Episode 53: Universality and IQ - Part 1
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Transcript
[00:00:11] Blue: Welcome to the theory of anything podcast. Hey guys, how’s it going?
[00:00:15] Red: Hi, Bruce. Nice to see you. Hey, Peter, you hear you.
[00:00:20] Blue: Hi guys. Hey, cameo. You know, the next episode is going to come out is one that Peter is in. But it’s not the first one we recorded with him. The first episodes we recorded with Peter were actually on the topic we’re talking about today, universality and IQ. Thank you. We recorded three very long episodes, and then we didn’t really like them that much. Peter pointed out we made some mistakes and then we couldn’t find one of the episodes like the recording just vanished. So we decided we’re going to rerecord. And so that was actually Peter’s introduction to the show. So they’re going to hear Peter on the show and they’re going to not have any idea where he came from or who he is, or, you know, because the first ones are to come out with Peter. There’s no introduction to him
[00:01:07] Red: because I almost think the 45 minute tangent we went on about are we weird could have been like its own mini podcast or something. You know, I
[00:01:16] Blue: may go, I still have that.
[00:01:17] Red: I may go like pull that
[00:01:19] Blue: one.
[00:01:19] Red: Just putting that out there.
[00:01:21] Blue: Peter, why don’t you give us an introduction since we didn’t give you a good introduction in the last episodes we’re going to have heard.
[00:01:27] Red: Okay, I connected with with you Bruce through the Facebook group that I created called the mini worlds of David Deutsch. I would encourage anyone out there listening to this to join that group if they’re on Facebook. For years I was participating in similar kinds of groups to about Sam Harris and other kinds of guys in that, in that world and I just got, it wasn’t actually through the Sam Harris podcast initially but through checking out David Deutsch’s first is Ted talks are what really pulled me in. And then his, his books, of course, and just everything else out there I just got really, really turned on to the whole world view. I mean, I’ve just never, never heard anything that made as much sense to me. I think it’s really him and popper of course, too. And, and so that’s how we started connecting there and, and here I am on your podcast and I think we’ve had some some wonderful conversations here and I’m excited to talk about IQ.
[00:02:35] Blue: I think Peter’s been a great addition to the show. By the way, I agree. Even though we threw away more than half. Oh, it’s okay.
[00:02:44] Red: All right, may I just throw out one other thing there to introduce myself that I wanted to get out of the way that I might my professionals experience you know I’m not I’m not a scientist not a philosopher. I’ve, I’ve been but I think I’m on my 17th year of teaching hard to believe for me but as a special ed education teacher. So, you know a lot of my kind of professional experience, life experience I guess just indicates to me it’s really hard for humans to change their minds, change their brains I guess I really was really what I mean. And, you know, I, in the past I have been really hooked into like sort of an evolutionary psychology view of humans and what we are and I think that getting into David Deutsch has really made me question a lot of these assumptions and, and, and kind of gave me just a new way of understanding humans to be fair when I sympathize with to a good deal, but even before reading David Deutsch I’ve always considered myself, not always but at least as an adult and been pretty tuned into optimism. And I think that’s why his his his ideas about knowledge and reality and humans and universal explainers and all this it just was like, yes, this this just feels right to me. However, I do have a lot of still, I guess trepidation about this one area. It really does seem to me that,
[00:04:22] Unknown: that,
[00:04:22] Red: that, you know, you’re we’re kind of born with the brains, we’re born with and they’re really, it’s really hard to change it’s no matter what theory you have so right. This is an area where I think maybe we are somewhat in in a lot alignment on in that we have we have had a lot of questions. Yes.
[00:04:45] Blue: So, Peter asked me some questions on Facebook about this and I said hey why don’t you come join our show we’re going to do a podcast episode or three on this.
[00:04:56] Green: And
[00:04:56] Blue: that was what got him on the show and then he did such a great job we just sort of started inviting him back every single time. That’s that’s how Peter ended up on the show and that’s why he suddenly emerges as a new player in the podcast out of the blue.
[00:05:12] Green: I hate it when a TV show drops an entirely new character that gives you no backstory. Yes. So
[00:05:21] Blue: let me also just mention something else so there are two groups that kind of associate with the Twitter critical rationalist which I call the twit rats, and the Facebook critical rationalist which I call the F book rats. And there’s actually a lot of difference between the two groups. Peter is one of the main people in the Facebook group as he mentioned he started one of the main groups, the many worlds of David Doge. And so he’s a strong voice there. And Peter’s group is heavily associated with the various Carl Popper groups that are on Facebook, which are made up of what the twit rats called the old guard so it’s the students of Carl Popper people who actually knew Carl Popper. Right. And, and people who are, you know, distinguished in their field in philosophy and in preparing philosophy so Bruce Caithness and who are some of the other ones, Luke. I don’t even know how to pronounce his last name, but some people who actually did know Carl Popper personally, Margaret. I don’t know if she knew Carl Popper personally but she’s someone who’s published in that field and things like that. And it seems to be more oriented towards critical rationalists who are aware of David Doge they did not come to critical rationalism through David Doge they’re usually older. Whereas the twit rats are the ones who tended to be came through critical rationalism through David Doge know about critical rationalism as part of their interest in critical rationalism came from the interest in David Doge’s theories. They’re almost always younger. I’m like one of the single oldest ones on on Twitter. They have there’s you can just tell a difference when you’re talking to the two groups.
[00:07:07] Blue: It’s not good or bad it’s just, there are distinct cultural differences between the two groups. So, Dworkus Patel, who I don’t think I’ve seen on amongst the F book rats. I wouldn’t know if I would call him a twit rat because I don’t he doesn’t really fully agree with David Doge but he certainly has associated with them a lot and interactive them and he’s got his own podcast the Lunar Society podcast he’s interviewed David Doge as well as lots of other people it’s a very popular podcast want to understand.
[00:07:35] Red: Wonderful podcast I think. Yeah, yeah, he’s interviewed a lot of interesting people I mean Charles Murray and, you know, yes, all kinds.
[00:07:44] Blue: He wrote an article called contra David Doge on AI with the subtitle the universal explainer’s hypothesis incorrect because it cannot explain why some animals are smart and some humans are stupid. He then writes this whole article. I’m going to give you first a summary of what I felt was the most alien points from his article I’m going to try to summarize it something much shorter than what he actually wrote of course. Bruce’s rules of summary applies here the summary is never the same as the actual thing. You should go read the actual article and I definitely think it’s worth reading. In this episode today, I’m going to summarize his point of view and then I’m going to summarize the opposing viewpoint of the tweet rats. I’m not going to express my opinions this time I’m really mostly curious what Peter and cameo think and then in future episodes I’ll be willing to express my opinions a bit more strongly. But I, I found the discussion quite interesting for a variety of reasons on both sides. So let me first try to summarize both the sides of the argument. Okay, so darkest Patel. Here’s probably what I see is the key quote from him that summarizes his view the best IQ scores are heavily correlated with job performance school performance income lack of crime, and even health. IQ is clearly measuring some underlying trait that determines your effectiveness across a broad range of cognitive demanding tasks. In many cases, even years down the line, you can call this trait whatever you want but I call it intelligence. I think that summarizes his view well and I think that’s a pretty powerful argument that he’s making. Now, throughout his article.
[00:09:28] Blue: He makes a number of what I would consider pretty bad arguments. And one of the things that we do when we’re arguing with people’s we cherry pick right we we, if you don’t like what somebody saying you pick out the bad arguments and you show they’re wrong and you ignore the good arguments.
[00:09:45] Green: Right.
[00:09:46] Blue: So I don’t want to do that so first let me just acknowledge he does make a number of bad arguments, and I’m going to for the most part just ignore them, and I’m going to concentrate on his good arguments, because he makes a number of really good arguments. So, but here’s an example of a bad argument he says about 21 to 24 % of Americans fall in level one of the National Adult Literacy Survey meaning they can’t even perform tasks identifying the expert date with driver’s license or totaling a bank deposit slip. Now the problem with an argument like this. I mean, this could be a good argument for all I know right maybe because this is because some people are low IQ, but I’ve got he’s not offering any reason for me to differentiate that from the view that these are just low educated people. Nobody doubts that if you’re low if you if you’re not literate, then you can’t read right no matter what your IQ is. In fact, there’s not even any real doubt that education plays some sort of role in the development of mind, and that you will have score higher on an IQ test if you received an education at a younger age and versus if you just didn’t. So, whatever we mean by education that might be unschooling for all I know but just educated in some meaningful way where you’ve received knowledge as you were growing up. So, because of that an argument like this makes no real attempt to distinguish between theories and therefore isn’t useful, even if he’s right that that is caused by low IQ. Thank you. But I might have
[00:11:15] Red: to push back on that a little bit. I mean something. It sounds to me like basically what he is saying trying to get across with that fact is that there are a huge number of humans in this world, probably more than most people would imagine, who are unable to perform basic intellectual tasks that yes don’t even I mean these tasks don’t even necessarily have to do anything with school necessarily I mean they are just they really struggle with basic things that more that other people just never had to learn really. I mean just because it just comes so naturally to their brains that they it’s just they only probably a lot of people don’t even would never even can consider that how that there are so many people out there who are unable to do. You make a point. It seems to me the IQ bell curve I guess kind of captures it pretty well when you. So,
[00:12:18] Blue: I was concentrating on the fact that an individual case like this is inductive it doesn’t really show us anything but you’re pointing out is that the really salient point is the 21 to 24%. Yeah. Okay, I’ll buy that. That does improve the argument if I understand it in that way. What I said though is still true he does make a number of arguments that I feel like don’t really differentiate between theories. I want to concentrate on the arguments that I felt were actually good arguments. By the way, if Peter sent me this just before the show. So people at home are going to see this but this is a picture that’s kind of typical of how people look at the prevailing view of intelligence. So it’s this view of people at the top, the small number of exceptionally gifted people like Albert Einstein, who made our technical civilization possible that’s IQ of 160 or above, you know, and then kind of below that in the hierarchy is highly gifted people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who invent our infrastructure and create jobs IQ of 145 or above. Then below that is moderately gifted people like software engineers and computer scientists who implement the ideas of highly and extremely gifted people IQ of 130 and above. And it kind of just goes down until you get down to at the bottom level, the least able of the population who survived due to social welfare welfare IQ of below 85 below or equal to 85. And this kind of goes with what you were just saying that there is this kind of bell curve that exists. This isn’t in doubt. Right. It’s we know there’s this bell curve of IQ that exists whatever IQ is.
[00:13:56] Blue: But this this picture goes further it’s trying to use it to explain things it’s trying to say. Yes, so you have to be high IQ to be someone like Einstein who creates, you know, a brand new physics theory and then you have to be somewhat high IQ to be a captain of industry that is going to create an Amazon, you know, and, and then a moderately high IQ to be someone who implements that and kind of goes down and it’s trying to explain how society works in part based on IQ. And this is certainly typical of how the prevailing theory of intelligence looks at things. I should probably know there’s probably no such thing as the prevailing theory of intelligence. There’s probably more like many competing theories but they group together around ideas like this. So saying the prevailing theory of intelligence is probably a meaningful statement, even while it’s not literally true.
[00:14:50] Red: And I think it’s possible to sort of basically accept the, that this world kind of worldview has some validity without seeing IQ as being like the end of the line way to classify human intelligence. I mean, I think probably most people recognize that there’s different. Yes. So even people who believe strongly in IQ. Yeah,
[00:15:14] Blue: don’t really believe it anything but roughly measures intelligence. Yeah, I mean
[00:15:18] Red: it’s
[00:15:18] Blue: yeah so IQ is this measure we’re familiar with that captures an idea that different people have different levels of intelligence. Peter you also made a comment. When you were sending me this about the idea of rank ordering. So IQ kind of rank orders people, right it says, you know, I’ve got an IQ of 130 so that’s, you know, better than IQ of 100 or something along those lines, right. There is actually an alternative opinion on that even amongst the prevailing view, which is that there’s multiple types of intelligence. And we’ll get into this later when we talk about this in a bit more depth. And people who believe in IQ don’t necessarily deny that they definitely believe that, you know, there is such a thing as someone who’s really good at math, but not very good at English grammar or something language, or art, or something along those lines and they they’re necessarily claiming so I think the prevailing theories, probably more like a partial rank order than a true rank order, but IQ itself is a rank order but then it’s only perceived as this super rough, best we can do right now attempt to measure intelligence.
[00:16:34] Red: I think they may also tend want to point out that that the if someone is higher in say math. It tends to correlate with being higher and it does ability.
[00:16:45] Blue: That’s G factor. Yeah,
[00:16:47] Red: the G factor. Yes.
[00:16:48] Blue: So the, in fact, this is something that if G factor hadn’t been discovered I doubt we would have IQ today. When they first started to invent the idea of an IQ test, early in the 20th century, I guess, they had all sorts of tests the test of different things and there was no real basis for why should we accept this test versus that test until they started to notice that people that scored high on one test would also score high on another test, even though they were completely different ideas of intelligence. This led to the theory of g factor, which kind of grows up at the same time as IQ IQ is perceived today as an attempt to measure g factor, and g factor means general intelligence is this this idea that some people actually are, as Patel put it, better at a broad range of cognitive tasks than other people. So IQ would be a measure of g factor but g factor is this attempt to at once accept there are different kinds of intelligence but for some reason they call it. Okay, so now here are some key arguments from Patel. While we can’t account for the entire genetic contribution to IQ through known causal mechanisms we have identified enough to know that genes can cause disparities intelligence. If culture is the basis for all the differences in intelligence, as George believes between people George must explain why twins separated at birth and adopted by different families with different cultures end up having highly correlated levels of intelligence, or why identical twins have a higher correlation of IQ than fraternal twins.
[00:18:22] Blue: Such studies shown show that intelligence is between 50 to 80 % heritable, meaning most of the variance intelligence between people is explained by genes.
[00:18:32] Red: Now, I simply can’t understand why people completely dismiss that as an uninteresting. I agree. Okay.
[00:18:41] Blue: So just, and then also, this wasn’t in the article, but in his interview with David Deutsch where he actually challenges David Deutsch on this fact. He points out for example, hardware correlations the fact that size of brain 0.3 correlates with IQ. We haven’t given the Deutsche Viewpoint yet but if the Deutsche Viewpoint is correct. That as Patel at least understands it, we’ll discuss whether he understands it correctly or not. Why does genes make such a big difference and why does things like hardware make a big difference. By the way, for those who are interested episodes 47 and 48 of this show, talk about how genes can influence us. And when I get around to expressing my own view which won’t be in this episode. I’m going to use an approach very similar to how I did in episodes 47 and 48. I think it’s
[00:19:27] Red: coerces. I love that. Yes, genes
[00:19:30] Blue: genes genes can and do influence us often coercive. There might be a similar argument to be made here. Continuing Patel’s summary of his view. Animals are stupider than humans but still capable of a limited form of creativity. If creativity is universal then why do animals have it in a constrained form. Okay, so this one to understand this. David Deutsch claims as we’ve mentioned in past episodes that only humans are creative and that animals are not and that all the animals knowledges in the genes. Now I have already taken a very strong stance in my past episodes that Deutsch is wrong about that unless you’re very narrowly defining creativity and knowledge in really specific sorts of ways which after I’ve had a chance to talk with David Deutsch about this. I think that’s what he’s actually doing. But I don’t think most fans of David going to know that right. I think that the very fact that he said animals all their knowledge is in the genes and that they are not creative and things like that. That’s what Patel’s pushing back against here. Then he goes on to say if only universal explainers can address problems which require novel solutions with a large search space. Then why have non universal programs been able to solve problems this is in ml which is some of dark issues background protein folding writing poetry creating art beating the best go players discovering new drugs. 100 other really impressive examples. And if you don’t need to be universal explainer in order to solve these problems then why should we care about universal explainers. The general point I’m making is that you can build programs that are not true agis, but which are still extremely powerful.
[00:21:05] Blue: You can say they have no creativity, but if extremely important and previously impossible work can be done by quote uncreative programs. Then this diminishes the value of your concept of creativity rather than the value of the programs themselves. I bolded that one because of all the arguments he makes I overwhelmingly think this is his best argument. And I think he’s spot on with this one and you should know that by now if you’ve been listening to the show that I, I have used almost the exact same argument when I’ve been discussing knowledge creation and AI and things like that. This really is something where I think he’s called out a legitimate problem that needs some explanation. Okay, he continues. Do it dismisses the dismisses any example of animal cognition as unthinking imitation or genetic knowledge, which accumulates slower and has minuscule reach in comparison to explanatory knowledge. Do it just trying to explain complex animal activities by using Richard Burns theory of imitation as behavior parsing. This theory states that animals do not need to understand cause and effect relationships or have intentionality in order to fulfill multi step procedures for gathering and process and process include building shelter hunting etc. Stating that a task involves statistical pattern recognition does not explain how he chip extracts patterns of ordered sub tasks, just from observing instances of the whole task. How does the chip even recognize that the action he is observing right now is an instance of a task he’s supposed to learn to imitate.
[00:22:34] Blue: That’s the end of my quote here, but he goes on to point out that if you could actually write an ML program that did this, you’d be rich, which is an argument that I’ve used and my podcast before he ever said this. And he’s right about that that there’s a lack of explanation here, right for do it to just simply use this example I don’t think which is wrong if you listen to my episodes on this episodes 3738 discuss this very topic. Episodes 39 and 40 go over Burns actual theory. I have some criticisms of do it, but I don’t think which is entirely off base here, but I don’t think which is finding everything either there’s an explanation gap and Patel is
[00:23:16] Red: calling it out. Okay, I guess for myself, I feel quite agnostic about some of these details you’ve brought up. And, you know, I am sort of an animal lover I love my pet but animals, you know, sometimes the Deutsch, people will say animals don’t have feelings which I don’t agree with, and maybe they can be creative in their own way, but I do think that which really gets it a fundamental truth, which is so often deemphasized, to say the least by scientists, which is that humans really are special in the actual world there’s something really different about our brains and the way we are creative and create knowledge and do incredible abstract things I mean.
[00:24:01] Blue: By the way, one of Deutsche’s arguments that I completely agree with is, there’s not really that much fundamental difference between our brains and a lot of animals, particularly the other mammals. So the difference has to be in what we would call software.
[00:24:14] Red: Right, it’s physically they are the same so why are they so different than us.
[00:24:19] Blue: Yeah. Also by the way, episode 34 of the show, I give an example of how AI can be creative using AlphaGo. He mentions AlphaGo also. And then episodes 24 and 20 through 26 are my views on AI and knowledge creation so Patel is hitting along along a lot of the very same things that I talked about previously on the show. First, let’s talk about Patel’s arguments we kind of been doing as we go along. What’s your overall thoughts about his arguments, Camille and Peter.
[00:24:51] Green: I, there’s a lot I agree with. I mean that’s just my initial reaction is I, I think the things he’s calling out Deutsche on our legitimate concerns with which is arguments. Okay. Peter,
[00:25:07] Red: any thoughts you want to add. Well, my overall, I think that the vast majority what he says kind of rings true for me, but it this I guess I’m pulled into some different directions. I guess I fundamentally can’t for the life of me see why the something like the universal explainer hypothesis, which makes a lot of sense in a more theoretical level. I mean, you know, even if it’s extremely difficult to change our brains and develop new abilities or we can still do it, at least theoretically, I mean you can there’s always a theory that could probably get you up to the next IQ point or something and then the next one after that there maybe it’s even harder but there’s, there’s, there’s a way in this natural world, which I think, as I think of it, it’s the principle of optimism applied to the human brain. I mean, if something is possible under the laws of physics, then it’s just a matter of having the right knowledge to get you there strongly agree with that point. But at the same time, I kind of, I do feel like we are creatures of the natural world and our brains are, you know, I look at my own children and it just seems to me that they’re at some level their personalities and their temperament and probably their capabilities to a large degree are really formed early on, you know, it doesn’t mean that it’s that everything is set in stone. It’s one of the beautiful things about humans is that we can change so much about the natural world even even our own brains.
[00:26:47] Red: So, I guess that maybe some of the harder, harder edged things that the Deutsche and some of his followers says about this I don’t quite ring true for me but I think there’s a lot of. There’s a kind of a middle middle path that we can look at the accepts a lot of validity from both sides. Yes.
[00:27:13] Blue: So, a question that I kind of asked when we first recorded this, and I didn’t maybe do it as well as I should have but is Patel straw manning the Deutsche and view right it’s not immediately obvious that that he’s getting the Deutsche and view right. So, interestingly, since that original recording that we never released Brett Hall just recently came out with a series of tweets, where he explained the Deutsche and view. So I’m now going to quote Brett Hall, giving the other side of the argument so now instead of me guessing at is Patel straw manning the, you know, the Deutsche and argument, we can actually have the Deutsche for themselves explain their view, their view point. So, here is summary of the Deutsche and view from Twitter, forget degrees of intelligence, people all share the capacity to learn, and to the same extent. It’s what we choose to focus on learning that separates us. It’s there in choosing what to learn the value judgments being being made. Those who choose to focus on learning mathematics, physics, science, coding, medicine, law, language, etc. are ranked higher. Those who choose to focus on learning sports, dancing, influencing trades, crafts, art, pop music and soap opera storylines, office gossip and politics are ranked lower, said to be incapable of learning what they choose not to unlike the previous group. There’s no mystery why the first group on average performs better on IQ tests. It IQ test selects a kind of knowledge, what they’ve chosen to learn, what the higher group has chosen to learn, but the capacity to learn period is common across all people. It’s only what people choose to do with that capacity that differs.
[00:29:01] Blue: The desire to rank humans on the thing making them qualitatively different from all other life is perverse. It is itself a misfiring of what of that very capacity to learn to define categories and explain. All explanations can contain fundamental misconceptions. IQ can be predictive precisely because the interests of enhanced choices some people make mean the knowledge they gain will help them score higher or lower on tests, asking questions about a particular kind of knowledge. Some kinds of knowledge are more useful for getting higher paid jobs, going into particular careers and knowing what what society values and scare quotes, but none of this means differences in capacity to learn. All knowledge can can in principle be learned by any person, because all people are defined by a universal capacity to learn. And that means learn anything, but no one will choose to learn anything or everything they will focus on their very personal interests. Of course defenders of IQ just to find intelligence as performance on IQ tests or some other tests by fiat like all such claims it’s entirely circular and non explanatory. Now, this is the overall point of view that he’s expressing he makes moral claims you can actually hear some moral claims from the previous course I just did, but he makes moral claims based on this. He says Karl Popper wrote, while differing widely in the various little bits we know in our infinite ignorance we are all equal. So minds cannot be ranked ordered. Unless we rank the little bits we know, ie, we make a value judgment in entailing some mind some people have less value.
[00:30:43] Blue: The idea some people have less value is a category error, people provide knowledge of more or less value to you, or to solving a particular problem. You pay for someone else, someone’s knowledge and time, but people are equally valuable ie priceless a person cannot be bought and owned. This is, I think a pretty good summary of the Deutsche in view. I’ve never heard it expressed quite so all in one place so straightforwardly but just based on the bits and pieces I’ve picked up. This is pretty close to what I would have expected. Let’s now discuss I would like to know camera let’s have let’s start with you I’d like to know your initial reactions to this viewpoint that Brett is expressed expressing.
[00:31:27] Green: Like I totally get what he’s what he’s saying. And, but it feels a little bit circular. Also to me, you know, you can’t I don’t know if you can talk about intelligence and then, and then say, oh, things like having skills with doing plumbing is the same thing as having skills with, you know, higher math functions, like the ability to do, you know, any any any number of of really really complicated, you know, math like they’re, it’s not intelligence, if it doesn’t have to do with what we can do with our minds, you know, learning things is not actually the same thing as as as having intelligence. And I don’t know that I believe that all peoples are capable of of learning all the same things.
[00:32:24] Red: And Peter, give me your thoughts. Well, I, a lot of it rang true for me, I will say that the end part about value, valuing what I think what you call the moral aspect of the argument, I almost felt like he may have been straw manning the sort of the IQ, the other side a little bit. You know, Charles Murray makes an interesting point about this where he says that, well, his pushback against people saying that he’s sort of dehumanizing people with lower IQs is to say, well, do you think of people with higher IQs is better than you. And, you know, I mean, I think that kind of rings true for me. I certainly don’t. If I think of someone with a 160 or 170 or whatever. I mean, I don’t even know what my IQ is, but people with who are super, super, super intelligent, I might envy some of their abilities, but I would never think of them as is fundamentally better than me. And I wouldn’t, wouldn’t, I would say the same about people with IQs that are lower than me. I mean, they, and you know, I’ve seen that in my own life experience teaching is that, you know, sometimes people will talk about the idea of a slinter skill, whereas someone like with a with a lower IQ might just be amazingly good at just this one thing and I see that all the time. I mean, it’s really the idea of putting people in boxes based on their IQ I think can be a bit dehumanizing. I mean,
[00:33:58] Red: but I see what he’s saying there but I just I think there’s there’s a way to accept the validity of the idea that IQ can be heritable without dehumanizing people, but you know, a lot a lot of what he said actually ran true for me to so.
[00:34:16] Blue: By the way, I didn’t capture this as a quote, but Brett. First of all, I should probably explain who Brett is although probably people in the show. No, Brett is the a podcaster, who is probably the largest of the Deutsche and podcasters. He gets retweeted by David Deutsch, all the time. He is podcaster, or excellent stuff, right actually having recommend them.
[00:34:39] Red: Yeah.
[00:34:39] Blue: And but he is really, in my opinion, very careful to match David Deutsch’s view. I don’t think he always does. He doesn’t understand the material as well as David Deutsch so sometimes he kind of ends up going off a slightly different direction than David Deutsch does. But in many ways, I do see if Brett says this is the Deutsche and view, I even if I’ve not seen David Deutsch say that I tend to believe Brett, if that makes any sense.
[00:35:10] Red: Yeah, I’ve gotten the feeling there must be a lot there probably a lot of back behind the scenes communication that have gone on for a year. I mean, maybe more tuned into that than I am that there’s
[00:35:22] Blue: at least some discussion for sure that has gone on there. It’s not an accident that David Deutsch retweets Brett all the time. In many ways, Brett is the apologist for David Deutsch and David Deutsch knows it, right. Some people have referred to Darwin’s bulldog. Yeah, I was about to say that. Brett as Deutsche’s bulldog.
[00:35:41] Red: Yeah. So
[00:35:41] Blue: there is a fair question, though, because Brett, I don’t mean this in a negative way at all. I really don’t. I use the word apologist. Brett is not a professional philosopher. He’s a podcaster. He’s an influencer. And he does a really, really good job of understanding Deutsche’s viewpoints, and he communicates it incredibly well, in some cases better than Deutsch does, and he’s got a ton of thought into it. But when you actually talk with Brett, he does not understand the alternate viewpoints very well at all, which is why I think he qualifies more as an apologist he’s not a scientist trying to understand the viewpoints and trying to get at the truth. He’s totally in the Deutsche camp, if that makes any sense. Now, the world needs great apologist like Brett, there’s nothing wrong with that there’s nothing wrong with that. Okay, we really benefit from having someone who just minds out a single viewpoint and tries to defend it to the best of their ability we just did episodes on dogmatism and said even dogmatism is somewhat okay for exactly that reason, for the exact same reason, there’s nothing wrong with Brett deciding I’m in the Deutsche camp I’m going to defend it to the hilt, but Brett doesn’t necessarily have a strong understanding of alternative viewpoints because of that words do it does, because of that, there is the possibility that Brett is getting Deutsche’s view wrong. In this case, I’m going to argue that he isn’t and here’s why in Deutsche’s books, Deutsche talks about this, not a lot.
[00:37:14] Blue: Certainly not to the degree Brett does, but here is what Deutsche actually says, talking about our diamonds books he says diamond says that his main reason for writing guns, germs and steel was that unless people are convinced that the relative success of Europeans was caused by biogeography, they will forever be tempted by racist explanations. Well, not the readers of this book I trust. And then he goes on to say in reality the difference between Sparta and Athens had nothing to do with their genes, but their ideas were different. Now this, you might say, how am I getting out of this, what Brett said and it may not be immediately obvious, but do it is stating here that you cannot explain differences between race in, in terms of IQ. That’s what he’s saying, right he’s saying that if you read this book and you understand universal explainer ship, then IQ just doesn’t matter between races, because we all have the same capacity. You can’t even make sense of Deutsche’s argument here, unless you actually have something like Brett is saying in mind. So I actually think Brett is accurately portraying Deutsche’s viewpoint now me and Brett actually had an exchange over this Twitter thread, where I kept referring to it as Brett’s, Brett’s theory, and he kind of got a little upset with me and said it’s not my theory. I agree is not Brett’s theory. It’s Deutsche’s theory. I completely agree with Brett that he’s not the one who invented it. I’m going to continue to say Brett’s theory though. And hopefully we can all be mature enough to understand that what I mean is the theory he was advancing in this thread and I’m just using a short hand. Can
[00:38:49] Blue: you just say that the culture matters more than biology but that biology still has. Okay, so here’s the here’s the problem with saying that. Okay. And by the way, I agree with what you just said. So I’m not I’m not arguing against what you just said. I’m explaining why it doesn’t fit well with what Deutsche say, if you admit that there is other factors that matter, other than universal then you’ve reopened the possibility that IQ is a real thing, and that Jared Diamond’s concerned with the quote racist explanations is a thing. If IQ really exists and there really is cognitive capacity differences between humans, then you don’t have an explanation for why there is no cognitive cognitive capacity difference between one race and another. There could be because races at least somewhat collated with genetics. So when George is trying to put that down the idea that you that his explanation of universal explainer ship undercuts that whole viewpoint as a necessity it undercuts the very concept of IQ. And that’s, and I’ve actually seen statements between the two from put rats to the effect of the left claims there are no IQ differences between races, but they don’t have a good reason for why they don’t. Why that’s true that they’ll argue there are no IQ differences between races, but they don’t have an explanation for why there wouldn’t be why why why couldn’t there be IQ differences between races. Well, from the put rats viewpoint that explanation is universal splintership undercutting the whole concept of IQ. So, yes, of course, a completely valid viewpoint might be culture matters the most. Okay, and in fact, that’s something that I would agree with completely. But if you’re if
[00:40:34] Blue: you’re going to admit that there are other factors, then they are the moral argument that do it is making here has become undercut you have refuted it. In fact, at least to some degree, and then you have to find a different explanation. So I think that’s why I don’t know that currently at least this is why Brett’s taking such a strong stance that the one you can’t disconnect the moral explanations from the scientific explanations in a lot of cases when you’re talking about a cultural belief system like Twitter critical do it is a Twitter critical rationalism. They’re all kind of tied up together, which is why there’s maybe even some resistance the very fact that I’m willing to make an episode and, you know, look at hotels viewpoint and challenge the do it in view. That’s going to suddenly be a little scary for people who buy into the moral worldview that comes from this. Now, having said all that, let’s be honest, IQ really does have a really, really controversial history. And the Germans are hardly the only ones who have really big problems with theories around IQ. And again, let’s be honest, left has joint problems with IQ these days to the point where if you try to if you’re kind of a left leaning scientist, even talking about IQ and studying it is almost is looked down upon. So Dworkiz Patel actually interviewed someone who’s an expert in this. When I say this I’m not even sure what I mean he was actually someone who was using. He interviewed Stephen. I don’t know how to pronounce this hsu. And the title was intelligence embryo selection and the future of humanity. So this guy is by the excellent interview and super interesting stuff.
[00:42:23] Blue: The guy he interviewed has is an expert in like using machine learning to work with genes. I’m not sure I remember enough to give a more detailed explanation in that at this point. I listened to it a while back. One of the things that Stephen mentions in the interview is that they can measure IQ in a 15 minute test that’s highly accurate. And right now when they’re doing the genetic studies with machine learning. Nobody measures IQ, but we could be collecting all sorts of data on how genes relate to IQ and because of the left. There’s so much terror over doing that that they’re intentionally not doing it, even though it would be very cheap to do so. And we could actually be doing all these great studies into how do genes actually relate to IQ. And we’re just we’re just not even doing them at all, because of political reasons. Having said that, I don’t think the left’s entirely wrong. I mean like IQ is controversial enough of history. And there’s enough problems with the theory that, I mean, yes, they’re probably doing it mostly for political reasons but they’re not completely out of left field either. Right, it’s, it’s there really are concerns around similar to how the rat rats have gone about handling the Deutschians have done about handling this that IQ may not be a fair measure it may just be measuring certain kinds of knowledge and we’re just valuing kinds of knowledge and things like that. So this is a place where normally Deutschians are very much at odds with the left this is one where there’s at least some overlap with a leftist viewpoint. I
[00:44:02] Blue: mean, I think, you know, I but I think it’s somewhat similar to culture and that fundamentally, it’s, even if we accept the fact that culture matters a lot that it’s still irrational to judge an individual based on what culture they come from. I mean, we have to just look the way to get around all this morally is to just to look at people as individuals that’s the only thing that makes sense. So here’s what I’m going to argue though and it’s okay if you want to disagree with me, because I don’t think my argument is completely certain, but my argument is very simply this. I think this idea that Brett is expressing the theory that I’m calling Brett’s theory does in fact come from David Deutsch, and that this is David Deutsch’s opinion. I don’t know that for sure. And like I said, Brett does sometimes, perhaps not intentionally but departs from David Deutsch’s views, but I don’t think this is one of them. And so I have a relative level of confidence that this idea does in fact come from David Deutsch and from his books, and that this is something that he would agree with. Who knows for sure I’m open to the possibility I’m wrong here. But I’m going to kind of I’m going to continue to call it Brett’s theory just in case I’m wrong. Nothing else in case I’m wrong. And just because conveniently that means I’m referring to specifically what Brett was expressing on Twitter.
[00:45:24] Red: Okay,
[00:45:24] Blue: so now I interacted with the Twitter critical rationalists over this, and a number of them talked with me about their views with me challenging their views. Furthermore, let me just say that the ones I talked to are without a doubt the cream of the crop of the Deutsche and worldview on Twitter. That is just not true for something some of the Deutschians on Twitter are just annoying. Really pretty bad. That was not who I was talking to. I was talking to people who have really shown open mindedness and discussion. Don’t just get angry and discussion really do think this through are willing to differ with Deutsch on things if they feel like Deutsche is wrong. So, I feel like I was getting the cream of the crop responses from the Deutsche and worldview when I asked them. Okay, what if somebody said this, what if we tested this, again, you can decide for yourself. You know, how good the responses are and I’m not even going to express my opinions right now I’m going to try to just simply list out what I said what I saw as challenges, and explain as best I can as still man as I can, what their responses were. So, first of all, if IQ, so Brett’s theory is is that IQ tests IQ is really just measuring interest in certain kinds of knowledge. Well, now if that’s true, if that’s theory is if we really take that serious as a theory. Then it seems like we could test it. It seems like what we could do is we could test children in IQ with IQ tests before they’ve clearly taking an interest in mathematics, physics and science versus sports are etc.
[00:47:04] Blue: And we could see if I was stable or not. If this is partially just our perceptions that we value certain kinds of knowledge over others, then testing children before they’re clearly in. I’m a mathematic going to be a mathematician versus I like sports at a young enough age. We could test them, then we could test them again after they’ve now make it made a choice and we could see if IQ is stable or not. If you know anything about IQ, you know they’ve done tests like this. Pretty stable right.
[00:47:34] Red: I mean it’s from what
[00:47:36] Blue: I understand it’s relatively stable. Yeah. But you know I’m, we can argue whether the tests are valid or not but my point was not. I’m trying to put out there this test has been done and you’ve refuted I’m trying to say, why would not accept this as a valid test it seems like this directly takes your, your point of view seriously takes the consequences of your point of view seriously and comes up with a legitimate test. Shouldn’t you accept this as a valid test that if IQs are stable before interest are chosen and then after doesn’t that refute brett’s viewpoint brett’s theory. Okay, then I also said, couldn’t we test brett’s theory that so he basically said that people are interested in sports dancing influencing trade crafts arts pop music soap opera storylines, office gossip and politics that we see them as lower IQ because we less value that kind of knowledge. Again it seems like you could test this. Let’s say you took people who are, you know, actors or into art or something like that. And we wanted to see who dominates those fields even even something like office gossip who dominates the office gossip. Okay, in in a certain office or across offices. We could then find out if the people dominating them or hire an IQ or not right we could test it, we could see if IQ influences those kinds of knowledge or not. If we find that all categories including the ones brett is saying are dominated by high IQ, that seems to me like it refutes his theory. So it seems like his theory is testable. And now again, I’m sure that everyone was aware that they’ve done tests like this.
[00:49:12] Blue: Okay, at least not maybe for office gossip but yeah actually actors tend to have really high IQs, because to be a really good actor is a cognitively demanding task and Tom Cruise has a really high IQ probably higher than mine by far. So people who dominate even the fields that Brett is talking about tend to be higher IQ not necessarily always like you could argue that that’s not true for sports, but I suspect that it would depend on the sport and depend on the position. But you would probably find that like quarterbacks that good quarterbacks have much higher IQs than not as good quarterbacks or something along those lines. Pretty sure they have done studies in this by the way.
[00:49:52] Red: Yeah,
[00:49:52] Blue: from a full back or something maybe not so much. Um, you know, do you think Michael Jordan has a low IQ like I kind of doubt he does. Right. It’s making
[00:50:03] Red: on the court and that the the how quickly you’re making those decisions I mean there’s. Yeah, there’s a lot going on in his mind for sure. Okay,
[00:50:12] Blue: so then I also suggested couldn’t we measure neutral factors that have nothing to do with specific field. So for example and I just threw these out there, you know, I’ve taught my head randomly, not fluid reasoning knowledge quantitative reasoning visual spatial processing or working memory. So I threw those out there. What if we just measured those so it’s got nothing to do with specific fields or what we value or we don’t value. And what if we found that these correlated now of course I’m sure everybody knows that what I did is I just looked up g factor looked up what they measure and listed them. Course we already talked about g factor does correlate that’s what led to the continuing theory of IQ was that they kept finding that when you try to measure different types of capacities that really could have been unrelated that they turn out to highly correlate. If you found that these factors do not correlate. Let’s be honest IQ would be dead as a theory like it would be gone. Okay, it would. That is an example of how IQ as a theory prevailing theory. There is a difference in cognitive capacity between humans could have been refuted and wasn’t. Okay, so it was corroborated by an actual empirical test. Shouldn’t the opposite therefore also be seen as refuting Brett’s theory. Okay, so I raised each of these issues with them. Here was their response when we let me do my best to try to explain their viewpoint. The Deutschians denied these tests would matter. They doubled down on a few arguments previously mentioned, for example, they said that it just shows that well on a particular test.
[00:51:46] Blue: It doesn’t mean that it actually correlates to their capacity to understand explanations. It just shows that they’re not interested in the subject being tested. A key argument that was made multiple times, by the way, was that since the prevailing view offers no detailed explanation as to what cognitive capacity actually is and instead is just about a correlation. That that means it has no explanatory power, therefore, in their minds, it does not count as a good explanation and it’s just it’s dead as far as they’re concerned, leaving theirs as the sole surviving explanation. And then they, they, they would ask, how would any of these tests account for the fact that maybe some people just don’t care about the test, and don’t try very hard, because there’s not that interested in it. Perhaps this is the main difference in IQ is level of interest in the test and how much effort to put into it.
[00:52:40] Red: I mean, it kind of made the kind of makes sense and I can’t say they’re completely wrong there but I mean to it to someone who’s like a IQ researcher, I mean, I think they would probably argue that they’ve oh they’ve accounted for this and they have, you know, yeah, 50 different ways to get around that and I don’t know.
[00:52:57] Blue: I’m trying to not express my view too much, but but but basically attempt to say, you know, this shows that IQ test don’t matter. That seemed like a testable thing, right that you could come up with ways to try to test that of course an IQ researcher would try to take something like that into consideration, whether you agree with how they did that or not would be a different question.
[00:53:18] Red: Yeah.
[00:53:19] Blue: So then I gave them examples of refutations I said okay let’s talk about actual real life problems with your theory. So I said my neighbor that lives down the street for me. He has Down syndrome as well as other fairly serious issues I mentioned in the previous recording I mentioned him quite a bit. Okay. He is severely mentally challenged to the point where he can’t take care of himself on his own. Well, not atypical of someone that has Down syndrome and autism, yet he can talk, he can engage in conversation, he can understand what you’re talking about, as long as you keep it simple. He has interests, he has things that he likes a lot and that he doesn’t like as much and furthermore Down syndrome is known to be a genetic disorder caused by when normal, when abnormal cell division results in extra full or partial copies of chromosome 21. This is from the Mayo Clinic. So like we even have an explanation for why you know why how genes cause Down syndrome, and this somehow Down syndrome people are lower IQ always right it’s doing know there’s this really strong link between genetics and have a genetic explanation and low IQ in this, in this case, doesn’t that refute Brett’s theory. And that was what I was asking. And then I said, we know taking drugs or being I don’t think I actually brought this one up but this one I should have brought up. No I did bring this one up. We know that taking drugs or like being drunk or high reduces one’s cognitive ability. How is it.
[00:54:50] Blue: How is this fact the fact that I can go, you know, take painkillers or alcohol or something, and my cognitive ability reduces how is that even a meaningful statement in the the Deutsche in view, if the only capacity that really matters is whether you’re your universal explainer or not. What’s going on from the Deutsche in the Deutsche in viewpoint. When I get drunk and my cognitive ability and we say quote my cognitive ability reduces. If it’s not actually my cognitive ability that is reduced what is it that is being reduced like what’s your explanation for this. Okay. And then I pointed out. One of the main things they argue is that it’s all just about interest and time. So you know a baby is doesn’t have strong cognitive ability but they just haven’t had the time develop it yet, matter what you happen to be interested in we mentioned that one several times. So one of the things I pointed out because they kept bringing that up was cognitive decline due to aging. How can you explain cognitive decline due to aging in terms of time and interest because now we’re talking about someone who’s had more time and is clearly still interested, and yet some for some reason we can measure a cognitive decline in a person as they age. What is it we’re measuring. How does the Deutsche in world view explain that. Furthermore, these are people who used to be younger and used to have quote, higher intelligence, and they can tell you self report. Yeah, my intelligence is that my cognitive ability. These are lower now due to the fact that I am older, even though I’ve spent more time on the material, even though I’m, I’m still interested in it.
[00:56:23] Red: It seems to me that all this is getting at a just a view of the human mind, which might be a little bit different than the Deutsche in view but it’s when I kind of also sympathize, which kind of says that you know there’s there’s a way to push back against this where you say oh well you know these these people with disabilities or cognitive decline they’re they’re in another another category and their brains are just broken but you know the universal explainers are for for everyone else. But then there’s another way to think of it that maybe we’re all a little bit disabled in different ways and you know I see that in my own life I just have there’s just certain things like like I think I brought up a sense of direction before or or you know some people just just can’t hear musical pitches so you know there’s there might just be a thousand million things in our brains that we’re just we just have different. You know maybe we’re in some areas where we’re really high in and then you know we have certain things were basically even if we don’t have a name identifiable disability we’re probably all disabled about this or that and that’s just how our brains work. Yeah,
[00:57:36] Blue: by the way with cameo and the previous episodes that we recorded, she brought up the tone deaf thing, which I thought was an interesting example. So another example that that I this is the one I didn’t bring up that I should have, but that I brought up in previous conversations with the twit rats is people can lose their sanity. Right, I mean like, like I gave the example of a BYU professor that I know, who has a paper he published about how he went insane temporarily had like a virus in the brain. And he actually describes what it was like to be insane and to come back out of it again, and an insane person is clearly still a universal explainer they can still understand things, but there is something just off with an insane person. In this case, we’re not even talking about a lifelong mental illness when we could challenge whether the word mental illness is an appropriate term or not. We’re talking about someone who very literally got a virus in the brain, lost their sanity temporarily, and then in a few weeks they finally found a way to deal with the virus and came back to his senses. How would you go about trying to clearly there’s a while he’s insane. He cannot air correct well at all in certain areas, and there’s what’s the explanation for that within the Deutsche in World View. How could you possibly explain something like that in terms of just interest and time. So now I raised these issues with them. And here’s what they, they responded with. So you mentioned something, and I was actually expecting them to say this, and I was a little surprised that they didn’t.
[00:59:12] Blue: I would have if in our previous recorded episodes that we didn’t release, I took the stance that my neighbor didn’t count, because my neighbor was clearly because this down syndrome and we understand exactly what’s wrong with the chromosomes that that he is not in fact a universal explainer, and therefore isn’t what we need to consider in terms of you know is not. He’s not even, he’s just a different category, because of that, which is basically what you just said, Peter. I was expecting them to say that and if they had said that that that could be used to explain a number of the ones I just gave. I’ve heard people make similar claims. So one person seemed a little open to that possibility. I’ll mention that in just a second, but but for the most part, the Deutschians took the stance that my neighbor was still just a case of time and interest, which surprised me a little they would ask, how is my neighbor different from a child, if it is a child’s capacity less than adult just because he had less time to learn one suggested that this was not any different than if a normal person feels sick, and therefore has there has an ability to create knowledge temporarily reduced, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have the same or equal capacity, I quickly pointed out on that one that actually that did mean they didn’t have the same or equal capacity. And they said, I’m off to think about that. That was the one exception. Everybody else kind of really did take a hard stance. There’s no real difference here.
[01:00:43] Blue: One discussed a severely mentally challenged family member that could play video games really well kind of similar what you were talking about Peter better better maybe better than someone with a quote normal intelligence level, and they claim this refuted the prevailing there could be used to theoretically refute the prevailing theory. His argument wasn’t really that it refuted prevailing theory he was really saying your arguments that these refute our theory are no better than me claiming that the fact that my family member can play video games really well, I could claim for the same reason that it refused the prevailing theory. And then they would you know they would kind of ask, why can’t you explain the difference with your neighbor in terms of just being a matter of time and interest. They also reuse the quite a bit the prevailing theory is not explanatory so doesn’t count argument. So they would say look, it just doesn’t matter because the prevailing theory is just a bad theory, because it doesn’t have and it’s not explanatory, it’s just a correlation it doesn’t have it needs to have one of them said it needs to have a strong explanation that explains how what intelligence is in terms of function of the mind, and it needs to explain how IQ measures that and since it doesn’t do that. It’s just a bad explanation and it just doesn’t count and ours is the surviving explanation. And then by comparison they claim that their explanation Brett’s theory is an explanation and that it has reached
[01:02:15] Red: and therefore it is the best explanation.
[01:02:17] Blue: Now, this is something that we did not discuss. Actually, before I go on, let me ask your, you guys’s thoughts on my push back to them and their push back to me.
[01:02:28] Red: It seems to me again I guess I keep coming back to this that it what they’re saying has some validity to it, but I just can’t like, you know going back to the twin studies. To the you know this idea that non genetically related siblings raised together have the IQ does not and you’re not even just IQ every single personality characteristic there is. There is, from my understanding at least little very little or zero close to zero correlation between the siblings whereas siblings or twins raised apart. Everything is highly correlated in terms of their their abilities and their IQ and in every way you can measure the human mind. I can’t quite as much as sympathetic as I am to the these universal explainer arguments and basically everything that Brett Hall is saying. I just can’t quite get my mind around why that’s just as a parent and a teacher and just someone who just wants to know about human brains, why that’s not an interesting fact about our world and why, you know, and why this this idea that this stuff is probably at least heavily influenced by genes doesn’t isn’t a good explanation. I can’t can’t quite. I guess maybe I just don’t quite get it.
[01:04:02] Green: Well, I can’t agree that that enough time or like it like your neighbor, it’s not a time time and interest. He’s in his
[01:04:13] Blue: 30s right. I mean,
[01:04:14] Green: even if he put all of his focus on on changing his evolving past the point that he’s at not evolving is not the right word, changing that capacity. It’s, it’s, I don’t believe that’s something that he’ll ever change. I don’t believe and I don’t agree that it can be time and interest. I just, I don’t know.
[01:04:40] Red: I mean, certainly interest has a lot to do with what were our capabilities as well. I mean, I really like the point that these are intertwined kind of phenomena. I mean, if you’re not interested in an IQ test or or anything, you’re probably not going to score well and maybe you have other interests that you would that are just as meaningful and great I gotta say it’s a shoddy explanation personally.
[01:05:08] Blue: Brett says you mean, or. Yeah, yes. I’m not sure I would go that far, but I
[01:05:14] Green: don’t mean I like the, I like their their focus on, you know, they’re that I understand all the problems with with our more traditional view of intelligence and intelligence tests and all of that. But the argument that somebody who has down syndrome that it’s that it’s only about their time and interest. It just it that’s a really hard argument to to get behind.
[01:05:46] Blue: I did not discuss this with them. I mean everybody has to decide where they’re going to spend their time. And this was a long discussion and so eventually it kind of petered out. This is what I would actually wish I could discuss with them maybe I will at some future point. So the argument that the capacity to understand an explanation is the argument is ultimately that the capacity to understand any explanation is the soul important capacity and intelligence, unless maybe you want to count time and interest as a capacity which I think you could make the case that those count as capacities to that argument is not unlike claiming that the capacity of a universal computer is solely in its instruction set whether it’s universal or not Now you go back to the episode as we did on computational universality. They’re different kinds of computers. Some have some are universal the terrain complete ones, and some are not, and they can’t do certain kinds of algorithms they’re incapable of doing certain kinds of algorithms things like finite automata or whatever, but imagine using the argument that they are using with universal computers right you say the soul form of capacity of a universal computer is instruction set. So it’s it’s just a matter of is it universal or not, and you could use the arguments that they’re using you could try to explain everything in terms of it’s just a matter of the software. Right, you could say, yeah, sure this computer slower than that one, but it’s just because that’s not as good an algorithm, you know, you could use identical arguments with what they’re using to try to justify a theory that universal computers, their soul capacity is their instruction set.
[01:07:25] Blue: Okay, but we know that’s wrong. Nobody would make that argument because we know that’s wrong. We know universal computers actually have three types of capacity. The power of the instruction set whether it’s universal or not what what it can actually what types of algorithms that can actually perform, and then memory and speed. Why should universal explainers have only one single capacity. If, if universal computers don’t have a single capacity. Now, I actually know what the Deutschians would say for this because just I’ve seen bits and pieces elsewhere I’ve seen what they were doing to set about it so let me try to explain their argument against that argument. So their argument is that potentially universal explainers could have memory and speed capacity differences, because the brain is a universal computer. So in theory computers, universal computers can have memory and speed capacity differences. So they would at least in theory by that there could be a speed of memory capacity difference between humans, because they could have different brains. However, they would argue that due to universal compute computational universality. Those are the only possible capacity differences that we already know from that theory that there’s only three capacities possible, and that these three three capacities are the only ones that could possibly apply to a human as well between differences in between brains, then they would make the following arguments and say okay yes in potential potentially, you could have a difference in speed or memory for a human for one human compare to another.
[01:08:56] Blue: But in practice, we shouldn’t expect to see that because human brains are not like CPUs there’s no Moore’s law of human brains going on, where we end up every with every two years, double the number of transistors, human brains should all be roughly equivalent in speed and memory. And therefore, while there could be some speed and memory capacity differences between humans, they should be mostly just negligible and really wouldn’t ultimately make a difference. It
[01:09:23] Red: seems they oftentimes will bring up well you have you you hand someone an iPhone or something like that then that becomes like practically an extension of their. Yes, right.
[01:09:34] Blue: Brett makes that argument as part of the thread so yeah,
[01:09:37] Red: it’s a good one
[01:09:37] Blue: who’s name I can’t pronounce because it’s a string of letters challenged Brett on this thread and said, Well what about working memory like we know you can working memories completely neutral to what area of interest you have, but it would be you would benefit from working memory if and we know it’s we can measure that different people have different amounts of working memory. So, why wouldn’t that make a difference where some humans have higher IQs, maybe for multiple factors but one of them is working memory. We know humans have differences in working and amount of working memory. So, why, why wouldn’t that then translate to IQ differences where we can actually measure cognitive differences between people. And Brett’s response was, it wouldn’t matter because once you get to the point where a universal explainer and you can write things down on working memories not that important anymore and that was his response. So, based on all this, I then pointed out after having them argue with me for quite a while. I said, it looks to me like you’re saying I’ve just offered what seemed to me to be several very testable consequences of your theory. And you’re, you’re claiming that they’re not valid tests, whether you know whether I agree with you or not that doesn’t matter, you’re making the claim that they’re not valid tests. Are you making the claim there are no valid tests of this theory and thus your theory is metaphysical. Now, I got an interesting response on that.
[01:11:04] Blue: Brett actually became a little offended and put up in a fun way though, and put up a picture of Kathy Newman saying so you’re saying, Okay, which was really strange because he then went on to admit that his theory makes the same predictions as the prevailing theory explains them differently that there are no testable differences between the two. So it seems like I was actually correctly summarizing his view, which is very different than what Kathy Newman did. And then he never did respond after that one of the other ones I was talking to, he took exception to the term metaphysical, he said, I would call it a philosophical theory, not a metaphysical theory, which was also interesting. Because, you know, popper, his demarcation is supposed to be between empirical sciences and metaphysical theories that’s what popper calls it that’s the Popperian term if you’ve, your theory has no testable consequences popper calls it metaphysical. That’s, that’s the critical rationalist term for it. So he didn’t he didn’t like the term metaphysical but he said I would call it philosophical. And he says, if you buy metaphysical mean it has just it has no testable consequences which again, that is the Popperian definition of metaphysical, then yes I would say this is a metaphysical theory. So there seem to be agreement, even with Brett, who took some exception to calling it metaphysical that this is in fact a completely non empirical theory. They did not push back on that once it was fully explained they said yes there is no way to test this theory, but this theory is a good explanation it has explanatory power.
[01:12:36] Blue: And that’s why it’s a good theory that’s why it’s a better theory and the other theory has got no explanatory power. So it’s, it’s refuted it’s not a good theory. This is the good theory. I think this is as best I can, a steel man version of their argument and how they responded to what seemed to me to be some fairly you know legitimate push backs that you would expect them to get and I’ve tried to capture what their responses were. And at this point, I’m think probably we can wrap up this episode. So let me just give you guys a chance to make any final thoughts or comments on this.
[01:13:13] Red: Well, we didn’t talk about my favorite part of the article was which was the universal bicycle. I never did justice to that did I think about that when I’m you know I bike to work every day I don’t think I’m saving the earth or anything but just just for the health reasons and I just like it. And I think about the universal bicycle aspect all the time. Let’s, let’s
[01:13:35] Blue: talk
[01:13:35] Red: about
[01:13:36] Blue: that one.
[01:13:36] Red: Let’s let’s because I don’t want to forget it like I did the last time. Let’s talk about it right now. So the basically the idea if I can just explain it and then I’d be curious on your thoughts about it is that what he is. It’s sort of a criticism of the universal explainer hypothesis and the idea is that, well, you know how is that any different than saying you have a universal bicycle where if you take take that bicycle and you change this part you put this part put a jet engine on it and you know it may suddenly you have a have a spacecraft capable of going the speed of light, but it really totally theoretical I mean you still just on a practical level, you have a bicycle and you’re not going to go very fast and you’re not going to go very far. Yeah, okay, is that is that
[01:14:23] Blue: fair. Yes, it is I think I think that’s exactly the criticism he’s getting at is that even if you accept that universal explainer ship in some senses true. It doesn’t change the fact that the prevailing theory could still be true. Yeah. And that was one of his better criticisms I probably should have captured that one particularly since I knew you liked that one. So thank you for bringing that one out. So I, I’m not going to share my opinions, like my opinion is secret. I’ve made it fairly clear as I’m going along. But I actually would like to make the, you know, one of the next episode or at least a future episode, be where I actually go through each of the potential reputation that I offered to them, and take a look at their pushbacks, and talk through how I feel about their theory and how I feel about tell one of the things that we didn’t mention. And this can be the next episode is that Patel actually tries to offer a more specific alternative theory. Basically he offers a combination of hardware plus the scaling hypothesis I don’t have time to explain exactly what that means. But he believes that the differences intelligence can be explained by the fact that we actually have hardware differences, and that the brains are not equivalent. And on top of that, that that leads to a problem, because if there are if the differences are in hardware, you know why are animals not on the human bell curve. So he explains that through something called the scaling hypothesis, which is that as you’re starting to scale up the number of neurons that giant leaps suddenly take place at certain levels.
[01:16:05] Blue: And then he likens that to like the difference between GPT to GPT three or these, you know, mid journey or these these stable diffusion these new machine learning algorithms that are coming out that do these amazing things like being able to type a scene, a description and it can draw a picture of it, that this wasn’t possible at lower levels of neurons, even though we had the architecture, even though we had the right concepts, you just needed a bigger computer to be able to and more data to be able to process to be able to actually make these cool new algorithms, even though we technically had the same neural network architectures previous to this point, even though we technically could have done these. They just it just wasn’t actually feasible feasibly possible until we had a big enough computer with enough compute and with enough data and enough ability to actually run that data through the system until these giant leaps came out. So his theory is based around hardware plus the scaling hypothesis, basically, I should note that that’s different than the prevailing theory. So the prevailing theory is actually indifferent, why IQ exists. And this is where the Germans are kind of partially right there is a lack of explanation in the prevailing theory at certain points, they don’t really necessarily say what IQ is. They don’t necessarily try to explain it, or even how it happens or why it happens or how it’s related to that brain function. They’re simply trying to measure that there is a cognitive difference. So Patel is trying to fill in that gap with his own explanation. If that makes any sense.
[01:17:50] Blue: So maybe next time on the next episode, we can talk through what I what I think is actually wrong with Patel’s explanation I think I think Patel’s explanation is really actually quite problematic, but I also think that the the Deutsche one is, and we can kind of talk through, you know, the pros and cons of each theory. One of the things that I had suggested to the, to the Germans I was talking to, as I said, I actually think both theories are wrong, but that both have some verisimilitude. That’s not exactly uncommon and that fits perfectly with Popper’s epistemology
[01:18:22] Red: is
[01:18:23] Blue: that two false theories may both capture some sort of different truth from the other
[01:18:28] Red: theory.
[01:18:28] Blue: But what is that? And like, I can see the Deutsche one in particular who kept bringing this up, just saying you can get great Bruce explain it, right. And he’s right. That’s a hard thing to do. It’s hard to explain because we know so little about intelligence at this point. It’s very hard to explain at this point. So there is a lack of explanation in the prevailing theory and they’re right about that. We can, we can probably stop here. This would be a good stopping point. Thank you,
[01:18:55] Red: Bruce. That was wonderful. I really enjoyed that.
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