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IQ Tests are (Kind of) Dumb · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
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Speaker 1: fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
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Speaker 1: tuning in. Let's hear for the Man, the myth, the legend,
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Speaker 1: our super producer, Max Benney Williams not with Benne like
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Speaker 1: Jean Benet, similar to do don't have the relationship. Well,
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Speaker 1: we've got a h we've got kind of a dark
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Speaker 1: turn here. Uh. This episode is following on the heels
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Speaker 1: of our recent episode. We're quite proud, proud of the title.
0:58
Speaker 1: Did lead lead to the fall of the Roman Empire? Right?
1:03
Speaker 2: Yes, lead lead, lead lead, you know, maybe probably not spoiler.
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Speaker 1: Alert, Yeah, contributed to Maybe you'll have to check out
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Speaker 1: the episode, folks. That is none other than the legendary
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Speaker 1: mister Noel Brown. Hello, it's you, Ben, Is it you?
1:20
Speaker 1: I think it's you. We are all, we are all vast.
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Speaker 1: We could take multitudes for tax purposes. That call me
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Speaker 1: Ben Bullen. He from the United States. We are bro.
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Speaker 2: I gotta tell you I made the mistake of briefly
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Speaker 2: dating a gen Z person. And she told me when
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Speaker 2: I said I contained multitude, said that is such a
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Speaker 2: millennial thing to say.
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Speaker 1: And I was really triggered by this. Has she not
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Speaker 1: read Whitman? The relationship did not go well? Unclear.
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Speaker 2: My whole thing is I really like there's a Bob
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Speaker 2: Dylan song called I Contain Multitudes, and obviously the Whitman
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Speaker 2: is what he was referencing. But it just felt like
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Speaker 2: such a dismissive thing to say. And she's the kind
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Speaker 2: of person that would say like Bedrod all the time. So,
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Speaker 2: you know, potato potato, To each their own. I wish
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Speaker 2: her well.
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Speaker 1: Dismissive dismissiveness is arguably, depending upon who you read, dismissiveness
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Speaker 1: is a sign of insecurity intelligence that do that?
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Speaker 3: Do?
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Speaker 1: Boy?
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Speaker 2: Oh boy, Ben, We're talking about a thing today related
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Speaker 2: to the Lead Leading with Lead episode in that there
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Speaker 2: purports to be a way that our society claims you
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Speaker 2: can measure one's intelligence, and it's those two golden letters
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Speaker 2: that people love throwing around. You know who loves thrown
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Speaker 2: around a lot? Are President as a diss low IQ individual?
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Speaker 3: Right?
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Speaker 2: Right? Uh, he's got some news coming his way, my guy. Well,
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Speaker 2: that metric, it turns.
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Speaker 1: Out not the best. We Actually I got a little
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Speaker 1: heated up during our Led Lead Roman Empire Fall episode
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Speaker 1: A little hit up, as they would say in Tennessee,
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Speaker 1: about the concept of IQ tests, and we had to
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Speaker 1: change the title to make this a little bit more
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Speaker 1: family friendly. Maybe the best way to begin, folks is
3:25
Speaker 1: check out our Roman Empire episode. I think we did
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Speaker 1: an all right job, and then answer us this. We'll
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Speaker 1: do it first on air, fellow ridiculous historians, Noel Max,
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Speaker 1: have you guys ever taken an IQ test? No?
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Speaker 2: I did recently take one of those Enneagram tests that
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Speaker 2: measures you know, your feelings or whatever.
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Speaker 1: I NFJ.
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Speaker 2: I think I hold on, I've actually got a note
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Speaker 2: for you here. Oh no, I'm getting the beach ball
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Speaker 2: of death on my notes app So we'll come back
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Speaker 2: to that. But this was even like a step above
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Speaker 2: the regular Enneagram thing called like I think it was
4:07
Speaker 2: called Youngian something or other. It was some kind of
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Speaker 2: Jungian thing. And it was interesting because it wasn't you know,
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Speaker 2: it wasn't like taking a test. It was like having
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Speaker 2: a conversation, and then the person that was administering it
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Speaker 2: was able to make all these notes. If I'm not mistaken, Ben, Yeah,
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Speaker 2: the old IQ test is much more of a by
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Speaker 2: the numbers, less interpretive kind of you know, bubbling in
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Speaker 2: the circles test.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a weird thing. Max. Let's hear from you.
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Speaker 1: You ever took one of those tests?
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Speaker 3: But if I did, I can't remember. Maybe it had
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Speaker 3: that little impact on me that I can't remember it,
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Speaker 3: but I can't say I have.
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Speaker 1: It makes sense, right what we're saying when we say
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Speaker 1: I haven't taken an IQ test. The odds are most
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Speaker 1: certainly that you did if you grew up in the
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Speaker 1: United States, even if it was not explicitly cold an
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Speaker 1: IQ test. We have a lot of capstone things, standardized
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Speaker 1: test for every child in school, and if you ever
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Speaker 1: aspire to go to college or university, you take something
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Speaker 1: that is the kissing cousin of the IQ test. Things
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Speaker 1: we call the SAT or the ACT.
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Speaker 2: See that's funny, Ben, because when I was thinking about
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Speaker 2: whether or not I'd taken an IQ test, my mind
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Speaker 2: immediately went to Scantron World.
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Speaker 1: Yes, wouldn't that be a really boring amusement park? Scadorcantron World.
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Speaker 1: I maybeet me, but I really want to go because
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Speaker 1: you get your results at the end of the amusement park.
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Speaker 1: What is their roller.
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Speaker 2: Coaster looks like sort of the like the nerdy equivalent
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Speaker 2: of getting that picture you know where you're making the
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Speaker 2: O face when you're on the coaster or et saying
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Speaker 2: your name at the end of the et ride at Universal.
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Speaker 1: What would the roller coaster be? You know what it
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Speaker 1: could be. It could just be roller coaster of emotion.
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Speaker 2: Because kids, they're not a huge fan of these high
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Speaker 2: stress tests, and we know that. I think we've discussed
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Speaker 2: not on this episode, but maybe a conversation you and
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Speaker 2: I were having leading up to this episode, and maybe
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Speaker 2: a brief mention in the Rome episode about how even
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Speaker 2: some of the smartest people in the world notoriously don't
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Speaker 2: test well or specifically crumble.
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Speaker 1: Under the pressure of these timed high stress tests. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I've got some stories to share. Also, maybe maybe we
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Speaker 1: can make a solid argument in this episode that instead
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Speaker 1: of a roller coaster of stats at your sat amusement park,
6:42
Speaker 1: you're a q amusement park, you should have the roller
6:46
Speaker 1: coaster of love. Courtesy of Red Hot Chili Peppers and
6:50
Speaker 1: Anthony Keatis. Yeah, Dustry for that, right, Well, their version
6:55
Speaker 1: is a banger. Who does the original?
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Speaker 2: I remember their version from Beavis and butt Head do
7:00
Speaker 2: America soundtrack? Right, it's a lot of Fun of Love
7:04
Speaker 2: and the Originals by the Ohio Players from nineteen hundred
7:07
Speaker 2: and seventy five. Funk hit the top the US charts
7:11
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy six. Known for its energetic rhythm, the
7:14
Speaker 2: song famously is an urban legend claiming a murder scream
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Speaker 2: was recorded in the background.
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Speaker 1: Oh fascinating. We have to get into that. We might
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Speaker 1: be an episode for another.
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Speaker 2: Time, maybe the very least a bullet point on a
7:28
Speaker 2: on a listical episode about weird music urban legends that
7:32
Speaker 2: we should. I'm just going to drop in on the
7:33
Speaker 2: spot here right now invite our buddy Jordan Runtalk to
7:36
Speaker 2: join us for.
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Speaker 1: Oh I miss you, Jordan. I hope you're tuning into
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Speaker 1: the show. I love that guy. I'll text him after this.
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Speaker 1: Another kind of thing, another sort of standardized test that's
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Speaker 1: going to be familiar to a lot of us in
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Speaker 1: the United States, is something called the ASVAB, the Armed
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Speaker 1: Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. This is what determines whether get
8:00
Speaker 1: to work in Intel or whether you know you work
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Speaker 1: in the elevators, et cetera, et cetera. All jobs are
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Speaker 1: worthwhile the idea of placement test does make sense. They
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Speaker 1: can help set school children up for success. They can
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Speaker 1: help you get the right college or university. And of
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Speaker 1: course Uncle Sam loves the ASVAB because it helps you
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Speaker 1: figure out what a new soldier is especially talented at.
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Speaker 1: It's it's weird because going back to what you said, No,
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Speaker 1: all these things that we could loosely group as IQ
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Speaker 1: or intelligent quotient tests, they are attempting to understand not
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Speaker 1: your roat memorization abilities, but your cognitive abilities like reasoning,
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Speaker 1: problem solving, verbal comprehension, you know. And it's never The
8:53
Speaker 1: tricky thing is it's not the same as say a
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Speaker 1: firearms test. Right. In a fire arms test, you are
9:01
Speaker 1: measured by how accurate you are getting close to, say
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Speaker 1: a bullseye right with certain with certain weaponry. But with this,
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Speaker 1: your intelligence quotient attempts to quantify your level of smarts
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Speaker 1: in comparison to other people who are taking the test
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Speaker 1: or have taken the test in the past. So it's
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Speaker 1: a comparison thing, not an absolute measurement. Got it. So
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Speaker 1: you're part of the sample size of home that only
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Speaker 1: includes those who have taken the test before you or
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Speaker 1: with you. Sticky wicket right, A little bit, right, a
9:41
Speaker 1: little bit, and well we'll talk a good bit about
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Speaker 1: why no one believes. Of course, I hope not. Anyway,
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Speaker 1: we all have things to learn.
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Speaker 2: That you're perfect, you're not spoiler alert, but I think
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Speaker 2: it's really important, you know, in order to human properly,
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Speaker 2: to know the things you don't know, and know that
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Speaker 2: it's probably a smart idea to continue to learn new things.
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Speaker 2: Humans still can't agree, however, on what that knowledge base
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Speaker 2: could perhaps be quantified. As you know, it's a combination
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Speaker 2: of the things you know, intuition skills, certain skills that
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Speaker 2: you might have, and that all bundled together we might
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Speaker 2: refer to as intelligence.
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Speaker 1: Right or competence or the ability to function in a
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Speaker 1: given situation. But as we said, no one thinks IQ
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Speaker 1: tests are perfect, even the biggest proponents or champions of it.
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Speaker 1: The issue is, can we really quantify all that stuff
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Speaker 1: that you just named, Noel? Can we accurately represent that
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Speaker 1: in something as boiled down as a three digit number?
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Speaker 1: How did we get here? Why do so many people
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Speaker 1: think IQ tests are you know, kind of malarkey? To
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Speaker 1: understand that, we have to understand how these things came
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Speaker 1: to be. And this is where we begin by introducing
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Speaker 1: everybody to a guy named Alfred Bennet. Now, when I
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Speaker 1: was research associate for this, I want to confess to
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Speaker 1: you guys, transparency's key to me. I accidentally wrote Alfred
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Speaker 1: Bidet quite frequently in this. It was just a slip
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Speaker 1: of the slip of the fingers.
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Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
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Speaker 3: Was it an autocorrect thing such as you've written Bedet
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Speaker 3: so many times as automatic changing to it or was
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Speaker 3: it just a mind autocorrect.
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Speaker 1: I just really liked our Beidet episodes well, and we
11:41
Speaker 1: are all admittedly Bidet boys over here.
11:43
Speaker 2: And if that isn't the name of a fun punk
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Speaker 2: rock band, then it absolutely should.
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Speaker 1: Be tattoos we should get. I'm good with my Toto
11:53
Speaker 1: wash lit. I know you guys should get it. You
11:55
Speaker 1: guys should get Bidet bros. Right like where the old
11:59
Speaker 1: tramp stamp bros. Right at the right at your lombard.
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Speaker 1: I like it in theory, Ben, I don't think I
12:06
Speaker 1: like it. I don't think you should do it. No,
12:08
Speaker 1: I don't think you should do it. I think Jonathan
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Speaker 1: Stricklan should get it. Yeah right on. Oh geez, So
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Speaker 1: this guy Alfred Bennet b I n E T not
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Speaker 1: Bidey and no relation to the Ramses, right. Yeah, so
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Speaker 1: far as we know, he is born as Alfredo Benetti.
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Speaker 2: It was one of those americanizations, right, It must have
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Speaker 2: been gotta sound a little more, a little more native born.
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Speaker 1: It's common when people, you know, immigrated in those days,
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Speaker 1: especially in France, right in the mid eighteen hundreds. He's
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Speaker 1: born on July eighth, eighteen fifty seven, so his posthumous
12:48
Speaker 1: birthday is coming up pretty soon. His dad was a doctor,
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Speaker 1: his mom was an artist. His parents separated when he
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Speaker 1: was very young, and he was raised primarily by his mother.
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Speaker 1: She moved with him to Paris later in life so
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Speaker 1: that he could attend law school. And guys, here's the thing.
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Speaker 1: He did get his qualifications as bona fides. He was
13:14
Speaker 1: able to practice law in eighteen seventy eight. But he
13:18
Speaker 1: looked around at the legal landscape of France in the
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Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds and he said, no, I'm going to
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Speaker 1: be like my dad. I'm going to go into medicine.
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Speaker 1: And then soon after that he said, no, I'm going
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Speaker 1: to be different. I'm going to get into hypnosis. Cool.
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Speaker 2: A very reasonable progression there, a reasonable reasonable trajectory.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so he's been several years becoming a sort of
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Speaker 1: a autodidact. He is teaching himself. He reads extensively. He
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Speaker 1: loves work by people like Alexander Bain, Charles Darwin from earlier,
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Speaker 1: John Stewart Mill. Eventually, no, he publishes his first article,
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Speaker 1: his first professional article. It is on hypnosis. He publishes
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Speaker 1: this in eighteen eighty and everyone hates it.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, people were not fond of this piece of writing
14:23
Speaker 2: in eighteen eighty three.
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Speaker 1: However, he weathered the critiques and the poor reviews.
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Speaker 2: The throwing of the tomatoes, and he took a position
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Speaker 2: in the I'm gonna try my best here and make
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Speaker 2: Casey Pegrim proud that you got Sepatrier, Sepatrier cept Salpetriere.
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Speaker 1: There we go. Hospital.
14:45
Speaker 2: I was about to say hospital, but that would be
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Speaker 2: a bridge too far. In Paris, it was a place
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Speaker 2: that allowed him to pursue research that focused on hypnosis.
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Speaker 2: He was greatly influenced by a guy by the name
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Speaker 2: of Charco and he published four articles during his time
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Speaker 2: there on hypnosis and the concept of animal magnetism, which
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Speaker 2: is another one that's a little bit of a sticky wicked.
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Speaker 2: I mean, I just my dog just growled when I
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Speaker 2: said animal magnetism.
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Speaker 1: What do you know that I don't know, buddy. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: we're referring to Jean Martin Charco. And this guy becomes
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Speaker 1: a mentor to our buddy Alfred. His work shines brightly,
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Speaker 1: but briefly because other peers in the world of hypnotism
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Speaker 1: or animal magnetism. Oh, Paula, can't hear me? Okay, he
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Speaker 1: sends you always seems to look in the past. I
15:46
Speaker 1: love the vibe. So this guy is sort of his
15:50
Speaker 1: mentor figure, right Charcot and Charco gets in a lot
15:56
Speaker 1: of trouble because other scientists look at his work and say,
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Speaker 1: I don't know, man, this feels less like science. This
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Speaker 1: feels more like you sort of doing your own thing
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Speaker 1: and calling your opinions science. It's a massive, massive scandal.
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Speaker 1: It's a massive downfall, and unfortunately our buddy Al Bennet,
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Speaker 1: his reputation takes a big hit as well. It's my association. Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: he caught some strays. As we would say on the
16:24
Speaker 1: Breakfast Club.
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Speaker 2: Well we would if we were ever invited back, or
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Speaker 2: you know, for the first time, you know, Ben, This
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Speaker 2: makes me think of a recent discussion that we had
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Speaker 2: on our sister pod Stuff they Don't Want you to Know,
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Speaker 2: with the incredible host of the podcast series Mind Games,
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Speaker 2: about sort of the history of hypnosis, more specifically the
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Speaker 2: history of a controversial technique. What was the main thing
16:50
Speaker 2: that we talked about with Zoe Lacaz Thank you, Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Focuses on the controversial group of tactics called neuro linguistic programming.
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Speaker 2: Right, and also the types of controversial forms of hypnosis
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Speaker 2: like memory regression therapy and this idea that it can
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Speaker 2: cause false memories to be quote unquote recalled. So it
17:15
Speaker 2: makes sense to me that in the early days of
17:18
Speaker 2: this kind of attempt to scienceify this practice, that it
17:23
Speaker 2: might have been met with some backlash.
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Speaker 1: Oh right, And this stuff happens well after Bena has passed.
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Speaker 1: At this point where his mentor has an academic downfall
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Speaker 1: and gets hit with Look, his career is basically over.
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Speaker 1: Ben A has to pivot, as they would say in
17:46
Speaker 1: corporate America. So he decides he is going to abandon
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Speaker 1: hypnosis in favor of studying psychological development. This is his
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Speaker 1: big switch, This is the decision that will later change
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Speaker 1: the world. And he starts. There's no other way to
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Speaker 1: say it. Folks. He starts experimenting on his own children.
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Speaker 2: Mmmmm, yeah, that's not great. I mean, we just talked
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Speaker 2: about that as well, Ben on stuff that I want
18:15
Speaker 2: you to know in talking about the fine line between
18:20
Speaker 2: scientific advancements in the concept of magic, and we've certainly
18:25
Speaker 2: talked about folks that have gone all mad scientists about
18:28
Speaker 2: things and in the pursuit of progress, but doing some
18:32
Speaker 2: pretty horrific things in that pursuit, like human experimentation or
18:37
Speaker 2: you know, self experimentation. Not great, definitely better than you know,
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Speaker 2: experimenting on someone who is not consenting. Not really sure
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Speaker 2: what the relationship was with the daughter. Maybe she was
18:49
Speaker 2: into it, but still kind of doesn't matter to be honest.
18:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's here's the thing. It's eighteen eighty four.
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Speaker 1: Bene Mary's his longtime spouse or a Balbiani, and together
19:02
Speaker 1: they have two daughters, Madeleine and Alice. Madeleine's born in
19:06
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five, just a year after they get married.
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Speaker 1: Alice is born in eighteen eighty seven. And so this
19:13
Speaker 1: guy is not to be clear, he's not drugging his children.
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Speaker 1: He starts to study how they think, or how they
19:21
Speaker 1: think about thinking. Their metacognitive processes. And this means that
19:27
Speaker 1: he is the weirdest beat me here, Max, He is
19:31
Speaker 1: the weirdest guddamn dad ever. He's not hurting the kids,
19:36
Speaker 1: but he's asking them very strange questions, and he's making
19:39
Speaker 1: them do little experiments that inform his research on suggestibility
19:46
Speaker 1: and attention. Now he starts saying, how do we measure intelligence? Right?
19:52
Speaker 1: How do personalities or how does lineage affect intelligence? And
19:57
Speaker 1: he publishes so much stuff at this point. If we
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Speaker 1: fast forward, it's eighteen ninety two, he gets a doctorate
20:04
Speaker 1: in natural sciences from suborne and in eighteen ninety one, Bro,
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Speaker 1: I'm not sure how to say this, he kind of
20:15
Speaker 1: gets a job at the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology. It
20:26
Speaker 1: is a prestigious place, but we're saying kind of because
20:31
Speaker 1: when he got the job it was an unpaid position.
20:37
Speaker 1: He worked for a year and didn't see a dime
20:40
Speaker 1: or a fronk.
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Speaker 2: Am I even do too much trouble for doing this
20:43
Speaker 2: stuff with his daughters, because I mean it doesn't seem.
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Speaker 1: Like it's particularly.
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Speaker 2: You know, invasive of just studying suggestibility and attention. But
20:53
Speaker 2: I guess when I immediately when I hear about someone experimenting
20:56
Speaker 2: quote unquote on their family members, it does make me
20:59
Speaker 2: kind of you know, ra eyebrows a little bit.
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Speaker 1: It's cringe. And we're right to be skeptical because even
21:05
Speaker 1: if you're just asking the questions, you are never not
21:10
Speaker 1: going to also be their parent, you know what I mean.
21:14
Speaker 2: That's true, that's true. That can also lead to just
21:17
Speaker 2: you know, it's just not good science, right.
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Speaker 1: Not great science. Yeah, agreed, And everybody in France disagreed
21:24
Speaker 1: with our conclusion because they said, this guy is great.
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Speaker 1: He works for a year and we don't have to
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Speaker 1: pay him. Let's make him the director of this laboratory.
21:36
Speaker 1: And there he meets his longtime collaborator, Theodore Simone. Theodore
21:42
Speaker 1: Simone works with Bene to do doctoral research under Benet's supervision.
21:48
Speaker 1: Bene does some things that are unequivocably very good things.
21:53
Speaker 1: He starts the first French journal of psychology in eighteen
21:58
Speaker 1: ninety five, and at first he is a huge fanboy
22:03
Speaker 1: of a guy named Francis Golton. Francis Golton earlier worked
22:08
Speaker 1: in developing what we will call standardized test and his
22:13
Speaker 1: thing was, we can build out a rubric to measure
22:18
Speaker 1: individual differences in a population. So Benee adopted this approach
22:25
Speaker 1: in his work. He later, I think it's nineteen oh three,
22:29
Speaker 1: he publishes an article that says, hey, guys, have you
22:33
Speaker 1: ever asked your daughters off putting strange questions.
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Speaker 2: All the time? What have you ever dadd before? Kind
22:45
Speaker 2: of comes with the territory, So Ben, shall we begin
22:49
Speaker 2: ZiT tests?
22:50
Speaker 1: Ah Wonderbach. Also he got a lot more love for
22:58
Speaker 1: this nineteen oh three article I did about his hypnosis stuff.
23:02
Speaker 1: He was getting there, man, he was doing the work.
23:05
Speaker 1: You know. They were like Al's back, als back so hard.
23:09
Speaker 1: And he and his collaborator, as we're alluding to, they
23:13
Speaker 1: started working on a test that was meant to help
23:17
Speaker 1: the kids, just like Wu Tang. They said, if children
23:20
Speaker 1: have problems in learning, we got to figure out how
23:24
Speaker 1: to assist those kids. This is what leads to the
23:27
Speaker 1: thing we call the benez Simone Intelligence Scale, and it
23:32
Speaker 1: was a government project.
23:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I thought I'd maybe take a minute real
23:36
Speaker 2: quick here, just as an aside to talk about something
23:38
Speaker 2: that you and I talked about off Mike about this
23:40
Speaker 2: subject in terms of helping kids to learn and this
23:44
Speaker 2: knowledge that kids learned differently and that no two kids
23:48
Speaker 2: are the same. I do appreciate where Bene is coming
23:51
Speaker 2: from here specifically because my kid is given certain dispensations
23:57
Speaker 2: through the public school system here in Atlanta, allowing them
24:00
Speaker 2: for a little bit more time on tests. And it's
24:02
Speaker 2: not something that you'd go so far as to maybe
24:04
Speaker 2: call a learning disability, but it is something that after
24:07
Speaker 2: an assessment, it is determined that a little bit of
24:11
Speaker 2: extra time is helpful. And I just really appreciate all
24:14
Speaker 2: the admins and teachers and you know, folks in the
24:17
Speaker 2: school system that advocated for that kind of stuff because
24:19
Speaker 2: to your point earlier, Ben Or we talked about some
24:22
Speaker 2: really smart people just don't test well and it can
24:26
Speaker 2: be a real source of anxiety if someone already has,
24:29
Speaker 2: like say, just generalized anxiety. So just kudos to the teachers,
24:34
Speaker 2: as we always says, and you know, this is a
24:37
Speaker 2: it's been a very positive experience.
24:39
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Yeah, that's not what's happening in early nineteen hundreds.
24:43
Speaker 2: Not yet, definitely, not yet, but just again speaking to
24:47
Speaker 2: the idea of you know, help helping the kids.
24:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, the French government it's nineteen oh four, okay, and
24:54
Speaker 1: the French government says we need to identify special needs
25:01
Speaker 1: in children. Specifically, the Minister of Public Instruction over in
25:05
Speaker 1: Paris says, we have to study existing tests, or we
25:09
Speaker 1: have to create our own tests so that we can
25:13
Speaker 1: ensure intellectually disabled children their words, not ours, can receive
25:19
Speaker 1: an adequate education as best as the state can do.
25:23
Speaker 1: The minister at the time, or the ministry, i should say,
25:27
Speaker 1: is also concerned that children who have normal intelligence are
25:33
Speaker 1: being placed in classes for disabled children, not because of
25:37
Speaker 1: their cognitive abilities, but because of behavior problems. And so
25:42
Speaker 1: they look around France and they say, oh, former creepy
25:46
Speaker 1: hypnotist fanboy, Alfred Binet, you're the guy who should be
25:51
Speaker 1: in charge of all of this. And he took the reins,
25:57
Speaker 1: he took it went off run And by this point
26:01
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, I think Bene is sort
26:05
Speaker 1: of a mercurial dude. You go from the law to medicine,
26:10
Speaker 1: to hypnosis to psychology.
26:13
Speaker 2: That's funny, Ben, because it's like, when I think of mercurial,
26:16
Speaker 2: I guess I sometimes think of somebody who might be
26:18
Speaker 2: like a jack of all trades or sort of a polymath.
26:21
Speaker 2: But I guess maybe that you're meaning more in terms
26:23
Speaker 2: of a little bit on the flighty side.
26:26
Speaker 1: A little bit. He's a little bit on the flight,
26:30
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. The guy takes flights, but hey,
26:32
Speaker 1: so do we.
26:34
Speaker 2: So, speaking of which I need to book a return
26:36
Speaker 2: flight before you know it could cost one.
26:41
Speaker 1: Oh right, yeah, that's a good time. The best time
26:44
Speaker 1: too if you're gaming the system, if you want to
26:48
Speaker 1: take advantage of the AI pricing or dynamic pricing, wake
26:53
Speaker 1: up at like two to three thirty in the morning.
26:57
Speaker 1: That's when that's when the system resets. That is not
27:00
Speaker 1: helpful or well, hopefully it's helpful. It is not relevant
27:04
Speaker 1: to what we're talking about. Our buddy Benet in Classic
27:08
Speaker 1: Mercurial Nature has already at this point rejected his adoration
27:15
Speaker 1: of Galton and Galton's ideas. He said, look, this guy
27:19
Speaker 1: was onto something with standardized tests, but they're only measuring
27:23
Speaker 1: trivial abilities. They're measuring things like memorization. What we need
27:29
Speaker 1: are tests that measure the more impactful, if abstract things
27:34
Speaker 1: like judgment, comprehension, reasoning. These are much more difficult to measure,
27:40
Speaker 1: and he knew that going in, but he was convinced
27:43
Speaker 1: that doing so would yield more accurate results.
27:48
Speaker 3: In this.
27:50
Speaker 1: Question right, and again, this question was entirely about how
27:56
Speaker 1: to set children up for success. Right, should the kids
28:00
Speaker 1: who maybe have learning disabilities, should they go to special
28:05
Speaker 1: classes in regular schools or should they be sent to asylums?
28:11
Speaker 1: And who determines whether a kid has a learning problem
28:15
Speaker 1: in the first place. The psychologists were kind of a
28:19
Speaker 1: cartel at this point in France, and they said, oh, yeah,
28:23
Speaker 1: you've got to go to our boys. You've got to
28:25
Speaker 1: go to our crew of psychologists and they'll tell you
28:28
Speaker 1: if your child is a broken egg. And Bene and
28:32
Speaker 1: the crew that he led in opposition, they said, no,
28:36
Speaker 1: that's weird. You guys are being weird. Don't get me wrong.
28:39
Speaker 1: I experimented on my daughters as well, But we should
28:43
Speaker 1: use objective criteria because humans are fallible, So what should
28:50
Speaker 1: be the test? And that's where they started to create
28:55
Speaker 1: what we call the first IQ test. It probably also
28:59
Speaker 1: did not escape this guy, or at least, here's what
29:02
Speaker 1: I like to think, it probably didn't escape him that
29:05
Speaker 1: the future of a lot of children rested on his shoulders,
29:10
Speaker 1: especially since he had those earlier missteps in the world
29:14
Speaker 1: of hypnosis. He had to get this one right, he
29:18
Speaker 1: sure did so. Soon enough, he and Theodore Simone had
29:21
Speaker 1: created an early prototype of the IQ test. Is an
29:25
Speaker 1: early test, a prototype, it has to be, I'm gonna
29:27
Speaker 1: go with that.
29:28
Speaker 2: It's a type of technology. And this was known as
29:31
Speaker 2: the Benet Simone Tests. But they wanted a little bit
29:35
Speaker 2: more input from some other folks in the field, so
29:39
Speaker 2: they took this early version of the test over to
29:42
Speaker 2: Stanford University across the pond.
29:45
Speaker 1: Ah. Yes, and here we introduce our friends at Stanford University.
29:52
Speaker 1: So in this sense, specifically, when we say friends, we're
29:55
Speaker 1: talking about another psychologist. His name is Lewis Turman. He
29:59
Speaker 1: built on Bene and Simone's work and he created a
30:03
Speaker 1: version of their test called the Stanford Bene Intelligence Scale,
30:09
Speaker 1: introduced in nineteen sixteen. This is the IQ test. A
30:14
Speaker 1: lot of people take. It's been revised numerous times. It's
30:18
Speaker 1: administered individually, so you're not sitting in a big room
30:23
Speaker 1: like when you take an SAT, and it assesses individuals
30:28
Speaker 1: as young as two years old. It primarily focuses on children.
30:33
Speaker 1: I just can't imagine giving a two year old a
30:36
Speaker 1: standardized test. What do you tell to you? What are
30:39
Speaker 1: you talking about?
30:40
Speaker 2: Shapes Yeah, pointing at animals like that. What's that one
30:43
Speaker 2: for dementia that Trump's always bragging about?
30:46
Speaker 1: Oh, man, woman, person camera, something like that. Yeah, hands
30:50
Speaker 1: on the clock TV man woman person camera. Cool like that,
30:55
Speaker 1: we're clear. We can name five words we heard earlier.
30:59
Speaker 2: Is this it's a square peg round hole type situation
31:02
Speaker 2: or like one of those ones where you're putting shapes
31:04
Speaker 2: in different order. I mean, I know the square peg
31:06
Speaker 2: round whole thing is it doesn't work. But you know
31:08
Speaker 2: the one where you're like recognizing patterns and things like that.
31:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, pattern recognition. Like you see a picture in a
31:15
Speaker 1: grid and maybe let's say it's a three by three grid, right,
31:21
Speaker 1: so nine squares and one of the squares is left blank,
31:25
Speaker 1: and you have to pick the image that fits in there.
31:29
Speaker 1: You know, you've got let's say, equilateral triangle and the
31:34
Speaker 1: bottom left corner is missing, and then you have a
31:37
Speaker 1: couple of choices for what image would best complete that
31:41
Speaker 1: full picture of the triangle. That's an example. Then you
31:44
Speaker 1: know what completes my full picture of a triangle? What's that?
31:47
Speaker 1: You shucks? The full picture of the triangle in my heart? Cool?
31:54
Speaker 1: Shout out to olt j Ed, shout out to Max Williams, man,
31:57
Speaker 1: you're part of the triangle as well.
32:00
Speaker 2: That oh Max is good, he's done with us speaking
32:05
Speaker 2: of triangles, and oh dear, okay, let's not go. We'll
32:10
Speaker 2: have to get back into Max's good graces. But Ben,
32:12
Speaker 2: speaking of triangles and French stuff, have you heard of
32:15
Speaker 2: this Montreal, This French Canadian band called Angeen de Poitrine.
32:21
Speaker 2: So they have this whole mythology.
32:23
Speaker 1: You'd love them.
32:24
Speaker 2: They they wear these crazy costumes, and they purport to
32:26
Speaker 2: be aliens from another planet, and they worship triangles and
32:30
Speaker 2: they play microtonal math rock and they wear these bonkers
32:35
Speaker 2: costumes and they're blowing up right now, and they're a
32:37
Speaker 2: lot of fun. They kind of have King Gizzard vibes.
32:40
Speaker 2: But I just love I know you love a mythology,
32:42
Speaker 2: especially a triangle based one.
32:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you for the recommendation. What's the name of
32:48
Speaker 1: the band?
32:49
Speaker 2: They are called Angeen Dipatin, all right, And I'm linking
32:54
Speaker 2: you to their.
32:55
Speaker 1: I'm linking you to their k XP performance right now. Phenomenal.
32:59
Speaker 1: I love k Look, we also know that this idea
33:04
Speaker 1: of this idea of measuring intelligence is tricky because even
33:10
Speaker 1: back then and in the current day humanity has no
33:15
Speaker 1: universally agreed upon definition of intelligence. So Ever, since nineteen sixteen,
33:22
Speaker 1: the boffins and the eggheads and the very smart badgers
33:25
Speaker 1: have been revising this scale, this Stanford Benet Intelligence Scale.
33:33
Speaker 1: They have also again, it's different from a firearm test
33:37
Speaker 1: because it is a comparative score. So modern tests are
33:42
Speaker 1: going to use what we call deviation. They're going to
33:45
Speaker 1: assume the average score, like in the middle of the
33:48
Speaker 1: Bell curve is one hundred. We can get into the
33:52
Speaker 1: weeds there later. Let's standard deviation. If I'm not mistaken, Yes, yeah,
33:57
Speaker 1: nailed it. Standard deviation of sixteen. So if you take
34:01
Speaker 1: a test like this and your IQ score is above
34:05
Speaker 1: one thirty, you are considered gifted. If it's below seventy,
34:11
Speaker 1: they're going to look at you a little bit harder
34:13
Speaker 1: for some sort of intellectual disability, Forst. Gump style. Right.
34:18
Speaker 2: So, as this concept kind of starts picking up steam
34:21
Speaker 2: and expanding throughout the world, you started to see other
34:24
Speaker 2: sort of folks styling on it a bit, giving it
34:27
Speaker 2: their own spin, which sort of led to some other
34:30
Speaker 2: still to this day pretty well known tests and other
34:32
Speaker 2: kind of ideas around testing, beginning to emerge stuff like
34:36
Speaker 2: the Wes Adult Wessler perhaps I know this one adult
34:40
Speaker 2: Intelligent Scale and the Westler Intelligence Scale for children, which
34:45
Speaker 2: do yield an overall intelligence quotient score, as well as
34:51
Speaker 2: separate ones for verbal and performance subtests.
34:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, sort of like how you get yours a gifts
35:00
Speaker 1: right one score for verbal or communicative in your SATs
35:05
Speaker 1: wants one score for quantitative or mathematical.
35:08
Speaker 2: Well, so, I guess the reason a lot of this
35:09
Speaker 2: stuff rang true to many of us in the audience,
35:12
Speaker 2: including myself, is because, as we're learning, the basis for
35:17
Speaker 2: so many of these standardized.
35:19
Speaker 1: Tests is in all of this stuff. So even if,
35:21
Speaker 1: to your point, Ben, you haven't taken a quote unquote
35:23
Speaker 1: IQ test, which is less of a thing, it's much
35:28
Speaker 1: more of a spectrum, you've probably taken something that was
35:31
Speaker 1: very much inspired by the work of these folks one
35:36
Speaker 1: hundred percent. You know, for an example of a verbal test,
35:39
Speaker 1: it would be a vocabulary question. Performance tests would be
35:44
Speaker 1: picture arrangement like we described just a few minutes ago.
35:47
Speaker 1: And for us folks, fellow ridiculous historians, this actually sounds
35:53
Speaker 1: like a lot of fun because neither of those examples
35:57
Speaker 1: requires you to be super good at math, which is
36:00
Speaker 1: where no offense estinal. I think we both crapped the
36:04
Speaker 1: bag a little bit.
36:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now my thing, I got a near I mean
36:07
Speaker 2: not to bragg or anything, but I got a nearly
36:08
Speaker 2: perfect verbal score, as I'm sure you did on the SAT.
36:11
Speaker 2: And I don't even remember what my math was, but
36:14
Speaker 2: it was so bad that my overall SAT score weren't impressive.
36:18
Speaker 2: But taking taking in, you know, as as the verbal one,
36:21
Speaker 2: that's what I always lead with when I'm talking about
36:23
Speaker 2: the SAT, just to.
36:24
Speaker 3: Be this guy, I was a guy who did much
36:27
Speaker 3: better in math than verbal.
36:28
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, And frankly, dude, that that makes sense. You've
36:31
Speaker 2: got a very analytical brain in that respect. But you're
36:34
Speaker 2: also a really good communicator, So go to hell.
36:37
Speaker 1: It's got good SAT score in general.
36:39
Speaker 2: So right, get off, get off here and be gone
36:42
Speaker 2: into a well with you and we're not even gonna
36:44
Speaker 2: send last.
36:46
Speaker 1: Stop kissing up to each other, guys, is not what's happened,
36:51
Speaker 1: and not the gay hockey kind. The decades to go on, right,
36:56
Speaker 1: and as we said, new versions of similar test and merge,
37:00
Speaker 1: these things are continually getting revised. As you pointed out,
37:04
Speaker 1: now some version of this some grandchild of this sort
37:08
Speaker 1: of idea is found in all sorts of places. There
37:12
Speaker 1: is no escaping it. A good score can have a
37:15
Speaker 1: significant impact on your future in terms of your career
37:20
Speaker 1: path and vice versa. Of course, right, there's a bit
37:23
Speaker 1: of a feedback loop, right, And this is the ridiculous part.
37:27
Speaker 1: These tests have always been controversial since the early nineteen hundreds,
37:32
Speaker 1: and a lot of people are going to tell you,
37:35
Speaker 1: including us, that these tests are far less useful than
37:39
Speaker 1: we have been led to believe. It's never going to die,
37:45
Speaker 1: and so on paper, it sounds pretty nifty, right to
37:50
Speaker 1: put it simply, We love black and white.
37:52
Speaker 2: We love being able to boil things down to like
37:55
Speaker 2: a formula or a score. It is a human brain thing,
37:59
Speaker 2: but typically we know that stuff can sometimes it be
38:03
Speaker 2: a little too good to be true, or a little
38:06
Speaker 2: too broad to.
38:07
Speaker 1: Be nuanced, if that makes sense. The idea of quantifying
38:19
Speaker 1: every single member of the human population by bypassing all
38:23
Speaker 1: those things you describe nuance right, the experience right, right,
38:29
Speaker 1: soft skills, The idea that you can just treat a
38:32
Speaker 1: person like a file or a unit and slap a
38:35
Speaker 1: number on their forehead. It turns out that so similar
38:40
Speaker 1: to so many other things that sound like amazing shortcuts.
38:44
Speaker 1: IQ tests fall far short of what they are supposed
38:48
Speaker 1: to do. I mean, the Stanford Bene test is used
38:51
Speaker 1: to evaluate abilities, but it has also inescapably been used
38:57
Speaker 1: to justify racist a list beliefs and policies.
39:02
Speaker 2: No callback with phrenology just also just came up pretty recently,
39:08
Speaker 2: typical of these types of again very black and white
39:13
Speaker 2: boiling down, boilings down of something that is a much
39:17
Speaker 2: more complex issue, like feeling the bumps on someone's head
39:20
Speaker 2: and feeling like that allows you to say that they
39:23
Speaker 2: are not a valid member of the human race.
39:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, this is the question efficacy. Efficacy for an
39:32
Speaker 1: IQ test would be asking are these results an accurate
39:38
Speaker 1: measure of a concept that human beings still struggle to
39:42
Speaker 1: fully defy? Can your IQ score really predict your future performance?
39:49
Speaker 1: The answer is, give me a record scratchbacks perfect, not
39:55
Speaker 1: really not skirt skirt not really, not one hundred percent
39:59
Speaker 1: of the time. Not fully. It's fairly common. I will
40:03
Speaker 1: pause it that a lot of us know objectively brilliant
40:08
Speaker 1: people who could maybe write amazing novels. They can make
40:13
Speaker 1: phenomenal murals, they can do high level math, in their
40:16
Speaker 1: heads without notes. But they still don't have financial or
40:21
Speaker 1: social success. They're not at the top of society. And
40:25
Speaker 1: it's not because they're dumb by any means. It's just
40:27
Speaker 1: because they're good at taking one test, which is not
40:32
Speaker 1: the same thing as being good at life.
40:34
Speaker 2: Well, it's also, you know, worth mentioning the path dependency
40:39
Speaker 2: maybe the wrong term. I'm a little bit stuck in
40:42
Speaker 2: a conversation we recently had about oil and natural resources
40:47
Speaker 2: and path dependency in that respect, but in terms of
40:50
Speaker 2: the path towards success and this dependency that is sort
40:54
Speaker 2: of pushed historically on kids to follow that path, and
40:57
Speaker 2: including things like college and taking these tests and getting
41:01
Speaker 2: good scores on these tests. We know that a lot
41:03
Speaker 2: of that too, is sort of just gatekeeping for connections,
41:07
Speaker 2: you know, and the types of people that you might
41:09
Speaker 2: encounter that are ultimately the ones who put you in
41:12
Speaker 2: the right rooms and get you, you know, a leg
41:16
Speaker 2: up towards perhaps that journey of success. But these days,
41:21
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, those paths are a little bit
41:23
Speaker 2: less relevant than they used to be. And we know
41:26
Speaker 2: that if you make the effort and put yourself out there,
41:29
Speaker 2: you can find your people. You can find those connections
41:32
Speaker 2: on your own, just by being part of the world
41:35
Speaker 2: and being interested in stuff and perhaps being part of
41:39
Speaker 2: Reddit groups or you know, making Internet content, or just
41:43
Speaker 2: like hanging out and going to clubs and stuff like that.
41:46
Speaker 2: So I'm not saying don't go to college, but I'm
41:48
Speaker 2: also just saying that I think it's coming around. The
41:51
Speaker 2: general knowledge maybe is that it's not exactly the only way.
41:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And part of that is because IQ tests
41:58
Speaker 1: measure a very narrow slice of what we can call
42:02
Speaker 1: mental horsepower. Right. It looks at your logic, your pattern recognition,
42:07
Speaker 1: short term memory, problem solving. So these tests can tell
42:11
Speaker 1: you how good you are taking an IQ test. They
42:15
Speaker 1: can tell you how fast you can solve a puzzle,
42:17
Speaker 1: but they don't they don't measure They're not able to
42:21
Speaker 1: measure how you would do things like raise kids, or
42:24
Speaker 1: stop your friends in the middle of a fight, or
42:27
Speaker 1: even survive a week in the woods. The soft skills
42:31
Speaker 1: are the key, Right. You can score incredibly high on
42:34
Speaker 1: all sorts of tests, but you might not have emotional intelligence.
42:38
Speaker 1: You might not be good at reading and understanding the needs,
42:42
Speaker 1: perspectives and actions of others. Right. If you're very good
42:47
Speaker 1: at math. But you don't feel that other people also
42:53
Speaker 1: are equal entities in the world, then folks at your
42:57
Speaker 1: job aren't gonna like you. You also might not be
42:59
Speaker 1: good at hand stress. These are key things to success,
43:03
Speaker 1: and I love what you pointed out there about things
43:06
Speaker 1: like networking. IQ tests don't measure that, they don't measure
43:11
Speaker 1: interpersonal intelligence.
43:12
Speaker 2: Well, and we certainly all remember the No Child Left
43:15
Speaker 2: Behind scandal and how inevitably scandal maybe is a strong word,
43:19
Speaker 2: but how when these quotas are pushed upon already strained
43:24
Speaker 2: educational systems, you're going to end up with a whole
43:26
Speaker 2: lot of teaching the tests, which again is not a
43:30
Speaker 2: good indicator of what that test is actually supposed to
43:33
Speaker 2: measure in the real world.
43:35
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. You know, Bene's original test was meant
43:39
Speaker 1: to be a diagnostic tool, not some kind of leader board.
43:42
Speaker 1: But the issue is, by the time it hit the
43:45
Speaker 1: United States, the test and versions of it were being
43:49
Speaker 1: used to brank people to gatekeeper opportunities and even to
43:53
Speaker 1: justify eugenics programs like they would use the IQ test
43:58
Speaker 1: results to to justify another pseudoscience up there with phrenology,
44:06
Speaker 1: the idea that some people have to be sterilized. The
44:10
Speaker 1: idea that you're perceived race means you are superior or
44:14
Speaker 1: inferior to others.
44:16
Speaker 2: And man, I'm not trying to be get on a
44:19
Speaker 2: political soap box here, but that sure feels like the
44:22
Speaker 2: flavor of the way the President is thrown around that term,
44:26
Speaker 2: because he's often using it to refer to people of
44:28
Speaker 2: color and referring to them as low IQ individuals and
44:32
Speaker 2: stuff like that.
44:32
Speaker 1: It just it just has echoes of what you're talking
44:35
Speaker 1: about there, ben Oh, oh no, don't yield. We we can,
44:41
Speaker 1: we could break, but we will not. Then it just grows.
44:44
Speaker 2: It's again, not even if it's it's any political observation,
44:46
Speaker 2: it's it's it's not nice. It's just rude and at
44:49
Speaker 2: at at its very least and racist that it's at
44:53
Speaker 2: its worst.
44:55
Speaker 1: Yeah. In the early nineteen hundreds, Uncle Sam started using
44:59
Speaker 1: uh these tests descended from Benay to sort students into programs.
45:04
Speaker 1: So if you got a score on their version of
45:07
Speaker 1: the IQ test that was above one hundred and fifteen,
45:11
Speaker 1: that was your quotient, your deviation from the norm of
45:14
Speaker 1: one hundred, then you were considered gifted and you then
45:19
Speaker 1: got higher education opportunities. So you can make the most
45:23
Speaker 1: of your abilities. If you're a normal kid, your score
45:27
Speaker 1: is between seventy to one hundred and fifteen at this time,
45:30
Speaker 1: you stay where you are. If your score is under
45:33
Speaker 1: seventy for one reason or another and you don't often
45:36
Speaker 1: get to retake the test, you are considered special needs.
45:40
Speaker 1: You are sent to state schools, you are sent to institutions.
45:45
Speaker 1: People begin to think that these special needs kids are
45:49
Speaker 1: not fit for society. Only a few of them actually
45:54
Speaker 1: had a cognitive disability. A lot of these kids were
45:57
Speaker 1: from foster care, right, they didn't have earlier educational opportunities.
46:02
Speaker 1: Their parents or their relatives may have substance issues, they
46:07
Speaker 1: may have had their own sort of mental issues. These
46:10
Speaker 1: kids get carted off to abusive foster homes and institutions.
46:17
Speaker 1: And since we're a family show, can we just leave
46:20
Speaker 1: it at this horrific stuff happened to these children, all
46:26
Speaker 1: the kinds of abuse that you can imagine, and also sterilization.
46:31
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, and there's you know, if you want
46:33
Speaker 2: to dig deeper into that very disturbing topic, we've done
46:38
Speaker 2: episodes about that very thing, on stuff that it wants
46:40
Speaker 2: you to know. As well as our sister podcast stuff
46:43
Speaker 2: you missed in history class, who have done I think
46:47
Speaker 2: several episodes on sterilization and on this kind of horrific
46:52
Speaker 2: treatment of children through these very types of programs that
46:56
Speaker 2: we're talking about.
46:57
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah, and these controvert continue in the
47:01
Speaker 1: modern day. Critics will tell you intelligence tests have a
47:05
Speaker 1: strong cultural bias, a favor people for more affluent backgrounds.
47:11
Speaker 1: They discriminate against people from minority groups, right, whether that
47:17
Speaker 1: be racial, ethnic, social, et cetera. We also know that
47:20
Speaker 1: psychologists are responding to this by developing what they call
47:25
Speaker 1: culture free tests, and the idea seems like very basic stuff. Say, say,
47:31
Speaker 1: for instance, if we're testing kids who grew up in
47:34
Speaker 1: the inner city, then we're going to use when we
47:39
Speaker 1: ask questions, we're going to use urban or city settings
47:44
Speaker 1: instead of like an outdated rural pastoral thing. Right like,
47:48
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a kid in Queens, I'm an upper Queens.
47:52
Speaker 1: Why are you asking me about this? Farmer? And is
47:55
Speaker 1: rutabagas stop it? Ruda begas?
47:59
Speaker 2: We love rudebaks. I still don't really fully understand what
48:02
Speaker 2: they are do. Check out stuff they don't want you
48:04
Speaker 2: to knowse Weekly Listener Mail episodes for a brand new
48:08
Speaker 2: root of Bega Banger every single week from our incredible
48:12
Speaker 2: super producer Dylan the code name Tennessee pal Fagan, And
48:16
Speaker 2: I just wanted to really quickly mention that the specific
48:19
Speaker 2: episode that I was referencing from stuff you missed in
48:21
Speaker 2: history class is about the Calikak family and the study
48:26
Speaker 2: of hereditary feeble mindedness, which is another really gross term
48:32
Speaker 2: that was thrown around and tied to these types of
48:36
Speaker 2: standardized test scores.
48:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was weaponized language, for sure, But what we're
48:41
Speaker 1: telling you is eugenics aside, cultural gatekeeping aside. There is
48:46
Speaker 1: hope for the IQ test. These tests are not total garbage,
48:50
Speaker 1: but they have and continue to have massive issues. They've
48:54
Speaker 1: been weaponized, flagrantly misused. The results have been overestimated, and
49:00
Speaker 1: on and on and on. And here's one of the
49:03
Speaker 1: things I wish more people talked about when we talk
49:06
Speaker 1: about IQ tests. This is one of the most ridiculous
49:09
Speaker 1: flaws in the Origin story Noel Max. There is this
49:13
Speaker 1: old adage in writing fiction, which is this, it is
49:18
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult to write a super smart character because any
49:24
Speaker 1: character can only be as intelligent as the author that
49:28
Speaker 1: created them. IQ tests. I will posit cannot be immune
49:32
Speaker 1: from that law. So the creators are very smart people, right,
49:36
Speaker 1: the folks who make these tests, But they're probably not
49:39
Speaker 1: the smartest people ever, ever, ever in history, and they're
49:42
Speaker 1: probably not even the smartest people in their own lifetimes,
49:46
Speaker 1: so they quite possibly are not the best candidates to
49:51
Speaker 1: make these examinations in the first place. We need the
49:54
Speaker 1: smartest people ever writing the test, and these are not them. No,
49:59
Speaker 1: they're usually now, No they're not. And there's no statistical
50:04
Speaker 1: association between your IQ score and hard measures like your wealth.
50:10
Speaker 1: So look, this is a crazy thing. Humans are still
50:17
Speaker 1: figuring out intelligence. We didn't even get to the Flynn effect,
50:21
Speaker 1: which is kind of good news. Maybe we end on that. Noel,
50:24
Speaker 1: have you heard of the Flint effect?
50:26
Speaker 2: No, not till just now when I clocked it in
50:29
Speaker 2: the outline. But please tell us about the Flint effect.
50:33
Speaker 1: All right, here's the pickle. This is fascinating over time,
50:39
Speaker 1: over decades and decades and decades, more than a century now,
50:43
Speaker 1: IQ scores have shown a consistent increase across generations. It's
50:49
Speaker 1: called the Flint effect because a guy named James Flynn
50:54
Speaker 1: first first popularized this in the nineteen eighties and it
50:59
Speaker 1: looks like people are scoring a higher on IQ tests,
51:02
Speaker 1: not because they're necessarily getting smarter, but because the tests
51:07
Speaker 1: themselves are changing. People have improved access to education and information,
51:13
Speaker 1: and people, perhaps most importantly, have better health and nutrition.
51:18
Speaker 1: The one thing that hasn't changed is genetic lineage. Your
51:24
Speaker 1: genes have very little to do with your IQ test.
51:29
Speaker 1: It's true, it's true. And so where do we land
51:34
Speaker 1: on it? Guys? I know, always coming in a hot
51:36
Speaker 1: and saying IQ tests are kind of beat the air
51:38
Speaker 1: max bullshit, They're kind of dark, they're just overblown. They're
51:43
Speaker 1: over blown.
51:43
Speaker 2: It's true, and we already kind of knew that in
51:45
Speaker 2: terms of these types of tests for the very reasons
51:47
Speaker 2: that we mentioned, just the idea of it's really hard to.
51:50
Speaker 1: Boil down the individual, unique snowflakedness that is a human
51:54
Speaker 1: person into a number.
51:57
Speaker 2: But then you do end the episode with a think,
52:00
Speaker 2: a question that maybe on all of our minds is.
52:02
Speaker 1: But who's the best, Who's got the best one, who's
52:05
Speaker 1: the smartest? Remember when we were kids too.
52:07
Speaker 2: That's why I think it's so funny that Trump throws
52:09
Speaker 2: that around, where we used to probably make fun of
52:11
Speaker 2: people by saying your IQ's negative zero or stuff.
52:15
Speaker 1: Like that, not fully understanding anything about this world.
52:18
Speaker 2: So who's got the highest IQ in the whole wide
52:21
Speaker 2: world of sports?
52:23
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah, Oh, I've got to do one joke
52:26
Speaker 1: for please, one joke for our Irish American friends. This
52:31
Speaker 1: might get us in trouble, but let's do it and
52:33
Speaker 1: Max get a MIC for this one. Hey, guys, what's
52:37
Speaker 1: three miles long and has an IQ of forty? The
52:42
Speaker 1: Saint Patty's Day Parade?
52:45
Speaker 2: Because they're all really, did we even talk about what
52:50
Speaker 2: the scale is?
52:51
Speaker 1: Though?
52:52
Speaker 2: The numerical scale like forty would be pretty bad, right,
52:56
Speaker 2: forty is bad? And then we're talking about a cumulative
52:59
Speaker 2: school or of forty. So man, they really whoever wrote
53:03
Speaker 2: that joke really stuck it to the Irish?
53:04
Speaker 1: Huh? It was probably a British guy, Probably it was
53:07
Speaker 1: not us. So yes, to answer your question directly, as
53:13
Speaker 1: as we can find in the research. Currently, we don't
53:17
Speaker 1: know the actual smartest homo sapient alive right now, but
53:21
Speaker 1: as of twenty twenty four, a doctor named Jung Hun
53:25
Speaker 1: Kim has established the world record title for the world's
53:30
Speaker 1: highest IQ person. Now, his intelligence quotient has been verified
53:37
Speaker 1: as two one hundred and seventy six. I'm impressed. That's
53:42
Speaker 1: what's a big number. I mean, does he do We're
53:46
Speaker 1: not saying he's brilliant, No, you might just be very
53:48
Speaker 1: good to take you the.
53:49
Speaker 2: Test Crackerjack test taker. And good on you, doctor Junghun Kim.
53:55
Speaker 2: And by the way, I do love the idea of
53:58
Speaker 2: the non non Olympic record.
54:02
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, the International Non Olympic Committee. Yes, the International
54:06
Speaker 1: Non Olympic Committee. It's very niche, very very specific. Yeah. Yeah, like,
54:11
Speaker 1: oh uh, it's my first time going to committee meeting.
54:16
Speaker 1: What are you guys about, well, you know, the Olympics, Yeah,
54:20
Speaker 1: pretty much, nothing related to that. Everything else, everything, everything else.
54:24
Speaker 1: In our house.
54:26
Speaker 2: We also, of course have the World Memory Championships, the
54:29
Speaker 2: World Memory Sports Council. These are wild Ben and the
54:33
Speaker 2: official World Record trademark, right, yeah, whatever the R. What's
54:40
Speaker 2: the R registered trademark? Yeah, it's the registered trademark. I
54:43
Speaker 2: should remember that from our intellectual property series.
54:47
Speaker 1: But Ben Man, excellent.
54:49
Speaker 2: I don't know how what kind of test taker you are,
54:50
Speaker 2: but you're sure good a research doc writer and this
54:53
Speaker 2: was a fun one.
54:55
Speaker 1: Ah shucks. Well, big big thanks to everybody for tuning
54:59
Speaker 1: in big thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams.
55:04
Speaker 1: A big thanks to Jonathan Strickland, who I bet will
55:09
Speaker 1: lie about his IQ scores.
55:11
Speaker 2: Maybe, and I bet he knows it too. He's the
55:13
Speaker 2: type of guy that knows definite and that keeps it.
55:15
Speaker 2: You know, He's probably a guy that written on the
55:16
Speaker 2: back of his Mensa Carden.
55:18
Speaker 1: Big thanks to aj Bahamas, Jacob's. Big thanks to Leave's
55:22
Speaker 1: Jeffcoat and Christopher Hasiotis who else, who else? Who else?
55:26
Speaker 2: All the people jeez Luise the Lovely Humans over a
55:29
Speaker 2: ridiculous crime. If you dig our show, you will absolutely
55:32
Speaker 2: dig theirs Alex Williams and composer our theme.
55:34
Speaker 1: If you already said it, I'm staying in a second time,
55:36
Speaker 1: I'm doing it. Oh, I'm just doing it. Good, Save good,
55:39
Speaker 1: save forgot that one and one thing one thing I
55:43
Speaker 1: never want to forget is a big thank you to you, Noel.
55:48
Speaker 1: You're one of the smartest people I know and it's
55:50
Speaker 1: always a pleasure to hang out with you.
55:51
Speaker 2: Oh Ben same, you are the missing piece in the
55:55
Speaker 2: triangle pattern recognition test of my heart.
55:59
Speaker 1: Let's see you next time.
55:59
Speaker 2: Put For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
56:10
Speaker 2: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.