Scott Barry Kaufman

So there's something really pervasive about this that we're maybe not talking about as openly in society as we should be.

Hmm.

Okay, so we talked earlier about how context matters, and depending on what we're trying to predict statistically, IQ has a stronger prediction and a less strong prediction.

So when it comes to the arts, for instance, and that's a wide swath of things from creative writing to visual arts to music performance, we've published papers showing a zero correlation with IQ and creative achievement in the arts.

Within the sciences, some fields show a much stronger correlation than others, fields that are very math-heavy, physics-heavy, really draw on what we're really talking about here is abstract reasoning ability, your ability to really generalize and think at this very abstract level, like philosophy is even correlated with IQ.

especially like logic form of philosophy, where you have to hold lots of things in your working memory and IQ matters for that kind of stuff.

And so it really depends on what you're trying to predict.

But even within those fields, you have so many exceptions.

Wow, that's really clever.

Yeah, I think that there are tools that can provide information about a person's patterns of strengths and weaknesses cognitively.

And we have to recognize that there are so many other human attributes that are brought to the table in the process of self-actualization, especially as we become adults and we leave grade school.

So we need to hold all these things in mind at once.

But I really like the way you put that.

There's something called the Matthew effect in psychology where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

And you do find that very small advantages when you're young can really compound when you give people resources.

And then over time, you see these huge differences and you say, see, like, you know, these differences are really deep and meaningful.

But you're like, well, we as a society created those differences.

People who have more money for resources, those children have more opportunities for cognitive enrichment.

We know things as simple as how many books are in a household correlates with reading ability.

I think we have to be very sensitive to Matthew effects and how society and inequality can actually create those conditions.