3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on Intelligence and IQ
A Disturbing Thought About Chimps and Aliens, Maslow on IQ & the Only Real IQ Test
I. A Disturbing Thought About Chimps and Aliens
How intelligent are humans as a species? With a disturbing thought, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson puts our supposed intelligence into perspective:
Let me give you a fascinatingly disturbing thought.
If you look at our closest genetic relative to human beings, the chimpanzee. We share like 98 % plus identical DNA. We are smarter than a chimpanzee.
So let’s invent a measure of intelligence that make humans unique. Let’s say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry, symphonies, do art, math and science. Let’s make that as the arbitrary definition of intelligence for the moment. Chimps can’t do any of that. Yet we share 98.99 % of DNA.
The most brilliant chimp there ever was maybe can do a little bit of sign language. Well, our toddlers can do that. Toddlers.
So, here’s what concerns me deeply. Everything that we are that distinguishes us from chimps emerges from that 1 % difference in DNA. It has to. Because that’s the difference. The Hubble Telescope, that’s in that 1%.
Maybe, everything that we are that is not the chimp is not as smart compared to the chimp as we tell ourselves it is. Maybe, the difference between constructing and launching a Hubble Telescope and a chimp combining two finger motions as sign language, maybe that diffeenece is not all that great. We tell ourselves it’s a lot. Maybe it’s almost nothing.
How would we decide that? Imagine another lifeform that’s one percent different from us; in the direction that we are different from the chimp. Think about that! We are 1 % different and we’re building the Hubble Telescope, go another 1 %. What are we to them? We’d be drooling, blithering idiots in their presence. […]
So I lay awake at nights wondering whether we as a species are simply too stupid to figure out the universe that we’re investigating.
II. Maslow on IQ
As valid and reliable as they are, what part of the story do IQ tests fail to tell? American psychologist Abraham Maslow, inventor of the hierarchy of needs, on the limitations of the concept of IQ and IQ tests:
My main point is that [IQ tests] leave out the unconscious, the depths, the inner principle. They leave out the impulse-life, the emotions, the intuitions, the wisdom of the unconscious, the poetic and esthetic, the values… the wisdom of the heart…
It is certainly useful to have intelligence tests… they… can be quite useful. But we must in the last analysis remember that any dope can have a high IQ…
In the integrated person, at peace with himself and not fighting his old brain (his animal nature), it is possible… [conscious intelligence and nonconscious intelligence] are synergetic and not in opposition. Much more frequently than anyone ever expected, what is good for the unconscious is good for the conscious too. And what the impulses demand is what common sense and logic and rationality approve of.
—Abraham Maslow, as cited on the SBK Blog
III. The Only Real IQ Test
So what’s the ultimate test of intelligence? Here’s philosopher and angel investor Naval Ravikant‘s take:
The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.
🐘
Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com