 Alright. So let's shift now from talking about Houston. I want to, as part of covering a bunch of different, I want to talk a little bit about IQ. And some of you might know, but I discussed IQ in a previous episode, I don't know, a few months ago about the issue of IQ and race came up. And I have to say, whenever the issue of IQ and race comes up, I get pretty angry and pretty pissed off and upset, because I think tying the two together in any meaningful way, tying the two together in any way that has any practical importance, any meaningful value is ridiculous, is, you know, in many cases racist, and just silly, it's just silly, because individuals should be judged as individuals. And the question is, is the individual in front of you smart, given the role that he has to play and IQ. So one of the things I said during that period is I said that I said something about IQ is irrelevant and an insignificant measure. And it's true. I do believe that in evaluating, I do believe that as a measure applied to groups, it is irrelevant, meaningless, stupid. But I probably misspoke, I probably exaggerated the point when applied to individuals because I was so ticked off at the attempt to use IQ to in order to further a kind of a racist agenda. Yeah, I mean, IQ, it turns out has some pretty significant predictive powers over people's performances. Statistically speaking, doesn't mean anything with regard to particularly individuals and their abilities in the future. But in terms of predicting statistical prediction, IQ is a good predictor of success. High IQ people tend to do better than low IQ people in life, in school, in other things. IQ is a measure of intelligence. It's one measure of a certain type of intelligence. And I, you know, I've done some research on this, I am certainly no expert on this. And most of the people talking about this issues are not experts. But from what I can tell from reading the literature from actually going and reading scientific literature on IQ, I can say a few things. One, IQ is one measure of intelligence. There are others. And there's a big debate in the scientific community in terms of the mind and the biology of it and what we're measuring when we measure IQ. And what is intelligence and what are the components of intelligence? And one article here that says there are five different measures and IQ is just measuring one. You know, I don't know. And my suspicion is, and I'll get to this when I talk about the evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology topic as well. My, my strong suspicion is very high probability on this one. No certainty but a very high probability. The we know we and I include in the we scientists and psychologists and people who do the tests and people who evaluate the test know very little about the components of intelligence and what is biological and what is cultural and what is social and what is hormonal and what is nutritional and all these different components. We know some things. But in the big scheme of things, this is still an area of of scientific exploration that it's still in its relative infancy. And it's complicated because you're dealing with human beings. You're dealing with a mind. You're dealing with free will. You're dealing with an the most complex biological thing in the universe as far as we know the human brain and it's dealing with the influences on the individual from culture and society and everything around him on top of the biology on top of what I think is the most important issue which is free will. So if you take all those components and then you say well free will what is IQ is 100% genetic. I say BS nonsense. You don't know that. And there's tons of evidence in the literature. This I've read up on that that is just not true. So there is and this relates to race stuff. There is there are studies of a trans racial adoption. So white couples adopting a black kid black couples adopting a white kid. Primarily it's black kids being adopted by white parents. And IQ goes up significantly because based on things like social economics based on things like education based on things like the culture that the child is exposed to. So it is clearly not they've done twin studies about this. They've they've they've taken kids out of certain environments as I said and put them in different environments. And you see sharp increases in IQ. There's also the whole question of what is IQ exactly measuring. So the whole issue IQ while it does statistically correlate with certain outcomes and is interesting and I'm sure psychologists can use it and and and maybe even can be used in employment decisions and things like that. The idea that we understand what it means completely or the idea that we understand the relationship between IQ test and intelligence and what is intelligence. How do you define intelligence the ability to solve what kind of problems. These are still issues in the science of of the mind science of the brain issues that probably that psychology and and and biologists are going to have a lot to say about not to mention the the question of the extent to which free will impact IQ and that is if and this is pure speculation this is your on brook just speculating off the cuff right. To what extent does somebody taking idea seriously taking knowledge seriously taking his mind seriously actually impact his intelligence and and all of those factors taking stuff seriously all factors of free will of choices that one makes my point is that we know very little and we shouldn't pretend to know a lot and we shouldn't make definitive statements about these things and particularly if you haven't really studied it and if you aren't really an expert in the field and I am not so I'm not going to make definitive statements about this but let me let me uh so let me say how to measure intelligence I don't know the literature seems to be conflicted about this question and it seems to be a lot of data that's just that measuring intelligence IQ test is not enough to really measure an intelligence. There's a lot of evidence that how you brought up makes a difference culture and and the home environment that you brought up makes a difference in IQ. I'm suggesting that free will whether you engage to the extent that you are focused plays a role ultimately in the level of your intelligence. Now I want to relate this to race so first I would say this and I think I said during the show I don't really care about race race is irrelevant and race for all intents and purposes doesn't exist right so if you know I'm just going to use and I differentiate here between race and genes. Genes are really really important right particularly for disease particularly for certain attributes genes are really really important genes are what determine the color of my eyes genes have determined my height probably although nutrition probably plays a role there as well that's why human beings have become taller over time as we become richer and eaten better and you know genes play a role in my health it turns out it looks like again we know very little unfortunately about these things they play a big role in health and so I'm not against looking at somebody's genes and and and you know particularly when it comes to health so somebody criticize me about how can you say there's no such thing as race when there's certainly genetic differences between people yeah every single individual has genetic differences and it's true that since some of us share certain genes we're more likely to have certain diseases so I share some genes with a lot of people identify as Ashkenazi Jews so when you know one of the relevant questions to ask me when I go to the doctor with a stomach ache is are you an Ashkenazi Jew because is what's the probability you have the genes that cause a particular disease that cost stomach ache it's a bad disease so you have to deal with it quickly the fact that I'm saying race is irrelevant the fact that I'm saying race doesn't really exist the fact that I'm saying race is in a sense a construct it is a construct that doesn't mean I'm ignoring the fact that we're genetically different and the fact that groups of us have overlapping genomes and that there's value in knowing those overlapping genomes but you know what I did one of these gene things and you know where you spit into a tube and they tell you what diseases you're susceptible to and they also tell you where you have it to just and on my father's side I have this Q something snippet gene snippet I don't even know what it means and this I share this with people who lived in Siberia a long long time ago and it turns out that those people split up and many of them went and crossed the bearing straights and are now in Latin America and Central America and Northern America the American Indians so it turns out that based on that I have a huge amount in common I've actually more in common with American Indians than I do with Europeans on my father's side now that's all BS irrelevant to anything it's kind of interesting it's kind of cute and maybe it's relevant to some diseases that might have gone through the genetic code in those snippets but it's not relevant to anything in anybody's life it's not relevant to any decision one would ever make about anything so treating you know the fact that certain groups score lower or higher on any particular test you know is irrelevant as a group the only thing that matters and I don't know why you even slice the data based on the group the only thing that matters is you are you qualified to do the job I want you to do are you smart enough are you productive enough are you energetic enough are you you know good at math enough or you good at verbal stuff enough whatever whatever it happens to me do you know the skill set that I need to hire you that's it what your color of your skin is what your genome is who cares it's irrelevant and therefore race is irrelevant and the only thing that makes race relevant is people who choose to do so who choose to do so which means racist whites who want to enslave blacks or whites who want to treat backs as inferior or blacks who want to treat whites as inferior or just want to treat whites badly because they feel like even the ancestors were treating unjustly in the past or whatever race should have nothing to do with human decisions and therefore it's irrelevant and any discussion of it yeah it's a what do you call it a social construct call me a lefty go ahead we're gonna take a break here and then I want to say a few things about evolutionary psychology unless that question didn't Rand say that most people use the small amount of their intelligence anyway yeah I mean I think people use a small amount of their warm biological capabilities whatever the hell that means and that a lot of it has to do with what how you apply your mind and how you apply your mind is a question of free will not a question of biological determinism not a question of your racial inclinations not a question of your race or it's what or your genes sorry or what you're born with free will I believe you know free will is not caused by your genes now I don't want to get into a huge discussion of free will but free will is not caused by your genes it's free will it's initiated by you that is its essential characteristic that it's initiated or not and then you're just cruising in life following other people doing what they say or doing what they don't say but not initiating thought not initiating your mind your consciousness to engage with reality free will is that engagement it's that going into focus choosing to go into focus and then somebody mentions that I think absolutely right that beyond that I think your ability to become in a sense more intelligent is dependent on what you do with the tool that you have that is to what extent do you integrate your knowledge to what extent do you use logic to what extent do you use concepts and definitions and keep constants clear and and file them properly in your subconscious if you will so to what all of that the more efficient you can organize your knowledge the more intelligent you will be even if when you were young you might have scored a lower IQ otherwise I mean it's hard to it's we don't really have the language even to talk about this because all we have is IQ as a measure of intelligence but I don't believe that that's the only measure of intelligence or the most important in measure of intelligence the most comprehensive measure of intelligence I just think this is still field in its infancy but to to underestimate the importance of free will which I think which we'll get to in a minute as well when we talk about evolutionary psychology is a massive massive massive mistake and so somebody here says innate intelligence pales in comparison to rationality and I agree completely rationality being rational using logic engaging using it integrating it you know it practicing it practicing living by the objective epistemology by logic is far more important than whatever you were born with now that that is a very unpopular of you so the whole I really want to put to bed the whole issue race forget race it's irrelevant and I don't know who I'm yelling at here but hopefully some this I'm having an impact on somebody I have no idea all right I want to switch then to evolutionary psychology now just just to be clear again not if my field I'm not an expert don't know much about this but I know and but I know enough to ask the right kind of questions and what I want to do is ask some questions because I know a lot of you for example is a fans of Jordan Peterson and fans of other people out there who are who use evolutionary psychology all the time I see it on YouTube videos I see it in Facebook I see it on Twitter I see it everywhere everybody just assumes evolutionary psychology is true I I watch the video of Steven Pinker debating this woman and I forget the woman's name but about the difference between men and women and again using kind of the evolutionary psychology made what I take to be the evolutionary psychology methodology to do that and you know and I have a lot of questions so I'm most again to be asking questions I mostly want to suggest to you this idea that this is another one of those fields that is young new that we know very little about and when people come out and say definitive things oh men behave this way because they evolved in this way I don't know men tend to want to have many sexual partners because they're promiscuous because they generate lots of sperm and they need to distribute that sperm because what's important evolutionarily is having children right and and that drives men to have the inclination to have affairs and to sleep with many women right right I mean I've heard this this is not this is not unusual this is a common claim women on the other hand can only can only have you know one baby at a time they they they are weaker therefore they need to latch on to the one man that impregnates them they need to keep him around so they they they are much more likely to be monogamous women also attracted to wealthy guys because those this is all stuff that comes out of evolutionary psychology some of its pop evolutionary psychology some of its real evolutionary psychology whatever that means now what is evolutionary psychology now this is a definition this is from their science daily but they but I'm sure there are there's evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts so first of all it's in the field of psychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traits useful mental and psychological traits such as memory perception or language as adaptations as the functional products of natural selection so their ideas natural selection has selected certain mental and psychological traits all right so I want to ask a simple question I don't expect that I don't expect an answer a bit these are the kind of questions I would ask do we understand in psychology in psychology that that's the field that does evolution in psychology do we have a good understanding in psychology on what are right what are traits capabilities and behaviors right what are they does psychology have a good understanding or perception is or do you think you would come to different conclusions about perception if you held different philosophical views within evolutionary psychology do the psychologists have good understanding of emotions and where they come from and the relationship between emotions and ideas and thoughts do they understand what thoughts are and you know the basis for thought do they understand the idea of rationality and what rationality is do they value reason do they believe in free will and what is the role of free will vis a vis whatever psychological traits we might have received through evolution through through natural selection so these are kind of questions I would ask and I don't think from everything I've read and from all the videos I've watched that there is what I see in in even in the best thinkers even in the talk call it the Jordan Peterson's of the world and and the Stephen Pinkers of the world and the woman he debated is almost no mention of free will no mention of human reason no mention of rationality no mention of what they mean by traits what is the border of trait do they think for example you know where does where does and I you can even go deeper what is psychology actually studying is psychology science yet how much knowledge do we have in psychology notice that the evolutionary psychologist often ignore cognitive psychology which from the little I understand is probably most interested in thinking and in ideas and in concepts and the impact that ideas and concepts have on emotions so you know so you know I don't know I don't know again this is not my field so I'm not gonna you're not gonna pretend to have answers but I would just say be aware be aware of of these definitive answers that they come across men are different than women because here's the list now I am convinced unequivocally without any question that men are different than women and that there is a biological basis for that I'm convinced of that a biological basis and a psychological basis that men are different women how in what ways in particular again above my pay grade but the very fact that men and women are biologically so different is gonna make them different in other in the way they relate to reality the very fact the men and women have have you know a different biological experiences men don't have a menstrual cycle I think a menstrual cycle has an impact on a woman now what the impact I don't know but it's an experience a man will never have you know the experience of thinking men and women have the same right the experience of I don't know having an al into the physical experience of having to walk of having to think of it all of those experiences similar are the same between men and women and therefore I don't think there's any cognitive difference between men and women in that sense but they are differences and how they manifest themselves in emotion or in behavior or you know is interesting it's interesting in values and values they seek is interesting the fact that the male penetrates the female is significant it's not irrelevant it can't be relevant psychologically the fact that for the most part men rape women women don't rape men that is significant so all of that plays into the differences between men and women and all of that should should be studied now there is a legitimate question and that is what traits and I don't even know exactly what traits are but what traits are genetic so I can tell you that my two sons were completely different from minute one in what way were they different in how how aware they were of their surroundings how much sleep how much they slept you know whether the eye movements the level in which they engaged with the environment around them the amount of crying so all these things now do we understand those differences they're pretty simple so those are pretty simple and and I don't think we have a full understanding on so I look I'm not saying evolutionary psychology is determinism is deterministic necessarily although I think many evolutionary psychologists are determinists but even to ask the questions of what are traits what I inherited traits what are learned habits maybe traits of by definition inherited what are habits what it what influence the traits have on our cognitive functioning what influences do our traits have on our emotions on our habits on you know our psychology on our capabilities and ultimately on our behavior I think that evolution psychology is way too dependent on statistics way too dependent on storytelling that is making up story evolutionary stories that explain what they want to explain they've got a theory they've got it and then they go back and they find a story in evolution to explain it you know it's it's very very questionable as a science and and you know I ran said that in her lifetime she said psychology was in its infancy it was just beginning as a science they were just starting to think about what were the relevant questions and I think to some extent that is true I think to some extent that is true and if that's true if psychology is still very early then evolutionary psychology is even earlier and evolutionary psychology won't be a fully fledged science until it has those psychological foundations built until we understand more of what we are talking about what are the core scientific questions we have to ask what is psychology so my suspicion is that much of what you hear in evolutionary psychology is just is is just not true it's it's it's statistics and correlations and and correlate and I saw this with Steven Pickers presentation correlations on a correlation is not causality and they try to attribute causality and they and they they come up with biological evolutionary stories to make the causal attribution but look I know a little bit about evolution and I you know and I've studied some biology and I think most people let me rephrase that I think most intelligent people I think most intelligent educated people don't really understand biology sorry don't really understand evolution evolution is not trivial what natural selection is is not trivial so beware of becoming a amateur psychologist beware becoming an amateur evolutionary psychologist because I think the professionals are on shaky ground I think the amateurs don't know what they're talking about and I see too many out there way too many amateur evolutionary psychologist so I'm not saying it's an illegitimate field I'm just saying it's young it's new there's a lot of questions to ask and without the right philosophical framework it's very difficult to ask the right questions and since they don't have the right philosophical framework they're not asking the right questions right you know as some people apply this behavior so it's a little different but they apply evolutionary psychology to finance or to economics and there's some interesting results there there's some interesting things that come out when you test large groups and you find that majorities have certain biases now a that's just a statistical statistic that says that some people have a bias let's say you know people overestimate risk they overestimate risk they don't actually do the math and calculate risk we're talking about finance where the risk is you can actually estimate it they get clear probabilities they get clear decisions and they tend to overestimate how risky something is all right so 65% of people overestimate the risky something is so what so is that coded is that genetic is that inherent in human nature I mean maybe I don't know I don't see how can you teach them how to do it and if you teach them do they improve so I once talked to one of these evolutionary psychologist who applies this behavioral economics they applies it to behavioral economics is he's got an Israeli name and he's he's got like 80% of his body's burns I forget his name right now a very famous guy and first of all the studies he did were completed out of nonsense completed out of nonsense studies I could poke holes in those studies all day long and these studies were published in academic literature and were and were published in books and everything so I would so it was terrible it was just ridiculous and he came to conclusions without any evidence without any proof and then I asked him I met this guy and I asked him okay when you do this stuff and you discover I don't know people have certain biases people don't they don't people don't save for the future because they the future is hard to think about it's far in the future so people have a tendency not to save so the conclusion is people inherently biased against the long-term and they for don't save so we have to force them to save this is part of the argument that modern liberals and nudged libertarians have for forcing people to save right because they don't we know we've studied them right and I asked him I said do you discover these things so you can teach people how to be better thinkers because then I think it's fine right we can discover cognitive errors people tend to make some people tend to make and we can teach them how to fix them oh yeah don't Dan Ariely is his name Dan Ariely stay away from the guy he's awful Dan Ariely he is terrible he's so bad anyway so I asked him he said no there's no point in teaching people how to think they can't think they're biased there's no way to change that I said then how do you have you fix your biases why are you not biased oh well you know I'm different I mean so Plato's philosopher king it was just unbelievable right he said something like one of his theories is that he justifies using this is that managers have no clue who they good employees and their bad employees are so when they give people raises they give people bonuses it's completely random and it's completely ineffective and and there's no real correlation between bonuses and performance because managers don't know they're not they can't be objective they can't think right the impossibility of being think of actually being rational and objective and he studies this and he tests and he shows that people are not this but when I asked him whether university professors are good at grading their graduate students and deciding who's a good graduate students and who's not and helping them get jobs the good ones are not helping the bad ones get jobs then he said oh absolutely we know how to do that it's those business people they have they don't have a clue and and there's no way to teach them he added right there's no way to teach them so stay away from down a reality and and I'd stay away I generally would stay away from behavioral psychology unless that's your field unless you're studying it it's irrelevant so most things in life unless you're an academic interested in it I mean I find some of the arguments kind of interesting and I've but it's just amazing to me how much of the stuff online just takes evolutionary psychology for granted takes these things just as a given IQ race thing is a given and they run with it and you see it all over the place including people who are good on things like free speech and good on other things all right well Malin you let me just say about Stefan Malin you Malin you just is is an utter ira irrationalist who uses evolutionary psychology IQ test anything he can find to justify his racism his bigotry his anti-immigration his political views generally so he uses pseudoscience to justify politics which is not a new thing authoritarians of all he's done it Stefan Malin is particularly nasty when it comes to this he is a real anti-Semite and you know just watch some of his stuff he's done in Israel and you know others I think do it more you know what you call it honestly or innocently you know I respect people like God said and Peterson and and so on I you know I think they really they think this is science and partially it's you know think about it nobody teaches rationality nobody teaches reason nobody teaches free will the role of free will the role of choices nobody actually studies the interaction of these things with the traits that we have in the capabilities that maybe that we we're born with and clearly we're born with something and we're born different and men and women are different but how do you take that and and and then take your understanding of reason and rationality and integrate it and come up with new knowledge I mean that is hard hard hard hard stuff and right do you know of a main trait that evolutionary psychologists point to as positive does it fall in with objectivism I'm not sure what the question give any example because I don't know what the question really asks what do we mean by a trait right what's a trait and that's a fundamental question a basic question right what is it now you know there's no we different on outside there's reason to believe our brains are constructed a little differently and in the different construction of a brain is going to have an impact on our capabilities and I think certainly our capabilities are different but how that manifests itself certainly how that manifests itself psychologically is a big big question some evolutionary psychologists recognize the trade is win-win but not all of them I've seen many people who don't many people who don't so again you know I'm reading from comments here from questions don't it don't you know you're reading the ones that are more free market and it's not true the trade is always win-win right it's not true the trade is always win-win voluntary trade is not always win-win I mean objectivism doesn't hold the voluntary trade is always win-win I mean people lose all the time people voluntarily engage in altruistic behavior that is a losing behavior towards other people all the time now I know that in my talks about capitalism I talk about win-win in a particular context in a context of economics and even there people sometimes do engage and lose transaction because they they go buy stuff they can't afford they go spend money they don't have they take on debt that is not that they don't have you can't divorce winning in objectivism you can't divorce winning from being rational you can't divorce winning from being rational so to the extent people out there engaging in economical other activities and are not rational they're not win-win relationships they're voluntary the preference maximizing in some way short-term preference maximizing but they're not necessarily win-win now this is hard and that's why sometimes even I in my talks fall back on well trade is win-win not always rational trade is win-win when rational people trade it's win-win that's the way to think about it you cannot libertarians tend to think that any human activity is selfish self-interested because a human in engaged in and that therefore we're all selfish because everything we do is in our only interest that's just not true and that's a whole other topic we'll talk about another time alright psychological traits like maybe loving your family more having less empathy for enemies I don't I can't imagine that either one of those is evolutionary as anything to do with evolution and has anything to do with biology I might be wrong but I don't think they have I think these have to do with the values they're chosen they have to do with the choices you make they have to do with what how you grow up the you know the kind of decisions you make based on the experiences that you have while you are growing up but I don't think a baby is born loving or not loving or baby is born with more empathy or less empathy I you know I don't think that's true right came and developed through kids those who can selection how do you know that is that how biology works is that how evolution works and once you have once you have a human consciousness with free will does evolution still work the same way so once human being can make choices does evolution work the same way does it code into us instincts in a sense and I ran said no I in rents argued that at least that ideas cannot be coded into us that and since I emotions a product of our ideas then how much we love X is not coded into us it's a product of an idea it's a product of a choice it's a product of a decision we made no but it's not clear and it's not clear to me that cavemen followed a general altruistic ethos I don't believe I don't know that that's true I don't know that that they did it because it was evolutionarily helpful to them I mean imagine if you're if you're a tribe in a cave you're living in caves right and suddenly somebody comes up with the idea of individualism and hey we should all be selfish and we should all allow the human mind to flourish and we should all be thinking and when somebody creates something new we shouldn't we shouldn't beat him up we should celebrate him would they have a competitive advantage versus other tribes and other caves that don't have that attitude I mean the idea that altruism is a survival benefit to human beings with a rational mind is nuts it's nuts and it's nuts in a cave it's nuts in a clan it's nuts in agriculture society and it's nuts today sorry it doesn't work you can't code in moral ideas we're not coded with altruism so what does and I ran said I'm I'm ran believes in tabla rasa we're born tabla rasa what does that mean again what does that mean I'm not sure what it means but it suddenly means we have no ideas we don't inherit in our genes any ideas what do we inherit in our genes cuz clearly we're different genetically I don't know and I doubt any of you do either and I'm curious when the first real objectivist intellectual thinker who studied the philosophy understands reason understands objective epistemology deeply when that person goes into evolutionary psychology or psychology I think it'll have really interesting things to say about these issues I'm not that person so I'm not gonna have interesting things to say other than to question what you're saying because I think a lot of you a lot of people out there don't know what they're talking about don't know what they're talking about yeah I mean free will changes everything human consciousness human consciousness changes everything including how we evolve including what evolution means I think evolution means here I'm really going off on a limb I think evolution means something very different when it comes to human beings and I suspect that once you introduce free will and once you introduce the kind of conceptual consciousness that human beings have that evolution stops working at least stops working in the conventional sense so I mean what I encourage you those of you interested in these topics think about it but before you go jump in evolutionary psychology and into the mumbo jumbo there go really study the objective is to epistemology really get understanding really get to understand what I ran means by tabula rasa what she means by ideas where emotions actually come from and introspect yeah so somebody says your reason disconnected us from evolution yeah I think that's right I think reason disconnects us from evolution in a in a really really significant way now is that everything there is to say about the topic I doubt it but so evolutionary psychology you know maybe it's probably it's probably miss a misnomer the real question is when evolutionary transitioned from an animal consciousness to what is a modern humans consciousness when that transition hundred thousand years ago five hundred thousand years ago I don't know what happened what happened biologically and then what happened psychologically and in what is left biologically in terms of traits and things like that alright somebody's asking about the school of psychology the geno-golan practices I think practice by genome I think it's called cognitive psychology but you'd have to check with her I think it's cognitive psychology which is very different which places at the center do all of ideas alright I want to make this last point and we're not gonna have a lot we're not gonna have time for questions so what we're gonna have to do a session just in questions because it turns out that even on topics I know very little about and have very little to say on I I say a lot of stuff I might be a vice not a virtue I'm not sure some of you will let me know I'm sure