this is a statistic that just absolutely
shocked and staggered me when I went
through the Intel intelligence
literature so you know it is illegal in
the United States to induct anybody who
has an IQ of less than 83 and the reason
for that is you know that the American
armed forces have been conducting
intelligence research for like more than
a hundred years and that was partly
because they needed a way of sorting
people rapidly during times of military
expansion during wartime but it was also
because IQ tests and especially in the
early part of the 20th century were used
to identify and let's say the deserving
poor who could really benefit from
additional educational attainment and
advancement in the unit and the military
was hoping to identify people from more
class strata that could be streamed into
say officer training programs and so
forth or even skills training programs
to to move people from the underclass
and to at least the working class and
maybe above so they had a bloody stake
in this man they wanted to find people
they wanted to sort them properly and
they wanted to do social good when they
weren't just trying to win a war let's
say which often also is a social good
but what happened was that by I don't
remember when this legislation was
introduced but it wasn't it was in the
later part of the 20th century but their
basic finding was that by say the 1980s
they had determined that if you had an
IQ of less than 83 there was not a damn
thing that the unit that the army could
do the Armed Forces could do to
transform you into someone who could do
something that was more productive than
non-productive and the Thera terrible
thing about that is that it's about 10
percent of the population and so you
look at a statistic like that and you
think oh my god you've got this this
this this enterprise this massive
enterprise that's chronically hungry for
people it's right it's always they're
always looking for people they're really
oriented towards taking people from the
underclass and lower working-class and
pushing them up the societal strata and
during wartime they're actually
desperate to bring in recruits period
and their conclusion is that 10% of the
population can't be trained to do
anything anything sufficiently useful to
make them militarily operable it's just
I just read that my judge is
it's like yeah you know in the United
States we have about 330 million people
and because of the distribution the
relatively normal distribution of IQ
scores about 16 percent have IQs of 85
or what right right genes they're not
going to graduate school no it means
that from from what I've read
practically it means the Wonderlic
company is actually done and really they
have a nice IQ test from the commercial
perspective you know it's actually
psychometrically valid and they've late
IQ levels to to job specifically the job
categories you know yeah I know says
they're not only not going to graduate
school they're not gonna find a a stable
job that pays a livable wage yeah now
especially even given that so many of
the service jobs now require a fair high
degree of computational savvy or need a
bit know I'm it's not computation but
ability to interact with complex
computational technology most a typical
tell data at a checkout market or or the
till out of McDonald's because
McDonald's is actually very complicated
is is often far beyond the ability of
people who are on the low end of the
intelligence distribution and they
claimed I think it was Wunderlich
although it might have been it might
have been hunt what's his name they said
IQ researcher is it Earl hunt I think
possibly 12 are what he claimed that
that if you have an IQ of below 90 that
it's it's difficult it's difficult for
you to read well enough to translate
what you're reading into action so you
can't actually read instructions and
follow them you don't have that level of
literacy that's correct yeah so so I was
gonna say that in the United States
this bottom 16 percent translates into
51 million people right including 13
million children who are in school right
this is a very difficult problem no I
knew Earl hunt you passed away west you
knew him pretty well he also would say
that there is this
cognitive segregation in society this is
a point that charles Murray makes yes
well and on where they often ask you
know when's the last time you had
someone over for dinner who wasn't a
college grad well that was something
that Murray and Herrnstein wrote about
in their book the bell curve which
really struck me because I read that
book twice unlike most of the people
ritter sized it and you know we're one
of the things that that they pointed out
in there was look the the typically the
typical educated person thinks that
someone isn't very bright if they have
an IQ of at 115 to a graduate level of
PhD level research institutions right
because 115 there's there's as many
people at 115 above as there are at 85
and below and so it's a minority of the
population and that's the top 15% and
you know that's that's the dollar
undergraduate right so how do you just
people have to see I'm a clinical
psychologist and I've dealt with people
who had eye ranges in the low 80s and
tried to find them jobs and tried to
train them and I I have some real
knowledge about the stunning gap between
people at the low end of the IQ
distribution and the high end and it's
it's no bloody wonder people hate IQ
research and intelligence research
because it reveals a set of seriously
dismal facts about the incredible range
of ability among human beings well yes
this is true and moreover I would add to
this that people in universities
professors and couple of graduate
students have a hard time understanding
what the what everyday life is like if
you have an IQ of 80 or 85 and you're
making your way you're living
independently you're making your way in
the world but it is a challenge it is
Amin just chose it just barely begins to
describe it I had a I had a client who
he probably had an IQ of under 80 the
nonverbal portion of it anyways and he
was indistinguishable in physical
appearance for
from let's say I hate to use the frame
normal person but there's nothing mark
that marked him out about particularly
intellectually impaired you know and I
tried at one point this is this what
this was so so telling to me
I got an interval interior job which by
the way is very difficult it's harder to
get a volunteer job than a real job
because you have to do police screening
and all sorts of things and the
selection process is just as extreme but
I eventually ended up getting him a job
at a bike store bike slash bookstore and
but that place couldn't hold him once
the subsidy program had expired and then
I got him a job at a charity and his job
was to fold letters into three so that
they could be put into envelopes well
that sounds easy except that he also had
a bit of a motor trimmer and you know it
took me about 30 hours to train him to
fold up a piece of paper with sufficient
precision so that it could be put in an
envelope rapidly so that the envelope
wasn't so mangled that it would get
stuck in the automatic sorting machine
and you know there was high performance
demands on him too he had to whip
through those letters pretty quickly and
then sometimes the letters would have a
photograph appended to them that was
stapled on and they weren't always
stapled on in the same place so then he
had to calculate how to fold the paper
over the photograph without bending the
photograph in precise thirds so that
would still fit in the envelope and then
he had to separate the french letters
from the English letters and associate
them with the proper envelopes and like
that level of complexity just did him in
let me say two things about this one is
I hope common sense and the other is
pretty provocative the common sensing is
we have to be very careful when we have
these discussions not to devalue the
human dignity of people who aren't in
the upper end of the distribution and if
there's one criticism that I think is
fair is sometimes in these conversations
it sounds like we're devaluing people at
you know the lower end of the
distribution we have to
very careful that we don't do that human
life has dignity and IQ is not the most
important thing that defines human yes
and beans you know it's not associated
with wisdom it's not necessarily
associated with truth or with courage or
with many virtues that that are being on
the wall humble or honest no the
psychometric relationship between
intelligence and conscientiousness is
zero right right we have to make that
point yes I think I agree I agree I mean
I'm sure are trying to make the point
about how difficult it is for people who
are on the low end of the cognitive
spectrum to survive in a increasingly
complex cognitively sophisticated
environment where jobs are just
disappearing
you