The Infinite Monkey Cage - Irrationality

Episode Date: August 11, 2014

Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by comedians Josie Long and Paul Foot, psychologist Richard Wiseman and neuroscientist Stuart Ritchie to ask "is irrationality genetic?". The second of two programmes recorded at the Edinburgh Festival.

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Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And welcome to the podcast version of the Infinite Monkey Cage, which contains extra material that wasn't considered good enough for the radio. Enjoy it. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And we are at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a month where the Edinburgh Zoo expands its boundaries across the whole of the city. A comedian in every possible cage, a dance troupe in every possible aviary, and angry packs of Shakespeareans roaming the parks. Do not feed the Stephen Burkoffs. He's snappy.

Also, as well as being a home to nervous, weepy and drunk performers, it is the birthplace of David Hume, one of the world's great philosophers and empiricists, and today, much to Brian's annoyance, there is a possibility we will stray from science into philosophy. Hmm. Yes, today's show... What's that?

Four. Today's show was inspired by a letter from a listener. This was from Jago Tremaine, and he wrote, or asked us, whether there might be a genetic basis for narrow-minded intolerance, and if so, whether a cure might be a genetic basis for narrow-minded intolerance and if so whether a cure might be found so to paraphrase basically what he said what he was asking is is irrationality genetic the idiots are cocksure but the intelligent are full of doubt that's what birch and russell probably said all gk chest and all kurt vonnegut it's normally one of those three can we blame all we are merely on the

shortfalls of our own genes? Don't blame me, it's my base pairs. Your honour, I would like to take into account my client's genetic code. We have a panel to tackle this ethical and scientific quandary, and they are... My name's Stuart Ritchie, I'm a research fellow in the psychology department at the University of Edinburgh, and my most irrational belief is that in the year 2014 it's still worthwhile listening to Morrissey hello my name is Josie Long and I'm a comedian and champion outdoor swimmer and thank you and by that I mean I was fast-tracked to the final because there weren't enough entrants and I came last. My rational belief is that I

genuinely think that I can predict the future. Using differential equations? Yeah. I warn you, Josie has just been doing her A-level maths exams. That's true, isn't it? I have, but it's not A-level, it's AS, which is the slightly easier one.

But I get the results on the 14th. So you do calculus next year? Yeah, I'm not ready for calculus yet. If you want something differentiated and then integrated again, I'll do that for you. Thank you. There's a Q for me.

X squared. X squared. X squared? Just X, mate. Oh, hang on, a different... Two X. Two X! Wait, I'm not too excited. Oh, no, Josie, you've just seen the future and you've seen your results.

Wait, do another one. Oh, God! Do another one. You're going to do a contour integral then. Sine X. Oh, no, I can't do them yet. That's the next year. Do, like, six X cubed. Sine x. Oh, no, I can't do them yet. That's the next year. Do like 6x cubed.

6x cubed. Okay, that would be 18x squared. Thank you. You're welcome. That was like watching the blooper reel of University Challenge. Integrate it back again. Oh, I'll integrate it back.

Okay, it's 6x cubed. Plus a constant of integration. Oh, I'll integrate it back. Okay. It's 6x cubed. Plus a constant of integration. Oh, plus C, yeah. That was a real thrill. I've no idea what's going on. I'm Richard Wiseman, psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire

and my rational belief is that I'm totally rational. Mmm. Mmm. My name is Paul Foot. I am Professor of Horse Physics... LAUGHTER ..at the university.

LAUGHTER And my most irrational belief is that I'm a carrot and I live in a rabbit hutch. I almost live in almost constant fear. And this is our panel. Richard, first of all, some definitions. So what is irrationality? I don't think... I'm sure we've all got our own definitions.

I think that it's sort of just basically getting things wrong. That's what I would say. And I would say that we all get things wrong all the time. There's lots of research that asks people, do you think you're an above-average driver in terms of safety? And about 80%, 90% of people go, yes, that's me. Have you got an above-average sense of humour? That goes up to 99% of people.

So we hold on to these things. For example, if you support a football team and they win, then it's, you know, we won. If they lose, then it's they lost. You distance yourself. So these are the rational ideas that make life bearable, I think. That just seems to be a misunderstanding of statistics. I mean, are you using a statistical definition of rationality? I think I'm using it in the sense that just seems to be a misunderstanding of statistics in this i mean is that you're using a statistical definition of rationality i think i'm using in the sense

that psychologists refer to what are called positive illusions things we believe that aren't true uh often it's obvious to other people they're not true uh but we hold on to them because they make us feel better so i think as a social psychologist that's the angle i would take on it so stewart do you think as a scientist is there a point where you think now i'm using my rationality but at times there is a level of kind of gut instinct of things which are perhaps not you know the forefront of your mind where that is required that if we were merely rational i mean there's experiments that have been done with people who for instance uh no longer experience emotion and they find it a lot harder to make decisions yeah absolutely we take into account all this information when we're making decisions. And as Richard said,

we're often extremely poor at understanding statistics. So yes, but as a scientist, there certainly are moments of gut instinct. But I would, so I do research into intelligence, I would emphasize the importance of high intelligence as well for real scientific breakthroughs and scientific achievements. You get very few very, very high performing

sort of Nobel Prize winning super scientists who are not way up the high end of the bell curve of intelligence. How do you define intelligence? You're scoring an intelligence test. And just very briefly what would that entail? Well, so there are different tests you can do. So you can

take a vocabulary test and then you can take a reasoning test, a sort of puzzle pattern based reasoning test. A test where you have to simply move your finger off a reasoning test, a sort of puzzle, pattern-based reasoning test, a test where you have to simply move your finger off a button quickly when a light goes on, and tests where you have to do reading comprehension and so on. And the big finding of psychology in the past century, the biggest, most replicable, well-attested finding,

is that if you're good at one of those things, you tend to be good at them all, and you can extract. So all those tests will correlate positively together. So it's not just an education test then? Because reading comprehension, for example... Reading comprehension is one thing. So you have verbal and non-verbal things. But as I say, even just how quickly you can take your finger off a button, how quickly you

can notice the difference between a shape that's shown to you. You have to decide whether it's one shape or another. It's shown to you extremely quickly. That will correlate with your performance on a vocabulary test, with your performance on a reasoning test and so on. And you can extract this general general factor which is called the general factor of intelligence g we call it and that is a great predictor of education occupation health loads of stuff like that can i ask something because i genuinely have sort of been developing a little belief recently

that people who move faster like their education must be a little bit about how fast your brain works and not other things. That's exactly in line with the scientific evidence, yeah. That's so good, because to my mind, I like to walk really fast. And I always see that as a sign of, like, superiority. Like, I'm going to get there. Well, in our samples at the University of Edinburgh, we've shown things like walking fast, having stronger grip in your hands.

I've got a very strong grip. Being able to exhale very quickly, a large volume volume forced expiratory volume, those things will correlate positively with intelligence. Having a stronger grip Yeah, the idea is that all these things will correlate positively together, you have genes that will allow you to build a better system in general and that includes your brain as well as your muscles and your lungs and all the other parts

so there's kind of a theory of a system integrity and intelligence is just one part of that Paul, you studied mathematics. Yes. Do you feel that mathematics could be seen as something which is very rational? The ordering of numbers, certainly some people who've gone into mathematics,

some of the great mathematicians have been searching for kind of patterns and certainty. Do you consider yourself to be more rational because you're a mathematician? Putting aside the carrot thing. Yeah. I consider myself to be... My journey of my life has been to become the opposite of when I studied maths at university.

I don't even... When people say it, I can't... I mean, when you said that just now, that I'd studied maths at university, I'd forgotten about it. I just... You know, like, sometimes I've actually been on a campus doing a show there, and I think, oh, that'd be nice to go to university. And then I think, oh, I have been. I can't remember it.

And then often I go on shows like this and I say, yes, we want Paul on because he's a comedian, but he combines that with mathematics. But I just find mathematics incredibly boring. And the absolute antithesis of comedy and humour. So I just try and think about it as little as possible. I'm very annoyed that you mentioned it. It's got no relevance to my life now.

I just make up silly things and on flights of fancy. I think, actually, my life is better now because I spend less time rationally working out what the best thing to do is and more time just doing what feels like the right thing. So really it was good going to university because you got rid of all your rationality. In a three year course

the final time you put down that character you went that's enough rationality I'm now going to pretend to be a horse or a carrot for a while. Which is what the Edinburgh Fringe is all about. So Richard, if we take the view that... So we define irrationality perhaps in one way as being not really reacting properly to statistical arguments. So let's say that you might say, I don't want to get on that plane,

I think that's rather dangerous, I'll ride a motorbike instead or something like that. Does it make you happier as a person to be irrational or rational? I would say I think we are all irrational and it's that irrationality which keeps us happy because we end up believing things about ourselves that aren't true. So we think, oh, you know, this relationship will be great and we ignore the 50% divorce rate. Otherwise, we just think the world is a dreadful place and we're dreadful people, which is the truth of the matter. And so there is some evidence that people who suffer from depression actually have a very realistic worldview.

That's why they feel so down a lot of the time. So it's a slight irony. So, yeah, I do think it's part of being human, is to have these positive illusions. But the problem is sometimes we can take it too far and we start to believe in things that really aren't true, like ghosts and homeopathy and other silly things like that. Let's get some letters. Let's list them all.

Astrology, homeopathy, the supernatural. Carry on. What are they? Religion. That's an interesting... Well, are we allowed to leave in the show the fact that some of my research has shown that religion is negatively correlated with intelligence as well. Is that... I don't know if that's...

Well, he did. That's interesting, because you bring that up, and there have been... So, when you say... Again, we get caught up in definitions, don't you? When you say religion, well, that covers an enormous array of kind of very liberal beliefs. Then you have... Are you, at that point, saying fundamentally religious? Are you saying dogmatically religious? Specifically fundamentalist religion is most negatively. So if you ask people questions, rate out of five how strongly you believe the Bible is the word of God, you should only marry

people within your own religion, I hear God talking to me every day, how much do you agree, one to five. Those sorts of questions, if you ask them, they will correlate, not strongly negatively, but they will correlate negatively with a score or an intelligence test, the kind of things I was talking about earlier on. Which is slightly odd, because if I met a fundamentalist, I'd expect them to have quite a strong handshake. There may be exceptions to the matrix of correlations that we're talking about here. But is that just true of any dogmatic belief in anything? So are we unfair singling out religion?

I think we are. Is it just not being able to see many different sides of arguments? Yeah, no, I think we absolutely are. There's evidence showing that people with higher intelligence test scores will be, for instance, more socially liberal, so less racist, for instance. So if you ask people a questionnaire about, I think people from different races should be allowed to marry each other

and things like that, and apparently that's still controversial in some areas, but intelligence will correlate negatively with people being more racist on those scales. It will correlate positively with people believing in gender equality and people should be paid equal money for equal work, etc., etc. These are not massive correlations. We're not talking that every racist is really stupid or whatever. Sorry, if there's any racists in the audience, I don't want to be

offending you at all. But the general point is... One explanation is that intelligence allows you more abstract thinking skills that allow you to put yourself in other people's shoes and allow you to think from their perspective. One thing I should say, it's all very nice,

less racist, more equal, etc. More intelligent people are also more economically liberal as well as socially liberal. So, essentially, more intelligent people tend to be libertarians. And I know that they believe that they are the most intelligent people, so it is quite annoying that it's also true. Well, isn't that... The reason for Josie, I wonder how you feel,

because in one way you can go, oh, that's good, it turns out racists are idiots. But in another way, because you are a liberal, you go, well, I don't really like the idea of thinking that so much might already be, you know, what we are and what we genetically are, our potential, that so much is already ingrained, that in some ways as a liberal you want everyone

to have the equal potential to kind of change and all of those, so there's a kind of clash. I think people always do down the general level of intelligence. And the way I see the world is that most people are more intelligent than you would think, and there's more talent and untapped potential and things like that. And so I definitely want to see it much more as, like, nurture as opposed to nature.

I don't want to see it like... Well, and the evidence from behaviour genetics, which is the study of psychological traits and how genetic how much variance in those psychological traits can be explained by genes doesn't by any means say that intelligence is 100% ingrained in your genetics before you're born. Not in any sense.

But on average, about 50% of the differences between people in their intelligence level on those tests I was talking about can be explained by genetics and the rest is environmental. That environment, of course tends to be what we call non-shared environment which is not your parents which is not things that you share with with your siblings it tends to be things that are out there in the world and we haven't actually nailed down what those things are in psychology but we're working on it um and one of those things might of course just be going to school

um it looks like for every year you stay in school um you gain a few iq points and that's that's not just people who are smarter staying in school for longer there's kind of evidence from um where governments have sort of made it mandatory to stay in school for longer you know for everyone and uh and it does seem that there's a sort of causal effect of being forced to stay in school on on your iq and what do you think about reading to kids when they're little is that so there's a there's a big there's a big problem with that kind of research in reading to get so you know you'll observe a correlation in the population that people who read more to their kids will have smarter kids now is that because because the reading causally affects their intelligence the reading to them affects their intelligence or is it because you have passed on genes for being interested in reading

books to the kids who then has those genes and is interested in reading books and therefore is intelligent anyway. So there's this kind of genetic confound. You see a lot of this kind of research out there that doesn't take into account genetic differences between people. And so a lot of parenting studies and so on have this huge big problem where, well, you don't know if it's the parental behaviour

or if it's the genes that the parents have passed on. And in a lot of cases, it is likely that it is the genes rather than the parental behaviour. So really the best thing to do would be to take all children away from their parents, put them with other parents for a whole generation, everyone in the country, mix it up, and then we could do proper study. Well, I mean, there are such studies, right? There are adoption studies where you look at kids who have been adopted into families

and you see whether their intelligence or personality or antisocial behavior or whatever it happens to be correlates more strongly with their adoptive parents or their biological parents. It turns out that things like intelligence tend to correlate more strongly with the biological parent than the adoptive one, which shouldn't be – I don't think it should be too depressing. And it doesn't by any means say that you shouldn't read to your kids or whatever because obviously reading to your kids is is an amazing thing to do and it's and it's and it's it's fun and it's it's it's emotional bonding and all that sort of stuff great but you shouldn't do it because you think it's raising their iq because there's not necessarily any evidence for that yeah i just realized i'm away for two weeks and i won't be able to read to my son so very quickly um congratulations today's your day you're off to great places you're off and away with your brains in your head and your feet in your shoes you can choose any direction you choose you're on your way anyway i'll read part

two when i get back sorry i was thinking also about the racism thing because that could be genetic it might not so the best thing to do would be to force two racists of different races to get together and have a baby and then that baby on one level that baby would genetically obviously have all the racism genes in them but another level the baby would think well i've got one black mother and one white father so i'm not really racist because i've got all the races here i've got i've got over the racism thing. So what would happen? That's like a spoken word version of the song Ebony and Ivory. It was really beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Richard, listening to the debate about the... Well, first of all, I should ask, do you accept the evidence that there's a genetic basis for intelligence? Well, it's interesting. When you look at all these wonderful things that people with high IQ apparently have,

you wonder if the one thing they're all very good at is just lying on questionnaires. But I think that there's no doubt that whatever aspect of psychology we look at, there is a genetic basis to it. So personality, IQ, any trait, religiosity as well. And so all those things, yes, have a genetic basis. For me... That's quite, just to dig down, because that's quite, to me anyway, not shocking, but an interesting statement,

because it's not been the case, has it, for a long time, that that's been accepted. Now, it's been the case forever has it, for a long time that that's been accepted? It's been the case forever. I do believe it's true. Not forever, but 200,000 years since Homo sapiens. But in terms of academic research, is this a relatively new idea? No, the idea has been kicking around for a very long time. It has a fairly ugly history, as you might imagine, because it's coming from a particularly political point of view.

But it's been kicking around. And because the data is there, and it's coming from a particular, normally political point of view. But it's been kicking around. And because the data is there, and it's pretty good data, that every aspect of our psychology, to some extent, is genetically determined. But for me, that isn't the interesting part, because there you're putting the spotlight on what we can't change. What you have is a big area here that we can change. We can learn to grow, we can learn to reach our potential, and so on. And by always going on about genetics, the message

particularly to kids, actually, can be very damaging, which is that, well, you are what you are. There's us, and there's them, and you're in this category, and that's that. And that to me is the damaging message. There are a couple of good reasons to still do this kind of research and understand which things are heritable, and to what extent they're heritable.

So, for instance, we used to believe that autism was caused by parents there's the refrigerator mother theory where you know it's caused by parents being cold to their child and people blamed the parents for the children's autism but we know now that autism is strongly genetically influenced from these kind of twin studies where you look at the difference between identical and non-identical twins and you can look at the proportion of genetic influence on traits on autistic traits so that's one reason to really get to the point where you can say to people well actually let's stop blaming people for let's stop blaming teachers for not getting kids not getting every kid leaving school a genius let's stop blaming parents for their children's problems which are not necessarily caused by their parenting

styles so it is important to learn and i mean that's not even the most important thing about twin research because the genetic research because of course the genetic research is is attempting to understand the biological basis of illnesses like schizophrenia was a very major paper in nature last week about schizophrenia and they found about 100 genetic loci now that are associated with schizophrenia and this is a long time in the future, but we may, using this genetic research, understand the biological pathways that can then be targeted by treatments for illicit disorder. What is interesting to me, Josie,

is that this actually touches on a subject we covered in a previous Monkey Cage in this series about knowledge and whether it's always a good thing. So the maximum amount of knowledge, the more knowledge you have, the better, which is what the suggestion is here. Do you see problem with this a moral problem in a sense if it were possible for example to test to map the genome which it obviously is of every child that's born and then select them out and say well you have this gene that may mean you're statistically less

likely to be intelligent therefore will educate you in a different way that seems to me to be intensely problematic oh yeah well it's like what richard said it's not taking into account the fact that everyone's lives are wildly different and that people can achieve things that are astonishing and i and i mean in my own experience of like casual everyday sexism you get that jump from i've decided this is what is and therefore that is what all like it goes from descriptive to prescriptive. And all the time, like, you get people saying, like, you can't do what you're doing because of what you are, and it just makes you want to do it harder, and sometimes worse, just to sort of get them.

But so, no, I think it's wildly dangerous to think about limiting people in advance on the basis of things, no matter how accurate they are. But who says it's about limiting people in advance? He did. Sure, sure. Who is he to say that? For the purposes of argument.

Absolutely. So, Simon Baron-Cohen, I remember fairly recently, was talking about this. We need to have a debate now about what we should do if in X number of years we discover the genetic, the specific genetic associations with autism. That's his research topic. He's at Cambridge. And we need to have a debate now about

what we're going to do with that. If we can predict from the womb that a child is highly likely to have autism or any other disorder that we're talking about, what do we do about that? Do we not interfere? Do we interfere? Do we give parents the maximal information? I mean, that's an extremely important ethical debate to be had. But I think there's no argument against

having the information. It's not like we should just stop the science and tell people to stop researching. I think that's right. But I think we should also remember that in terms of being hardwired, the one thing we're hardwired for of everything else is to change, is to respond to our environment. We are the least

hardwired creatures on the entire planet. And so, you know, people change their point of view, they change their religion, they change their political stance, sometimes they grow as people, and I'd rather put the spotlight on that aspect of human nature than on the notion of actually you're your genes, or you're your brain,

you're fixed, because that does lead, and has in the past led to quite ugly political positions. So it's just a question of where you put the balance for me. But what if your propensity to change and adapt is also genetic well that's fine as well and obviously it will be but i'm just saying in terms of where you put that spotlight i think it's damaging to say you are your genes you're this type of person because that stops people trying a lot of the time particularly with kids actually but if you knew in advance that someone would have really good genes for like i don't know baking or cold water swimming or whatnot then you could be super prepared to like make them better from the get-go yeah you could be like right we've

looked at your limbs and they're good swimmers We're going to start you off day one and then by 20 you would have created a man machine. The thing is, people do that anyway, right? I mean, Mozart's parents brought him up to play music from a young age not because they did a genetic test, but because they were both musicians and it was likely that the child would be able to... And it turns out that, yeah, he was pretty good.

Although the early stuff's a bit facile, I think. But anyway, he was only four years old. He was only four years old, so I guess we can forgive him that. But we sort of do that anyway, right? We're genetically selecting all the time when we reproduce. You know, you select a mate on some characteristics, whether it's physical attractiveness, whether it's intelligence, whether it's personality.

There's statistical evidence for people assortatively mating on these characteristics. So there is a kind of, if you want to call it, the E-word, eugenics, going on just by people mating with each other and producing kids. And so we can't forget that. It's not a process you want to help along, though, is it? Let's be honest.

Also, it is quite good if two really musical parents or something have a child and they assume that child's going to be really musical and intelligent and it's absolutely thick. It's a great life lesson, isn't it? I mean, one shouldn't laugh, but it is great when it happens. Paul, do you ever... That idea that some of the things...

We as human beings want to believe that we have made every one of our choices, that we are the person, that we have the freedom to do that and actually it does appear even whether it's tests about free will even if it is looking at certain predilections that are genetic that maybe you are losing some of your possible individual powers does that ever kind of your way i've described that i've made you sound like a wizard some of your individual powers you you have the wizard gene don't you paul of course i do course, as a comedian, you probably get this. Different relatives will say, oh, you get it from your grandfather.

He used to wear a dress. Or things like... It's always someone I've got it from. But if there's very unamusing relatives, they're not mentioned. But, you know, my father... You know, I've got things from him. My father's quite an irrational man. For a start, he's got an irrational hatred of the clarinet.

And then there's other things. Like, whenever he gets a pie out of the oven, he always drops the pie on the floor. And he always, like, gets it out and he says, I've dropped the pie on the floor! Because he doesn't use oven gloves. It's totally against oven gloves. Well, that's not irrational, is it?

It's how he hates the clarinet. He tried to play it with his burnt fingers, thinking he'd one day be like Hacker Bilk. He might well be, but it's sort of irrational, and I suppose I'm a bit irrational, but different. I'm irrational, but I do use oven gloves. But then, on the other hand, I don't cook. Richard, I wonder about...

Again, when we define rationality when we think for the last hundred years for instance of of psychology where we see things which were seen as very rational at the time uh we were seen as ideas that were quite accepted that there was a man who used to drive around with a van giving people lobotomies you know this was nothing wrong with that tragically of course then killed by someone who gave a lobotomy to suggesting it wasn't the cure he'd imagined and these ideas how do we as human beings when we're trying to take in the best examples decide how we can rationally move forward what rationality of today becomes the irrationality of tomorrow yesterday both days well um so i think that that's why you need

psychology because uh psychologists do experiments you have randomly controlled experiments you Well, so I think that's why you need psychology, because psychologists do experiments. You have randomly controlled experiments. You randomly associate people with groups and so on. And you try and work out how the mind works and what is the best thing to do. And so I'm a social psychologist, so I'm interested in how people construct a sense of identity and that changes.

So, for example, in terms of the genetic debate, it's rather reassuring if it's something positive, like high IQ, to think that's imbued within you. And when you do something stupid, that's bad luck. So you make that attribution. Or if there's someone you don't like, then it's very easy to go, genetically, they're irrational because they disagree with me.

What other explanation could there be? So that's about constructing identity. But psychologists do experiments to try and work out the best way of leading a productive, happy, and successful life. And over time, we'll get there. In the meantime, a lot of times it's a complete disaster because we come up with very silly ideas, like doing lobotomies out of vans.

The idea that... If we look back through history, we're making a link between genetics and intelligence, and we're also using these words rational and irrational. It seems to me that it's self-evidently true, let's take Scotland, England, the Western societies, have got more uh there seems to they've got more liberal certainly democracies evolved education standards have gone up in general yeah i would imagine well this is the question that the intelligence level of the

population has been raised not by genetics but just by the way we organize society we become more liberalist societies undoubtedly we don't you't burn witches anymore, we're not a medieval society. So there's a progression which is clearly not genetic, it's to do with society itself. So Steven Pinker's recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, was all about the decline of violence across history, and he talks about that exact thing. And one of the explanations, not the only explanation,

but one of the explanations he brings in is what's called the Flynnnn effect which is the increase in intelligence that we've observed since intelligence tests were measured across at the start of the 20th century so every decade or so there seems to be a three-point increase in intelligence if if the average person now did an intelligence test from the 1960s that was normed on an average sample from the 1960s they would get a much higher result than 100 which is the kind of arbitrary average IQ. And one of the reasons... And so this is maybe because of better nutrition, better education.

James Flynn thinks it's because we all wear scientific spectacles these days. We think about things in terms of abstract... So if you ask someone at the start of the 20th century, what do a dog and a rabbit have in common uh and this is this was done i've just got to ask paul what do what do well they both live in my hutch right right there we go that's the kind of concrete thinking that was that was nine early early 20th century late 19th century i'm not saying anything about but

nowadays people might say if you ask that question, the average person might say, well, they're both mammals, and that's a more scientific, abstract way of thinking. And that, you know, you see these... They both bite, sometimes. But it's the rabbit that's a real danger, with those teeth. It's one you don't expect. It loves the carrot.

The dog just sometimes just nibbles and then throws me away. I like the dog. The dog's my friend. I hate the rabbit. I don't like the taste of either of them. This is a fundamental point, which I think is easy to lose, is that the genetic effect that comes out of twin studies and so on... And you don't even need twin studies anymore. You can look directly at the DNA to look at genetic effects on traits like intelligence. But the genetic effect is about the variance, right?

So it's about... There's a sort of rank order of people and there's variance around the mean. It's not about the mean. And you could conceivably raise everyone's mean and retain the rank order of people. Can I say that's AS-level statistics? Right! I get it right i was thinking about variance

and i was like tell you what i'll square root that i'll give you standard deviation not a problem mate so the width of the distribution stays the same so if it was a everyone in general there was a 100 plus or minus 20 then you can go up a 100 plus or minus 20, then you can go up to 110 plus or minus 20. Yeah, yeah. Well, the standard deviation is 15. Yeah, but 20... Yes, yes.

No, I'm just trying to simplify it for the listeners. I know, I can... Is it normal distribution? Oh, I love it when you think something's going down the radio and make you look like you're wrong. You get so worried. It's a normal distribution, so all you need is the chart and then you just standardise it and then you can just read it off.

Absolutely. Thank you for making that a lot clearer, Josie, because I didn't have a clue what Brian was talking about. Really succinct and proper. Watch out, someone's on your tail. It's very simple, isn't it? It's just that everyone's got better. Yeah, that's right.

Everyone's got better, but the rank order is still the same. So I don't think we should worry about... Because intelligence has a... There's a genetic effect on the differences in intelligence, that some people are geniuses and some people are not geniuses. We shouldn't worry about it being immutable. We should maybe

resign ourselves to the fact that we're not going to be able to equalise everyone. And I think there are still some people who think that people are blank slates and they're born with the, you know, that we can equalise them. And you certainly get that impression from really a lot of stuff in the media. There is a way to make everyone equal, and that is

to reduce everyone to the bottom level. And find what everyone is least good at, and make them do that. But that's exactly a point that comes out of behavioural genetics. Imagine a world where... I say exactly.

I say exactly. Imagine a world where... I say exactly. I say exactly. Imagine a world where in a world where everyone is exactly the same, has exactly the same environment. They're brought up by robot parents who are exactly the same as everyone else's parents. They go to a school taught by robots. So imagine the environment is exactly

the same for everyone. What's the only thing that can vary there? It's their genes. So actually actually in a world where everyone had a great environment brilliant teachers and everyone was raised up to that level the heritability of intelligence would be 100 i.e the only thing that would vary is is intelligence this is your recipe for utopia it's so simple to study that a high heritability of intelligence can actually be viewed as an index of of uh well social social meritocracy, almost,

so that everyone's doing quite well, a social equality index. If, in places where education is very poor, you'll find actually lower heritabilities because people aren't being able, being allowed, to reach their genetic potential. And so heritability is almost an indicator of how well you're doing the environment, which is quite nice. Josie, would you agree with Stuart that perhaps the main problem with society is the lack of sentient robots?

Oh, I know. He was like, robot teacher? I was like, I'm in. Robot parents? Yes, please. It would be great. Well, we're arguably sentient robots. Oh, hang on. Not even arguably, actually. I'm a universal Turing machine, and I arguably sentient robots. Oh, hang on. Not even arguably, actually. I'm a universal Turing machine, and I'm proud of it. That is so going to be solved by Damon Albarn.

Josie, you're someone who's campaigned for opportunities for everyone, for levels of equality in art and education. Do you feel optimistic hearing these things, that the idea that in some ways, when we sometimes see this reported in the press, there is a fear that it will be used as stewards, the idea that it could be used negatively, but in fact there's a tremendous positive thing of knowing

what is it that you have that gives you the advantage? You were talking there about the baking gene, for instance. I don't have that gene. I do feel optimistic, because i think the thing that i find most inspiring is this idea that like we can push up our overall general mean of intelligence and achievement and the idea that if society is better educated than society is kinder and more cultured and and so those two things regardless of like variance and regardless of being able to identify certain things in advance or anything like that,

those two things are tremendously inspiring and positive and just reinforce all my pre-existing biases. It has to be said, though, that the genetics work there is very complicated and very expensive, and we still don't know the best way to run a school, the best way to inspire kids, the best way to teach kids, because those really basic questions don't get that much attention. And it seems to me that that's the really important stuff, because that's where you can change people and make the difference. And by focusing on genes and genetics and brain structures and so on, it's all fine, but where does it get you?

What do you say when you're standing in front of a class of kids? You say, some of you have got the right genes and some of you haven't. Right, end of lesson. Yeah, but it's not either or. It's not like... No, no, but in terms of where you put that attention. In terms of where you put that attention

at the moment the attention is on genes and brains and so on, and we don't know the best way of inspiring kids, and I think that's a disgrace. But as far as that... That's a good point, but as far as that goes goes i think that's not necessarily because scientists have been spending all their time doing genetics it's because educational researchers have become victim to a certain post-modernism and a lack of uh appreciation of doing things like randomized control trials of new ideas and education and so on there's a certain uh and i'm going to get myself into

terrible trouble saying this but there is a i'm going to get myself into terrible trouble for saying this, but there is a... I'm going to egg you on, though. Get after those post-modernists. Yeah, absolutely. There's a dreadful post-modernism and a sort of actual aversion to doing this kind of research. But I think that's changing now, and a lot of teachers... There are conferences popping up

of people, you know, of teachers getting together who want to run experiments in their schools and try the new, latest teaching technique and so on. I think we're going to get out of that fairly soon, and I'm quite optimistic about changing those things, exactly as you're saying, changing those things about how to run a school. So, Paul, post-modernism is the problem. Well, I think so.

The roots of all evil. It's got to complicate it. I mean, I think schools worked perfectly well when I went to school. It was all right. We went in there. We were locked in our rooms. They gave us a thing. we had to do this, off the blackboard.

It's not complicated, you learn it, then you go out and kick a football for an hour and learn social skills, then you go back and you do double chemistry and you write it all down and then you quickly memorise it and you go into the exam, put it all, spout it all out, forget about it and get on with your life. It works perfectly well. And, Richard, again, the idea of genetics, the idea of society,

you do a lot of tests where you confront people that perhaps they don't have the knowledge or the abilities they have and that even if we do find ways of going, we can make you more i mean for instance you did a test i believe with wine tasting we had some wine experts and they really knew their wine and then you basically revealed that sometimes the one they went well this is a 500 pound bottle you went no it's four quid it's around the corner but then did they leave going thank you very much professor wiseman i've learned or were they a little bit aggressive um they went into what i would refer to as a state of denial, and then they criticised the tech.

I mean, I've tested lots of psychics and mediums over time, and it's always the same. They always fail, which is ironic for those that can predict the future. And I live for the day when even one of them would go, oh, it turns out I'm not psychic, thank you very much, I'll get on with my life. But they don't. So they start to criticise the test,

and then they'll criticise me, and then it all gets very personal. And it was exactly the same with the wine testers, the wine experts. We gave them a bottle of wine, which was about £1.99, and as you say, many of them went, oh, my goodness, I would pay hundreds of pounds for this. And then we lifted the tube, and wine experts, we gave them a bottle of wine which was about £1.99 and as you say many of them went, oh my goodness, I would pay hundreds of pounds for this. And then we lifted the tube and they went, oh my goodness, I'm leaving now. So yes, we don't like information

that confronts our sense of identity and expertise. But we need to have that experience in order to change and grow and be laughed at by others. And it's not just wine experts. I mean, it's not just wine experts i mean i'm not a wine expert but i find whatever the price of the bottle of wine after drinking a few i also go into a state of denial so a lot of crying weeping it's normally the next morning the

state of denial begins but it's uh do you think stewart that there's a possibility we'll be able to isolate the psychic medium gene so that those people who do have, you know, when it comes down the family line, I was talking to my great-great-great-grandfather the other day. He was in a lovely dress. If you're asking if there's a genetic basis to antisocial behaviour, deception and lying,

then I imagine there is, yeah. So, do you think you could work out in advance Who was going to be the biggest Fantasist At some point you could get that That is the kind of That is the kind of general Sort of long blue skies

Long term idea But we're not going to get anywhere near that For a very long time Generally though the biggest fantasist Is just going gonna be the one who walks in dressed as napoleon surely you don't have to then go to the whole kind of genetic thing and yeah we shouldn't rely on your brain scans and genetic scans and so on when we do have psychological tests that can predict these things pretty accurately and we don't necessarily have to give everyone an mri to predict their behavior and that is a kind of thing that people love to look at pictures of

brains when really that like the psychopath stuff. They did MRI scans on psychopaths, and they said, look, we found out an MRI test for psychopaths. And you think, well, how did you know who to put into the scanner? Well, indeed. Indeed. How do you, Josie, when you are trying to, you know, collating kind of arguments, do you have a system of thinking,

I think I can trust these people, I don't think I can trust it? Who are, you know, again, this is always the problem when we're trying to be rational, is who do we trust to be the rational people? Yeah, I do think it's hard, like, especially when it comes to things that I am never going to be an expert on, but I do care about. I do find, like, I'll try and have a pool of people that I consider to be reliable,

and I try to read their stuff as critically as is possible. They've got that. They're called scientists. Some scientists. Paul, do you have someone who's your rationality advisor, or have you left all of that behind now? No, I have a whole team of people who feed me irrational thoughts all day long. Irrational thoughts?

Yeah, irrational. Well, I have to have... I mean, they're irrationality advisors. So you can't come up with your own irrational thoughts? Well, yes, I can, but obviously... Obviously, I can, but it's... So the rational thing, therefore, would be not to employ a team of people... LAUGHTER ..to give me irrational advice.

APPLAUSE In fact, having a team of people to give me irrational advice was one of my first irrational thoughts. And, in fact, I'm going to sack them next week, which is the only rational thing I've done in years. So we asked our audience a question as well, just to find out, to use their hive mind and see what they thought was their most irrational belief,

and that we actually live in the stomach of a giant named George. I don't actually think this is true but it helps me get to sleep. Absolute nutter. I think these are all from your irrational panel actually. I was getting very annoyed

about this and then I worked out, I just understood grammar for a minute because the question is what do you think is your most irrational belief? And the answer was, there's no such thing as physics, there's only smoke and mirrors. But that's irrational. Yeah. So it's a negative of that.

That's what I like about you. You're always learning words on this show. We, uh... That my cat cares about me. That's definitely a rationalist, isn't it? Because that's the sadness of that one, isn't it? This is unfortunate. This is from Dr Alex Thomas.

It's that people care about my research. What's your research? Where is it? That's Alex Thomas. Alex. Isotope geochemistry. No, you're right. Yeah.

Thank you very much to our panel. Richard Wiseman, Stuart Ritchie, you're right. Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much to our panel, Richard Wiseman, Stuart Ritchie, Josie Long and Paul Foote. This is the end of the series. We'll be back for a Christmas special and a new series in the new year. Thank you very much for listening and goodbye. APPLAUSE In the Infinite Monkey Cage Without you travelling In the Infinite Monkey Cage You're now nice again. That was the Infinite Monkey Cage podcast.

I hope you enjoyed it. Did you spot the 15 minutes that was cut out for radio? Hmm. Anyway, there's a competition in itself. What, you think it's to be more than 15 minutes? Shut up, it's your fault. You downloaded it. Anyway, there's other scientific programmes also that you you downloaded it. Anyway, there's other scientific programs also that you can listen to. Yeah, there's that one with Jimmy Alka-Seltzer.

Life Scientific. There's Adam Rutherford, his dad discovered the atomic nucleus. Inside Science All in the Mind with Claudia Hammond. Richard Hammond's sister. Richard Hammond's sister, thank you very much Brian. And also Frontiers, a selection of science documentaries on many, many different subjects. These are some of the science programs that you can listen to.

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