YouSaid · the spoken record

Richard Haier

lines on the record: 136
first: 2022-07-14
most recent: 2022-07-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That's exactly what the science does say. It's not. Opposite of what the science is. Everything I know about psychology, everything I've learned about intelligence, everything points to the inexorable conclusion that you have to treat people as individuals respectfully and with compassion. Because through no fault of their own, some people are not as capable as others. And you want to turn a blind eye to it. You want to come up with theories about why that might be true. Fine. I would like to fix some of it as best I can.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yes, you can't escape it. And think about the G factor in intelligence everybody knows this is true on a personal daily basis. Even if you think back to when you were in school. Know who the smart kids were, you know, when you are on the phone talking to a customer service representative that in response to your detailed question is reading a script back to you and you get furious at this. And have you ever called this person a moron or wanted to call this person a moron? You're not listening to me. Everybody has had the experience of dealing with people who they think are not at their level. It's just common because that's the way human beings are. That's the way life is.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think about it more and more as I get older. Yeah, I do. And it's one of these human things that it is finite. We all know it. Most of us deny it and don't want to think about it. Sometimes you think about it in terms of estate planning. You try to do the rational thing. Sometimes it makes you work harder because you know your time is more and more limited and you want to get things done. I don't know where I am on that. It is just one of those things that's always in the back of my mind. And I don't think that's uncommon.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One famous psychologist wrote about this issue that somehow a balance has to be found between pursuing the science and communicating it with respect to people's sensitivities, the legitimate sensitivities. Somehow.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What will that drug do in a college student that doesn't have Alzheimer's disease? So I would encourage people who are interested in psychology. Who are interested in science to pursue a scientific career and address the big questions? And the most important thing I can tell you if you're going to be in kind of a research environment is you've got to follow the data where the data take you. You can't decide in advance where you want the data to go. And if the data take you to places that you don't have the technical expertise to follow, like, you know, I would like to understand more about molecular biology, but I'm not going to become a molecular biologist now. But I know people who are. And my job is to get them interested, to take their expertise into this direction. And it's not so easy.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I can say if you're interested in psychology, if you're interested in science and the science around the big questions of consciousness and intelligence and psychiatric illness, we haven't really talked about brain illnesses and what we might learn from you if you are trying to develop a drug to treat Alzheimer's disease, you are trying to develop a drug To impact learning and memory, which are core to intelligence. So it could well be that the so-called IQ pill will come from a pharmaceutical company trying to develop a drug for Alzheimer's disease”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't say more intelligence is always better if you want to create beauty, I just said all things being equal, more is better than less. That's all I mean.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look at everything about the brain. There are different levels of explanation. On one hand, you have a behavioral level, but then you have brain circuitry, and then you have neurons, and then you have dendrites, and then you have synapses, and then you have the neurotransmitters And the presynaptic and the postsynaptic terminals. And then you have all the things that influence neurotransmitters. And then you have the individual differences among people. Yeah, it's complicated. But 51 million people in the United States have IQs under 85 and struggle with everyday life. Shouldn't that motivate To take a look at this?”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I have written that the nightmares of neurobiologists, you know, understanding the complexities, this cascade of events that happens at the synaptic level. That these nightmares are what fuel some people to solve. So some people, you have to be undaunted. I mean, yeah, this is not easy. We're still trying to figure out cancer. It was only recently that they figured out why aspirin works. You know, these are not easy problems, but I also have the perspective. Of the history of science is the history of solving problems that are extraordinarily complex.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Metaphorically, I do, and I am supremely confident that it's possible because I am supremely ignorant of the complexities of neurobiology. And so I have written”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. That's called fluid intelligence as opposed to what's called crystallized intelligence, which is your knowledge of facts. You know things. But can you use those things to solve a problem? Those are two different things.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Amazon had Alexa. Amazon had Alexa. Something. So I propose to one of my colleagues that he buy one of these, each one of each, and then ask it questions from the IQ test. But it became apparent that they all searched the internet. So they all can find answers to questions like, how far is it between Washington and Miami and repeat after me. Now, I don't know if you said to Alexa, I'm going to repeat these numbers backwards to me. I don't know what would happen. I've never done it. But one answer to your question is you're going to try it right now. Let's try it. Let's”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I have thought a little bit about this, but every time I think about these things, I rapidly reach the limits of my knowledge and imagination. So when Alexa first came out, And I think there was a competing one. Well, there was Siri with Apple and Google had Alexa.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“PET scan studies of intelligence found the unexpected result of an inverse correlation between glucose metabolic rate and intelligence. It wasn't how much a brain area lit up. How much it lit up was negatively correlated to how well they did on the test, which led to the brain efficiency hypothesis, which is still being studied today. And there's more and more evidence that the efficiency of brain information processing is more related to intelligence than... Than just more activity.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I don't lose my train of thought. I couldn't find in the textbooks anything about dosing by intelligence. I asked my friend the anesthesiologist, he said, no, he doesn't know. I said, can we do a chart review? And look at people using their years of education as a proxy for IQ because if someone's gone to graduate school, that tells you something you can make some inference as opposed to someone who didn't graduate high school. Can we do a chart review? And he says, no, they never really put down the exact dose. No, he said, no. So to this day, the simple question. Does it take more anesthetic drug to put someone under if they have a high IQ or less or less? It could go either way. Because by the way, our early...”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I tried to find out. And I went to some anesthesiology textbooks about how you dose and they dose by weight But I also learned, this is a little bit off subject, anesthesiologists are never sure how deep you are. And they usually tell by poking you with a needle, and if you don't jump, they tell the surgeon to go ahead. Not sure that's literally true, but it's”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, imagine this. Here's a simple question Does it take more anesthetic drug? To have a person lose consciousness if their IQ is 140, then a person with an IQ of seventy.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of research that would be fascinating to see the parts. There are a lot more imaging studies now of consciousness. I'm just not up on them.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The sequence of events seemed to have the thalmus in it Now, here's the question Are some people more conscious than others? Are there individual differences in consciousness? And I don't mean it in the psychedelic sense. I don't mean it in the political consciousness sense. I just mean it in everyday life. To some people go through everyday life more conscious than others. And are those the people we might actually label more intelligent? So now the other thing I was looking for is whether the parts of the brain we were seeing in the anesthesia studies were the same parts of the brain we were seeing in the intelligence studies. Now this is very complicated expensive research we didn't really have funding to do this we were trying to do it on the fly. I'm not sure anybody has pursued this. I'm retired now. He's gone on to other things. But I think it's an error.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the results were absolutely fascinating. We did this with different anesthetic drugs and different drugs impacted different parts of the brain. So we were naturally looking for the common one. And it seemed to have something to do with the thalamus. And consciousness, this was actual data on consciousness, real conscious, actual consciousness.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He managed all the human subjects requirements on this research. And he was brilliant at this. And what we did is we had these normal volunteers come in on three occasions. On one occasion, he gave them enough anesthesic drug, so they were a little drowsy. And on another occasion, they came in and he fully anesthetized them. And he would say, Mike, can you hear me? And the person would say, And then, though we would scan people and under no anesthesic condition. So same person. And we were looking to see if we could see the part of the brain turn off. He subsequently tried to do this with AmphabRI, which has a faster time resolution, and you could do it in real time as the person went under and then regained consciousness where you couldn't do that with PET. You had to have three different occasions.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You may not know this, but I did some of the early research on anesthetic drugs with brain imaging, trying to answer the question, what part of the brain is the last to turn off when someone loses consciousness? And is that the first part of the brain to turn on when consciousness is regained? And I was working with an anesthesiologist named Mike Alkyer, who was really brilliant at this. These were really the first studies of brain imaging using positron emission tomography long before FMRI. And you would inject a radioactive sugar that labeled the brain, and the harder the brain was working, the more sugar it would take up. And then you could make a picture of glucose use in the brain. And he was amazing. He managed to do this in normal volunteers. He brought in and anesthetized as if they were going into surgery.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've always believed that consciousness and intelligence are the two real Fundamental problems of the human brain. And therefore, I think they must be related.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this is why, like many areas of science, you said earlier that there are a lot of gray areas and no definitive answers. This is not uncommon in science that the closer you look at a problem, the more questions you get. Not the fewer questions, because the universe is complicated. And the idea that we have people on this planet who can study the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang. That's pretty amazing And I have always said that if they can study the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang, we can certainly figure out something about intelligence that allows that.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, do you have a strange answer for that strange question? The answer is there were some studies that indicated the more children in a family. The firstborn children would be more intelligent than the fourth or fifth or sixth. Not clear that those studies hold up over time. And of course, what you see also is that families where there are multiple children four, five, six, seven, you know, really big families. The social economic status of those families usually in the modern age is not that high. Maybe it used to be the aristocracy used to have a lot of kids. I'm not sure exactly. But there have been reports of correlations between IQ and fertility, but I'm not sure that the data are very strong, that the firstborn child is always the smartest. It seems like there's some data to that, but I'm not current on that.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The weight of evidence is it doesn't add very much variance to predict what's going on beyond the genetic variance. So when you actually look at it in some, and there aren't that many studies that have genetically informed designs. But when you do see those, the genes seem to have an advantage.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, unless you have a genetically informative research design where you look at siblings that have the same biological parents and so on, you can't really disentangle all that. Most studies of social economic status and intelligence do not have a genetically informed design. So any conclusions they make about the causality of the social economic status being the cause of the IQ is a stretch. And where you do find genetically informative designs You find most of the variants in your outcome measures are due to the genetic component, and sometimes the SES adds a little.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The child will get those genes or some of those genes, as well as the environment. But it's not the number of books in the house that actually directly impacts the child. So the two scenarios on this are you find that, and this was used to get rid of the SAT test, oh, the SAT score is highly correlated with the social economic status of the parents. So all you're really measuring is how rich the parents are. Okay, well, why are the parents rich? And so the opposite Kind of syllogism is that people who are very bright make more money, they can afford homes in better neighborhoods so their kids get better schools. Now the kids grow up bright. Where in that chain of events does that come from?”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and there is some evident genetic evidence of kind of an interaction between the parents' IQ and the environment, that high IQ parents provide an enriched environment, which then can impact the child in addition to the genes. environment. So there are all these interactions that But it's not, you know, Think about the number of books in a household. This was a variable that's correlated with IQ. Well, why? Especially if the kid never reads any of the books. It's because more intelligent people have more books in their house. And if you're more intelligent, And there's a genetic component to that.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where I don't interpret any one study too much, the weight of evidence tells me genes are important. But what does that mean? What does it mean that genes are important knowing that gene expression, genes don't express themselves in a vacuum, they express themselves in an environment? So the environment has to have something to do with it, especially if the best genetic estimates of the amount of variance are around 50 or even if it's as high as 80%, it still leaves 20% of non-genetic. Now maybe that is all luck. Maybe that's all chance. I could believe that. I could easily believe that. But I do think after 50 years of trying various interventions, And nothing works, including memory training, including listening to Mozart, including playing computer games. None of that has shown any impact on intelligence test course.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that would be more now, and there is some data on adoption that indicates the adopted children are moving a little bit more toward their adoptive parents. It's you know, it's to me the overwhelming, the way I have this concept called the weight of evidence.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and when you take adopted kids and they grow up in another family and you find out when those adopted kids are adults, their IQ scores don't correlate with the IQ scores of their adoptive parents. But they do correlate with their IQ scores of their biological parents whom they've never met. I mean, these are important, these are powerful observations.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What everybody said at the beginning, that's what everybody said to Jensen. He said, well, maybe we need to start earlier. Maybe we need not do pre-kindergarten, but pre-kindergarten. It's always an infinite, well, maybe we didn't get it right. But after decades of trying, 50 years, 50 or 60 years of trying, surely something would have worked to the point where you could actually see a result and not need a probability level at 0.05 on some means. So that's why that's the kind of evidence that would change my mind.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and it's a good question because I think everyone should always be asked what evidence would change your mind? It's certainly not only a fair question, it is really the key question for anybody working on any aspect of science. I think that if environment was very important, we would have seen it clearly by now. It would have been obvious that school interventions, compensatory education, early childhood education, all these things that have been earnestly tried and well-funded, well-designed studies would show some effect, and they don't.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't think the data supports that genetics as a tiny component. I think the data support the idea that the genetics is a very important, and I don't say component, I say influence, very important influence. And the environment is a lot less than people believe. Most people believe environment plays a big role. I'm not so sure.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pay attention to organic baby food. This is why you do all these things because you want your baby to be as healthy and as smart as possible. And every parent will say that.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I do think there is more of a genetic My view, and I'm not an expert on this, genetics is a highly technical and complex subject. I am not a geneticist, not a behavioral geneticist. But reading of this, my interpretation of this, is that there is a genetic blueprint more or less, and that has a profound influence on your subsequent intellectual development, including the G factor. That's not to say things can't happen to, I mean, if you think of that genes provide a potential, fine, and that various variables impact that potential. And every parent of a newborn implicitly or explicitly wants to maximize that potential. This is why you buy educational toys. This is why you”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, some would say That the raw hardware of the brain As it develops from conception through adulthood, or at least through the childhood, that that so-called hardware that you are assuming is mostly genetic, in fact, is not as deterministic as you might think, that it is probabilistic and what affects the probabilities are things like in uterine environment. And other factors like that, including chance. Chance affects the way the neurons are connecting during gestation. Hey, it's pre programmed. So there is pushback on the concept that genes provide a blueprint. It's a lot more fluid”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think it's clear that the fact that an IQ score is correlated to things like thickness of your cortex, that it's correlated to glucose metabolic rate in your brain that identical twins reared apart Are highly similar in their IQ scores. These are all important observations that certainly that indicate, not just suggest, but indicate that there's a biological basis. And does anyone believe intelligence has nothing to do with the brain? I mean, it's so obvious.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Many of them would assert that as a logical outcome. But because I believe there is a stable G-factor from lots of sources of data, not just one study, but lots of sources of data over decades, I am more amenable to the idea that whatever interactions between genes and environment exist, they can be explicated, they can be studied. That information can be used as a basis for molecular biology of intelligence.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How much of the variance can you apportion to either? Most of the people who work in this field say that the framing of that, if the question is framed that way, it can't be answered because nature and nurture are not too independent influences. They interact with each other. And understanding those interactions. Is so complex that many behavioral geneticists say it is today impossible and always will be impossible to disentangle that no matter what kind of advances there are in DNA technology and genomic informatics.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and there's some evidence from infants that nutrition has made a difference. So it's not an unreasonable connection. But does it negate the idea that there's a genetic influence? Not logically at all. But it is very interesting so that if you take an IQ test today, But you normalize, but you take the score and use the tables that were available in 1940, you're going to wind up with a much higher IQ number. So, are we really smarter than a couple of generations ago? No, but we might be able to solve problems a little better. And make use of our G because of things like Sesame Street and other curricula in school. More people are going to school. So there are a lot of factors here to disentangle.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Still a mystery. It's still a mystery, although the evidence is coming out. I told you before I edited a journal on intelligence, and we're doing a special issue in honor of James Flynn. So I'm starting to see papers now on really the latest research on this. I think most people who specialize in this area of trying to understand the Flynn effect are coming to the view based on data that it has to do with advances in nutrition and healthcare. And there's also evidence that the effect is slowing down and possibly reversing.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this has presented intelligence researchers with a great mystery Two questions. First, is it effect on the 50% of the variance that's the G factor or on the other 50%? And there's evidence that it is a G-factor effect. And second, what on earth causes this? And doesn't this mean intelligence and G-factor cannot be genetic because the scale of natural selection is much, much longer than a couple of decades ago? And so it's been used to try to undermine the idea that there can be a genetic influence on intelligence. But certainly it can be the Flynn effect, can affect the non-genetic aspects of intelligence because genes account for maybe 50% of the variance. It could be as high as 80% for adults. But let's just say 50% for discussion. So the Flynn effect is it's still a mystery.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Flynn effect is James Flynn passed away about a year ago, published a set of analyses Going back a couple of decades when he first noticed this, that IQ scores, when you looked over the years, seemed to be drifting up. Now this was not unknown to the people who make the test because they renorm the test periodically and they have to renorm the test periodically because what 10 items correct meant relative to other people 50 years ago is not the same as what 10 items mean relative today people are getting more things correct now the scores have been drifting up about three points IQ scores have been drifting up about three points per decade this is not a Personal effect. This is a cohort effect. It's not for an individual.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, and this pretty much generalizes to every aspect of your being. This is who you are. You got to deal with it. And what it undermines, of course, is a realistic appreciation. For this undermines the fairly recent idea prevalent in this country that if you work hard, you can be anything you want to be, which has morphed from the original idea that if you work hard, you can be successful. Those are two different things. And now we have If you work hard, you can be anything you want to be. This is completely unrealistic. I'm sorry, it just is. Now, you can work hard and be successful. There's no question. But you know what? I could work very hard and I am not going to be a successful theoretical physicist. I'm just not.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting that you find that painful. Do you find it painful that people with charisma are very successful, can be very successful in life, even though having no other attributes other than their famous and people like them? Do you find that painful?”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Many of those kids went on to be very successful. And now there's a 50-year follow-up of those kids. And it turns out these kids were in the top 1%. So everybody in this study is in the top 1%. If you take that group, that rarefied group and divide them into quartiles. So, you have the top 25% of the top 1% and the bottom 25% of the top 1%, you can find On measurable Variables of success, the top quartile does better than the bottom quartile. In the top 1%, they have more patents, they have more publications, they have more tenure at universities, and this is based on you're dividing them based on their score at age 12.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, it does matter in certain things. So, for example, there is a very classic study that was started at Johns Hopkins when I was a graduate student there. I actually worked on this study at the very beginnings. The study of mathematically and scientifically precocious youth. And they gave junior high school students age 11 and 12 the standard SAT math exam. And they found a very large number of students scored very high on this exam, not a large number. I mean, they found many students when they cast the net to all of Baltimore. They found a number of students who scored as high on the SAT math when they were 12 years old as incoming Hopkins freshmen. And they said, gee, now this is interesting. What shall we do now? And on a case-by-case basis, they got some of those kids into their local community college math programs”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 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 occupations don't require complex thinking. And there are occupations like that, and G doesn't matter. Within an occupation, 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. There's a ceiling effect is what I'm saying that”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source