subject, but across subjects, so that's where the general comes in. Some- so- something about general intelligence. So when you were talking about measuring intelligence and, and trying to figure out something difficult about this world and how to solve the puzzles of this world, that means generally speaking. Not some specific test, but across all tests.

   7. RHRichard Haier3:58

      Absolutely right. And people get hung up on this, uh, because they say, "Well, what about the ability to do X? Isn't that independent?" And they said, "I know somebody who's very good at this but not so good at this," this other thing.

   8. LFLex Fridman4:15

      Yeah.

   9. RHRichard Haier4:15

      And so there are a lot of examples like that, but it's a general tendency. So exceptions really don't disprove, you know, your, your everyday experience is not the same as what the data actually show. And your everyday experience when you say, "Oh, I know someone who's good at X but not so good at Y," that doesn't contradict the statement of about a, he's not so good, but he's not the opposite. He's not a ne-

   10. LFLex Fridman4:44

       (laughs) .

   11. RHRichard Haier4:44

       It's not a negative correlation.

   12. LFLex Fridman4:46

       Okay, so we're not, with our anecdotal data, I know a guy who's really good at solving some kind of visual thing. That's not sufficient for us to understand actually the depths of that person's intelligence. So how, this idea of G factor, um, how much evidence is there, how strong, you know, given across the decades that this idea has been around, how much has it been held up that there is a universal, uh, sort of horsepower of intelligence that's underneath all of it? All the different tests we do to try to get to this thing, uh, in, in the depths of the human mind that's a, that's a universal stable measure of a person's intelligence?

   13. RHRichard Haier5:34

       You used a couple of words in there.

   14. LFLex Fridman5:36

       Yeah.

   15. RHRichard Haier5:37

       Stable and ...

   16. LFLex Fridman5:38

       I, I, we have to be precise with words?

   17. RHRichard Haier5:40

       Well-

   18. LFLex Fridman5:40

       I was hoping we can get away with being poetic.

   19. RHRichard Haier5:42

       We can. There's a lot about research in general, not just intelligence research, that is poetic. Science has a poetic (laughs) aspect to it. And good scientists are, are very intuitive. They're not just, "Hey, hey, th- these are the numbers." You have to kind of step back and see the big picture. When it comes to, uh, intelligence research, you asked how well has this general concept held up. And I think I can say-...without fear of being empirically contradicted-

   20. LFLex Fridman6:15

       Mm-hmm.

   21. RHRichard Haier6:16

       ...that it is the most replicated finding in all of psychology. Now, some cynics may say, "Well, big deal, psychology. We all know there's a replication crisis in psychology and a lot of this stuff doesn't replicate." That's all true. There is no replication crisis when it comes to studying th- the existence of this general factor. Let me tell you some things about it. It is, it, it looks like it's universal in, uh, that you find it in all cultures. The way you find it, let me step back one, one step. The way you find it is to give a battery of mental tests. What battery you choose, take a battery of any mental test you want, give it to a large number of diverse people, and you will be able to extract statistically the common- the commonality among all those tests. It's done by a technique called factor analysis. You... People, uh, think that's... that this may be a statistical artifact of some kind. It is not a statistical artifact.

   22. LFLex Fridman7:21

       What is factor analysis?

   23. RHRichard Haier7:22

       Factor analysis is a way of looking at a big set of data that... and look at the correlation among the, the different test scores and then find empirically the clusters of scores that go together. And there are different factors. So if you have a bunch of mental tests, there may be a verbal factor, there may be a numerical factor, there may be a visual spatial factor. But those factors have variants in common with each other, and that is the common, uh, that's what's common among all the tests and that's what gets labeled the G-factor. So if you give a diverse battery of mental tests and you extract a G-factor from it, that factor usually accounts for around half of the variance. It's the single biggest factor, but it's not the only factor. But it is the most reliable, it is the most stable, and it seems, uh, to be very much influenced by genetics. It's very hard to change the G-factor with training or, uh, uh, uh, drugs or anything else.

   24. LFLex Fridman8:32

       (laughs) .

   25. RHRichard Haier8:32

       We don't know how to increase the G-factor.

   26. LFLex Fridman8:35

       Okay, you said a lot of really interesting things there. So, uh, first, I mean, j- just to get people used to it in case they're not familiar with this idea, G-factor is what we mean... So often there's a, uh, this term used, IQ, which is... The way I- IQ is used, they really mean G-factor, in regular conversation. Uh, the way... 'Cause we... what we mean by IQ, we mean intelligence, and what we mean by intelligence, we mean general intelligence. And general intelligence in the human mind from a psychology, from a s- serious, rigorous scientific perspective actually means G-factor. So G-factor equals intelligence, just in this conversation, to define terms. Okay, so, so there's this stable thing called G-factor, you said... Now, factor, you said factor many times, means a measure that's a s- potentially could be reduced to a single number across the different factors you mentioned. And, uh, w- what... You said it accounts for half, half-ish. Um, accounts for half-ish of what? Of per- variance across the different set of tests. So if you're... if you do, for some reason, well on some set of tests, what does that mean? So that, that means there's some unique capabilities outside of the G-factor that might account for that. And what are those? What else is there besides the raw horsepower, the engine inside your mind that generates intelligence?

   27. RHRichard Haier10:13

       There are test-taking skills, there are specific abilities. Someone might be particularly good, uh, at, uh, mathematical things, mathematical concepts. Even simple arithmetic, people are... some people are much better than others. You might know people who can memori- oh, and, and short-term memory is another, uh, uh, component o- of this. Uh, short-term memory is one of the cognitive processes that's most highly correlated with the G-factor. Um, so, uh-

   28. LFLex Fridman10:54

       So all those things like memory, uh, taste, te- test-taking skills account for variability across the, the test performances. But you... So you can, you can run but you can't hide from the thing that God gave you, the genetics, um... So that G-factor, science says that G-factor is there. Each one of us have...

   29. RHRichard Haier11:16

       Each one of us has a, a G-factor.

   30. LFLex Fridman11:19

       Oh boy.
3. 15:11 – 37:59

   IQ tests

   1. LFLex Fridman15:11

      general. So that means you can... S- so it's not, it's not easily made specialized. Meaning if you're going to be good at one thing, uh, Miyamoto Musashi has this quote. He's a w- ancient warrior, uh, famous for The Book of Five Rings in the martial arts world. And the quote goes, "If you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything." Meaning if you do one thing, it's going to generalize to everything. And that- that's an interesting thing about the human mind. (inhales deeply) So that- that's what the G-factor (sighs) reveals. Okay. So what's the difference, if you can elaborate a little bit further, between IQ and G-factor? Just because it's a source of confusion for people.

   2. RHRichard Haier16:03

      An IQ is a, is a score. People use the word IQ to mean intelligence, but IQ has a more technical meaning in- for people who work in the field. An I- it's an IQ score, a score on a test that estimates the G-factor. Um, and the G-factor is what's common among all these tests of mental ability. So if you think about... It's not a Venn diagram, but, um, I guess you could make a Venn diagram out of it, but the G-factor would be really at the core-

   3. LFLex Fridman16:33

      Mm-hmm.

   4. RHRichard Haier16:33

      ... what- what's common, uh, to everything. And IQ, what IQ scores do is they allow a rank order of people on the score.

   5. LFLex Fridman16:44

      Mm-hmm.

   6. RHRichard Haier16:44

      And this is what makes people uncomfortable. This is where there's a lot of controversy about whether IQ tests are biased toward any one group or- or another. And, um, a lot of the- the answers to these questions are very clear, but they also have a- a technical aspect of it-

   7. LFLex Fridman17:01

      Mm-hmm.

   8. RHRichard Haier17:02

      ... that's not so easy to- to explain.

   9. LFLex Fridman17:04

      Well, we'll talk the, about the fascinating and the difficult things about all of this. But, uh, (sighs) so by the way, when you say rank order, that means you get a number and that means one pers- you can now compare, like, uh, you could say that this other person is more intelligent than me, which is a-

   10. RHRichard Haier17:23

       Well, what you can say is IQ scores are interpreted really as percentiles. So that, uh, if you have an IQ of 140 and somebody else has 70, the metric is such that you cannot say the person with an IQ of 140 is twice as smart as a-

   11. LFLex Fridman17:43

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RHRichard Haier17:43

       ... person with an IQ of 70. That would require a ratio scale with an absolute zero. Now you may think you know people with zero (laughs) intelligence, but in fact there is no absolute zero on- on an IQ scale. It's relative to other people. So relative to other people, somebody with an IQ score of 140 is in the upper less than 1%. Whereas, uh, somebody with an IQ of 70 is two standard deviations below the mean. That- that's- that's a different percentile.

   13. LFLex Fridman18:18

       So it's similar to like in chess, you have an Elo rating that's designed to rank order people.Uh, so you can't say it's twice one person if, if your ELO rating is twice another person, I don't think you're twice as good at chess.

   14. RHRichard Haier18:35

       Exactly.

   15. LFLex Fridman18:36

       It's not stable in that way, but... Because it's very difficult to do these kinds of comparisons. But, uh, so what can we say about the number itself?

   16. RHRichard Haier18:46

       Uh-

   17. LFLex Fridman18:46

       Is that stable across tests and so on or no?

   18. RHRichard Haier18:50

       There are a number of statistical properties of any test, they're called psychometric properties. You have validity, you have reliability. Reliability, there are many different kinds of reliability. They all essentially measure stability. And IQ tests are stable within an individual. There are some longitudinal studies where, uh, children were measured at age 11 and again when they were 70 years old, and the two IQ scores are highly correlated with each other. This comes from a fascinating study from Scotland. Uh, in the 1930s, some researchers decided to get an IQ test on every single child age 11 in the whole country.

   19. LFLex Fridman19:36

       Wow.

   20. RHRichard Haier19:36

       And they did. And-

   21. LFLex Fridman19:38

       Wow.

   22. RHRichard Haier19:38

       ... those records were discovered in an old storeroom at the University of Edinburgh by a friend of mine, Iain Deary, who found the records, digitized them, and has done a lot of research on the people who are still alive today from that original study, including brain imaging research, by the way. Really, it's a fascinating group of, of people who were, who were studied. Um, not to get ahead of the story, but one of the most interesting things they found is a very strong relationship between IQ measured at age 11 and mortality.

   23. LFLex Fridman20:21

       (laughs)

   24. RHRichard Haier20:21

       So that, you know, uh, 70 years later (laughs) , they looked at the survival rates and they could get death records from everybody. And Scotland has universal healthcare for everybody, and it turned out if you divide people by their age 11 IQ score into quartiles and then look at how many people are alive 70 years later, the... I know this is in the book, I have the graph in the book, but there are essentially twice as many people alive in the highest IQ quartile than in the lowest IQ quartile.

   25. LFLex Fridman21:01

       Interesting.

   26. RHRichard Haier21:02

       True in men and women. Um-

   27. LFLex Fridman21:05

       Interesting.

   28. RHRichard Haier21:07

       So it makes a big difference. Now, why this is the case is not so clear since everyone had access to healthcare.

   29. LFLex Fridman21:15

       Well, there's a lot, and we'll talk about it, you know, just the sentences you used now could be explained by nature or nurture, we don't know. Now, there's a lot of science that starts to then dig in and investigate that question. But let me linger on the IQ test. How are the tests designed, IQ tests designed? How do they work? Maybe some examples for people who are not aware. What, what makes a good IQ test question that sneaks up on this g factor measure?

   30. RHRichard Haier21:48

       Well, your question is interesting because you want me to give examples of items that make good items. And what makes a good item is not so much its content, but its empirical relationship to the total score that turns out to be valid by other means.
4. 37:59 – 46:36

   College entrance exams

   1. RHRichard Haier37:59

      may be on the tip of your tongue and you just can't get it because you're anxious about the time limit. You may never have learned it. You may never, you- you may have been exposed to it, but it was too complicated and you couldn't learn it. I mean, there are all kinds of, of reasons here. But for an individual, to interpret your scores as an individual, whoever is interpreting the score has to take into account various things that would affect your individual score.

   2. LFLex Fridman38:29

      Yeah.

   3. RHRichard Haier38:29

      And that's why decisions about college admission or anything else where tests are used are- are hardly ever the only criterion to make a decision.

   4. LFLex Fridman38:42

      And I think people are, uh, college admission is letting go of that very much. Uh-

   5. RHRichard Haier38:46

      Oh, yes, there, yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman38:48

      But what does that even mean? Because, um, is it possible to design standardized tests that do get, that are useful to college admissions?

   7. RHRichard Haier38:58

      Well, they- they already exist. The SAT is highly correlated with many aspects of success at college.

   8. LFLex Fridman39:05

      Here's the problem. So, maybe you could speak to this. The correlation across population versus individuals. So, um, you know, our criminal justice system is designed to make sure, um... Well, it's- it's- it's still, there's tragic cases where innocent people go- go to- go to jail. But you try to avoid that. In the same q- uh, way with testing, it just, it would suck for an SAT to miss genius.

   9. RHRichard Haier39:38

      Yes. And it, it's possible. But it's statistically unlikely.

   10. LFLex Fridman39:42

       Unlikely.

   11. RHRichard Haier39:43

       So the que- so it really comes down to-

   12. LFLex Fridman39:46

       Yeah.

   13. RHRichard Haier39:46

       ... do which piece of information maximizes your decision-making a- ability? So, if you just use high school grades, it's okay. But you will miss some people who just don't do well in high school, but who are actually pretty smart, smart enough to be bored silly in high school, and they don't care and they, their high school GPA isn't that good. So, you will miss them. In the same sense that somebody who could be very, uh, able and ready for college, just doesn't do well on their SAT. This is why you make decisions with a v- taking in a variety of in- in- information. The other thing I wa- I wanted to say, eh, I talked about when you make a decision for an individual. Statistically for groups, there are many people who have a disparity between their math score and their verbal score. That disparity... Or the other way around. That disparity is called tilt. The score is tilted one way or the other. And that tilt has been studied empirically to see what that predicts. And in fact, you can make predictions about, about college success, uh, based on, on tilt. And mathematics is a good example. There are many people, especially non-native speakers of English who, who come to this country, take the SATs, do very well on the math and not so well on the verbal. Well, if they're applying to a math program-

   14. LFLex Fridman41:30

       Mm-hmm.

   15. RHRichard Haier41:31

       ... the professors there who are making the decision or the admissions officers don't weight so much the score on verbal, especially if it's a non-native speaker.

   16. LFLex Fridman41:42

       Well, th- so yeah, you have to try to, in the admission process, bring in the context. But non-native isn't really the problem. I mean, that was part of the problem for me. But it's the, the anxiety was ... which it, it's interesting. It's interesting. Um, (laughs) oh boy, reducing yourself down to numbers. But it's still true. It's still the truth.

   17. RHRichard Haier42:09

       Well-

   18. LFLex Fridman42:09

       It's a, it's a, it's a painful tru- that same anxiety that led me to be, um, to struggle with the SAT, um, verbal tests is still within, within me in all ways of life. So maybe that's not anxiety. Maybe that's something, um, you know, like personality is also pretty stable.

   19. RHRichard Haier42:32

       Personality is stable. Personality, uh, does impact the way you navigate life.

   20. LFLex Fridman42:40

       Yeah.

   21. RHRichard Haier42:40

       Uh, there's no question.

   22. LFLex Fridman42:42

       Yeah. And, and we should say that the G factor in intelligence is not just about some kinda-... um, number on a paper. It also has to do with how you navigate life, how, um, easy life is for you in this very complicated world. So, personality is all tied into that in some- in some- in some deep fundamental way.

   23. RHRichard Haier43:05

       But now you've hit the key point about why we even want to study intelligence, and personally I think to a lesser extent, but, uh, that's my interest. Uh, is- is more on intelligence. I went to graduate school and wanted to study personality, but, uh, that's kind of another story how I got kind of shifted from personality research over to intelligence research. Because it's not just a number. Intelligence is not just an IQ score. It's not just an SAT score. It's what those numbers reflect about your ability to navigate everyday life. It has been said that life is one long intelligence test.

   24. LFLex Fridman43:50

       (laughs) Ah.

   25. RHRichard Haier43:52

       And who can't relate to that? And if you doubt... See, another problem here is a lot of critics of intelligence research, intelligence testing tend to be academics who, by and large, are pretty smart people.

   26. LFLex Fridman44:06

       Mm-hmm.

   27. RHRichard Haier44:07

       And pretty smart people, by and large, have enormous difficulty understanding what the world is like for people with IQs of 80 or 75. It is a completely different everyday experience. Even, uh, IQ scores of 85, 90. You know, there's a popular television program, Judge Judy, where Judge Judy deals with everyday people with everyday problems, and you can see the full range of problem-solving ability demonstrated there. And sometimes she does it for laughs, but it really isn't funny because people who- who are- are... there are people who are very limited in their life navigation, let alone s- success, by having... by- by not having good reasoning skills, which cannot be taught. We know this, by the way, because there are many efforts. You know, the United States military, which excels at training people.

   28. LFLex Fridman45:14

       (coughs)

   29. RHRichard Haier45:14

       I mean, I don't know that there's a better organization in the world for training diverse people.

   30. LFLex Fridman45:20

       Mm-hmm.
5. 46:36 – 52:35

   Genetics

   1. LFLex Fridman46:36

      that makes people very uncomfortable.

   2. RHRichard Haier46:38

      But nobody does that. Nobody in the field actually does that. That is a- that is a worry that is a worry like, um... Well, I don't want to call it a conspiracy theory.

   3. LFLex Fridman46:56

      Mm-hmm.

   4. RHRichard Haier46:56

      I mean, it- it's a legitimate worry, but it just doesn't- it just doesn't happen. Now, I had a professor in graduate school who was the only person I ever knew who cons- considered students only by their- their test scores.

   5. LFLex Fridman47:12

      Yes.

   6. RHRichard Haier47:12

      And later in his life, he kind of backed off that. (laughs) But, um...

   7. LFLex Fridman47:18

      Well, le- le- let me ask you this. So, we'll jump around. I- I'll come back to it, but... I tend to, um... I've had, like, political discussions with people and, um... Actually, uh, my friend, Michael Malice, he's, um, he's an anarchist. I- I disagree with him on basically everything except, um, the fact that love is a beautiful thing in this world. (sighs) And he says this test about left versus right, whatever, it doesn't matter what the test is, but, um, he believes... The question is, "Do you believe that some people are better than others?" Question is, uh, ambiguous. "Do you believe some people are better than others?" And to me, sort of the immediate answer is no. It's a poetic question. It's ambiguous question, right? Like, uh, so- so, you know, uh, people want to... Maybe the temptation is to ask, "Better at what? Better, like, sports?" So on. No. Uh, to me, I stand with the sort of the founding documents of this country, which is, all men are created equal. There's a basic humanity. And there's something about tests of intelligence just knowing that some people are different. Like, the science of intelligence that shows that some people are genetically-... in some stable way across a lifetime, have a greater intelligence than others, makes people feel like some people are better than others and that makes them very uncomfortable. And I, maybe you can speak to that, like, the fact that some people are more intelligent than others in a way that's, um, cannot be compensated through education, through anything you do in life. Um, what do we do with that?

   8. RHRichard Haier49:24

      Okay, there's a lot there. (laughs) We haven't really talked about the genetics of it yet, but you are correct, uh, in that it is my interpretation of, of the data that genetics has a very important influence on the G factor. And this is controversial, we can talk about it, but if you think that genetics, that genes are deterministic, are always deterministic, that leads to kind of the worry that you expressed. But we know now in the 21st century that many genes are not deterministic, they're probabilistic, meaning they, their, their, uh, uh, gene expression can be, uh, influenced. Uh, now whether they're influenced only by other biological variables, uh, or other genetic (laughs) variables, or environmental or cultural variables, that's where the controversy c- comes in. A- and we can come, we can discuss that in more detail if, if you like. But to go to the question about better, are people better, there is zero evidence that smart people are better with respect to important aspects of life, like honesty, even likability. (laughs) I'm sure you know many very intelligent people who are not terribly likable or terribly kind or terribly honest.

   9. LFLex Fridman50:55

      Is there something to be said... So, one of the things I've recently re-read for the second time, I guess that's what the word re-read means, uh, (laughs) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, uh, which is, uh, I think the best telling of the rise and fall of Hitler. And one of the interesting things about the people that, um, how should I say it, um, justified or maybe propped up the ideas that Hitler put forward, uh, is the fact that they were extremely intelligent. They were in- the intellectual class. They were, like, it was obvious that they, they thought very deeply and rationally about the world. So, what I would like to say is, one of the things that shows to me is some of the worst atrocities in the history of humanity have been committed by very intelligent people. Um, so th- that means that intelligence doesn't make you a good person. I wonder if, um, you know, there's a G factor for intelligence, I wonder if there's a G factor for goodness. Uh, you know, the Nietzschean, uh, good and evil, of course that's probably harder to measure 'cause it's such a subjective thing what it means to be good. And even the idea of evil is, um, a deeply uncomfortable thing 'cause how do we know?

   10. RHRichard Haier52:31

       But it's independent, whatever it is, it's independent

6. 52:35 – 1:00:04

   Enhancing intelligence

   1. RHRichard Haier52:35

      of intelligence. Uh, so I, I agree with you about that. But let me say this, I have also asserted my belief that more intelligence is better than less.

   2. LFLex Fridman52:47

      Mm-hmm.

   3. RHRichard Haier52:49

      That doesn't mean more intelligent people are better people. But all things being equal, would you like to be smarter or less smart? So if I had a pill, I have two pills, I said, "This one'll make you smarter, this one'll make you dumber." Which one would you like? Are there any circumstances (laughs) under which you would choose to be dumber?

   4. LFLex Fridman53:09

      Well, let me ask you this, that's a very nuanced and interesting question. You know, there's been books written about this, right? Um, now, we'll return to the hard questions, the interesting questions, but let me ask about human happiness. Does intelligence lead to happiness?

   5. RHRichard Haier53:29

      No. (laughs)

   6. LFLex Fridman53:31

      So, so, okay, so back to the pill then. So why, uh, when would you take the pill? So you said IQ 80, 90, 100, 110, you start going through the quartiles and, um, is it obvious, i- isn't there, uh, um, diminishing returns and then it starts becoming negative?

   7. RHRichard Haier53:57

      This is an empirical question.

   8. LFLex Fridman53:59

      Yes.

   9. RHRichard Haier54:00

      And, uh, so that I have, uh, advocated in many forums more research on enhancing the G factor. Right now there's n- uh, there have been many claims about enhancing intelligence with, you mentioned the N-back training, that was a, a big deal a few years ago, doesn't work. Data's very clear, it does not work. T- you know-

   10. LFLex Fridman54:25

       Or doing, like, memory tests, like, training and so on. Yeah.

   11. RHRichard Haier54:28

       Yeah. It make, it may give you a better memory in the short run, but it doesn't impact your G factor. Um, it was very popular a couple of decades ago that, uh, the idea that listening to Mozart could make you more intelligent. There was a paper published on this with somebody I knew published this paper.... uh, intelligence researchers never believed it for a second. Been hundreds of studies, all the meta-analyses, all the summaries and so on show it, uh, uh, th- there's nothing to it.

   12. LFLex Fridman55:01

       Mm-hmm.

   13. RHRichard Haier55:02

       Nothing to it at, at all.

   14. LFLex Fridman55:04

       (laughs)

   15. RHRichard Haier55:05

       But- but- but-

   16. LFLex Fridman55:06

       Yeah.

   17. RHRichard Haier55:06

       ... wouldn't it be something, wouldn't it be world-shaking if you could take the normal distribution of intelligence, which we haven't really talked about yet, but IQ scores and the G factor is thought to be a normal distribution, and shift it to the right so that everybody is smarter? Even a half a standard deviation would be world-shaking. Because there are many social problems, many, many social problems, that are exacerbated by people with lower ability to reason stuff out and navigate everyday life. So-

   18. LFLex Fridman55:51

       I wonder if there's a threshold. So maybe I would push back and say universal shifting of the normal distribution may not be the optimal way of shifting. Maybe it's better to, uh, whatever the a- asymmetric kind of distributions is, like, really pushing the lower up versus, uh, trying to make the, uh, people at the average more intelligent.

   19. RHRichard Haier56:19

       So you're saying that if in fact there was some way to increase G-

   20. LFLex Fridman56:23

       Yeah.

   21. RHRichard Haier56:23

       ... let's just call it metaphorically a pill, an IQ pill-

   22. LFLex Fridman56:27

       Yes.

   23. RHRichard Haier56:27

       ... we should only give it to people at the lower end?

   24. LFLex Fridman56:30

       No, it's just-

   25. RHRichard Haier56:31

       (laughs)

   26. LFLex Fridman56:31

       ... intuitively, I- I can see that life becomes easier at the lower end-

   27. RHRichard Haier56:37

       Yes.

   28. LFLex Fridman56:38

       ... if it's increased. It becomes less and less... It is an empirical scientific question, but it becomes less and less obvious to me that more intelligence is better.

   29. RHRichard Haier56:50

       At the high end, it... Not because it would make life easier, but it would make whatever problems you're working on more solvable. And if you are working on artificial intelligence, there is a tremendous potential th- to good... For- for that to improve society.

   30. LFLex Fridman57:13

       I understand, but the... So at the... Whatever problems you're working on, yes. But there's also the problem of the human condition. There's love, there's fear, and all those beautiful things that sometimes if you're good at solving problems, you're going to create more problems for yourself. It's, uh... I'm not exactly sure. So ignorance is bliss is a thing. So there might be a place, there might be a sweet spot of intelligence given your environment, given your personality, all of those kinds of things. And that becomes less beautifully complicated the more and more intelligent you become. But that's a, that's a, that's a question for literature, not for science, perhaps. You-
7. 1:00:04 – 1:12:35

   The Bell Curve

   1. RHRichard Haier1:00:04

      Charlie, for the younger people who are listening to this. Uh, you might be able to stream it on Netflix or something. But, uh, it- it was a story about, uh, a person with very low IQ who underwent a surgical procedure in the brain, and he slowly became a genius. And the tragedy of the story is the effect was temporary. It's a fascinating story, really.

   2. LFLex Fridman1:00:33

      That goes in contrast to the basic human experience that each of us individually have. But it raises the question of the- the- the full, the full range of people you might be able to be, uh, given different levels of intelligence. You've mentioned the normal distribution.So, let's talk about it. There's a book called The Bell Curve, written in 1994, written by psychologist Richard Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray. Why was this book so controversial?

   3. RHRichard Haier1:01:08

      This is a fascinating book. I know Charles Murray. I've had many conversations with, with him.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:01:15

      Yeah, what is the book about?

   5. RHRichard Haier1:01:16

      Well, the book is about the importance of intelligence in everyday life.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:01:24

      (laughs)

   7. RHRichard Haier1:01:25

      That's what the book is about.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:01:26

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RHRichard Haier1:01:27

      It's an empirical book. It has, uh, statistical analyses of very large databases that show that, uh, essentially, uh, IQ scores or their equivalent are correlated to all kinds of social, uh, problems, uh, and social benefits. And that in itself is not where the controversy about that book came. The controversy was about one chapter in that book, and that is a chapter about the, uh, average difference in mean scores between Black Americans and white Americans. And these are the terms that were used in the book at the time, and are still used to some extent. Um, and historically, uh, or really for, for decades, um, it has been observed that, uh, disadvantaged groups, uh, score on average lower than Caucasians on, on academic tests, tests of mental ability, and especially on IQ tests. And the difference is about a standard deviation, which is about 15 points, which is a substantial difference. Um, in the book, Herrnstein and Murray, in this one chapter, assert clearly and unambiguously that whether this average difference is due to genetics or not, they are agnostic. They don't know. Moreover, they assert they don't care because you wouldn't treat anybody differently knowing that if there was a genetic component or not, because that's a group average finding. Every individual has to be treated as an individual. You can't make any assumption about what that person's intellectual ability might be from the fact of a average group difference. They're very clear about this. Nonetheless, people took away... I'm gonna choose my words carefully 'cause I have a feeling that many critics didn't actually read these, read the book. They took away that Herrnstein and Murray were saying that Blacks are genetically inferior. That was the take home message. And if they weren't saying it, they were implying it because they had a chapter that discussed this empirical observation of a difference. And isn't this horrible? And so the reaction to that book was incendiary.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:04:18

       What do we know about, from that book and the research beyond, uh, about race differences and intelligence?

   11. RHRichard Haier1:04:30

       It's still the most incendiary topic in psychology. Nothing has changed that. Anybody who even discusses it is easily, uh, called a racist just for discussing it. It's become fashionable to find racism in any discussion like this. It's unfortunate. Um, the short answer to your question is, there's been very little actual research on this topic since 19, uh-

   12. LFLex Fridman1:05:04

       Since The Bell Curve.

   13. RHRichard Haier1:05:04

       S- since The Bell Curve, even before. This really became incendiary in 1969 with an article published by an educational psychologist named Arthur Jensen. Let's just take a minute and go back to that to see The Bell Curve in a little bit more historical perspective. Arthur Jensen was a, uh, educational psychologist at UC Berkeley. I knew him as well. And, um, in 1969 or '68, the Harvard Educational Review asked him to take an, uh, to do a review article on the, um, early childhood education programs that were designed to raise the IQs of minority, uh, students. This was before the federally funded Head Start program. Head Start had not really gotten underway at the time Jensen undertook his review of what were a number of demonstration programs. And these demonstration programs were for young children around kindergarten age, and they were specially designed to be cognitively stimulating, to provide, uh, lunches, do all the, the, the things that people thought would, uh, minimize this, this average gap of intelligence tests. There was a, a, a strong belief among virtually all psychologists that the cause of the gap was unequal opportunity due to racism, due to all, you know, all negative things in the society. And if you could compensate for this, the gap would go away. So early childhood education back then was called literally compensatory education.Jensen looked at these programs. He was an empirical guy. He understood psychometrics, and he wrote a... It was over a hundred-page article detailing these programs and the flaws in their research design. Some of the programs reported IQ gains of, on average, five points, but a few reported 10, 20, and even 30 point gains. One was called the Miracle in M- Milwaukee. The, that investigator went to jail f- ultimately for fabricating data. (laughs) But, but the point is that Jensen wrote an article that said, look... Uh, the opening sentence of his article is classic. The opening sentence is... I may not quote it exactly right, but it's, "We have tried compensatory education, and it has failed." And he showed that these gains were essentially nothing. You, you couldn't really document, empirically, any gains at all from these really earnest efforts to increase IQ. But he went a step further, a fateful step further. He said, "Not only have these efforts failed, but because they have had essentially no impact, we have to re-examine our assumption that these differences are caused by environmental things that we can address with education. We need to consider a genetic influence, whether there's a genetic influence on this group difference."

   14. LFLex Fridman1:08:32

       So you said that this is one of the more controversial works-

   15. RHRichard Haier1:08:36

       I think it's the most-

   16. LFLex Fridman1:08:36

       ... ever attempted.

   17. RHRichard Haier1:08:36

       ... infamous paper in all of psychology, I would go on to say.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:08:41

       (laughs)

   19. RHRichard Haier1:08:41

       Because in 1969, the genetic, uh, data was very skimpy on this question, skimpy and controversial. It's always been controversial, but it was even skimpy and controversial. It's kind of a long story that I go into, uh, a little bit in more detail in, in, in, uh, the book The Neuroscience of Intelligence. Uh, but to say he was vilified is an understatement. I mean, he couldn't talk at, at the American Psychological Association, uh, without bomb threats clearing the, the lecture hall. Campus security watched him all the time. They opened his mail. Uh, he had to retreat to a, a different address. Uh, this was, uh, one of the earliest kinds... This is before the internet and, and kind of, uh, internet s- uh, social media mobs. Uh, but it was that intense. And I have written that overnight, after the publication of this article, all intelligence research became radioactive. Nobody wanted to talk about it. Uh, and then it, it, it didn't... It, it... Nobody was doing more research. And then The Bell Curve came along, and w- the Jensen controversy was dying down. I have stories that Jensen told me about his interaction with the Nixon White House on this issue. I mean, it was... This was, like, a really big deal. Uh, it was some unbelievable stories, but you know, he told me this, so I, I kinda believe these stories. Nonetheless-

   20. LFLex Fridman1:10:21

       25 years later-

   21. RHRichard Haier1:10:23

       25 years later.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:10:24

       So all this silence basically saying th- you know, this... (laughs) Uh, nobody wants to do this kind of research. There's so much pressure, so much attack against this kind of research, and here's, uh, sort of bold, stupid, crazy people that decide to dive right back in.

   23. RHRichard Haier1:10:44

       And-

   24. LFLex Fridman1:10:45

       I wonder how much discussion there was, "Do we include this chapter or not?"

   25. RHRichard Haier1:10:48

       Murray has said they discussed it and they felt... (pauses) They should include it, and they were very careful in the way they, they wrote it, which did them no good. (laughs)

   26. LFLex Fridman1:11:01

       (laughs) Yeah.

   27. RHRichard Haier1:11:02

       Uh, so, um, as a matter of fact, when The Bell Curve came out, it was so controversial, I got a call from, uh, a television show called Nightline. It was with, uh, a broadcaster called Ted Koppel who had this evening show. Uh, I think it was on, uh, late at night. Talked about news. It was a straight-up news thing.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:11:23

       Yeah.

   29. RHRichard Haier1:11:24

       And a producer called and asked if I, if I would be on it to talk about the, uh, The Bell Curve. And I said, "You know, it, it..." Uh, she asked me what I thought about The Bell Curve as a book, and I said, "Look, it's a very good book. It talks about the role of intelligence in society." And she said, "No, no, what do you think about the chapter on race? That's what we want you to talk about." I remember this conversation. I said, "Well..." She said, "What would you say if you were on TV?" And I said, "Well, what I would say is that it's not at all clear if there's any genetic component to intelligence. Um, any differences. But if there were a strong genetic component, that would be a good thing." (laughs) And, you know, complete silence on the other end of the phone.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:12:24

       Yeah.
8. 1:12:35 – 1:31:48

   Race differences

   1. RHRichard Haier1:12:35

      And if it's biological, we can figure out how to fix it."

   2. LFLex Fridman1:12:40

      I see. That's interesting.

   3. RHRichard Haier1:12:41

      And she, she went... She said, "Would you say that on television?"

   4. LFLex Fridman1:12:43

      Yes.

   5. RHRichard Haier1:12:44

      I said, "No." (laughs)

   6. LFLex Fridman1:12:45

      (laughs)

   7. RHRichard Haier1:12:45

      And so that was the end of that. Uh-

   8. LFLex Fridman1:12:47

      So that's for more like, uh... Biology is, um, within the reach of science, and the environment as a public policy is social and all those kinds of things. It's, it... From your perspective, whichever one you think is more amenable to solutions in the, in the short term is the one that excites you. But, um, you saying that it's good...Uh, th- the truth of genetic differences, no matter what, th- between groups, is- is a painful, harmful, potentially- potentially dangerous thing. So, l- let me ask you to this question, w- there's bell curve or any research on race differences. (exhales) Can that be used to increase the amount of racism in the world? Can that be used to increase the amount of hate in the world? Do you think about this kind of stuff?

   9. RHRichard Haier1:13:54

      I've thought about this a lot. Not as a scientist, but as a person. Um, and my sense is, there is such enormous reservoirs of hate and racism that have nothing to do with scientific knowledge of the data that speak against that. That, no, I- I don't- I don't want to give racist groups a veto power over what scientists study. If you think that the differences, and by the way, virtually no one disagrees that there are differences in- in scores. It's all about what causes them and how to fix it. So, if you think this is a cultural problem, then you must ask the problem what- do you want to ch- do you want to change anything about the culture or are you okay with the culture 'cause you don't feel it's appropriate to change a person's culture, so are you okay with that and the fact that that may lead to disadvantages in- in school achievement? It's a question. Are- i- if you think it's environmental, what are the environmental parameters that can be fixed? I'll tell you one. Lead in, you know, lead from gasoline in the atmosphere, lead in paint, lead in- in water. That's an environmental toxin that society has the means to eliminate and they should.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:15:26

       Yeah, just to sort of trying to find some, um, insight and conclusion to this very difficult topic, uh, is there been research on environment versus genetics, nature versus nurture, on this question of race differences? Since the bell curve.

   11. RHRichard Haier1:15:43

       There has not... No one wants to do this research. It- first of all, it's hard research to do. Second of all, it's- it's a minefield. No one wants to spend their career on it. Tenured people don't want to do it, let alone students. Um, the way I talk about it, I- I- be- well, before I tell you the way I- I talk about it, I wanna say one more thing about Jensen. He was once asked by a journalist straight out, "Are you a racist?" His answer was very interesting. His answer was, "I've thought about that a lot and I've concluded it doesn't matter." This... now, I- I know what he meant by this.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:16:23

       (laughs) The guts to say that. Wow.

   13. RHRichard Haier1:16:25

       He was a very unusual person. I think-

   14. LFLex Fridman1:16:28

       Yeah.

   15. RHRichard Haier1:16:28

       ...he had a touch of Asperger's syndrome, to tell you the truth.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:16:30

       Yeah.

   17. RHRichard Haier1:16:31

       Because I- I saw him in many circumstances and-

   18. LFLex Fridman1:16:34

       He would be canceled on Twitter immediately with that sentence. (laughs)

   19. RHRichard Haier1:16:37

       Well, yeah, but what he- what he meant was he had a hypothesis.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:16:41

       Yeah.

   21. RHRichard Haier1:16:42

       And with respect to group differences, he called it the default hypothesis. He said whatever factors affect individual intelligence are likely the same factors that affect group differences. It was the default. But it-

   22. LFLex Fridman1:16:55

       Yeah.

   23. RHRichard Haier1:16:56

       ...was a hypothesis. It should be tested and if it turned out empirical test didn't support the hypothesis, he was happy to move on to something else. He was absolutely committed to that scientific ideal that- that i- it's an empirical question, we should look at it, and let's see what happens.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:17:18

       The scientific method cannot be racist from his perspective. It doesn't matter what the scientists... if they- if they follow the scientific method, it doesn't matter what they believe.

   25. RHRichard Haier1:17:32

       And if they are biased and they consciously or unconsciously bias the data, other people will come along to replicate-

   26. LFLex Fridman1:17:42

       Yes.

   27. RHRichard Haier1:17:42

       ...it, they will fail, and the process over time will work.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:17:48

       So, let me push back on this idea because psychology to me is full of gray areas and what I've observed about psychology, even replication crisis aside, is that something about the media, something about journalism, something about the- the virality of ideas in the public sphere, they misinterpret. They take up things from studies, uh, willfully or from ignorance, misinterpret findings and tell narratives around that. I personally believe, for me, I'm not saying that broadly about science, but for me, it's my responsibility to anticipate the ways in which findings will be misinterpreted. So, I've had... I've thought about this a lot 'cause I publish papers on, uh, semi-autonomous vehicles and, um, those, you know, cars... people die in cars. There's people that have written me letters saying... emails, nobody writes letters-

   29. RHRichard Haier1:18:58

       (laughs)

   30. LFLex Fridman1:18:58

       ...I wish they did, uh, that I have blood on my hands because of things that I would say, positive or negative, there's consequences. In the same way when you're a researcher for intelligence, I'm sure you might get emails or at least people might believe that a finding of your study, uh, is going to be used by a large number of people to increase the amount of hate in the world.I think there's some responsibility on scientists, but for me, I think there's a great responsibility, uh, to anticipate the ways things will be misinterpreted, and there you have to, first of all, decide whether you want to say a thing at all, do the study at all, publish the study at all. And two, the words with which you explain it. See, it's, uh... I find this on Twitter a lot actually, which is when I, when I write a tweet, and I'm usually just doing so innocently, I, I'll- I'll- I'll- I'll write it, you know, it takes me, like, five seconds to write it or whatever, 30 seconds to write it. And then I'll think, all right, I, like, close my eyes, uh, open, and try to see how will the world interpret this? Like what are the ways in which this will be misinterpreted? And I'll sometimes adjust that tweet to see, like, yeah, so in my mind it's clear, but that's because it's my mind from which this tweet came. But you have to think in a fresh mind that sees this, um, and it's spread across a large mi- number of other minds, how will the interpretation morph? I mean, for a tweet that's a silly thing, it doesn't matter. But for s- a scientific, um, paper and study and finding, I think it matters. So I don't know. Well, I don't know what your thoughts about, on that, because maybe for Jensen, uh, the data is there, "What do you want me to do? This is a scientific process has been carried out. If you think the data was polluted by bias, do other studies that reveal the bias, uh, but the data's there." And what... like, I have (laughs) wh- what... I'm not a poet. I'm not a, uh, literary writer. Like what do you want me to do? I'm just presenting you the data. What do you think on that spectrum? What's the role of a scientist?
9. 1:31:48 – 1:40:57

   Bell curve criticisms

   1. RHRichard Haier1:31:48

      This is not a small issue. 14 million children have IQs under 85. Is this something we want to ignore? Does this have any... What is the Venn diagram between, uh, you know, when you have people with IQs under 85 and you have achievement in school or achievement in life? There's a lot of overlap there. This is why, to go back to the IQ pill, if there were a way to shift th- that curve toward the higher end, that would have a big impact.

   2. LFLex Fridman1:32:31

      If I could maybe, before we talk about sort of the impact on life and so on, um, some of the criticisms of The Bell Curve. So, Stephen Jay Gould wrote that The Bell Curve rests on four incorrect assumptions. Ca- it, it'd be just interesting to get your thoughts on the four assumptions, which are, intelligence must be reducible to a single number, intelligence must be capable of rank-ordering people in a linear order, intelligence must be primarily genetically based, and intelligence must be essentially immutable. Um, maybe not as criticisms, but as-

   3. RHRichard Haier1:33:07

      With-

   4. LFLex Fridman1:33:08

      ... thoughts about intelligence.

   5. RHRichard Haier1:33:09

      Listen, all, uh, yeah, we could, we could spend a lot of time on him.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:33:13

      (laughs) On Stephen Jay Gould? Yeah. Yeah.

   7. RHRichard Haier1:33:15

      Yes. He wrote that in, what, about 1985, 1984?

   8. LFLex Fridman1:33:20

      Yeah.

   9. RHRichard Haier1:33:20

      He, his views were overtly political, not scientific. He was a scientist, but his views on this were overtly political. And I would encourage people listening to this, if they really wanna understand his criticisms, they should, uh, just, uh, Google, um, what he had to say-

   10. LFLex Fridman1:33:43

       Mm-hmm.

   11. RHRichard Haier1:33:44

       ... and google the scientific reviews of his book, The Mismeasure of Man, and they will take these statements apart. They were wrong. Not only were they wrong, but it, when he asserted in his first book that, you know, uh, that there was no biological basis essentially to IQ, by the time the second edition came around, there were studies of MRI, MRIs of, showing that brain size, brain volume, were correlated to IQ scores, which he declined to put in his book. (laughs) So, you know-

   12. LFLex Fridman1:34:20

       So, okay, I'm, I'm learning a lot today. I didn't know ... I didn't know the, actually the extent of his work. I was just using the few little snippets of criticism. That's interesting. So, there's a battle here. He wrote a book, Mismeasure of Man, that's not, that's missing a lot of the scientific, um, uh, grounding.

   13. RHRichard Haier1:34:36

       His, his book is highly popular in colleges today. You can find it in any college bookstore under assigned reading. It's highly popular.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:34:44

       The Mismeasure of Man?

   15. RHRichard Haier1:34:45

       Yes. Highly influential.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:34:46

       Can you speak to The Mismeasure of Man? I'm, I'm under-educated about this. So, what ... Is this the book basically criticizing-

   17. RHRichard Haier1:34:53

       Yeah. Yes.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:34:53

       ... the ideas in The Bell Curve?

   19. RHRichard Haier1:34:54

       Yeah, yeah, where those four things came from.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:34:57

       Yeah.

   21. RHRichard Haier1:34:57

       And it is really, um, a book that was, uh, really taken apart point by point by a number of people who actually understood the data. And he didn't care.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:35:09

       Yeah.

   23. RHRichard Haier1:35:09

       He didn't care. He didn't modify anything.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:35:11

       So, it's a poli- it's a politically ... Listen, uh, because this is such a sensitive topic, like I said, I believe, uh, the, the im- impact of the work as it is misinterpreted has to be considered. Because it's not just going to be scientific discourse, it's going to be political discourse. There's going to be debates. There's going to be, um, uh, politically motivated people that will use messages in each direction, make it the, m- make something like The Bell Curve the enemy or the support for your, uh, for, for one's racist beliefs. And so, um, I think you have to consider that. But it's difficult because, you know, Nietzsche was used by Hitler to, uh, justify a lot of his beliefs. And it's not in- it's not exactly on Nietzsche to, to anticipate Hitler.

   25. RHRichard Haier1:36:07

       (laughs)

   26. LFLex Fridman1:36:08

       So, uh, and, or how his ideas would be misinterpreted and used for evil. But there's a balance there. So, I understand. This is really interesting. I didn't, I, I didn't know. Is there any criticism of the book you find compelling or interesting or challenging to you from a scientific perspective?

   27. RHRichard Haier1:36:23

       There were factual criticisms, uh, uh, about the nature of the statistics that were used, the statistical analyses. These were more technical criticisms. And they were, uh, addressed by Murray in a couple of articles where he took all the criticisms and, and spoke to them. And people listening to this podcast, uh, can certainly find all those online. Uh, and, and it's very interesting. But Murray went on to write some additional books, two in the last couple of years. Uh, one about human diversity where he goes through the data refuting the idea that race is only a social construct with no biological meaning. He, he, he discusses the data. It's a very good discussion. You don't have to agree with it. But he presents data in a cogent way he, and he talks about the critics of that, and he talks about their data in a cogent, non-personal way. It's, it's a, it's a very, uh, informative discussion. The book is called Human Diversity. He talks about race and he talks about gender, same thing, about sex differences.... and more recently he's written what might be (laughs) his final say on this, a book called Facing Reality. (laughs) Where he talks about this again, uh, so I, you know, he's, he, he can certainly defend himself. He doesn't (laughs) need me to, to do that. But I would urge people who have heard about him and The Bell Curve and who think they know what's in it, you are likely incorrect and you need to read it for yourself. (laughs)

   28. LFLex Fridman1:38:06

       But it is, uh, so scientifically it's a, it's a serious subject. It's a difficult subject. Ethically, it's a difficult subject. E- e- every- everything you said here calmly and thoughtfully is difficult. It's, it's difficult for me to even consider the G factor exists. Um, I don't mean from, like, that somehow G factor is inherently racist or sexist or whatever. It's just, it's, it's difficult in the way that considering the fact that we die one day is difficult. That we are limited by our biology is difficult. And it's, um, it's at least from an American perspective, you, you would like to believe that everything is possible in this world.

   29. RHRichard Haier1:38:51

       Well, that leads us to what I think we should do with this information. (laughs)

   30. LFLex Fridman1:38:58

       (laughs)
10. 1:40:57 – 1:50:34

    Intelligence and life success

    1. LFLex Fridman1:40:57

       century will, will be remembered by the technology and the science that goes to individual differences 'cause we have n- we have now data. We have now the tools to much, much better to start to measure, start to estimate, uh, not just on the sort of through tests and IQ, IQ test type of things sort of, uh, uh, outside the body kind of things, but measuring all kinds of stuff about the body, so yeah, truly go into the molecular biology, to the neurobiology, to the neuroscience. L- let me ask you about in... the life. (laughs)

    2. RHRichard Haier1:41:32

       (laughs)

    3. LFLex Fridman1:41:32

       How does intelligence correlate, uh, with or lead to or has anything to do with career success? You've mentioned these kinds of things and, um, is there any data... You, you had an excellent conversation with, uh, Jordan Peterson, for example. Is there any data on what intelligent means for success in life?

    4. RHRichard Haier1:41:53

       Success in life, there is, um, a tremendous amount of validity data, uh, that looked at, uh, intelligence test scores and various measures of life success. Now of course, life success is a pretty broad topic and not everybody agrees on, you know, what success means. But there's w- w- general agreement on certain aspects of success that can be measured. Uh, and, uh, those-

    5. LFLex Fridman1:42:33

       Including life expectancy, like you said.

    6. RHRichard Haier1:42:35

       Life expectancy. Now there's life success. Uh (laughs) -

    7. LFLex Fridman1:42:39

       (laughs)

    8. RHRichard Haier1:42:39

       ... you know? Uh, (laughs) uh, life expectancy, uh, I mean, though, uh, th- th- th- that is such an interesting finding.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:42:47

       Yeah.

    10. RHRichard Haier1:42:47

        But it, uh, you know, i- IQ scores are also correlated to things like income. Now okay, so who thinks income means you're successful? That's not the point. The point (laughs) is that income is one empirical measure in this culture that says something about your level of success. Now you can define success in ways that have nothing to do with income. You can define success, uh, based on your evolutionary natural selection success. (laughs) You know, y- y- but for variables, uh, and, and even that by the way is correlated to IQ in, in, in, in some, uh, studies. So however you wanna define success-... uh, IQ is important. It's not the only determinant. People get hung up on, "Well, what about personality? What about so-called emotional intelligence?" Yes, all those things matter. The thing that matters empirically, the single thing that matters the most is your general, uh, ability, your general mental intellectual ability, your reasoning ability. And the more complex your vocation, the more complex your job, the more G matters. G doesn't matter in a lot of, uh, occupations don't require complex thinking, and there are occupations like that and G doesn't matter. Within an occupation, the, uh, G might not matter so much. So that if you look at all the professors at MIT and had a way to rank order them, uh, you know, it... Th- there's a ceiling effect is what I'm saying, that, you know, uh...

Episode duration: 2:44:15