Rick Rosner: I want to talk about crystallized versus fluid intelligence, which is part of the same broad theories related to IQ. Fluid intelligence is raw problem-solving ability at its peak in young adults. The trade-off is that, as you acquire wisdom—knowledge-based expertise—this becomes crystallized intelligence.

As you learn more and your brain ages, fluid intelligence is replaced by crystallized intelligence. But this raises the question: “Am I getting dumber as I get older?” There’s a stereotype, and I’m sure some biological arguments support it, that exceptionally smart people tend to do their best work in their twenties or maybe thirties.

Take Einstein, for example. He was born in 1879, and by 1905, at age 26, he had developed special relativity along with three other groundbreaking theories—though ironically, he didn’t win the Nobel Prize for special relativity. Instead, he won it for the photoelectric effect, a discovery made in that same period. Ten years later, at 36, he developed general relativity. After that, while he did other important things—like contributing to quantum mechanics and statistical physics—he didn’t have any more groundbreaking discoveries. He lived until 1955, so for the last half of his life, there weren’t many notable scientific breakthroughs.

Similarly, Newton developed his mathematical and scientific principles in his twenties yet lived into his eighties—an unusually long life in the 1600s and 1700s. In his later years, he wasn’t as engaged in groundbreaking math or science. Instead, he ran the Royal Mint and made contributions, such as inventing coin “milling” (adding ridges to the sides of coins to prevent people from filing them down for precious metals). Later in life, Newton also engaged in personal feuds and political struggles. He wasn’t doing much innovative science at that point.

Darwin, on the other hand, went on the Beagle, a five-year voyage around the world, where he gathered the data and observations that would form the basis of his theory of evolution. However, he sat on the theory for about 20 years, developing his arguments until his friends—particularly Alfred Russel Wallace—developed a similar theory. Pressured, Darwin finally published On the Origin of Species in 1859. He then spent the rest of his life defending his work, writing more books on related topics, and continuing his scientific observations. He was famously meticulous. For instance, he studied how flagstones in his garden gradually sank into the ground, attributing it to earthworms chewing through the soil underneath.

Darwin was also a gradualist. He believed the Earth was incredibly old and its geological features formed gradually over millions of years. By the 1880s, Darwin was among the few who understood the immense age of the Earth. He rejected the theories of the time that suggested the Sun was powered by chemical burning or gravitational contraction, which implied it could only last about 20 to 50 million years. Darwin argued that the Sun and Earth must be far older to account for his observed processes.

So, did any of these people feel like their mental faculties were declining or that they couldn’t develop new ideas like they used to? I don’t think so. Take Feynman, for example. He remained mentally sharp and continued to innovate well into his later years. He was known for doing physics in unconventional places—like strip clubs, where he was famously uninhibited.

He would sit in the back and jot things down on napkins. He started sketching people, which became an excuse to look at naked women—not just naked art models. But I’ve never seen anything in the literature. However, I haven’t searched deeply for it, where renowned creative people complained about their brains deteriorating to the point where they couldn’t create anymore. But I wonder about myself.

Not that I’ve accomplished much—certainly not that I’ve developed a grand theory of the universe—but I have a theory that hasn’t been widely circulated or evaluated. It’s not very math-heavy, though it probably should be. I used to write jokes for late-night shows, and I think I’m a better joke writer now than when I was getting paid for it. I was just fortunate to be paid at the time.

But I’m confident I could still contribute to a late-night show if I had the good fortune to be hired by one. So, how do I feel about my fluid intelligence? Has it declined? Though somewhat ridiculously, my intelligence has been measured through dozens of IQ tests. However, these tests require more than 100 hours of work to do well.

My tolerance for spending so much time on such a task has diminished because I’m 64, and I shouldn’t waste my remaining time on that nonsense. There was a test I started years ago and got about halfway through, where I’d done quite a bit of work. The only reason I would take an IQ test now is if it offered the potential to score higher than my previous record- around 196, maybe 192—somewhere in the 190s.

So, to take another test, I would need to get a chance to score at least 198 or even 200, assuming a standard deviation of 16. Or are we talking about 15? I’ve scored six standard deviations above the mean.

Anyway, I again picked up this one test, the Cooijmans test, about a year ago. I looked it over to see if I could answer enough questions correctly to set a new personal high score and regain the number one spot in the world. But then I got distracted by other things and set it aside again. The thing about Cooijmans’ tests is that you rarely score as well as you think you will, and he loves that about them.

I admire it. I know he strives for validity, even in the strange world of ultra-high IQ tests, which means he isn’t generous with scores. But would I still perform well if I took these IQ tests again? Have my skills declined? I don’t think so, but maybe that’s a reflection of the test not measuring what it claims to measure. I’ve found that the key to success on these tests is persistence—trying a zillion different approaches to the hardest problems.

Is coming up with a zillion different ideas fluid intelligence? Or is it about looking around for analogies in the world that can be applied to a problem? In many ways, you’re profiling the test and the test maker as much as solving the problems themselves. But then again, what were super-smart people like Einstein and Newton doing?

And is that what anyone doing creative work is doing—looking for associations, developing new patterns, and observing new consistencies in the world or their imagination? So, to return to the original question: am I getting dumber?

Most of what I do, and the main creative work in my day, isn’t creative. It’s mostly tweeting random stuff. I’ve also been working on this book for years, and I need to spend more time writing sentences instead of just coming up with new ideas. I need to translate the ideas into actual prose. Am I being lazier about that than I should be because my mental abilities have declined?

I don’t think so. I’ve been editing my wife’s book, and my editing skills aren’t any worse than ever. I’m a good editor, so I haven’t noticed any decline in my mental faculties.

What I have noticed is a laziness. I’m sleeping more. Is that because I’m depressed? Is it because I’m not drinking enough coffee? Is it something else?

Is it because I’m working out more? I joined another gym, so now I’m working out an average of more than six times a week when I used to work out five times a week. Is that making me more tired? Have my mental skills declined compared to other people my age, 64?

Because I work out six times a week, I’ve gotten skinnier, against my will. During the Trump years—these years included—I lost a lot of weight, partly because I was having stomach issues all the time and couldn’t keep the weight on. So now, at 5’10.5″, I got on the scale yesterday and was 139 pounds, with socks and pants on. That’s skinny, but it’s probably easier on my body than carrying an extra 20 or 25 pounds of muscle would be.

So, I am still trying to figure out the answers. Do you think I’ve gotten dumber? 

Jacobsen: I would go with your earlier assessment: you used to be crazier. Now, you’re less crazy but also less motivated. In other words, lazy has replaced crazy.

Rosner: At least they rhyme. But was I crazy or more agitated and vocal about it? 

Jacobsen: I agree with your assessment and don’t want to offend you. I remember comparing yourself with Grigori Perelman regarding appearance, which was an offense. 

Rosner: You said I look a bit like him. 

Jacobsen: So I’d chalk it up to cooling down with age. You haven’t done anything drastic. An inflection point was probably the cancer scare. That rearranged your whole schedule with pills and supplements. It didn’t change your exercise routine too much. But you take more naps now and don’t take those IQ tests anymore. 

Rosner: I recently found a simpler test, which I’ve been working on.

I want to spend less than 100 or 200 hours on a test, and this one doesn’t require that much time. I’ve only got three more problems to crack, so I may finish it soon. 

Jacobsen: But to finalize the answer to your question, I’d say you’re no longer taking the tests as seriously. You have an adult daughter and other things going on. Then, there’s the fact that you’re getting older, the cancer scare, and how it shook up some of your rigid systems. You’ve also become more comfortable with taking naps. So, it’s a combination of things that reflect the transition from “crazy” to “lazy.”

It’s more about being attuned to self-care now, which is more reasonable. You once made an argument, around the time of your cancer diagnosis, that part of the problem might have been overloading your kidneys due to working out so much, especially with the muscle-building exercises and the strain on your body from processing all that muscle mass.

You speculated that this overwork might have contributed to the cancer. 

Rosner: I said, “Hell no.” But, if you work out a lot, you expel a lot of creatinine. Creatinine is a waste product from working your muscles hard, and that stuff can build up. It’s also a cheap measure of how well your kidneys are functioning. But there are more expensive blood tests that tell you more directly how well your kidneys are doing.

For most people, the amount of creatinine in their system indicates kidney function. The more waste in your blood, the less efficiently your kidneys work. But extreme exercise can throw off that measurement. So the question is, does it mess up your kidneys too?

There’s a point where extreme exertion, like rhabdomyolysis (rhabdo)—which some CrossFitters experience—can send your body into toxic shock. In that case, yes, it’s damaging your kidneys. But I’m not sure if it’s just raising your creatinine slightly out of the normal range. Maybe I have sensitive kidneys. So, yes, that’s my sense of being less crazy now.

I was talking with Carole about this, about my craziness. My wife has been writing a semi-biography of my mom because she found a trove of old love letters. We talked about how my mom had many disappointments in her life, including me, during my crazy years. I was super gifted as a kid, but I messed everything up. I was cutting scars into myself to look badass and stripping instead of going to Harvard. That was incredibly disappointing and distressing for my mom and stepdad.

But my argument is that I did much crazy stuff. Still, it eventually led me to become a successful comedy writer. Some people are just crazy and keep getting into trouble, sabotaging their lives because their minds are not working in a way that helps them navigate the world.

There’s a crazy where your brain isn’t functioning properly, and you’re constantly hurting yourself and others—like someone walking down the street, screaming nonsense. My craziness was more about coming up with weird, often misguided, ideas to address real issues I thought I needed to fix. One of those issues was finding a partner—getting a girlfriend or, eventually, a wife.

I had all sorts of crazy plans for this. Some were stupid, like the scars. Others weren’t so bad, like lifting weights to develop a decent-looking body. That helped me get laid a few times and made me more presentable. It was part of a larger effort not to look terrible. For a while, I looked pretty good. You can’t tell in this lighting because it makes my hair look like crap. I also haven’t trimmed my beard or bothered to groom myself, but I’d still look pretty good for 64 if I tried. So that part wasn’t entirely insane. I took it too far, sure, but it wasn’t wild in the schizophrenic sense, where I was hearing voices or thinking famous people were talking to me.

So anyway, is that it?

Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org

Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com

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