Scott Barry Kaufman

general intelligence, and we overvalue general intelligence.

We don't need to expand the definition of general intelligence to encompass every talent and skill and every single human characteristic.

Instead, what we need to acknowledge is that we overvalue general intelligence and don't really appreciate

talents, the character from like creativity to love to spirituality.

I mean, those are the building blocks of a good life, not your IQ type cognition.

I think what we're really getting here in this conversation, what's emerging, is this idea that self-actualization and the journey of self-actualization is such an intensely personal process that to have standardized tests that kind of have this assumption that we're testing your potential in life based on these general standardized things where you're being compared to other people, that's the problem, really, if you want it in a nutshell.

Well, I want to pick up on something that Tarin said there at the end.

is that seeing the whole child, that's it.

That's the key there, is that we all contain multitudes.

We're all brimming with our areas of strengths and our areas of weaknesses.

And most of these tests,

are not designed to capture the whole person.

They're designed to capture a slice that will try to predict your further test scores.

It's like test scores are trying to predict further test scores, which are then going to predict, will that get you into law school?

And then will that get you into the nursing home you want eventually?

It never ends.

Growing up, I moved between China, Poland, and the US, often changing schools every six months to a year.

That constant moving made me feel like I was always behind or somehow dumb, even though I was keeping up, adapting, and surviving in completely new environments.

I think a lot of that feeling came from how intelligence was measured via grades, tests, and how teachers and adults generally correlated them with a child's potential unworth.

Like Scott, as a child, I could sense that something wasn't right.