 Coming up next Barbara Drescher is going to be next of course Her talk is why Mensa will never eliminate world hunger It's a great title. She's the JRF's educational programs consultant She's a national science foundation fellow and her very quick haiku is Mensa tests are hard Unless you're a member of well, you know Mensa Here she is Barbara Drescher and thanks for coming out so early to see Richard Saunders and not leaving when I took the stage. Hey, I'm gonna jump right in and tell you a story Paul Frampton fell for a honey trap He's a divorced man of 68 He'd begun corresponding with this woman Denise Malani She's a bikini model in her early 30s, and he started talking to her in November of 2011 now though he'd never Okay, so if you can't tell Paul is on the left Denise is on the right so anyway again, she's a bikini model in her early 30s and He started talking to her online in November of 2011. He never really spoke with her not directly. It was always in text but in January of 2012 He decided to set out to Bolivia where she was doing a photo shoot to meet her Two weeks later. He was sitting in a jail in Buenos Aires arrested for transporting two liter kilos of cocaine into the country So this is what happened Paul Frampton was sent a ticket from Chapel Hill, North Carolina to Bolivia by way of Toronto When he got to Toronto he discovered that the ticket for the second leg was not valid he waited in Toronto for another ticket and Four days later He arrived in Bolivia But Malani was no longer there. She had to go to Brussels for another photo shoot But was she mind bringing a bag that she left in Bolivia? Because she'd send him another ticket to Brussels, but could he just bring this back. He had sentimental value apparently nine days later a Man handed him a black cloth suitcase. Just one of those plain suitcases we you know probably all brought one and He filled it with his dirty laundry and he headed to the airport He was sure he was soon going to get off a plane in Brussels and head for a hotel Where he would finally meet Denise Malani But he didn't make it out of the airport in Buenos Aires the evidence suggests that Frampton knew the bag contained cocaine it even suggests that he knew how much was in it But it also suggested that he believed that Denise Malani loved him and he seemed to think that they would sell the cocaine Get married settle down and have a family So if you're like me About now you're wondering just how dumb the sky is Well Paul Frampton's a tenured professor of physics at UNC He's got over 450 publications. That's an astronomical amount by the way He's co-authored with three Nobel laureates He's not stupid But I don't think any of you would deny that What he did was pretty stupid So what does this have to do with world hunger? Well as a young adult in the late 80s, I was really searching for something I was searching for people that I could talk to that would give me a challenge, you know Science literature deeper meaning all those things you look for when you're late adolescent young adult That's probably why a lot of you came to this meeting to or why you go to the local Skeptics in the pub, you know to meet other people who can talk to you about deep things that not everybody wants to talk about Well, I joined Mensa and I'm not afraid to admit it. I had a good excuse. I was young naive and Ironically pretty stupid So those of you who haven't heard of it Mensa is it an organization It's really a club and the only criteria for membership in this club is that your IQ is in the top 2% of the population Now that's only 1 in 50 people That's really not all that exclusive if you think about it. In fact, it's probably closer to 1 in 25 because a little thing We call measurement error So a lot more than 1 in 50 probably get in But I thought 1 in 50 at the time I didn't know anything about statistics and I thought what if it was probably enough To give me what I was looking for it to guarantee that there would be some smart people that I could talk to that would You know talk about deep stuff and science and all of that And I thought that I would probably feel pretty stupid when I was around them, but that was a good trade-off So imagine my excitement when that packet came in the mail and I poured over the contents and there were events and Special interest groups are called SIGs for short That I could participate in and so I went through the list of SIGs and I saw a bunch of cool stuff like Scrabble by mail Okay, that's fun But if I really just if all I wanted was a challenge in Scrabble I could let my mom kick my ass and she did that regularly Then I saw like writer's SIG. Okay, that's a little more like it Star Trek SIG. Oh, yeah Okay, but then I saw them ESP SIG Angels SIG Astrology SIG I Kind of lost interest in Mensa It faded pretty quickly and then I got a job in the software industry for a while And I was around people who were smarter than me and that was plenty But then many years later I had kids and like a lot of people who kind of lose their You know they're not really interested in religion until they had kids and suddenly they they're interested because they want to make sure they raise their kids right I rejoined Mensa and the hope was really that my very geeky kids who Outrun me intellectually. I thought that they might feel a little more comfortable If at least once in a while they were able to hang around kids that I knew, you know We had a test that said that they were smart Okay, so I got the information and now I can get it all online and I saw the list of SIGs and you know A lot of them are still there in fact Here's the list of Some of the SIGs that you can currently see On the list at Mensa. There's a parapsychology SIG. There's conspiracy theories. There's a prep first thing. There's all the usual Religious affiliations including atheists You'll have to look that one up. So he asked what starving the monkeys is to just look it up. I Can't explain it It's based on a book So I I also did what I did before I read the material and I started reading the Mensa bulletin and One featured story informed me that science does not have a consensus Regarding the man-made nature of global warming and that AGW was a product of McCarthyism So this was in 19 in 2008 this was after the IPP at the IPCC consensus statement The author also had some really harsh and rather ironic criticisms for the act of making claims without evidence But her own arguments were so clearly fallacious and irrational that I was fuming I mean you could have seen smoke coming out of my ears. So what do I do? I write a letter to the editor and it doesn't go published Neither did any letters that were really critical of this article that I could see and I wasn't surprised Mensa was founded over 65 years ago Primarily for the purpose of fostering intelligence for the betterment of humanity. I Think that that what they really thought what they what they probably thought is a bunch of smart people get into a room and start talking They can solve all the world's problems But that was 65 years ago and frankly, I'm really not quite sure what Mensa has done other than provide some scholarships now individual mensons have yes because They're smart. Okay, but as a group They make games. I like the games But they make games. Okay, so hence this is why Mensa will never eliminate world hunger that the rest of it I'm is what I'm going to be talking about here Because intelligence just doesn't work that way Okay, most people realize that there's a difference between say book smarts and street smarts You know we talk about common sense, and I'm not even really sure what that word means But we seem to have this intuitive understanding that Intelligence is not quite what rationality is But we still seem to expect that intelligence and knowledge are going to predict rational behavior Or should somehow predict rational behavior is if rationality is some kind of byproduct of intelligence and unfortunately It's not it's just not how it works, and we're starting to understand How that is and how to measure it. Hopefully we will have a measure fairly soon where we can actually measure rationality separate from it intelligence Even skeptics. I mean you'll hear this several times this week, and I'm sure I've already heard it a few times We seem to find it fall into this Thinking that if we just give people the right facts That they'll change their minds about vaccines ESP global warming you name it if we just tell people the truth They'll change their minds, and that's just not how people work So let's tease this apart a little bit, but first I've got to start with some some basic definitions. I Think that these definitions Most almost all cognitive psychologists will agree with them although I've simplified the at least the rationality Definition a bit so I'm going to define rationality is a consistent belief structures and behavior that maximum maximize that goal Fulfillment so we're not talking about what your goals are But whether or not you make decisions and choices and take actions and hold beliefs that maximize the goals that you do have So in other words those thought processes and behaviors that lead you to what you really want Okay, like eliminate world hunger Intelligence That which is measured by IQ tests you can laugh at that you didn't maybe because you know that's true I'm really kind of only half joking. That's pretty much the definition of IQ and And we do understand what IQ measures It does measure something and I'm actually going to pause a little bit right here and say I'm not knocking IQ I'm not knocking intelligence. I'm not knocking IQ tests, and I'm not even knocking Mensa For one thing IQ test do test intelligence The question is what is intelligence and understanding that we have a pretty narrow definition of what it is and Intelligence is a very very useful thing It just isn't the same thing as rationality and without rationality We don't make the kinds of decisions that solve our problems our everyday problems, or they get us what? To more toward our goals that get us what we really want And there are many many fascinating ways that human beings are predictably Irrational and many of you are familiar with them things like we tend to think that more is always better We fail miserably at understanding probability isn't assessing risks We look for evidence for what we believe Rather than believe what the evidence tells us is true The people we like always innocent always good always right We buy lottery tickets. We play roulette Hopefully none of you have done that this weekend and we buy extended warranties We're afraid to fly But we drive drunk Because who doesn't drive better when they're drunk, right? But we're capable of overriding all these natural tendencies. Okay, our brains are not broken They just have a default setting Rather than talk more about the ways in which we're irrational which you'll get lots of especially if you've done some of the workshops I'm gonna talk a little bit more about why What keeps us from Overcoming those things and and being rational and one of the take-home messages is it's not usually because we're stupid Intelligence is a factor in rationality, but it's a smaller one than than some of us may think and just to give you an example when we give instructions to people to avoid these biases and heuristics and we show them to them or we make it obvious then All of a sudden people with high intelligence do better on those tasks. They Succeed at tasks that they normally normally would have failed on okay So it's sort of like when you tell them what to do suddenly they know what to do and they do it So Paul Frampton wasn't stupid. We're not irrational just because we're stupid the men some member who wrote that article wasn't stupid George W. Bush isn't stupid really He's not what is the problem. He is irrational. Okay So did he says that we need to look a little bit about how we measure Good thinking and and then I'll get to the difference between them. Oh Psychologists We differentiate in our measurements between things like optimal Situations and typical situations and we're talking about performance situations because when we measure we often measure performance sometimes its attitudes, but optimal performance Situations are situations in which the participants aware that they're expected to do their best they know what they need to do to maximize their performance and What we want to know really what the experimenter wants to know is what people can do in a typical performance situation They usually the instructions are fuzzy the goals can be fuzzy at times We don't make it obvious. We don't make things obvious and what we really want to know is What people will do? Typical performance situations quite often don't have a correct answer So that isn't a matter of performance on matters So much as it is a matter of trying to determine what people Prefer so IQ tests are optimal performance situations So what they're measuring is something that we call cognitive abilities Unfortunately Rationality can't be assessed without at least including some typical performance situations Because it's sort of by definition. We want to know if you're making good choices We not want to know not if you can make good choices but if you will make good choices and typical performance situations measure something we call Thinking dispositions sometimes they also measure ability, but ability can't necessarily tap into these thinking dispositions Well thinking dispositions Are things like they're rooted in personal goals or routine goals beliefs belief structure and attitudes about belief How to form beliefs changing beliefs? some examples of thinking dispositions are Open-mindedness Consideration for future consequences so long-term thinking Dogmatism superstition the need for cognition and there are other there's actually quite a long list here some things like need for closure kind of the opposite of the need for cognition and To be rational We need to not only know when to override that default thinking, but we have to actually put it in place Okay, so it requires more than critical thinking more than problem-solving ability It requires us to hold our current worldview in a kind of escrow You know while we hold while we consider an alternative view with an open mind and some of these thinking Dispositions get in the way of that I mean clearly things like dogmatism are going to get in the way of you holding your current beliefs Back so that you can examine something in with an open mind Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Some of the thinking dispositions they get in the way of being rational One of them is that last one need for cognition. What we're really referring to is How a variation among people and how much they want to think about something Something we call intellectual curiosity This is one of the things that that a lot of people say Bush did not have was intellectual curiosity If you're not if you're not willing to or you're not you don't have a desire to think something through you won't necessarily We are naturally cognitive misers You've probably heard that term several times this weekend already and that means that we use as little energy as possible To meet our goals what we don't always consider is are we meeting our actual goals? And I'm going to give you an example here. This is a great problem that I like It's a classic Jack is looking at Anne but Anne is looking at George Jack is married George is not is a married person looking at an unmarried person You have three options. Yes. No and cannot be determined. Okay, very quickly without thinking about it too much. Who says yes Who says no Who says cannot be determined? aha Congratulations, you're normal people, but you're wrong. Okay, um the key here is We've got a situation if you're like most people you said see okay, but the correct answer is a Most people notice that they don't know anything about Anne Okay, and you see an option for cannot be determined and you stop there now when we present the same problem without the option Of cannot be determined you have to answer yes or no people put a little more work into it The cognitive miser can no longer be miserly because you can't get to an answer by just leaving it there Okay, you have to think of the alternatives Here's the possibilities if you think about it Anne is either married or unmarried And you'll you won't know if she's married or unmarried, but it doesn't you'll if you think about those possibilities Then you'll realize that it doesn't matter because if Anne is Married Well, then she's looking at George. She's not married And if Anne is not married Shit Jack is looking at her So either way the answer is correct Okay Yeah, a lot of you're going oh And now it's obvious Right, but we have to actually take the time to consider those alternatives So that we realize that we can solve our problems and a lot of time I think people just throw their hands up thinking they can't solve the problem Okay, so that need for cognition is One of those thinking dispositions that affect rationality and there's actually many I'm kind of I'm kind of giving a composite view here Because there's too many and some of them are very highly related Like open-mindedness adherence to belief and flexible thinking these are all related and they're actually related to the next bullet point I have Overconfidence in one-sided thinking that's a big one the more over confident We are we are the less open-minded we're going to be and the less flexible we're going to be because we think we're right We don't think we have a reason to think to listen to what somebody else is saying And now why is this so bad? Well We turning to our professor and drug smuggler Paul Frampton was warned by a friend and colleague when he was in Bolivia He called a friend and told him what was going on and the friend said okay Who's your next of kin because you're not coming home? And he laughed it off, okay But the text messages that he sent to Milani while he was waiting in the airport made it clear that he knew about the Cocaine he actually thought those messages would exonerate him Even though they're all about selling the cocaine Because he thought that it would it would exonerate him because it also made it clear that he was transporting the bag for someone else Somehow that was okay In his eyes he was innocent because it wasn't his bag and it should be no surprise Any of the psychologists in the the audience that two psychologists Testified that Frampton had traits of narcissistic personality disorder His downfall was over confidence. Okay, so that's one of those thinking dispositions that he was real low on Well, I guess real high on over confidence and and If you're overconfident you don't even think about the way the rest of the world might work and that can put you in hot water in a lot of ways It's also very damaging in everyday life and the Dillon Keenburg and I conducted a study a few years ago after noticing a correlation between Entitlement attitudes study habits and academic performance and we learned that students with high entitlement attitudes Were the most overconfident and that shouldn't be surprising But they were also the least competent and that's the Dunning-Kruger effect for those of you are familiar with it And for those of you who aren't please look it up. It's excellent They tend to attribute academic performances to outside Control things that are outside of their control like the teacher or the test the type of test And these students also tend to use poorly poor study strategies like flashcards and Memorizing bullets on lecture slides and things and this created something that I call oops a cycle of incompetence I'm actually going to backtrack a little bit here and talk about the Some of the reasons we're irrational and then I'll show you the cycle of incompetence We are the things that may we think we're irrational about we think we're irrational sometimes because we're stupid because we lack some information or lack of Education so that's ignorance as well But the things that we overlook are the things that are related to thinking dispositions. They were lazy We're cognitive misers and we're overconfident. I call that arrogant So we are irrational for many different ways for many different reasons Sometimes it's because we're stupid sometimes because we're ignorant sometimes because we're lazy and sometimes because we're arrogant and Sometimes it's some combination of the above And that's just a short list really Okay, so here's our cycle of incompetence. What happens is students don't know that they don't know They don't they think they understand the material the feedback they get that says that they doesn't they don't is Dismissed as somebody else's you know the teacher hates me or you know I just don't know how to answer the question right and so they don't think that that they need to change their ways and they Feel entitled to continue with the poor study strategies. They also feel entitled to get good grades So I want to also talk about why it's so important that we are more rational and this is a study This is a study that that demonstrates cognitive laziness you ask people to Allocate a hundred livers to two hundred children who need liver transplants Plants and they do pretty much what you expect them to do when you tell them a group a has a hundred children and group B has a hundred children They give 50 to each but then when you tell them that group a All the children in group a only have an 80% chance of survival surviving the Surgery and group B has a 20% chance of surviving the surgery what happens is you don't get everybody Giving the livers to group a only a quarter of the people give all of the livers to group a with the best chance of survival another quarter Still divide it 50-50 and the rest are in between And what's so bad about that is the difference between these two choices is 30 dead children They're not meeting their goals What their goal is is to save as many children as possible and when they ask people Why do you still give livers to the children who don't have as great a chance of surviving People say things like oh, I want to give them hope And one person even said that they believe in God and God doesn't work in numbers So we could accept those answers and we could consider hey, it's a motion driving their choices But the problem is is they've done a study to test that When they allocate the livers to children individually and then they list them in order of survival chance People have absolutely no trouble giving all of the livers to the top 100 children It was only when they grouped them that they tried to distribute them evenly. So All that all that language about hope and everything It's great and it's compassionate, but it's a justification for being lazy And not getting what you really want because what what should happen here Is you should see this kind of a distribution if what they wanted to do was give the kids the bottom hope And you actually see this distribution so one of the last take-home messages that I want to give you is We all believe that we're rational Okay, and it's clear that when we aren't rational We're giving all of our power to somebody else somebody who knows how to frame the questions To get us to answer in a way that they want us to answer and not in a way that's going to meet our goals We all think that we're rational. We all think that we're We also all know especially in this room. We all know how human beings are irrational but Time and time again I seem to witness people thinking that that means other human beings and not ourselves And it's really important to turn the mirror on that And think about it yourself and think about the ways that you are irrational And finally if you want to read more, these are some of the best books. There are many more One of the authors is here. Actually, you'll hear from him later today And a lot of the material that I talked about today is in that last one What intelligence tests miss but carol tavers is also a common tamer and These well there are I couldn't choose between them. They're all great books Thank you Ladies and gentlemen, thank you Barbara very nice