intelligence – My Mental Model

Educating the Next Generation

I’ve had a storied academic history. As a kid, I was always told about my ‘potential’. When shifting from elementary to high school, I applied to a ‘mini school’ for smart kids and was denied.. probably for not being smart enough. I went to the high school that the rest of my friends went to and by the next grade, had enrolled in their advanced program. My grades were generally below average and might have had something to do with my reluctance to study for anything. I was the type who went to class, paid attention, and participated… and that was usually enough to get by. By grade 12, I was down to 2 advanced courses, history and biology. The wager was that it would be easier to get into university with good grades from the standard classes than average grades from advanced classes. The bet paid off as I averaged mid 80s, and I was headed to university.

In my first year of university, I barely managed to stay off academic probation with a GPA of 1.8. The work wasn’t difficult, I just wasn’t that interested. There were certain courses that I did quite well in, like business or psychology, but then there were others like calculus that I failed twice after skipping most of the classes, doing none of the homework, and barely studying for the exams. I left university after my second year for a combination of reasons, including: a lack of funds, a lack of interest, a lack of focus, a bar fight, and a soured relationship with the university. When I got home that summer, I ended up making a fair bit of money.. enough to postpone any thoughts of finishing school. Fortunately or unfortunately, that job showed me that business is what I wanted to do, and I knew that getting a business degree was a good place to start. So I returned to school with a renewed interest after a couple years. With a renewed focus, I performed accordingly. I took business and psychology courses exclusively and was among the top of my class when we graduated. That included taking that calculus course on my own during a summer semester and finishing with a 90+.

During that time, I’ve learned a great deal. Including that being knowledgeable and performing well in academics are not the same thing. During my first two years, I set an unofficial record for fewest classes attended and still managed to finish with a GPA in the 2.5 range. It wasn’t because I was smart, I was because I knew how to study and how to test. For most classes, I could skip the lectures and course readings, and simply memorize the chapter summaries and vocabulary. It left gaps but with most tests being multiple choice, a bit of analysis and probability would usually get you in the 70s. Reflecting on it now, most of these courses relied heavily on memory. I learned to memorize things back in high school for biology but learned how to apply those skills elsewhere. Unfortunately, things that I memorized while cramming for an exam were almost always lost just as quick. Maybe not entirely, but the strategy wasn’t designed around long-term retention.

Perhaps there’s some rhyme and reason to things which are easy to remember and things which aren’t. If you learn a detail and know where it fits in your larger understanding of things and the variety of things it connects to, it’s easy to remember. If you’re just looking to memorize a list of details that’s isolated from your core understanding of the world, not so easy.

It would be interesting to see how much of the modern curriculum is based in memorization and I wonder if enough attention is paid to establishing the foundation for these facts to be absorbed more easily. Either way, I can’t help but think that memorization is going the way of long division. There was a point when I was a kid where elementary school teachers would tell me about how important it was to know how to do long arithmetic. Curious about why this was valuable when we had calculators, I had to ask. They would say something to the effect of, what happens when you don’t have a calculator? Thinking back on it now, I can’t say I’ve ever found myself in a situation where I needed to do math and didn’t have access to a calculator. I haven’t a clue how to do long division anymore and I’ve never once felt at a loss for it.

I think we’re evolving. For decades, if not centuries, if not millennia… people with remarkable memories were among the most capable individuals. They had the ability to draw from a larger database of knowledge than most of their peers, and as long as they filled it with useful things, they were remarkably useful. Once the written word and the printing press came along, it wasn’t just about your memory, but your ability to find good information worth memorizing. But here, in the information age, everything has changed.

Today, I walk around with a magical device in my pocket which provides me with a portal to 99.9% of all knowledge within the known universe. Within this portal exists search engines which help me locate the information I’m looking for. Within the results of those search engines exists all kinds of information, waiting to be understood and converted to knowledge. And these magical devices are available to just about anyone. This has revolutionized the way we gather and access what we need to know. And I don’t think we fully appreciate that just yet.

How much of a school’s curriculum is teaching kids what to think? How many of us were trained in the art of memorizing facts to be repeated at a later date, preferably when someone has asked asked a question to which that fact is an appropriate answer? Like while watching Jeopardy. That’s how to look smart isn’t it?. But what if we took the best (human) Jeopardy player of all time and matched them up against an average 15 year old with a laptop, internet connection, and a solid grasp of google? The 15 year old might be a bit slower but beyond that, I’d probably bet on the 15 year old. Without a doubt, the knowledge contained within Wikipedia, let alone the entirety of the internet would be considerably more vast and detailed than what any single mind could retain. Thinking about it differently, our collective digital brain represents just about all of human knowledge, far more than any one person could ever compete with.

Where a single mind can still compete quite effectively though, is with recalling that information quickly. Someone asks you your birthday, you can spit it back out almost immediately. If someone asks you when Thomas Jefferson’s birthday is, good chance you’ll need a few seconds on google. But in a practical world, when does one need to recall specific details of this nature in less than a few seconds? Is it possible that in this practical world, the skill of being able to find new information and understand it quickly becomes more valuable?

I’m watching the world tear itself apart right now and I can’t help but ask myself why and try to understand what I’m seeing. Something that I’ve observed, is that many people seem to be done learning. Old people can’t be bothered to learn how new technology works while young people can’t be bothered to learn history. Men won’t take the time to learn about the struggles that women go through while women won’t take the time to learn about the struggles that men go through. The religious crowd isn’t interested in learning new perspectives while the atheist crowd isn’t interested in learning about why people still seek religion. Hedge fund managers aren’t interested in learning about social impact and social justice warriors aren’t interested in learning about capitalism. Politicians aren’t interested in learning how to serve the people while the general population isn’t interested in learning how the government works. With access to more information than we’ve ever had, why have so many of us decided to stop learning?

I suspect that the search engine will go down as one of the most remarkable tools ever created by humans.. but it just wasn’t enough. If you do a google search for Thomas Jefferson’s birthday and get 5 different results on the first page, what then? Well hopefully you had memorized that date from American History class back in middle school. But if you hadn’t, that’s when you need to apply your skills of critical analysis, research, pattern recognition, and logic. You know… learning. But what if you don’t have those skills? I don’t remember any classes in school called logic or critical analysis. I don’t even remember anyone even offering detailed explanations on either.

I think that for a long time, academia has been about the memorization of facts which were deemed historic and relevant, in the hopes of creating a framework of future understanding. They were teaching us what they thought we should know. The problem with that though, is that the people who decided which facts were historic and relevant had their own biases and misunderstandings. Even worse, because of how they were presented, these frameworks became rigid. Within a rigid framework, it becomes more difficult to evolve and adapt to new environments. Also within these frameworks, people seem more likely to reinforce the walls than to question how their foundation was built.

What this all seems to boil down to for me is that many of us have either lost our sense of curiosity, or lack the tools to explore it. There’s no shortage of people who would like to tell us what to think or how to feel, but without an ability to explore it ourselves, how are we to know what’s real and what isn’t? If we fall into the habit of trusting people because we like what they’re saying, all we’ve done is fallen into an echo chamber.. a place where curiosity and learning is carefully restricted to reinforce an existing perspective. How do we get around all this? The answer seems to always be the same… education.

I think we need to revolutionize our approach to education and the first step will be supporting a child’s innate sense of curiosity with the tools to learn. Teach them everything we know that will help them discover the world for themselves and let them choose their own path. I don’t think it benefits anyone to have teachers reciting facts to groups of students, with the hope that they’re listening, will retain the information, and will then find it useful some day. What if teachers became facilitators which helped students develop the skills which in turn, helped them form their own understanding of the universe. Give them the compass of truth and reality, give them the tools of critical analysis, debate, logic, and research, and set them off on their own adventures. Prepare them to rise above the obstacles we couldn’t see beyond… and all that good stuff.

It’s not about teaching people what to think, it’s about teaching them how to learn.

Intelligence Vs. Compassion

I’ve done a lot of thinking on these two ideas over the last year or so. The western world seems rather divided right now.. democrats vs. republicans.. liberals vs. conservatives.. blue vs. red.. left vs. right. When you consider how much these individuals agree on, the division seems rather silly. Yet it persists. I have no doubt that the existing political system and those within it perpetuate this division for their own gain, but there’s something more to it than that. They didn’t create that division, they’re just the ones exploiting it. There’s something that exists beneath that.. something biological.

I wrote an entry a while back on thought vs. emotion. Introspectively, I could tell that they were two different cognitive processes within my brain. It led me to suspect that they had different roles within the human experience. I understood that you couldn’t use emotion to do things like solve math problems or learn languages. I also understood that happiness wasn’t a logical thought. Seemed rather likely that the thoughtful part of the brain would pursue happiness while the emotional part of the brain allowed you to enjoy it.

Ironically, a few months later, a friend gave me a book for my birthday that discussed this topic. The book, A General Thoery of Love, was written by a small team of MDs and PhDs in clinical psychology. To my surprise, the authors were big fans of poetry, love, their families, and all the other soft stuff you might not associate with a scientific mind. I must say it was done quite well and taught me a great deal about how the mind works.

One of my biggest takeaways was how obvious evolution was in determining the fundamental structure of the human brain. The base of our brain is referred to as the reptilian brain and controls things like your vitals and balance. This also represents our most base instincts.. things relating to survival like the 4 Fs: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and… reproduction. What the reptile brain seems to lack though is any sense of compassion. I was rather surprised to find out that reptiles are known to eat their young. Apparently the part of the brain that tells us to be kind to our kin didn’t come until afterwards.

After the reptile brain came the limbic brain. It’s likely that this evolution occurred during the early evolution of mammals. The theory is that when life made the jump from laying eggs to carrying their young, the brain needed to adapt appropriately. Mammals were taking a different approach to survival, one which required them to care for their young until they were capable of fending for themselves. They needed a way to communicate. They needed to develop a language. Enter the limbic brain, the emotional center of the human brain today. The limbic brain was one of facial expressions, touch, sound, and all these other little nuances that allowed mammals to instinctively understand how one another felt. Not a language in the classic sense, but very much a language nonetheless.

The most recent evolution of the brain is the neocortex. It would be convenient to say that that the neocortex is unique to humans but it isn’t. It’s present in great apes, dolphins, elephants, and most other mammals. What seems to makes humans different is how much of brain’s mass is dedicated to the neocortex and the size of our brain relative to the size of our bodies. As one might guess, this is the part of the brain is responsible for what we typically consider to be human intelligence: logic, abstract thought, imagination, and consciousness.

Effectively, through millions upon millions of years of evolution, our brain has equipped itself for survival, compassion, and intelligence. In that order. And yet the vast majority of the human brain is dedicated to its most recent addition: intelligence. That evolution has happened rather quickly considering how long it took for the other parts of the brain to develop. Nature rarely does anything by mistake.

I’m grateful for having learned all this because it’s given me a rather useful insight into the difference between thought and emotion. It’s also shown me how little the general public seems to understand or appreciate how the brain works. How often will someone talk about how they feel towards something when they’re actually thinking about it? How often will someone claim to be using their feelings to navigate something abstract? How often are we asked how we feel when we should be asked what we think? I suspect there’s something worth observing here.

As someone who prioritizes thoughtfulness, logic, and truth, I’m probably more easily frustrated by this dynamic than others. As a result, I’ve been thinking about it a fair bit and have noticed something worth sharing. Throughout the course of recorded history, I’ve noticed a shift from emotional to intelligent. I’m unsure if it’s a result of an ongoing biological evolution in the brain, or a gradual appreciation for what intelligence allows us to do. Realistically, it’s probably both. If I were to guess, natural selection favors intelligence.

Religion might be the easiest example here. Religion has existed in some shape or form for about as long as human civilization. Our brains are programmed to identify patterns, and once we do, we can’t help but use our imaginations to assign meaning to them. As soon as we were able to recognize the significance of things like the sun and stars, we couldn’t help but try to tie them into one grand narrative. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why religion is such a complex topic.. perhaps in some way, it serves as a chronology of intelligence vs. compassion.

There was a point where religion was about community and worship.. this general idea that if you were kind and compassionate to each other, your god would be kind and compassionate to you. Over time, intelligence allowed us to realize that if we were kind and compassionate to each other, that was probably all we needed. In that time, god went from an individual who was supposed to be loved or feared, to something much more abstract. Since then, religion has become less about worship and more about philosophical teachings relating to morality. Unfortunately for these religions, they often attributed their teachings to the word of god rather than what they most likely were: a reflection of how humanity understood morality at that point in history. As a result, we were put in a position where humanity’s collective understanding of morality was evolving and god’s wasn’t. How could that be. Something wasn’t right.

As the centuries went by, the intellectual crowd kept coming up with better and better reasons to stray from religion. The politics, the corruption, the lack of evidence, the logical fallacies, the tribalism… it just looked like a big pile of nope. Even the renaiisance experienced a big shift from religion to the sciences. And now, in the 21st century, religion looks to be as irrelevant as ever. The world’s brightest minds are notoriously non-religious. The vast majority of people STEM careers are non-religious. The vast majority of business and industry leaders are non-religious. The vast majority of recognized philosophers are non-religious. The only leaders that I can think of who tend to be religious are political leaders. As their actions tend to show, it’s a function of votes and job security more than loyalty to the cause.

The better we get at using the intelligent part of our brain, the better we get at discerning the difference between real and not real. As we get better at discerning between real and not real, truth and reality become increasingly important to us. As truth and reality become increasing important to us, the fictions of religion becomes much less attractive. While I think this movement away from religion is justified if not an essential part of our evolution, we should be mindful not to throw away the baby with the bath water. Religion was among the first establishments to champion the ideas of kindness, community, and morality. Those ideas are worth bringing with us to where ever we go next.

When I think about where we are now and where we go next, I can’t help but think that computers are rather central to the conversation. When I think about how computers were designed from the beginning, I can’t help but think that they were designed as an extension of our neocortex. Computers are logical by nature. If a program has a line of code which contains a logical fallacy, it creates an error. And while our computers inch towards levels of artificial intelligence that rival our own, there’s an obvious absence of emotion or survival instincts. This idea that one of humanity’s most significant creations is an extension of one of our most significant evolutionary advantages…. doesn’t strike me as a coincidence.

I’ve been thinking about writing a book for a couple year now. It’s working title is the Vulcan Republic. The idea is a mash-up between Plato’s Republic and the Vulcan philosophies from Star Trek. One takes place in the past, using logic in search of how one would create a Utopian society. The other takes place in the future where a species just like humanity embraced logic and created that utopia. Considering the path that we’ve taken over the course of our evolution, is this so unlikely? Is it so far fetched that intelligence is our guiding star?

MBTI helped me understand how strong the division is between thinkers and feelers. I know this all too well as the feelers tend to get upset with me for thinking too much and feeling too little. But then I ask them why I should feel more and think less, and they don’t have a reason. They just feel that way. As it turns out, the part of the brain that knows why things happen is the thinking part. And unfortunately for me, there are statistically more feelers than thinkers. But I suspect this is changing. I suspect that every generation, on average, has been more thoughtful than their parents’ generation. I expect that computers will help kids to learn and embrace logic faster that previous generations. I expect that the kids growing up today will respond to the highly emotional conversations around current events by learning to be more thoughtful and sensible in the way they discuss ideas with one another.

That’s a future that excites me. But it doesn’t excite everyone. The more emotional crowd aren’t always the biggest fan of computers, logic, or intelligence. I’m often faced with situations where they consider these things to be threatening. They’ll use words like empty, cold, or robotic. They seem to assume that intelligence and compassion are binary, that it’s one or the other. To that point, I think they’re wrong. I think that we could all be reminded of a simple truth: The most intelligent decision someone can make is a compassionate decision, and the most compassionate decision someone can make is an intelligent decision.

Intelligence and compassion tend to operate like a map and compass. Intelligence is a tool that helps you read the terrain and understand the most effective way to move from point A to point B. Compassion is like a compass which might not tell you much about where you are or how to get to where you want to go, but it’ll always give you a sense of direction. Too often, people will lead with unintelligent compassion, resulting in good intentions but progress in the wrong direction. Watching the social justice warriors embolden the conservative crowd reminded me of this. But at the same time, there are those who lead with intelligence and a lack of compassion which lead to productive actions which are counter-productive to humanity’s collective goals. You don’t have to look much further than Thanos or any bond villain to see how that plays out. I suspect that for real progress, we need to embrace both, and understand that when we are at our best, they are one and the same.

Nature rarely does anything by mistake… Survive. Be compassionate. Be intelligent.

EQ vs. IQ

I was reading an article the other day about hiring practices. The article discussed how people used to hire for IQ, until they learned that it was better to hire for EQ. An example they gave was how brilliant leaders would rarely fail for a lack of IQ, but failed often for a lack of EQ. Interesting. The article went on to talk about how people are now hiring for LQ, or a learning quotient. Now they’re talking my language. In an age where your ability to acquire knowledge is worth 10x your ability to retain it… this is the age of learning.

But I digress.

What inspired this entry was the article’s brief comparison between EQ and IQ, suggesting that EQ is a better predictor of job performance than IQ. I can’t help but disagree with that. And I can’t help but think that EQ, as the general public understands it, has become overvalued.

Before the Justin Trudeau ran for Prime Minister, I remember hearing all these comparisons to Pierre Trudeau, his dad who had also held the role of Canadian Prime Minister. The one which stood out for me was from John Oliver and it was about IQ vs EQ. Where Pierre Trudeau was intellectually brilliant, Justin Trudeau had Emotional Intelligence. I’ve been paying very close attention to the value of EQ since and I’ve noticed a few things.

I guess the first thing we should do is define the term EQ. Google defines it as “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.” It’s the first time I’ve seen that definition and I quite like it. Actually, I really like it. Let’s break it down. The first part is about self-awareness, self-expression, and the ability to control your emotions. So often, someone who is highly emotional qualifies themselves as having a high EQ but that doesn’t seem to be the case. If being aware of your emotions and having an ability to control them is part of EQ, that makes a lot of sense. The second part is about being able to understand the emotions of others while handling those relationships fairly. This is where things get interesting.

Emotions are part of the human blueprint. To assume they don’t exist is incorrect. To assume they can be suppressed indefinitely is unhealthy. To be aware of, to be in control of, and being able to experience emotions seems to be the philosophy of emotional intelligence and I can get behind that. Being able to understand the emotions of others, as a non-verbal language… I can get behind that, too. Where I think the modern understanding of EQ falls apart is when handling interpersonal relationships judiciously.

I’m often criticized for being insensitive. I’m also recognized as being very honest.

If you were presented with the option of telling someone what they wanted to hear and making them feel good about themselves, or telling them a hard truth and making them feel bad about themselves, which would you choose?

When people discuss individuals with a high EQ, they seem to be discussing people who are skilled at telling people what they want to hear. It’s like a comedian walking into a room, being able to feel out the crowd, and then delivering the kinda jokes they want to hear. When you hear what you want to hear, you feel good about yourself, and when you feel good about yourself, you tend to think highly of the person who helped you get there. That’s what I see when I see EQ being discussed in the mainstream,and it’s wrong.

In the age of thought bubbles and echo chambers, we desperately need to move away from the people who are skilled at telling us what we want to hear. Those who prioritize telling us what we want to hear are selfish. For them, our long-term well-being is secondary to feeling good in this moment. And feeling good in this moment almost always produces what they’re actually looking for.. a date, a sale, a vote.. and even a presidency. And it’s extremely unhealthy.

There’s a 50 Cent song from back in the day called A Baltimore Love Thing. 50 raps from the perspective of heroin. If you’d like to know what a relationship looks like when the other person cares more about making you feel good in the moment than your long-term health, that’s it. And if you’re looking towards the other end of the spectrum, think exercise. It always sucks at first, and the harder the exercise, the more it burns. But the more you do it, the better you feel about and the healthier you are.

And this brings me back to my personal struggle, perhaps why this topic is of such interest to me.

Over and over, I’m labelled as low EQ because being capable of understanding and controlling my emotions is perceived as suppressing or not engaging with them. Over and over, I’m labelled as insensitive because I’m unafraid of delivering the hard truths that help people the most. Over and over I’m told that I’m not empathetic towards others because I’d rather motivate and inspire than offer blind support. I’m done accepting those criticisms.

I am not without room for improvement, but I am not without EQ.