[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we had a small chat. I was reflecting on the fact: I don’t know if I have many more avenues to explore the High IQ societies. I have a couple ideas, maybe a few, but I think those are pretty much already underway and can be done fairly quickly. Other than those, meh, they’ll be done.
Rick Rosner: One argument to be made is that you have given it at least as much attention as it deserves.
Jacobsen: Can you expand on that?
Rosner: How much attention does the World’s Strongest Man competition deserve? It’s this niche sport done by very few people that’s interesting to watch for maybe half an hour on a boring Sunday afternoon which is when they used to broadcast the World’s Strongest Man competition. It’s these guys from Nordic countries, named Magnus who stand like 6’5 and weigh 320 pounds and are careful to power lift like six sets of three reps everyday and eat 5500 calories a day to maximize their bulk lifting strength, so they can lift a ball of solid rock which is like 30 inches in diameter. It’s interesting but not that interesting.
Then the guys who have explored the far reaches of puzzle solving cleverness can be interesting but if they haven’t done anything else, it’s not that interesting. It’s time bound. The whole idea of IQ and the golden age of IQ ran from maybe after World War I until the 80s. But of course IQ was way abused in World War I and then there were various efforts to make it more fair and then it kind of was widely accepted in the highly conservative conformity oriented 1950s. Everything in America is okay where the world leaders and capitalism and liberty and everybody owning a house and schools are okay if we just follow the American system, then everything’s cool.
IQ is a part of the American system. Everybody gets their brain measured and get processed accordingly. Then people got cynical in the 60s and 70s and realized that a lot of bad IQ is bullshit. I mean, IQ is entirely bullshit. To bring up that Churchill quote again that democracy is terrible except compared to every other form of government [“democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”] IQ is terrible except compared to every other way to fairly easily measure intelligence. But IQ has kind of had its moment. You have talked to a lot of people who’ve been part of the world of IQ. And now it got a whole new world of wildly expanded intelligence coming with AI and machine learning which will lead to about one percent called a Cambrian explosion of expanded jungle of consciousness; new types of consciousness powerful and competing in this weird twisted new world, all of which will make IQ look quaint.
So, that’s my argument.
[Recording End]
Authors
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
In-Sight Publishing
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Rick Rosner 