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

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Life expectancy. Now there's life success. Life expectancy, I mean, that is such an interesting finding, but 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 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 based on your evolutionary natural selection success. But for variables, and even that, by the way, is correlated to IQ in some studies. However, you want to define success”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Success in life, there is a tremendous amount of validity data that looked at intelligence test scores and various measures of life success. Now, of course, life success is a pretty broad topic. And not everybody agrees on what success means. But there's general agreement on certain aspects of success that can be measured.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, the step those researchers, those scientists need to take when it comes to intelligence is to focus on the concept of individual differences. Intelligence research has individual differences as its heart because it assumes that people differ on this variable and those differences are meaningful and need understanding. Cognitive psychologists who have morphed into molecular biologists studying learning and memory hate the concept of individual differences historically. Some now are coming around to it. I once sat next to a Nobel Prize winner for his work on memory. And I asked him about individual differences. And he said, don't go there. It'll set us back 50 years. I said, don't you think they're the key though to understand why can some people remember more than others? He said, you don't want to go there.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that leads us to what I think we should do with this information. And what I think we should do with this information is unusual Because I think what we need to do is fund more neuroscience research on the molecular biology of learning and memory. Because one definition of intelligence Is based on how much you can learn and how much you can remember. And if you accept that definition of intelligence, then there are molecular studies going on now and Nobel Prizes being won on molecular biology or molecular neurobiology of learning and memory.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That and he talks about their data in a cogent nod personal way. It's a very 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 his final say on this, a book called Facing Reality, where he talks about this again. So, you know, he can certainly defend himself. He doesn't need me 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.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were factual criticisms about the nature of the statistics that were used, the statistical analyses. These were more technical criticisms. And they were addressed by Murray in a couple of articles where he took all the criticisms and spoke to them and people listening to this podcast can certainly find all those online. And it's very interesting. But Murray went on to write some additional books, two in the last couple of years, 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 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. And he talks about the critics of”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, where those four things came from. And it is really a book that was really taken apart point by point by a number of people who actually understood the data. And he didn't care. He didn't care. He didn't stuff on anything”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This Highly popular in colleges today. You can find it in any college bookstore under assigned reading. It's highly popular.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He wrote that in what about 1985, 1984. 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 want to understand his criticisms, they should just Google what he had to say 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 when he asserted in his first book 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.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot of overlap there. This is why, to go back to the IQ pill, if there were a way to shift that curve toward the higher end, that would have a big impact.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, let me tell you this, let's go back to the bell curve, not the bell curve, but the normal distribution. 16% of the population on average has an IQ under 85. Which means they're very hard. If you have an IQ under 85, it's very hard to find gainful employment at a salary that sustains you at least minimally in modern life. Okay, not impossible, but it's very difficult. sixteen percent of the population of the United States is about one or 52 million people with IQs under 85. 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, you know, when you have people with IQs under 85 and you have achievement in school or achievement in life?”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a realistic concern. But I think it's a misplaced concern if you want to fix the problem. If you want to fix the problem, you have to know what the problem is.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the best research we have shows that school variables and teacher variables together account for about 10% of student academic achievement Now, you want to have some policy on improving academic achievement. How much money do you want to put into teacher education? How much money do you want to put into the quality of the school administration? You know who you can ask? You can ask the Gates Foundation. Because they spent a tremendous amount of money doing that. And they, at the end of it, because their measurement people, they want to know the data, they found it had no impact at all. And they've kind of pulled out of that kind of program.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even though the origins of these studies were a long time ago, I'm blocking on the name of the report, the Coleman Report was a famous report about education. And they measured all kinds of variables about schools, about teachers, and they looked at academic achievement as an outcome. And they found the most predictive variables of education outcome were the variables the student brought with him or her into the school. Essentially their ability. And that when you combine the school and the teacher variables together, the quality of the school, the funding of the school, the quality of the teachers, their education, you put all the teacher and school variables together. It barely accounted for 10% of the variance. And this has been replicated now”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a matter of fact, in California, there has been tremendous controversy about recent attempts to revise the curriculum for math in high schools. And we had a Stanford professor of education who was running this review, assert there's no such thing as talent, of mathematical tal And she wanted to get rid of the advanced classes in math because not everyone could do that. Now, of course, this has been very controversial. They've retreated somewhat. But the idea that a university professor was in charge of this who believes That there's no talent, that doesn't exist. This is rather shocking, let alone the complete absence of intelligence data. By the way, let me tell you something about what the intelligence data show. Let's take race out of it.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've thought a lot about this. The first step is to have people interested in policy understand what the data actually show to pay attention to intelligence data. You can read policy papers about education and using your word processor, you can search for the word intelligence. You can search a 20,000 word document in a second and find out the word intelligence does not appear. anywhere in most discussions about what to do about achievement gaps. I'm not talking about test gaps. I'm talking about actual achievement gaps in schools, which everyone agrees is a problem. Word intelligence doesn't appear among educators.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to say one more thing before we get off the normal distribution. You also asked me, what is the science after the bell curve? And the short answer is there's not much new work, but whatever work there is supports the idea that there still are group differences. It's arguable whether those differences have diminished at all or not. And there is still a major problem in underperformance for school achievement. For many disadvantaged and minority students, and there so far is no way to fix it”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes you are successful at having a good conversation like we are today that doesn't start out pejorative. Other times I've been asked to participate in debates where my role would be to justify race science. Well, you can see you start out. That was a BBC request that I received.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And people will make different conclusions and decisions about that. I wrote about this. I'm the editor of a journal called Intelligence, which publishes scientific papers. Sometimes we publish papers on group differences. Those papers sometimes are controversial. These papers are written for a scientific audience. They're not written for a Twitter audience. So I don't promote them very much on Twitter. But in a scientific paper, you have to now choose your words carefully also because those papers are picked up by non-scientists, by writers of various kinds. And you have to be available to discuss what you're saying and what you're not saying.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The reason I do podcasts. The reason I write books for the public is to explain what I think the data mean and what I think the data don't mean. I don't do very much on Twitter other than to retweet references to papers. I don't think it's my role to explain these because they're complicated. They're nuanced But when you decide not to do a scientific study because not to publish a result because you're afraid the result Could be harmful or insensitive. It's not an unreasonable thought.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if they are biased and they consciously or unconsciously bias the data, other people will come along to replicate it. They will fail. And the process over time will work”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but what he meant was He had a hypothesis. 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 was a hypothesis. Should be tested, and if it turned out empirical tests didn't support the hypothesis, he was happy to move on to something else. He was absolutely committed to that scientific ideal. That it's an empirical question. We should look at it and let's see what happens.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was a very unusual person. I think he had a touch of Asperger's synd To tell you the truth, because I saw him in many circumstances”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is not no one wants to do this research. First of all, it's hard research to do. Second of all, it's a minefield. No one wants to spend their career on it. Tenured people don't want to do it, let alone students. The way I talk about it, well, before I tell you the way I talk about it, I want to 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. Now, I know what he meant by this”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you think it's environmental, what are the environmental parameters that can be fixed? I'll tell you one. Lead from gasoline in the atmosphere. Lead in paint. Lead in water. That's an environmental toxin that society has the means to eliminate. And they should.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've thought about this a lot, not as a scientist, but as a person. 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. No, 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 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 change anything about the culture? Or are you okay with the culture because 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 school achievement? It's a question.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. Any differences. But if there were a strong genetic component, that would be a good thing. Complete silence on the other end of the phone. And she said, Well, what do you mean? And I said, well, if it's the more genetic any difference is, the more it's biological. And if it's biological, we can figure out how to fix it.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Murray has said they discussed it and they felt They should include it And they were very careful in the way they wrote it, which did them no good So, as a matter of fact, when the bell curve came out, it was so controversial. I got a call from a television show called Nightline. It was with a broadcaster called Ted Koppel who had this evening show, I think it was on late at night, talked about news. It was a straight up news thing. And a producer called and asked if I would be on it to talk about the bell curve. And I said, you know, 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,”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I have written that overnight after the publication of this article, all intelligence research became radioactive. Nobody wanted to talk about it. And then it didn't, nobody was doing more research. And then the Bell Curve came along. 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, this was like a really big deal. It was some unbelievable stories, but he told me this, I kind of believe these stories. Nonetheless,”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's the most infamous paper in all of psychology. I would go on to say. Because in 1969, the genetic data was very skimpy on this question, skimpy and controversial. It's always been controversial It's kind of a long story that I go into a little bit in more detail in the book Neuroscience of Intelligence. But to say he was vilified is an understatement. I mean, he couldn't talk at the American Psychological Association without bomb threats clearing the lecture hall. Campus Security watched him all the time. They opened his mail. He had to retreat to a different address. This was one of the earliest kinds. This is before the internet and kind of internet social media mobs. But it was that intense.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Were essentially nothing. 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 reexamine 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.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 on average five points, but a few reported 10, 20, and even 30-point gains. One was called the Miracle in Milwaukee. That investigator went to jail ultimately for fabricating data. But the point is that Jensen wrote an article that said, look, the opening sentence of his article is classic. The opening sentence is, I may not quote it exactly right, but we have tried compensatory education and it has failed. And he showed that these gains”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These demonstration programs were for young children around kindergarten age, and they were specially designed to be cognitively stimulating to provide lunches, do all the things that people thought would minimize this average gap of intelligence tests. There was a strong belief among virtually all psychologists that the cause of the gap was unequal opportunity due to racism, due to 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.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Since Belker, 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 an educational psychologist at UC Berkeley. I knew him as well. In 1969 or 68, the Harvard Educational Review asked him to do a review article on the early childhood education programs that were designed to raise the IQs of minority 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.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Still the most incendiary topic in psychology. Nothing has changed that. Anybody who even discusses it is easily called a racist just for discussing it. It's become fashionable to find racism in any discussion like this. It's unfortunate. The short answer to your question is There's been very little actual research on this topic since 1970.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People took away. I'm going to choose my words carefully because I have a feeling that many critics didn't actually read these book. They took away that Hernstein 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.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. In the book, Hernstein 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 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 an average group difference. They're very clear about this. Nonetheless,”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The book is about the importance of intelligence. In everyday life That's what the book is about. It's an empirical book. It has statistical analyses of very large databases that show that essentially IQ scores or their equivalent are correlated to all kinds of social problems 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 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. And historically, or really for decades, it has been observed. That disadvantaged groups score on average lower than Caucasians on”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Many profound aspects of that story. It was a film that was very good. The film was called Charlie for the younger people who are listening to this. You might be able to stream it on Netflix or something. It was a story about 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.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you know, there's virtually no research That's based on a neuroscience approach to solving that problem. All the solutions that have been proposed to solve that problem or to ameliorate that problem are essentially based on the blank slate assumption that enriching the environment, removing barriers, all good things, by the way. I'm not against any of those things. But there's no empirical evidence that they're going to improve the general reasoning ability or make people more employable.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow, but imagine this. Imagine there was an IQ pill And it was developed by a private company. And they are willing to sell it to you. And whatever price they put on it, you are willing to pay it because you would like to be smarter. But just before they give you a pill, they give you a disclaimer form to sign. Don't hold us that we're you understand that this pill has no guarantee that your life is going to be better and in fact it could be worse.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the high end, 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. For that to improve society.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you're saying that if, in fact, there was some way to increase G. Let's just call it metaphorically a pill, an IQ pill. Should only give it to people at the lower end.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Training and so on. Yeah, it may give you a better memory in the short run, but it doesn't impact your G factor. It was very popular a couple of decades ago that 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, intelligence researchers never believed it for a second. Hundreds of studies, all the meta-analyses, all the summaries and so on. So there's nothing to it, nothing to it at all But wouldn't it be something, wouldn't it be world shaking? 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.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is an empirical question And so that I have advocated in many forums more research on enhancing the G-factor. Right now there have been many claims about enhancing intelligence with, you mentioned the NBAC training. It was a big deal a few years ago. It doesn't work. Data is very clear. It does not work.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whatever it is, it's independent of intelligence. I agree with you about that. But let me say this. I have also asserted my belief that more intelligence is better than less. 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 will make you smarter, this one will make you dumber. Which one would you like? Are there any circumstances under which you would choose to be dumber?”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we can come discuss that in more detail if you like. But to go to the question about better, people better, there's zero evidence that smart people are better with respect to important aspects of life, like honesty, even likability. I'm sure you know many very intelligent people who are not terribly likable or terribly kind or terribly honest.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, there's a lot there. We haven't really talked about the genetics of it yet, but you are correct in that it is my interpretation 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 twenty first century that many genes are not deterministic that are probabilistic, meaning their gene expression can be influenced. Now, whether they're influenced only by other biological variables or other genetic variables or environmental or cultural variables, that's where the controversy comes in.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But nobody does that. Nobody in the field actually does that. That is a worry that is a worry like Well, I don't want to call it a conspiracy theory. I mean, it's a legitimate worry, but it just doesn't happen. Now, I had a professor in graduate school who was the only person I ever knew who considered the students only by their test scores. And later in his life, he kind of backed off that. But.”
2022-07-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source