Welcome back to the deep dive. Today, we are
starting with a word that, I mean, it defines
so much of our world, our education system, our
technology. And right now, especially, the AI
revolution, that word is intelligence. It's the
standard we use for everything, measuring capability,
progress, sometimes even human worth. But what
if I told you that the very foundation of how
we've traditionally defined it, you know, as
this single, quantifiable thing, what if that
whole idea is fundamentally flawed? I mean, not
just flawed, but academically rejected and historically
just a social disaster. disaster. You've brought
us some really fascinating sources today, all
diving deep into this powerful critique from
the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould,
especially the arguments he laid out in his book,
The Mismeasure of Man. And this isn't some minor
critique, is it? It's a full -on rejection of
a concept that has haunted us for over a century.
Let's unpack this. Our mission for this deep
dive is to look at six specific characteristics
of intelligence, the core assumptions that Gould
says we just have to reject, and to understand
why these flawed ideas are, well, still causing
so many problems today. What's fascinating here
is just how ambitious the original project was.
If you go back to the early 20th century, psychology
was trying really hard to be seen as a hard science.
Like physics. Exactly, like physics or chemistry.
They weren't just looking for theories. They
wanted objective, quantifiable laws to describe
how the brain worked, almost like measuring gravity.
And this wasn't just some academic exercise in
an ivory tower. No. These scholars were actively
pushing for public policies. We're talking educational
tracking, immigration laws, social engineering,
all based on these numbers they were trying to
define. So the stakes were incredibly high from
the very beginning. Immense. And our sources
really stress that even though careful modern
study has pretty much rejected the philosophical
basis of these tests, the shadows of those old
ideas are definitely still with us. And Gould
just starts his demolition right at the root
of the whole thing. He says the first mistake.
The philosophical one that underpins everything
was how we started treating intelligence, not
as a set of skills or processes, but as a singular,
measurable object. So his first point to reject
is this idea of intelligence as a single, unitary,
abstractable entity, this sort of central stuff.
Right. And he had a specific philosophical term
for this mistake. Reification. Reification. Yeah.
And it's key to understanding this whole trap.
It's when you take an abstract concept. something
like cleverness or competence. And you wrongly
turn it into a concrete thing, a hard entity
that you think exists physically and can be measured,
like your height or weight. So it's mistaking
a process for a physical part. Like a mental
organ. Precisely. It's like trying to define
courage and saying, OK, we need to find the courage
muscle in the brain. Right. And if that muscle
is bigger, you're just more courageous. Gould
insisted intelligence isn't like that. He said
it was richly multiple and independent. There's
no single well that all your abilities draw from.
OK. So if you believe it's a single thing, the
logical next step is to assume it has to be located
somewhere. Exactly. Which brings us to the second
characteristic we have to reject. And it flows
right from reunification. the belief that this
central stuff must have a physical location in
the brain and The main scientific tool they used
to justify this was something called factor analysis.
Okay, it's a complex statistical method but basically
psychologists like Charles Spearman used it to
argue that if different mental tasks like memory
logic patterns If they all seem to correlate,
then there must be one single thing causing it.
Right. A single underlying general ability. Spearman
called it G for general intelligence. And G was
held up as the scientific proof that there really
was this unitary thing in the head. So factor
analysis didn't actually find the thing. It was
a statistical method they used to create a score.
And then they made the philosophical leap to
say that score represented a real physical thing.
That's the crucial distinction. Yes. OK. So now
you believe this central stuff exists. It's somewhere
in the brain. The next impulse, obviously, is
to measure it, put a number on it. And this gives
us the third rejected characteristic, the belief
that all that complexity can be boiled down to
one number for each individual. Which we all
know is the IQ score. Right. And here's where
the story gets really interesting. Because the
man who invented the first scale, Alfred Binet,
was just trying to solve a practical problem.
This was in France, right, with school children.
Exactly. He wanted a way to identify kids who
needed extra help in school, specifically to
help them catch up. Our source material is very
clear on this. Benet himself explicitly denied
that his test could measure the intelligence
as a single quantity. So he didn't even believe
in his own test and the way it was later used.
He saw it as a diagnostic tool. a rough guide
for intervention. He said it was not a lifetime
brand of a person's worth. For him, a low score
was a starting point for help, not a final judgment.
Wow. So Benet himself warned everyone against
the exact misuse that became, well, rampant almost
immediately. Especially in America. The next
generation of psychologists just stripped all
that nuance away. And that transition from a
tool to a label. That leads us straight to the
fourth characteristic Gould rejects. And this
one is maybe the most socially devastating. The
use of that single number to rank people in a
single series of worthiness. This is where the
academic error meets real -world cruelty. Once
you accept that a single number defines a person,
you are forced into this massive, brutal simplification
of reality. A dichotomization, as the sources
call it. Yes. Suddenly, complex individuals,
each with their own unique profile of strengths
and weaknesses, are just flattened into smart
and stupid, or normal versus feeble -minded.
And the consequences were huge. Immediate and
massive. This ranking system was seized by policymakers.
It gave a kind of pseudo -scientific justification
for their own prejudices. The score became a
weapon. To justify the status quo. Absolutely.
The sources we looked at are explicit. The ranking
was invoked constantly to argue that oppressed
and disadvantaged groups, races, classes, or
sexes are innately inferior and deserve their
status. It was the intellectual engine of the
eugenics movement. That immigration restrictions
segregation all of it was propped up by this
idea of a single ranked number. Which provides
a chillingly perfect bridge to the next point
because for those rankings to mean anything for
social policy they had to be seen as permanent.
So the fifth rejected characteristic is the belief
that intelligence is innate, inherited, and almost
entirely fixed by your genetics. And the conviction
they had is just, it's astounding to look back
on. You have figures like H .H. Goddard who brought
the Binet scale to the U .S. He literally argued
that intelligence was a unitary mental process,
conditioned by a nervous mechanism, which is
inborn. He even suggested it might be a single
gene. A single gene for all of intelligence.
A single gene. undoubtedly recessive to normal
intelligence. That's a direct quote. And that
thinking was everywhere. Lewis Turman, who developed
the Stanford -Binet IQ test, that became the
standard, he argued for the relatively greater
importance of endowment over training. He saw
disparities between groups and just concluded
it must be innate genetic inferiority. It wasn't
looking at environment or opportunity or history.
Not at all. The test score was proof enough for
him. And you can't forget someone like Cyril
Byrd, who for decades was a giant in the field
arguing for what he called innate general cognitive
ability. Even though his data was later discredited.
Yes, but the damage was done. The core belief
that this single measurable thing is mostly genetic,
that became the dominant and I'd say toxic idea
in the field for decades. OK, so if it's innate
and it's genetic, then it has to be unchangeable.
inescapable, which is the sixth and final point
we have to reject. The belief that intelligence
is a fixed quantity that can't be increased,
that it's but little affected by any later influences
like education or environment. Right. And the
consequence of that belief is just total fatalism.
Why bother trying to improve education for certain
groups? Why invest in social programs if their
rank is fixed at birth? This is where Gould really
brings the hammer down, isn't it? Oh, absolutely.
He calls this belief in fixity a form of brutal
pessimism that was founded on, well, on nothing.
The research didn't support it, but the social
utility of the idea was immense for those in
power. It let them off the hook. It did. And
Gould spends a lot of time attacking what he
calls the false equation of heritable with permanent
or unchangeable. That's a key distinction. It's
vital. We know lots of traits are heritable.
Height, for example. But that doesn't mean it's
unchangeable. Nutrition can dramatically change
the outcome. Heritability is a statistical measure
about variation in a population, not a statement
about an individual's fixed destiny. But that
idea of a fixed, unchangeable number was necessary
for the whole hereditarian theory to hold together.
Through the linchpin. And Gould just completely
dismantled it. So, okay. What does this all mean
for us today? If we accept Gould's critique...
that this entire historical concept of intelligence
as a single innate fixed thing, if that's all
academically unsound. So what does all this mean?
The author of one of our main sources concludes
that because that whole framework has been rejected
by careful study, the word intelligence itself
is almost becoming meaningless, at least when
it's used in that old single -number way. Which
brings us right into this moment. right into
the age of AI. We have these large language models
that are, I mean, they're incredibly effective.
They can pass the bar exam. They can write code.
They can do things that would score incredibly
high on any of those old 20th century tests.
And yet, most people hesitate to call them intelligent
in the same way a person is. Right, you don't
hear people describe an AI as conscious or wise
or having common sense. Exactly. The AI seems
to perform all these complex intellectual tasks
without having that mysterious, singular, central
stuff that we were trying so hard to find in
the human brain. The AI kind of forces our hand.
It makes us realize that maybe that concept was
the problem all along. Maybe it was just an error
of reification. A human invention. That really
reframes the whole conversation. The old guard
wanted a single number for worth. Now we have
machines that can ace their tests, and we still
instinctively feel like something is missing.
And that connects this whole critique right back
to learning and teaching, which I know is a key
interest for you, our listener. If we stop chasing
one single measurable quantity, what should education
be aiming for? Yeah. puts it beautifully, it
says that whatever students leave school with
is far more diverse than anything we can conceive
as general intelligence. It's not about maximizing
a G score. It's about cultivating that rich multiplicity
of skills. Creative thinking, emotional intelligence,
collaboration, technical competence, all the
things a single number just catastrophically
fails to capture. Gold's critique frees us from
that brutal pessimism. It says potential is fluid,
not fixed. It's a profound takeaway. The whole
historical concept of intelligence was a mistake
from the start, rooted in this desire for a simple,
scientific -sounding number. And its application
led to social catastrophe, all based on a number
that its own inventor warned us not to misuse.
We have to reckon with that history to find a
better, more honest language to talk about human
potential. which leaves us with a final provocative
thought for you to take away. The flaw of the
early 20th century was trying to define intelligence
like a law of physics. Now that we have these
AI systems that show incredible capabilities
without fitting that old definition, maybe the
whole mission was flawed from the start. Should
we just stop trying to measure intelligence altogether
and focus only on measuring observable, specific,
and multiple capabilities? Abandon the noun and
just focus on the verbs. Exactly. Something to
think about is you define competence in your
own life.