1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday

1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I am here with Skeptical Sunday co-host Michael Regilio. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories and secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

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It'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just [00:01:00] visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. For decades, IQ tests have been used to judge people's intelligence. These scores were often used when considering job applicants or determining educational placement.

And to this day, many of us still assume that somebody with a high IQ is smart and likely to succeed in life. I guess I'll consider myself the exception. You do seem to be doing pretty well for yourself. Michael, you made it onto this podcast. You got that go for you. I, I guess your score is pretty low then, Jordan, the bar for hiring.

Yes, my IQ classified information so far. I'm actually, truth be told, I'm not sure if I even know my IQ score. I have no clue. Do you know yours?

Michael Regilio: I did take one of those tests once, but to be honest with you, I forgot my IQ score. I see. Which I suppose goes to show you something.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it might. To be honest, I'm not sure that any of this goes to show anyone anything, which is why have you.

Michael Regilio, our resident skeptic, are one of them here to help unpack IQ tests. So what are [00:02:00] they, how did they come about? And most importantly, should we take them seriously at all?

Michael Regilio: I think it's fair to say that people with high IQ scores are more likely to support their validity than those with low IQ scores.

Jordan Harbinger: That sounds like a smart way of saying that. If a test says somebody is intelligent, they're more likely to believe that the test is accurate. Color me. Surprised I.

Michael Regilio: And it's just like being good at chess. If you're good at chess, you want everyone to think that means you're smart. And if you're bad at chess, then chess doesn't mean a damn thing.

Jordan Harbinger: So if you're a skeptic of IQ scores, maybe you have a low iq. Uh, yeah, I see where you're going with this. I might also be in that camp, so it's not the veiled insult you think it is. I might just be throwing myself in the same bucket, but I do wonder. Is there even a gold standard, so to speak, IQ test anyway?

And I'm remembering that Seinfeld episode where George was gonna take one and he gets a lane to do it for him.

Michael Regilio: Oh yeah. And there's actually a number of IQ tests that have evolved over time. Why don't we start at the very beginning? Sure.

Jordan Harbinger: Uh, smart [00:03:00] thing to do.

Michael Regilio: Ha. So first off, IQ stands for intelligence quotient, which is a term coined by the German psychologist, William Stern, who ironically.

Cautioned against using it alone to categorize intelligence.

Jordan Harbinger: So you're saying the guy who came up with the term IQ was himself a skeptic of the idea that IQ alone measures intelligence. Is that right?

Michael Regilio: Bingo. Yeah. Stern wasn't the only one at the time. Working on ways to test people's intelligence. Most people identify the Benet Simon test published in 1905 as the first real IQ test.

It was developed in France to identify which school children had normal intelligence and which had abnormal intelligence.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, this is gonna be one of those things. That sounds harsh, right?

Michael Regilio: Yeah. It was actually pretty harsh. And the fact of the matter is the turn of the century was pretty harsh in general.

The original Benet Simon test was particularly severe. It grouped children into four categories, normality de. Iil [00:04:00] and idiocy.

Jordan Harbinger: Yikes. Yeah, that is harsh. Imagine getting that call, like, I'm pleased to inform you that your son is merely an imbecile and not an idiot as previously suspected. Good day.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. You know what?

In their defense, these were technical terms at the time. Schoolyard bullies had yet to put the stank on the words. Buil an idiot. But yes, these were the determinations made by the Benet Simon Test.

Jordan Harbinger: It's funny that those are technical terms. 'cause of course that meaning is all lost. So, so what were these determinations even based upon?

Michael Regilio: Okay, so the test was divided into four sections. The first section was called Basic Skills, assumed of an Idiot.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh God. Okay. Well, I, I shouldn't laugh. I hope I could pass that section. Who knows what's in there?

Michael Regilio: Yeah, that one was pretty simple stuff like unwrapping a piece of chocolate before eating it.

Remember? This is a test for children,

Jordan Harbinger: so they were like, if he eats the chocolate with the wrapper on, he's an idiot. Why is that so funny? In grade [00:05:00] school, I did know a kid who would eat a candy bar with the wrapper on just as a gag, and I suppose I feel a little bit better about myself. Hey, we all called him by the technically correct term.

I see. Yeah.

Michael Regilio: Again, that would be the school yard doing its thing. It's funny, comedian, Doug Stanhope has a great bit about this. He says that it doesn't matter what they switch the technical term to, people will just co-opt that word to call friends when they do something stupid. He's like, did you just put a metal plate in the microwave?

What are you developmentally challenged? Testing for idiocy was just an early 20th century way of saying

Jordan Harbinger: basic and basic, of course, now has already been co-opted. Okay, so tell me about the other sections of the test. I suppose it gets harder from unwrap the candy before you eat it.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, you nailed it. It gets progressively more complicated, but remember, the highest level of the test was normality, so it's not exactly rocket science.

For example, one of the later tasks had the tester fold [00:06:00] a piece of paper in half, twice. Before cutting out a triangle, then the child would have to guess what the piece of paper would look like when he unfolded it.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. I can feel my brain trying to work that one out and I'm not sure how good I would do at something like that either.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, actually that's a good one. The Benet Simon test was very limited, as Benet himself pointed out, so we're continued on trying to develop more robust IQ tests. A psychologist from Stanford named Louis Turman took the Benet Simon test and he adapted it later publishing what became known as the Stanford Benet Test in 1916.

Jordan Harbinger: So this is where we get the IQ scores we've come to know

Michael Regilio: today.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Michael Regilio: and basically what they did was you took the mental age of someone. Divided it by their actual age, their chronological age, and then multiply that by a hundred and bingo. That's what an IQ score is.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay? So if you're 40 chronologically and mentally, the test says you're 40, you divide 40 by 40, you get [00:07:00] one, and you multiply that by 100, so your IQ is a hundred.

Check out the IQ on Jordan,

Michael Regilio: eh? So what's the average IQ then? It's actually between 85 and one 15. So using the bell curve, that's about a hundred. So the tests,

Jordan Harbinger: they hypothetically work, which I guess is good because people use these to determine so much about someone. So it sounds like it works to give you a score that makes some sense.

I don't know.

Michael Regilio: Absolutely. Which is why psychologists have continued to come up with new tests ever since Benet Simon first published theirs. They've also modified how the number itself is calculated. The whole concept evolved over time, but this is how it started at the turn of the century.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay? As we've already established a person's IQ score, it could really impact their life.

It's starting to feel a little bit like Brave New World. They got the alphas and the betas.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. In fact, you're not far off on that one. Two very consequential tests were even called the Army Alpha. And the Army beta tests.

Jordan Harbinger: That's really on the nose there. I guess [00:08:00] it makes sense that the Army would be looking into this kind of thing.

They always wanna figure out how to get big groups of people put into buckets, right?

Michael Regilio: Yeah, I They definitely were. And in 1917, it was the time of World War I and a guy by the name of Robert Urs came up with the army alpha and the army beta test to determine which army recruits. We're better suited for leadership roles and or other specific positions.

The Army Alpha was a written test and the army beta was made up of pictures in order to include soldiers who didn't read or didn't speak English. Over a million soldiers ended up taking these tests.

Jordan Harbinger: You know, you gotta wonder, Aldi Huxley Brave New World was like 1932. I wonder if he knew about this and took that from this.

You gotta wonder. Gotta wonder. Yeah. But okay, so they made everyone take this. It's crazy that there was people who didn't speak English in the US Army during World War I. That just, I. That's kind of mind blowing to me, but I guess maybe even now, there's people whose English is not super good in the [00:09:00] army.

Michael Regilio: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Huh. Yeah.

Michael Regilio: That's interesting. I don't even think you need to be a US citizen to join the US Army, to be honest with you. Yeah. There was something,

Jordan Harbinger: gosh, we're gonna get an email about this. There was something I remember hearing where people from the Philippines especially, and I'm sure it's other countries too, you could join the US Army and basically after you got out however many years you would get US citizenship.

Which is kind of a cool deal. But yeah, I guess in the Philippines they speak English, but I don't know if the deal's open to like anyone from anywhere. That would be an interesting question. It's something I should have looked up before and something I'll look up after the show. Okay, so if they had everyone take this test before World War I or during World War I, that is a lot of data to work with.

Michael Regilio: Right? Absolutely. And they use this data to screen for officers, sometimes not even considering someone who scored below a certain grade. Fortunately, this sort of data ended up being used in all kinds of nefarious ways, as I'm sure you can imagine. Remember, eugenics was having a moment around [00:10:00] the time of these tests.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Should we. Also, maybe take our moment to remind everyone what Eugenics was. I don't think everybody knows what that is,

Michael Regilio: was I wish Eugenics was a was. Sadly, it's still creeping around out there,

Jordan Harbinger: by the way, eugenics, it does sound like a supplement. Marketed towards disguise my age when they're having problems urinating or getting it up.

Basically anything to do with the equipment, you're gonna sell a pill. Middle age is amazing. But yeah, eugenics sounds like a multi-level marketing scam.

Michael Regilio: But unfortunately, eugenics is not merely a dick pill as eugenics was just basically racism in a lab coat. Eugenics was the notion that certain traits like intelligence, physical prowess, and even moral character were inherited.

I. Society would benefit by promoting the breeding of some people, and in America, the forced sterilization of others.

Jordan Harbinger: So the idea that certain populations of lesser people should be prohibited from reproducing. I. [00:11:00] That's some very dangerous stuff. Even if you, man, there's a thought exercise here. Like, what if we don't stop the people from reproducing, but we encourage people to reproduce who are like really smart and have achieved a lot.

Even that is, is fraught. Yeah. There's no good way to do that, huh?

Michael Regilio: By the way, that is the plot of Idiocracy, more or less, or more to the point that super smart people have fewer children, which is true. And see, Idiocracy, it's, turns out it was more of a prophetic vision of America's future than just a comedy from the, uh, in

Jordan Harbinger: 10 years it's gonna be a documentary, which is, that's the worst part.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, no kidding. But you're right. It is super dangerous stuff. And in the US many of these ideas took their darkest forms around that time, the thirties and the forties. There was a eugenics program implemented in North Carolina that started in 1933 and went on for over four decades. Over 7,000 people are estimated to have been sterilized on account of this program, which singled out people with low IQ [00:12:00] or as they called them, feeble-minded.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Yeah. That's intense. So if we had to get rid of the feeble-minded folks in 2025, there'd be almost nobody left.

Michael Regilio: Uh, I'm pretty sure the traffic in Los Angeles would certainly get a lot better. Yeah. No more Carmageddon. Some might argue that Michael Regilio would be taken off the roads, but anyway, several states enacted similar programs, not just North Carolina, in fact, California.

Wow. I am sitting right now. In fact, uh, it was another principle state that was enacting this kind of stuff and this whole movement. These programs inspired none other than one, Mr. Adolf Hitler and his views. I've heard of that guy. In fact, all over mine, kf, there are references to American eugenics and the praise for what was going on in this country with sterilization of the feeble minded.

Yikes. And this was all legal

Jordan Harbinger: in America at the time. That's crazy. How did this not make it to the Supreme Court or whatever?

Michael Regilio: Oh. [00:13:00] It did okay. In fact, the Supreme Court of the United States in Buck versus Bell 1927, full on supported the practice of sterilization of people they deemed to be feeble-minded.

Justice Holmes delivering the opinion of the court wrote quote, it is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their IL society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Oof. He later added. Three generations of imbecile are enough.

Wow. What's the three generations of imbecile? That was the family that their case made it up to the Supreme Court. I can't remember. It was the bucks or the bells, but oh my

Jordan Harbinger: god.

Michael Regilio: Wow. That aged like milk. Oh man. Yeah. That's.

Jordan Harbinger: Rough.

Michael Regilio: A way to take a swing at mom and pop and grandma and [00:14:00] grandpa at the same time, by the way.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Hey, it's not just you who were thinking about sterilizing. Your parents should have been sterilized, their parents should have been sterilized. Yikes. Wow. And that's coming from the Supreme Court of the United States, how dignified.

Michael Regilio: I've already hinted at this, but guess who ended up quoting Justice Holmes while on trial for Crimes Against Humanity?

Jordan Harbinger: I'm gonna go with Nazis. You got it. Nazis, man, you're on shaky ground when you've got Nazis quoting you. I mean, it's not necessarily your fault if you've got Nazis quoting you, but there's a reason that Nazis are quoting you. That's all I'm saying.

Michael Regilio: Oh, the Nazis got a lot of ideas from America, and in fact, I'll do you one better than just quoting us.

Or perhaps one worse than just quoting Americans. Adolf Hitler famously hung a portrait of Henry Ford in his office. Really? Yeah. It's just a fact. Racism and eugenics was very popular in the us. Okay. So there was this whole idea at the time that some people were born inferior, feeble minded, [00:15:00] and it was best to sterilize them or otherwise remove them from your population in order to create a better society.

And they used none other than these IQ tests. To justify these ideas. Hey, imb,

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I.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, it's crazy to think that you could be on the Supreme Court of the United States and be that I Basilic, I believe would be the correct term. Yeah, I guess IQ isn't everything. Also, the test questions themselves were deeply flawed. Some of the questions on the URS test, for example, are pretty subjective, arguably more about knowledge of culture rather than intelligence.

Here's an example, straight from the Army Alpha Test eight form seven, question 31. The author of the Raven is Stevenson Kipling, Hawthorne, or Poe.

Jordan Harbinger: Are you asking me?

Michael Regilio: Sure, why not? Aren't you curious if you'd been an officer or a private po? I don't know, man. Actually, you got it. Wow. Okay. How about this number 32.

Spare is a term used in bowling, football, tennis, or hockey.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that one's easier. Bowling. So I'm a genius and I should have been at least a Lieutenant General or whatever. Is that where this is going? That's exactly what we're saying

Michael Regilio: here. All right. I'm okay with it, but perhaps. [00:20:00] As you can see, knowing what a spare is and who wrote the Raven shouldn't exactly qualify you as being intelligent or not.

Jordan Harbinger: No, that's true. Right, of course. Especially, there's tons of people who grew up in a place where bowling is not a sport that people play, or you couldn't afford to bowl, and maybe you never heard of Edgar Allen Poe because you had a third grade education. I mean, the only reason I know that one is because I think my mom read me post stuff when I was a kid.

The Raven sounds very Poe somehow, but I also just guessed really at the end of the day.

Michael Regilio: If I'm being honest, it's because The Simpsons did a bit on Elder Garland posed the Raven in one of their famous Halloween episodes. It's like a

Jordan Harbinger: fluke that we would've gotten those questions

Michael Regilio: correct. In 1917. I would not have gotten that question correct.

I can assure you. Look, the fact of the matter is maybe you've read hundreds of other worthwhile poems from countless other authors just didn't come across Pope, or maybe you were a mathematical genius who stayed away from poetry altogether.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:00] So we're talking about some. We call it like culturally relevant questions on the test that don't make sense if you're not from that culture.

Right.

Michael Regilio: But now there are other questions on the Army Alpha test that are less like determining the number of blocks in a stack or what comes next in a pattern. And these types of questions are far more along the lines of the kind of questions you find on modern IQ tests.

Jordan Harbinger: Those are like the ones you see when you're scrolling through social media.

Like, Hey, if you can count the number of blocks in this, you're a genius. Or if you can figure this puzzle out, you'd need to join Mensa. Oh

Michael Regilio: man, that is some of the best clickbait out there.

Jordan Harbinger: It is, because who doesn't want to think of themselves as smart? Maybe I'm secretly a genius and nobody ever knew.

Michael Regilio: Everyone wants to think of themselves as smart. It's human nature, and if you're convinced that certain tests, you're going to tell you how smart you are, you might just go ahead and take those tests to find out. In fact, I have a friend who was quite fond of dropping into conversations that he had a 1 45 IQ according to one of [00:22:00] those online tests.

Yeah. And one day, after having heard him drop the 1 45. Brag into a conversation for like the 90th time. I said, oh, you know what? I'm gonna ask some follow up questions. Turns out he had to take the exact same test eight times before he achieved this high score and he was looking up answers in between tests.

The dude just likes to think of himself as smart, even if he doesn't realize that admitting you took the same IQ test eight times to get your score makes you sound. Not smart.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, no kidding. Wow. Well, it's pretty nerve wracking to think about that. I mean, what if I take an IQ test or many tests and it just turns out I'm not as smart as I think I am?

I don't know if I could handle it. This is the psychological equivalent of getting out a ruler in college and being like, let me measure my Wang. It's gonna be totally above average. Just you don't want to answer this question folks. You don't trust tape. Voice of experience.

Michael Regilio: I will say that I'm old enough that coming across [00:23:00] the information as to the average size of one's weighing was hard to come by when I was a kid.

So couldn't Google it. No. When we

Jordan Harbinger: really could have doubled down on our insecurity about that, that information wasn't available. Thank God. Yeah. That's true. No, sometimes less is more folks, and I'm talking about information,

Michael Regilio: so I've been told, okay, and look, the fact of the matter is your nerves are going to affect how you take the test, your environment, your mood, all these things are going to factor in.

Imagine being a soldier in 1917 and being stuffed into an exam room and knowing that how you score on this test is going to determine if you're an officer or if you're in the trenches.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I'm. Sweating, thinking about that, I mean, that's a life or death situation. Am I gonna be organizing ammo, crates that go out by plane or am I gonna be getting shelled?

Michael Regilio: Yeah, and World War I. Yeah. According to the movies I've seen particularly brutal. Oof. These army alpha and alpha beta tests devised by Urk and Urk [00:24:00] went off with the data from these army tests. He got charts in there with what professions scored, what number, and then based on different scores, what professions are best suited for certain people.

It's reminding me of the

Jordan Harbinger: movie Divergent. They take a test and it determines what faction they're gonna be in. Basically, one test determines what their whole life is gonna be. I.

Michael Regilio: I can't say I saw that particular movie, but you're absolutely right. This is a tricky idea. On the one hand, maybe you can test people for a certain level of intelligence, and maybe some people are better suited for certain jobs than others.

On the other hand, how is one test made up of a series of questions going to accurately give you that information?

Jordan Harbinger: I doubt any test would tell me, you should host a podcast. We did these tests when I was in. High school, I think. And the questions were so dumb. It would be like, do you enjoy organizing different kinds of paper?

Do you enjoy stamping images [00:25:00] or words into metal? It's like, what? I know. And then they're like, oh, just answer to the best of your ability. And I remember the teachers telling us that. I just filled it out fast. 'cause I don't know, maybe stamping things in a metal would be interesting. I don't know. Next question.

And then we get this report back. That's like jobs you might be cut out for machine metal stamp or machine press and it's just made no sense. How is a kid who's never done something gonna say, yeah, stamping something in the metal might be cool. And they're like, aha. Career idea for you, stamping things into metal.

It was the absolute dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. So these tests can't be that far from that.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, I mean as far as determining what somebody's gonna do with the rest of their life. When I was in high school, I think they did take the test and I skipped that day. And that tells you all you need to know.

Yeah. They were like, don't worry about it. You miss the test like every other test, but we didn't need to give you the test. We have an idea anyway.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. We know where you're gonna end up. Je Yeah. They didn't need a test. Yeah.

Michael Regilio: I like to joke that, hey, my life might not have turned out the way I thought it [00:26:00] would, but it is a little bit comforting to know that my life did turn out the way everybody else thought it would.

So.

Jordan Harbinger: Fair. Yeah. I guess they did not need a test to know where you were going and the test couldn't tell me where I was going. Yeah.

Michael Regilio: So anyway, after World War I, the US government got into these IQ tests and what they purported to mean. They started using the dubious results in all kinds of shady ways. One can even argue that the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 was influenced by these tests.

The Immigration Restriction Act severely limited immigration into this country for people from Asia while favoring. Europeans. Surprise. Surprise.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So that just sounds like it could be plain old racism, but I don't know enough about it to say for sure.

Michael Regilio: We're talking about America here, so yeah, let's just go with racism.

You could also argue that the whole field of psychology was validated at the time by U'S tests and how much the Army dug it.

Jordan Harbinger: The army does like digging stuff. That sounds like a dumb pun, but that was not what I meant there. But yeah, especially trenches is where most of the people who took these [00:27:00] U'S tests ended up.

So that brings us to the thirties. Okay. World War I post World War, whatever. So social Darwinism and eugenics are in vogue. Rudimentary IQ tests, I guess they were back then are being used as a tool to justify these concepts. Now I'm gonna imagine that after World War II and all the atrocities committed by the Nazis and stuff, did that whole idea fall off a little bit?

I hope.

Michael Regilio: Yes and no. Eugenics definitely quieted down, at least for a while, but the notion that you could test someone's intelligence continued, which gets us to talking about the book, the Bell Curve.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. I thought you might bring that book up. Yeah, because I've heard of this and I, I know it's controversial.

I. Yeah,

Michael Regilio: you really can't talk about IQ without talking about the book, the Bell Curve, and you really can't talk about the book, the Bell Curve without talking about Arthur Jensen, who was before the Bell Curve. Arthur Jensen was an American psychologist who worked mostly out of uc, Berkeley. In 1969, he published a paper in the Harvard Educational Review called How Much Can [00:28:00] We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement.

Now this paper basically set off a bomb in the world of psychology because he suggested that genetics played a part in black students scoring lower on IQ tests than white students. Critics were fierce and pointed out that his research ignored the obvious roles of poverty, poor schools, racism and health inequality.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Um, 2025 me says, duh, but I'm guessing that was maybe even also controversial back then.

Michael Regilio: No, I mean, it struck at people's emotional core that there was something terribly wrong with that, and it didn't go well for Jensen at the time either. I mean, colleagues tried to formulate censure him. He had protestors storming into his lectures.

So it was more than a bit shocking that after all that happened with Jensen, that in 1994, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein published a book called The Bell Curve, which claimed that genetics was a part of what contributed to iq. And [00:29:00] again. When we say genetics, Marie and Herrnstein broke that down by race.

Predictably, a massive backlash followed the publication of the book.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I'm guessing the criticisms were largely the same, that the study didn't take into account poverty, poor schools, health inequality. Some people might think that, oh, those are weak, the poverty argument, but poor schools, health inequality, and when we say health inequality, we're talking about bad nutrition and like lead paint chips in the house, right?

Michael Regilio: Yeah, absolutely. Reading some of the criticisms of the bell curve. I learned a few new things like that. Intelligence is what's called polygenetic. That is to say it's influenced by a great many genes. Each one contributing only a small amount, and that there is no smart gene and that gene expression itself can be turned up or turned down by environmental factors.

Jordan Harbinger: Environmental factors. So I know some kids grow up with books and computers, and I know I'm harping on this, but other kids grow up with lead paint chips. That was a big thing in Detroit. When I was growing up, it was like all those old houses down there that had kids in it. All you need to [00:30:00] do is eat a couple lead paint chips as a kid and you're in trouble or the dust from it.

And that's because it actually,

Michael Regilio: apparently. Lead paint chips are sweet and they taste good. Ooh, I didn't know that. Yeah, gross. That's why kids eat lead paint chips. They taste like candy. Ah, at least the ones that I ate did.

Jordan Harbinger: So even in talking about the genetic aspects of intelligence, our environment also plays a part, which totally makes sense.

Michael Regilio: Exactly. Environmental factors that can influence gene expression are stuff like diet, which we talked about nutrition, but also toxics and chemicals.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Okay. So once again, paint chips and weird gasoline fumes or highway stuff if you live near a highway, probably.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. I. Absolutely. Also physical activity, sleep infections, exposure to UV light, and other forms of radiation and stress.

The stresses that come from living in poverty can lead to chronic stress, which can lead to elevated hormone levels like cortisol, which can affect gene expression like immune function and

Jordan Harbinger: brain development. Because I think [00:31:00] a lot of people are like, being poor doesn't make you have a lower iq. The UV thing actually explains a lot too.

I might be getting dumber, but I have a sick tan right

Michael Regilio: now. Yeah, you definitely got a beach bod. By the way. That field of study is called epigenetics, and none of these arguments even touch on the whole. Race is a manmade construct and not a biological category. And the fact of the matter is genetic differences between people or populations within what we call a race are very often far greater than the differences between any two people in what we consider to be a different race.

Jordan Harbinger: So that sounds like its own episode entirely. I didn't know the race thing was kind of not necessary.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. Even though some people in America will explode, if you profess the idea that race doesn't exist, the modern understanding of race is born out of racism. Mostly European colonization hierarchies between [00:32:00] population groups were devised to justify exploitation.

This isn't to say that population groups don't have shared heritage and culture, but a biologist can't see that stuff under a microscope, and as far as they're concerned, race just isn't a thing without rehashing the entire controversy. Let's just say the overwhelming number of experts in the field disagree with the findings of Jensen and the bell curve.

Jordan Harbinger: This is really interesting because before you would think, okay. People who lean right are gonna be like, not everything is racism. And I get that. Maybe there's something to that, but then the people on the left are like, we didn't mean race doesn't exist. If you said that to a college kid right now, depending on the college, I suppose you would get an earful.

So it's the horseshoe theory, right? It's like these groups might actually agree for completely different reasons.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, that's exactly the horseshoe. And by the way, I did say that to some college kids when I was doing this research. I, uh, was at a friend's house and their son was there with [00:33:00] his girlfriend and I said that, and she had to leave the table 'cause she didn't wanna sit with me anymore.

'cause I said that race isn't a biological category.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That would make for an awkward dinner. But you know what, when I hear that, I gotta say that's what people are talking about when they're like, snowflakes can't handle that. They, like, she had to leave the dinner to just get all upset and couldn't handle that particular line of argument.

I don't know.

Michael Regilio: I do get it because again, people have a shared culture that they're very proud of. And a shared struggle that they're very proud that they made it through, and so they think that in some way you're coming after that. When you say this, which you're absolutely not, I'm just talking about from a scientific perspective.

This is just not something that that truly exists.

Jordan Harbinger: Meanwhile, an overwhelming number of racist organizations probably agree with the bell curve and the findings of Jensen and all that stuff. So how do we square that?

Michael Regilio: And by overwhelming number of racist organizations, I assume you mean all racist organizations agree with them?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:00] Well, it seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same. I suppose I wanna jump back to the IQ step before we get too far off the, uh, reservation, which also sounds racist now that I say it out loud. Save me.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. Okay, fine. Let's get back to iq. IQ tests have been changing for a long time now and working towards getting rid of cultural biases.

A test known as the Wexler Adult Intelligence Scale was published in 1955 and modern editions continue to be released, including a fifth edition that just came out in 2024. There's also Ravens Progressive Matrices and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Tests. These tests have tried to reduce these cultural biases as much as possible.

I.

Jordan Harbinger: So no more questions like with which hand do you hold a caviar spoon? Or what does it mean for a dressage

Michael Regilio: horse to pf? Yeah, those questions are gone. These tests focus on logical reasoning, pattern recognition, things that anyone could be good or bad at, regardless of background. The goal being to measure general cognitive [00:35:00] ability with as little bias as possible.

And there's also the idea that there are multiple types of intelligence. There's mathematical intelligence, spatial linguistic, there's fluid intelligence, and crystallized intelligence. Crystallized intelligence Sounds pretty cool. It does sound cool. Sounds star warsie. I.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's, oh yeah, this New Jedi has crystallized intelligence.

Only Master Yoda has crystallized intelligence. Jordan, I would like to take the crystallized intelligence test. I feel like I might wanna take all these tests actually just for shits and gigs. I mean, if I take a bunch of different IQ tests, I. And consistently get around the same score, then that might in fact tell you something.

Okay. Plus, if I score super high, then I'll be inducted into some kind of secret society. Ostensibly.

Michael Regilio: Actually, there are some organizations like that only, they aren't secret Mensa. I know you've heard of that one. Yeah. For example, is the largest and oldest high IQ society you have to score in the 98th percentile or higher.

Under [00:36:00] approved supervised IQ test. They even have their own IQ tests. There's also the Triple nine Society. You need to have an even higher IQ to get into that one.

Jordan Harbinger: I've heard of Mensa, and it's actually the opposite of a secret society because people who are in it often cannot shut the actual fuck up about being a member of mensa, so they're not secretly controlling the world.

That's maybe disappointing.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, they're really just non-profits, publishing journals with puzzles and poems and helping to provide scholarships to gifted students.

Jordan Harbinger: All based on IQ tests.

Michael Regilio: That's right. Like the Wexler or the Stanford Benet five I.

Jordan Harbinger: So there are a few places out there that still value IQ scores on specific IQ tests.

In fact, it seems like they hold them in pretty high regard.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, that's right. And more than a few. We still use IQ scores when determining certain public policies. We still consider it regarding military service, and kids still take stuff like SATs, but that's not necessarily iq. I think that is just the idea that [00:37:00] we can test people's intelligence and that is still alive and well, just with some healthy skepticism mixed in now.

We love

Jordan Harbinger: skepticism, but I've gotta tell you, I'm feeling as though I like the idea that in some way we can measure a person's intelligence even if it's not totally accurate.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. At a basic level, you'd hope that we'd be able to test people's intelligence just generally, so we can try to make people smarter or find out what is hindering their development.

You don't need an IQ test

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You can also email us if you can't find the code. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, for the rest of skeptical Sunday, I mean, if there's no way to determine intelligence, at least to a degree, then there's no way to find out if somebody's getting smarter. So doesn't that take the whole idea of education and kind of throw it out the window in a way?

Michael Regilio: It behooves us as a society to try and figure out a way to gauge intelligence, at least [00:41:00] generally speaking. I'm not sure breaking it all down into a single number is possible, but you'd like to think that we could come up with some sort of value.

Jordan Harbinger: But then again, intelligence is a concept really. So how can you nail it down to a series of questions?

Michael Regilio: Aha. This is the back and forth playing out to this day, and there are scholars, academics, and psychologists, you name it, on both sides of the fence. Some have disputed the idea that IQ has any value at all when measuring intelligence. Others believe it can determine academic potential or has validity for clinical purposes.

Others will straight up swear by the results and extrapolate all kinds of things from the data.

Jordan Harbinger: So what if we assume for argument's sake that IQ scores, or at least modern ones, are a valid way of measuring people's intelligence? What does the data that we've accumulated over the years tell us if anything, are there trends?

Are there takeaways? I'm almost afraid to hear the answer. Speaking of videocracy,

Michael Regilio: the results and [00:42:00] interpretations of long-term studies of IQ among large populations is hotly contested. But there is the Flynn Effect named after research James Flynn. This highlighted increases in IQ scores measured all across the world.

Over time. On average IQ scores were rising by about three points per decade, starting in the first half of the 20th century.

Jordan Harbinger: Meaning people generally speaking are getting smarter.

Michael Regilio: Great. And not buy a little. Three points per decade might be one small step for a 10 year period, but over the course of half a century, that's one giant leap for mankind's intelligence.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that seems super important, but it also seems like exponential growth, like that kind of needs an explanation of some sort. What's going on here? You nailed it

Michael Regilio: actually. It does, and that explanation seems to be environment. If IQ was mostly genetic and fixed, you wouldn't expect entire populations to get smarter over just a few decades.

Genes don't evolve that fast.

Jordan Harbinger: So what is it, I'm guessing nutrition, [00:43:00] as we've discussed, has to be one of the factors.

Michael Regilio: Absolutely. But other factors play in as well, like better health, cleaner water. And the one that kind of blew my mind was that we live in more cognitively demanding environments. People do more abstract thinking in the modern world, modern life just requires more problem solving and quote unquote, out of the box thinking.

Jordan Harbinger: Smaller family size might play as well, I don't know, but kids get more attention from parents, they get more resources. Maybe check out the

Michael Regilio: IQ on Jordan. That's right.

Jordan Harbinger: I am an only child, so it all

Michael Regilio: makes sense. Family size is in fact one of the many factors experts point to, to explain the flin effect. And there are plenty of studies that suggest that IQ is going up, or at least for several decades it was going up.

Jordan Harbinger: Ah, crap. So are we getting dumber now?

Michael Regilio: There is some data pointing to a decrease in iq. In recent years, Norway, Denmark, Finland have all [00:44:00] seen decreases in IQ ever since the 1990s in Britain, scores started dropping around the year 2004 In the United States, it's a mixed bag because you figured if anybody was getting dumber, it was Americans.

But there are hints that scores are dropping for people born after 1990.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Damn. Video games,

Michael Regilio: eh? Yeah. Could be. That's the appeal of the IQ test in the first place. If we do have a reasonably accurate way of measuring intelligence, then we can use that data and try and determine variables or factors that can affect intelligence.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, like nutrition, cleaner foods, smaller family sizes, yada yada. This makes sense. I feel bad I'm taking pot shots at Americans, but the data showed the Scandinavians suck it Norway, but it makes sense. My dad was a one of eight kids and Ukrainian immigrant. The parenting was different. They lived in a small house.

There wasn't a whole lot of, let me focus on helping Don with his homework. You know? It was like, no, I just, I'm trying to make sure [00:45:00] nobody dies in my watch. The end.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, I'm from a family of six kids Catholic. Go figure. I like to say my mother had three ways of helping me with my homework. First she tried yelling at me, then she tried screaming at me, and then she tried shrieking at me, and then she was totally out of ideas.

Jordan Harbinger: Geez. Yeah. So the family size thing does matter. Okay. And like I said, cleaner food and blah, blah, blah. Exactly.

Michael Regilio: If we don't have a measure of intelligence, at least in general, how can we tell if things are making us smarter or dumber?

Jordan Harbinger: Let's just say we're trying to assess if a person's cognitive abilities are declining.

I mean, don't we need a test for that kind of stuff?

Michael Regilio: Absolutely, and it's helpful to know if, say an aging person is starting to lose their intelligence and what can be done to reduce that decline. Also, how can we ensure that every school kid has the best opportunity to learn and succeed? How can we identify students who need extra assistance to achieve their potential

Jordan Harbinger: or standardized testing?

Isn't that what George w Bush's No. Child Left Behind was all about, not the pastd eating, but the standardized testing. Yeah.

Michael Regilio: Which from what I [00:46:00] remember of George w Bush's presidency, he may have done a little paste eating himself. Okay. I. Politics aside. Look, the fact of the matter is No Child Left Behind had good intentions, but became deeply unpopular and for valid reasons, it instituted standardized testing and schools were often seen as just trying to teach the test, which

Jordan Harbinger: is definitely a factor if I kept looking at piles of blocks and got really good at figuring out how many there were or practice pattern recognition.

I might do exceedingly well on a specific IQ test. That's actually how I ended up doing decent on the lsat, which is a test you take before you apply to law schools. But I would study old exams and stuff like that, and I knew that what I was studying would be on the test. I literally only took old exam questions.

Took a bunch of old practice tests and then if I had a trouble with something, I'd look it up in the book or whatever, and I, so I could be a full blown moron, but just be really good at specific tasks like your friend who took the same IQ test a dozen times and looked up all the [00:47:00] answers or whatever. It doesn't tell you their intelligence, it just tells you if they learned how to take the test.

Michael Regilio: And by the way, this doesn't mean that IQ tests are completely useless either. They still have some value. An IQ test can illustrate that someone, for instance, has difficulty with pattern recognition or word association. We're not saying that they aren't intelligent, but we can identify areas for improvement.

Jordan Harbinger: And for educational purposes, that can be helpful. Like when teachers see which subjects a student is having trouble with and focus extra attention there. I guess

Michael Regilio: maybe a kid has got a calculus down but needs help with creative writing. I think the takeaway here is that intelligence is complex. It's a concept that we should remain skeptical about when attempting to quantify especially into something as simple as a single number.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, this has me thinking about all that. Well, that's a good sign. Yeah. We've really only been talking about human intelligence as it relates to IQ tests. I actually, this would probably beyond the scope of whatever, I'm wondering how all this applies [00:48:00] to something like ai. Are

Michael Regilio: you asking what is chat GT's iq?

Jordan Harbinger: Do we know that? Is that even possible to measure?

Michael Regilio: Yeah. In fact, a guy by the name of Roy Vayan from Scientific American copied the exact questions from the Wexler Adult Intelligence Scale, and he tested chat GPT with it,

Jordan Harbinger: and I'm gonna imagine that it aced the test. Yeah,

Michael Regilio: the verbal IQ of chat GPT was better than 99.9% of the standardized sample of humans.

Jordan Harbinger: So yeah, we're doomed as expected.

Michael Regilio: Maybe, but like we said earlier, there's a lot of nuance when you're talking about intelligence. As they mentioned in their article in Scientific American CRA asked cha, GPT, what is the first name of the father of Sebastian's children? And Cha GPT couldn't get the answer.

I tried it when I was researching this and it couldn't get the answer either. Full disclosure, because chat GPT is getting better all the time and perhaps somebody from chat GPT read the article in Scientific American. I did it right [00:49:00] before you and I started taping it. Got the answer

Jordan Harbinger: really? So it learned that because in fact, I'm going to try it right now if I can.

So I just tried it right now real quick, and it asked me which Sebastian I'm referring to because it could be a lot of different people. So it still doesn't know that the obvious answer is Sebastian because that's a man, and I mean, I guess there are technical ways that Sebastian could have children.

That are his, even though he's not the father directly. I guess this should be like an easy one that unless you're thinking of these crazy exceptions, Chad should say it's probably Sebastian. However, it could be a myriad of other people because of these various scenarios. But yeah, it's, you're right. It's not quite there.

It's so, this is a riddle that if I had to think about it, it would just be so obvious. I'd like to think, I don't know, maybe I don't want to take all those IQ tests.

Michael Regilio: Ha ha. Oh, perhaps you're struggling with riddles, but you're crushing pattern recognition. Doesn't mean you're not [00:50:00] intelligent. I can count blocks, Michael.

I

Jordan Harbinger: can count blocks. Alright. It sounds like the Wexler test is a pretty prolific one. Is there like a short list of IQ tests?

Michael Regilio: Yeah, I'd say that the Wexler one, the Stanford Ben A five Ravens Progressive matrices, the. Catel culture, fair intelligence test. Those are the most highly recognized IQ tests out there today.

Jordan Harbinger: So if I score low on all those tests,

Michael Regilio: don't take it to heart for some reason. Exactly. Don't take it to heart. Even though IQ tests have certainly come a long way, they still have a lot of limitations. Real world scenarios, emotional intelligence, unpredictable situations, these are all things that can't be measured really in any of those tests.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So just because chat GPT scores high in an IQ test, it doesn't necessarily mean robots are gonna take over the world, at least not tomorrow.

Michael Regilio: AI systems are great at applying patterns based on its training, and obviously a computer is naturally going to be very good at math, but that doesn't mean that they have the kind of [00:51:00] broad adaptive intelligence that humans possess.

Crystallized intelligence, if you will. I. I told you, only Master Yoda has crystallized intelligence man. Such nerds.

Jordan Harbinger: So this leaves me with a kind of win-win scenario here when I'm out there taking IQ test, getting my scores. If I score high, I can lean into all the data and support for IQ tests and what they mean.

And if I score low on the IQ test, then I can lean into all the healthy skepticism of them and say that it just doesn't necessarily mean anything. 'cause I've got crystallized or some kind of other. Intelligence.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. You just won't get into the 9 9 9 Society, which is their loss at this point, I think. I don't know exactly.

I agree. But in all scenarios, I think what's important is that intelligence is incredibly complex. It's more than a simple three digit number, or in some of our cases, two digit number. And whether it's emotional intelligence, creativity, or problem solving skills, there are many ways to measure it or more accurately to try and measure it.

Jordan Harbinger: And even if IQ scores don't tell us [00:52:00] everything, it sounds like there's still some value in trying to understand how our minds work. Right? So tests can show us where somebody might need help, where they might excel. It's not about labeling people as smart or dumb or feeble minded in Basilic, whatever, but rather about identifying areas to improve or maybe even tap into.

Michael Regilio: Now that you've put it that way, I kind of feel bad that I kind of labeled my friend who took the IQ test eight times as dumb.

Jordan Harbinger: He might not be dumb. He might not even be an ILE or an idiot for that matter. I know him,

Michael Regilio: so I just feel bad that I said it on a podcast. That said, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses, and we all need to be very cautious and skeptical about putting too much stock in any single test or number.

Jordan Harbinger: At the end of the day, it sounds like IQ scores are not gonna tell the whole story of someone's life, whether it's overcoming obstacles, gaining skills through experience, or developing other kinds of intelligence. There's a lot more to human potential than any one test could [00:53:00] capture.

Michael Regilio: While IQ tests can offer some worthwhile insights, they're just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.

They can help us understand certain cognitive patterns, but they can't and shouldn't define who we are or what we're capable of.

Jordan Harbinger: An IQ test or any test for that matter. Shouldn't tell us what profession we need to be in or how the rest of our life is gonna look. It certainly doesn't tell us that one type of person is inherently smarter than the other.

Michael Regilio: Exactly. And take ai, for example, Chad, GBT, may ace the Wexler test, but it doesn't have the same holistic intelligence that we humans possessed. At least not yet. Human intelligence is much more nuanced than that.

Jordan Harbinger: Intelligence seems like a rich and diverse concept, and we just can't let one number dictate our self-worth or limit our potential.

That's what I'm telling myself right now anyway.

Michael Regilio: Sounds like maybe you did take one of those tests.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, maybe or maybe not, but I'm really considering it.

Michael Regilio: I say go for it. Just remember, it's not the end all be all. It's just another way to get to know yourself and help your intelligence [00:54:00] grow. I couldn't have put it better myself.

And who knows, maybe you will be inducted into Mensa or the Triple Nine Society, or maybe you'll just take pride in being a great podcast host. Jordan,

Jordan Harbinger: I think I'll stick with that one for now. Doing okay. Maybe I don't need to get out the ruler, so to speak. Smart move. Thanks everyone for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, jordan@jordanharbinger.com.

Show notes on the website, advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show. All at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter or Instagram. Michael Regilio over at Michael Regilio on Instagram tour. Dates are up now as well. We'll link to that in the show notes because nobody can spell Regilio.

This show is created in association with Podcast one. People with high IQs might be able to spell Regilio. I don't know. We'll see. This show is created in association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Tadas Sidlauskas, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and [00:55:00] opinions are our own, and I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer.

Do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show and remember, I. We rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.