Speaker 1: Today. It's great to have Paige Harden on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Doctor Harden is a professor of clinical psychology at the
Speaker 1: University of Texas at Austin, where she's director of the
Speaker 1: Developmental Behavior Genetics Lab and co director of the Texas
Speaker 1: Twin Project. Her new book is called The Genetic Lottery,
Speaker 1: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality? Doctor Harden, I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to chat with you today. I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: be here too. I feel like we've been planning to
Speaker 1: talk to each other about this book for such a
Speaker 1: long time, so I've been looking forward to this one.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true, And there's lots of areas of interest,
Speaker 1: overlap areas such as intelligence and the role of nature, nurture,
Speaker 1: free will, responsibility. There's so much, there's so much to unpack,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think we could kind of do
Speaker 1: a layer by layer. I think that's the best way
Speaker 1: of tackling the situation. But yeah, congrats on your book.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling about how it's been received. Congrats
Speaker 1: on the New Yorker profile as well. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been I honestly, I've been surprised, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: especially as the author of a first book and an
Speaker 1: academic press book. I really didn't know what to expect
Speaker 1: in terms of just, you know what, we're going to
Speaker 1: be my opportunities to talk about the book and get
Speaker 1: people excited about it. And the New Yorker article obviously
Speaker 1: kicked off a lot of attention. And so I will
Speaker 1: confess to you I'm a little tired. I think I
Speaker 1: was a little bit delusional about how much work it
Speaker 1: is to promote a book. And I'm also teaching my
Speaker 1: class this semester, so it's a pretty busy season right now.
Speaker 1: But it's a good problem to have to have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to talk to so many different people from different
Speaker 1: perspectives about what I'm trying to accomplish with this book.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, before we get to what you're
Speaker 1: trying to accomplish and all the juicy bits of the book,
Speaker 1: I just want to just start with this question that
Speaker 1: I think that this concept that's so misunderstood, and that's
Speaker 1: this concept of heritability. Yeah, it's amazing how many people
Speaker 1: use the word heritability. It's synonymous with inborn, you know, unchangeable.
Speaker 1: It comes with like a whole network of things that
Speaker 1: that actually shouldn't automatically be associated with it. So let's
Speaker 1: dispel some of these misconceptions right off the bat before
Speaker 1: we get into anything else. Yeah. Yeah, So, I mean
Speaker 1: heritability is an old term, right, you know, dates from
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, and it's really about to what
Speaker 1: extent is the variation that you're seeing in a group
Speaker 1: of people that you're measuring due to the genetic differences
Speaker 1: between that. So, you know, you can describe heritability very simply.
Speaker 1: It is a statistic of genetic variation over total femotypic
Speaker 1: variation or total trait variation. But you're right, it activates
Speaker 1: so many ideas of if something's heritable, it's innate, or
Speaker 1: it's determined, or it's bound to be a certain way
Speaker 1: sort of regardless of the environment. It's immutable, or it's invaleable,
Speaker 1: or it's inexorable in some way. I have written a
Speaker 1: paper in the Annual Review of Psychology where I try
Speaker 1: to reframe that a little bit and I talk about
Speaker 1: it in relation to another statistic that we often use,
Speaker 1: which is the Genie index. Right. So, the Genie index
Speaker 1: is a measure of how much wealth is concentrated or
Speaker 1: income is concentrated in the hands of few people versus
Speaker 1: equally divided, and that's a statistic that can totally change.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that there's anything about that distribution of
Speaker 1: or income that's like preordained or destined. And we do
Speaker 1: see that genie indexes change in countries over time. They differ,
Speaker 1: you know, from from country to country. It is a
Speaker 1: snapshot of what is, but not what could be. And
Speaker 1: heritability works very similarly, which is in this group of
Speaker 1: people that I've studied, individual differences and something whether it
Speaker 1: be height or intelligence or personality are related to genetic
Speaker 1: differences between them, But it doesn't give you information about
Speaker 1: what could be if there's something about that society or
Speaker 1: group of people that was different, or what it would
Speaker 1: be if you studied a different group of people of
Speaker 1: the population. We're different, and so separating genetics can make
Speaker 1: a difference without genetics being destiny is just a really
Speaker 1: hard but I think a really important kind of set
Speaker 1: of ideas that we're you know, try trying as behavioral
Speaker 1: geneticist to pull apart for people all the time. Thank you,
Speaker 1: and I agree, But you know, some people will use
Speaker 1: the argument you just said as a way of making
Speaker 1: the argument that the therefore heritability is pointless because it
Speaker 1: only applies to a particular population. But as you say
Speaker 1: in your book, I'm going to quote you, even if
Speaker 1: heritability estimates are entirely population specific, they remain an important
Speaker 1: summary of how much inequalities and life outcomes were caused
Speaker 1: by the outcome of the genetic lottery for that population.
Speaker 1: So I feel like there's a lot of well, on
Speaker 1: the one hands, on the other hands with you, which
Speaker 1: I like because I'm like that too, you know, like
Speaker 1: I have fifty hands, you know, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: the other hand, third hand, fourthing. So you're not saying that,
Speaker 1: You're still saying that there's important information that can be
Speaker 1: gleaned from the herotability coefficient within that population, because it's
Speaker 1: saying something meaningful about what is as well, you know,
Speaker 1: there is what could be, which is a separate issue
Speaker 1: we're going to get to today. But you still argue
Speaker 1: there's something important about what is. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting to consider that some of the most
Speaker 1: vociferous critics of behavioral genetics or the usefulness of heritability
Speaker 1: the statistics have been from not from social scientists, from
Speaker 1: from biologists who really I think are tempted to think
Speaker 1: that if something is not universal, if it's not a
Speaker 1: law of nature that's true for all people at all times,
Speaker 1: then it's not then it's not valuable scientific information. Whereas, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as a fellow psychologists, you know that so
Speaker 1: many of things that we study are socially contingent, socially situated,
Speaker 1: historically contingent, and so we're interested both in the possibilities
Speaker 1: of how things could be if our social structures were different,
Speaker 1: or if we intervened in some way, but we're also
Speaker 1: interested in the people we've studied, you know, when we're
Speaker 1: thinking about like heritabilities are population specific. You know, we've
Speaker 1: studied from using twins and measure genetic methods. You know,
Speaker 1: people from America, from the UK, from Iceland, from Scandinavia,
Speaker 1: from Australia. That's not the whole world, right, that is,
Speaker 1: that is a narrow slice of global diversity. And also
Speaker 1: we're interested in what's happening in those societies. Right, So
Speaker 1: you're right that I'm I'm like you are kind of
Speaker 1: both and thinker. It's not everything, and it's not useless either. Great,
Speaker 1: it's like saying, you know, let's say I'm growing up
Speaker 1: in a really poor environment where there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of food. It'd be like saying, oh, well, we don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about giving them more food, because if
Speaker 1: we put them in a different environment where they had food,
Speaker 1: then they'd be fine. So let's just not worry. I
Speaker 1: mean that and that, and when you put it that way,
Speaker 1: it sounds ridiculous, right, Yeah, So that was just on
Speaker 1: the spot analogy situation. Yeah. So another misconception about the
Speaker 1: heartabilitic co efficient, which is very common misconspession I see,
Speaker 1: is people think it somehow means anything about parsing the
Speaker 1: sources of nature nurture terms within a person. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. It's only about it's only a a parsing
Speaker 1: variation among people. It doesn't have a meaning within a
Speaker 1: person because within a person, nature nurture are always intertwined. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, in the development of any one individual, it's
Speaker 1: always nature and nurture. And you know, I give this
Speaker 1: example in my book where you know, if you went
Speaker 1: out to eat at a restaurant and someone has said, well,
Speaker 1: what's more important for your restaurant experience today, having salt
Speaker 1: in your food or having a chair to sit in
Speaker 1: like that would be a ridiculous question, right, Like you
Speaker 1: obviously there's there is the food that you're eating, and
Speaker 1: then there's the environment in which it's served, and those
Speaker 1: are wrapped up together. You can, however, say, if we're
Speaker 1: looking across restaurants, do restaurants that have we're seating have
Speaker 1: more dissatisfied customers? And that's a very different question than
Speaker 1: you know, to what extent is this? Are these things
Speaker 1: combining within the development of an individual. So again, heritability
Speaker 1: is I say, it's both more limited and more useful
Speaker 1: than its advocates and its critics often a lesh it's
Speaker 1: giving us information, but about a very particular question, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, within a group of people at this particular place,
Speaker 1: in this particular time, what are the differences between them?
Speaker 1: How are they related to genetic differences between them? Great?
Speaker 1: You know, I've always a metaphor that will always resonated
Speaker 1: with me was nature via nurture. You know, this idea
Speaker 1: that within a person and again I'm going to zoom
Speaker 1: in on the within person level for a second, zoom
Speaker 1: out from the heritability level, but to the within within
Speaker 1: person level. It seems like you can't separate You know,
Speaker 1: you can't say, well, you're born with the lucky genes,
Speaker 1: and let's put that on the side. You're born with
Speaker 1: a walky environment, let's put that on the side. It
Speaker 1: seems like there's some meta luck that involves the molding
Speaker 1: and the constant interaction and interplay between the two within
Speaker 1: a person that you can't ever tease those two apart
Speaker 1: as two separate things within a person. Yeah. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think this is part of what makes
Speaker 1: genetics fascinating to people but also dissatisfying to people, is that,
Speaker 1: you know, when we're trying to retrospect on our own biographies,
Speaker 1: we're as storytellers, we're trying to say, like, well, it
Speaker 1: was this and then this and then this, But we
Speaker 1: don't get to see the counterfactuals for our individual lives.
Speaker 1: And so we can tell ourselves stories about how we
Speaker 1: came to be, but we can never really know for sure.
Speaker 1: And then science seems to promise some sort of more
Speaker 1: definitive answer, which is why I think people get fascinated
Speaker 1: by the study of genetics and relation to aspects of
Speaker 1: ourselves that we think of as part of our identities.
Speaker 1: And yet scientists like me are always giving some dissatisfactory answers,
Speaker 1: which is like, I can't tell you that you are
Speaker 1: the way you are because of your genes. I can
Speaker 1: just say that on average, people are different from one
Speaker 1: another because of their genes, which doesn't feel nearly as
Speaker 1: as gratifying to our storytelling selves, I think, as as
Speaker 1: as we would sometimes want it to be. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: raises so many issues. One issue that a lot of
Speaker 1: this raises is what what can one take credit for?
Speaker 1: This is a very fascinating question. I sent you a
Speaker 1: paper by my intellectual hero, Abraham Asloh, he was supposed
Speaker 1: to be his APA address, and it remained unpublished, on
Speaker 1: biological injustice and free will. I think I'm going I
Speaker 1: want to write more about that someday, but I just
Speaker 1: want to kind of just just riff on this a
Speaker 1: little bit. He asks, what what can one take credit
Speaker 1: for in one's life? You know, as you point out
Speaker 1: in your book, you're like my daughter who's a has
Speaker 1: verbal precosity. It's not like she really should take credit
Speaker 1: for that, you know, But I want to just just
Speaker 1: to push back in that, because you don't know the
Speaker 1: extent to which that robal precocity was a result of
Speaker 1: her I mean genes. I mean you didn't measure her apologic. No,
Speaker 1: I don't mean that. I'm extrapolating from what I know
Speaker 1: generally about the heritability special language crop disorders. But again,
Speaker 1: you know, why does any one individual child turn out
Speaker 1: the way they are? You know, I think any parent
Speaker 1: will tell you that their children feel miraculous and mysterious,
Speaker 1: like where did where did this person come from? You know,
Speaker 1: like she'll say something and I'm like, I you grew
Speaker 1: in my body and now you exist as a separate
Speaker 1: person that from me, and you know you were you
Speaker 1: were your own personal Explaining it that individuality is always impossible,
Speaker 1: but we you know, to go actually your thing, Like
Speaker 1: we do know that on average, if you're exposed to
Speaker 1: a normal linguistic environment in the home, that most of
Speaker 1: the variability and whether or not you have a speech
Speaker 1: language problem is heritable, and so you know, thinking about
Speaker 1: to what extent, like I think with that example, it
Speaker 1: would be very strange if we were like, well, we
Speaker 1: need to hold you know, my childhood struggles with speech,
Speaker 1: like we need to hold him responsible for that, right
Speaker 1: Like that that was again I think part of the
Speaker 1: luck of the draw and so the relationship between genetics
Speaker 1: and responsibility is just really really interesting to me. And
Speaker 1: I think so many of the controversies that we have
Speaker 1: about herotability are actually really underneath them conversations about who
Speaker 1: should be responsible for what? Are we passing the book
Speaker 1: on social responsibility? Absolutely, and what I'm really interested is
Speaker 1: the other side giftedness, intellectual giftedness and creative giftedness. And
Speaker 1: I wrote a whole book on this called Ungifted. That
Speaker 1: was the title of the book, just trying to understand,
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of assumption that a lot of
Speaker 1: schools have that intellectual giftness isn't born to a certain degree,
Speaker 1: and that we can measure it really early in life
Speaker 1: and that it doesn't change. You can't become you can't
Speaker 1: start off unngifted and then become gifted. Is kind an
Speaker 1: assumption in our education system that I've been trying to
Speaker 1: challenge that notion. I like to see it more as
Speaker 1: a moving target, you know. So, but it just makes
Speaker 1: me really think about you know, I think people might
Speaker 1: like you may even in reading your book, I think
Speaker 1: you fell prey to that a little bit yourself and saying, well,
Speaker 1: if my daughter is verbal PRECOSSI should I give her
Speaker 1: credit for that, kind of assuming that maybe that came
Speaker 1: from the genes, you know, whereas I would actually push
Speaker 1: back a little bit for the sake of an exciting
Speaker 1: conversation between us, to just say that, you know, for
Speaker 1: some that may be the case, but I actually think
Speaker 1: we need to leave room in our education models for
Speaker 1: giftedness to develop in a result of something where they
Speaker 1: didn't have the inborn or in I don't board, but
Speaker 1: they didn't have the proclivities to the genetic proclivities that
Speaker 1: would make it easy for them. But actually, even though
Speaker 1: even if it did make it harder for them to
Speaker 1: get there, they still got there at some point, and
Speaker 1: then we do give them credit for that. So I
Speaker 1: want that kind of nuance. Yeah. So I had two
Speaker 1: thoughts and sort of in in response to that, are
Speaker 1: in association to that. And first is I just find
Speaker 1: the language of giftedness to be so fascinating, like a
Speaker 1: gift from whom, and I think it relates also to
Speaker 1: it just kind of a more general thing that I
Speaker 1: hope we get a chance to talk about, which is
Speaker 1: like how we think about skill in America and what
Speaker 1: skills are valuable like I think so often when we're
Speaker 1: talking about giftedness, there's this kind of implicit assumption that
Speaker 1: the same skills would always be valuable sort of regardless
Speaker 1: of where the child found themselves. But if we think about,
Speaker 1: you know, which skills are valued by other people in
Speaker 1: an economy, you know, we certainly overlook some gifts in
Speaker 1: terms of their talents, and you know, kind of overly
Speaker 1: fetishize I think some other gifts or some other skills
Speaker 1: in relation to that. And also, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: you're right like that. There's this, you know, in writing
Speaker 1: the book and using that example of my kids, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to my intention of telling that story is
Speaker 1: to try to get at I want to trouble people's
Speaker 1: intuition that genetic difference is always allied with superiority or inferiority.
Speaker 1: I think from the perspective of a parent, that attitude
Speaker 1: of I can these people can be valuable to me
Speaker 1: in equal ways, even if they differ in skills that
Speaker 1: are valued differently by the external society. It could just
Speaker 1: be really hard to convey in a non abstract way.
Speaker 1: Whereas I think, thinking about the perspective of a parent,
Speaker 1: that idea becomes more intuitive. But you're right that they're like,
Speaker 1: what's missing in that story is change over time, right,
Speaker 1: and developmental plasticity, I'm thinking. So the other kind of
Speaker 1: thought I have in response to this is I had
Speaker 1: read David Epstein's The Sports Gene a while ago, and
Speaker 1: then I reread it after I finished writing my book,
Speaker 1: and I was really struck by how similar some of
Speaker 1: the content and themes were in a very different domain
Speaker 1: of human skill. He's talking about athletics, and he has
Speaker 1: this whole chapter around, you know, never being the fastest
Speaker 1: runner at the beginning of the season, but being the
Speaker 1: person who responds to practice, and what a gift it
Speaker 1: is in a way to not be the fastest one,
Speaker 1: because it's motivating him to like put in the work
Speaker 1: and the effort. And I that part of kind of
Speaker 1: like plasticity and agency and acquiring skill I think is
Speaker 1: missing in that description that I have about how I've
Speaker 1: seen skill differences in my own family. Absolutely, and I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of David Epstein's work and him as
Speaker 1: a person. He's a friend and a really good guy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, absolutely, let's let's riff on this a little
Speaker 1: bit by me quoting Maslow from that unpublished he said,
Speaker 1: there's a danger in adhering to a single pecking order
Speaker 1: or a single monolithic hierarchy of superiority and inferiority, which
Speaker 1: seems like that could come could have come right out
Speaker 1: of your book too, that that line which is exciting.
Speaker 1: Perhaps ultimately each human being is a hierarchy and to
Speaker 1: himself or herself, because in the final analysis, one's task
Speaker 1: is to be oneself well, and of course there's no
Speaker 1: rival in the whole world for this task. I love that.
Speaker 1: I love the way right. I love that. I love that.
Speaker 1: I think that's wonderful. I mean, I also think it
Speaker 1: gets out, you know, so much of so much of
Speaker 1: the controversies that we have around genetics. I actually don't
Speaker 1: think they're about genetics. Like we get agitated in conversation.
Speaker 1: Genetic starts to get attacked, starts getting attached to traits
Speaker 1: that are used in an economic system in this kind
Speaker 1: of strict pecking order of inferiority and superiority. And it's
Speaker 1: you know, I say this in my book that people
Speaker 1: are very wary of genetic determinism. And we've you know,
Speaker 1: we've already talked about like why heritability does not imply
Speaker 1: genetic determinism. But I think we also need to be
Speaker 1: wary of what I call this kind of economic determinism,
Speaker 1: this idea that some skills will always be can always
Speaker 1: be inherently more valuable than other skills in this really
Speaker 1: kind of strict way. And so I love this idea
Speaker 1: that Mas was talking about, like when we you know,
Speaker 1: the problem is even that there's genetic differences between us.
Speaker 1: The problem is that there's a pecking order that's so
Speaker 1: inflexible and so intolerant of different domains of human skill.
Speaker 1: And I really like how you talked about the history
Speaker 1: of intelligence testing. And because the history of intelligesting is
Speaker 1: is intimately in America, I want to say, in America
Speaker 1: is intimately bound up. You know. The goddard, you know,
Speaker 1: Willis Turnaman had very good intentions. Ben They had really
Speaker 1: good intentions in France, you know, with the initial attempt
Speaker 1: at a test. He didn't he never called it the
Speaker 1: intelligence test. It was the Americans who put that label
Speaker 1: on it. He wanted to be able to come up
Speaker 1: with a test that would help people who needed remediation
Speaker 1: in an education system from those who didn't need a remediation,
Speaker 1: kind of sort that out and figure out a better
Speaker 1: way of figuring that. In France, they never ended up
Speaker 1: using his test, and he died a feeling like a failure.
Speaker 1: At the very end of his life. There's a really
Speaker 1: poignant essay he wrote where he said, I'm starting to
Speaker 1: see how the people in the other soil, American soil,
Speaker 1: are starting to use my test, and it's and it's
Speaker 1: made me regret that I ever did this. So it's
Speaker 1: really a sad essay, you know, and very poignant. So
Speaker 1: in America there really was intimately tied up to the
Speaker 1: science of intelligence. Testing, eugenics, the idea of the feeble minded, right,
Speaker 1: all these things were so people rightly so have a
Speaker 1: knee jerk aversion to the science of intelligence, which I
Speaker 1: think is unfortunate considering that I do, and I know
Speaker 1: you agree with this as well. This is why we're
Speaker 1: kind of the one hand the other hand kind of people.
Speaker 1: There is a legitimate science of intelligence. There is a
Speaker 1: field that is studying it from an individual differences perspective
Speaker 1: and finding that it does predict lots of things in life.
Speaker 1: We can't sweep it under the rug, And there is
Speaker 1: partly genetic basis to it and which which influenced our
Speaker 1: biological aspects that influence our intelligence differences. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's very similar to you know, what we were just
Speaker 1: talking about with heritability, whereas it's not you know, people
Speaker 1: can respond to the over interpretation of a scientific idea
Speaker 1: with this kind of pendulum swinging the opposite direction. There's
Speaker 1: this is useless or can only be used for harm
Speaker 1: and trying to articulate that both the limitations and the
Speaker 1: value of something. So you know, we know that the
Speaker 1: types of problem solving that are tested by standardized IQ
Speaker 1: tests do predict things that we care about, including you know,
Speaker 1: as you know from the Lothian Birth Cohort studies, how
Speaker 1: long people live. At the same time, they're not markers
Speaker 1: of all human talent or skill, and we wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to live in a society in which everyone was you know,
Speaker 1: very very good at spatial rotation and nothing else like
Speaker 1: that would be not a society that we want to work,
Speaker 1: we want to live in. And so how to recognize
Speaker 1: both the diversity of skill but also the kind of
Speaker 1: the fact that we can measure something about people that
Speaker 1: matters for their lives as it's currently constructed that both
Speaker 1: and is I think often really hard to convey to people.
Speaker 1: Yeah so so so exactly this. You know, they ran
Speaker 1: on Twitter this this what you just said. So people
Speaker 1: say exactly this. You know, but you know, just to
Speaker 1: play a little yes end here, improv game. You know,
Speaker 1: intelligence is you know, not a measure of human worth. No, this,
Speaker 1: This is the point you're trying to make here, is
Speaker 1: that none of these specific heritability co efficients of any
Speaker 1: individual psychological trait anything is a measure of the totality
Speaker 1: of a human being or a measure of the intrinsic
Speaker 1: worth of a human being. Yes, definitely, and I and
Speaker 1: I would say further, we have to go beyond lip
Speaker 1: service to that idea. So when we're thinking about the
Speaker 1: ways in which labor markets are structured, in the ways
Speaker 1: in which educational systems are structured, in the ways in
Speaker 1: which we people have access to the ingredients of a
Speaker 1: good life, if we're saying that intelligence is not a
Speaker 1: measure of human worth, then I think we need to
Speaker 1: consider to what a center is our society set up
Speaker 1: so that people, regardless of how they end up in
Speaker 1: their measures of intelligence or in their genes, relevant to
Speaker 1: kind of any specific skill have access to those ingredients
Speaker 1: of a good life. We have to go beyond just
Speaker 1: saying that we don't think that i Q equals human
Speaker 1: worth to actually reflecting that in how we set up
Speaker 1: social structures. I was going to talk about that kind
Speaker 1: of part two of our conversation, but now you bring
Speaker 1: that up, I just maybe I'll just dive right into it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a very interesting argument because it
Speaker 1: seems to it feels like it feels a little political.
Speaker 1: It feels like a bit political. Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's hard. It's hard to It's just hard.
Speaker 1: There's no way around it about that philosophy of life
Speaker 1: you have about what what the why we're here on
Speaker 1: earth to help the vulnerable seems to conflict with other
Speaker 1: political views or even personal philosophies of what you know,
Speaker 1: we're here on earth to do, which some people might say,
Speaker 1: we're here on earth to develop our excellent to put
Speaker 1: all of our attention into developing our own personal excellence
Speaker 1: as much as possible, and that that'll have a trickle
Speaker 1: down effect on helping the vulnerable. So how how in
Speaker 1: the world does one extricate Where does the science end
Speaker 1: begin Yeah, it's you know, it's a really you're I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you're picking up on such an interesting and
Speaker 1: valuable tension, which is also related to like, what is
Speaker 1: your role as a scientist and as a science science
Speaker 1: communicator to be transparent about your own political values with
Speaker 1: which other people might agree. So I think of this
Speaker 1: project as very much coming from a space in which
Speaker 1: I have my personal political and moral commitments, and I
Speaker 1: have a research career around studying genetic difference in a
Speaker 1: relation to social behavioral outcomes. And I know from long
Speaker 1: experience that intuitively those two things, which seem really coherently
Speaker 1: connected in my own mind, strike other people as wildly unintuitive, right, Like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean you are egalitarian behavior geneticist. I
Speaker 1: really think of this project as saying, you know, these
Speaker 1: are my these are my values, This is how I
Speaker 1: think the science is consistent with that set of values.
Speaker 1: I think articulating that as clearly as I can is
Speaker 1: important for helping shape the larger conversation that we need
Speaker 1: to have about how to use genetics. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that you know, any one scientific finding commits you
Speaker 1: to anyone political ideology or moral ideaology, so that you know,
Speaker 1: walking that line. I don't know how successfully I did
Speaker 1: it in the book of trying to say, you know,
Speaker 1: this is how I make sense of this, given what
Speaker 1: I find valuable about you know, given my moral frameworks.
Speaker 1: You might not share them, but there's relatively few voices
Speaker 1: that are articulating how these how these things go together.
Speaker 1: So maybe you'll learn something from the interpretation of the
Speaker 1: science or from the way I see the role of
Speaker 1: luck in human affairs that might you know, expand the
Speaker 1: kind of space of conversation that we have right now. Look,
Speaker 1: you bring a fresh perspective to this topic. There is
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. I uh. In my own career,
Speaker 1: like with a gift, that I tried to be as
Speaker 1: impartial as possible, in the sense that I tried to
Speaker 1: present all the evidence and say, well, what does it
Speaker 1: all mean? You know what you know, kind of lay
Speaker 1: it all out there on the table for us all
Speaker 1: to look at, and then say, okay, what do we
Speaker 1: make of the truth now? And so I really back
Speaker 1: and like what you're doing because I get a similar sense,
Speaker 1: even even if we don't necessarily agree one hundred percent
Speaker 1: with the politics of it. I would say that you're
Speaker 1: a really important, uh, balancing force for for the study
Speaker 1: of behavior genetics, and especially particularly the people in the
Speaker 1: general public who take the behavior genetics findings and then
Speaker 1: start to use it for their own protocol purposes. And
Speaker 1: and along those lines, it would be impossible not to
Speaker 1: mention Charles Murray and the Bell, which you're sick of
Speaker 1: talking about. You know, you didn't tell me that, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're sick of it. But we would be
Speaker 1: remiss not to mention that because I feel like, if
Speaker 1: it's a seesaw, the sea, the sea, and the sea
Speaker 1: Saul part on the right is the link between behavioral
Speaker 1: genetics research being used to discuss the futility of certain
Speaker 1: social programs and the left sea saw being just like
Speaker 1: your view, which is is not the opposite. It's just
Speaker 1: a balance of of you know, look, there is there
Speaker 1: is stuff we can do, you know. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I actually feel like in the seesaw around social social intervention,
Speaker 1: psychological interventions, educational interventions, I actually feel like I'm not
Speaker 1: even on the seesaw, like I'm trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: introduce a new dimension to this conversation. You know, I
Speaker 1: really feel like Most of the back and forth has
Speaker 1: been people one group of people saying because things are genetic, genetic,
Speaker 1: or heritable, some measure of inequality is inevitable, and our
Speaker 1: social programs are sort of destined to failure, and another
Speaker 1: group pushing back against that and saying, obviously we can intervene,
Speaker 1: and and genetics are a distraction from that. They're either
Speaker 1: a moral distraction, or they're a resource distraction, or they
Speaker 1: are just like un minding support for this, and let's
Speaker 1: like minimize where where's my point is? I do think
Speaker 1: interventions can be successful, but figuring out where to intervene
Speaker 1: that's going to be the most effective's really really hard
Speaker 1: to do as a scientific problem like politics and morality aside,
Speaker 1: like just as a social science problem. Designing successful interventions,
Speaker 1: especially designing successful interventions that are preferentially benefiting people who
Speaker 1: are most vulnerable rather than the kind of more Matthew effects.
Speaker 1: He's a really really hard problem. And so it's not
Speaker 1: genetics as a distraction from social policy or genetics as
Speaker 1: a limit on the effectiveness of social policy. But genetics
Speaker 1: is a tool for social policy, which I think is
Speaker 1: a perspective that's really been missing in most of our
Speaker 1: conversations for decades at this point. Yeah, you know, I've read.
Speaker 1: I was curious. I went back and read Arthur Jensen's
Speaker 1: much maligned how much how much can we boost i
Speaker 1: q's classic achievement in Harvard? Have you read the full report?
Speaker 1: Have you read this full thing? So I read it.
Speaker 1: I reread it in preparation for this, and I reread
Speaker 1: the Bell Curve. Yeah yeah, and and I wanted to
Speaker 1: just see things as they are, not as uh yeahs
Speaker 1: and this and this, and I want to do something.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to defend Arthur Jensen for
Speaker 1: one second to a certain carse. I don't think anyone's
Speaker 1: all good or all bad, right, or everyone's all has
Speaker 1: the truth, and everyone's either all truth or all wrong.
Speaker 1: So I reread that report, and and what I got
Speaker 1: a sense and reading that report is he he says
Speaker 1: straight up in even the abstract that there are environmental
Speaker 1: and their genetic and non genetic influences on intelligence. And
Speaker 1: he mentions things such as prenatal facts as nutrition, let
Speaker 1: the pregnancy, maternal stress, and interurine environment has an effect
Speaker 1: on infinite intelligence. And he says post needle environmental influences
Speaker 1: have not been found to markedly effect IQ, with the
Speaker 1: exception of extreme misolation. So there's maybe where he goes
Speaker 1: a little arright. But well, something that is fair that
Speaker 1: both him and Murray point out is that even if
Speaker 1: we could acknowledge that intellgto intelligence differences between one person
Speaker 1: and another, we're not talking about groove differences yet between
Speaker 1: one person another has a genetic basis and has an
Speaker 1: environmental basis. No one has actually ever come up or
Speaker 1: have found a program that has substantially increased IQ. So
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, they're actually right in that, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, have you discovered anything, any large scale program
Speaker 1: that has substantially moved the needle on G or general intelligence? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I would push back against that. I think
Speaker 1: we have evidence. The thing is is that they're pretty
Speaker 1: broad brush things, right. So, like we clearly know from
Speaker 1: some adoption studies that you know, being adopted into a
Speaker 1: wealthy family relative to staying in the like the home
Speaker 1: environment by your biological children, by your biological parents. This
Speaker 1: is that can can learn er. Turcheimer study that use
Speaker 1: I think Swedish registry data from a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago does appreciably increase average IQ scores. And then I
Speaker 1: also think that, I mean, this is very much the
Speaker 1: Heckman point, which is that even if things don't move IQ,
Speaker 1: they might move other things that we might care about more. Right, So,
Speaker 1: do we really care about measured IQ scores or do
Speaker 1: we care about labor market involvement or avoiding contact with
Speaker 1: the criminal justice system or kind of other sort of
Speaker 1: ingredients of a good life adult outcomes not so much
Speaker 1: measured IQ scores. So, and then there's also Elliott Tucker,
Speaker 1: Drab and Stu Richie's meta analysis of just the effects
Speaker 1: of education on IQ, right, so, staying raising the compulsory
Speaker 1: school leaving age or I think we're going to see
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting research in the week of COVID
Speaker 1: related schooling disruptions about how formal schooling and different forms
Speaker 1: of alternative schooling have affected trajectories of cognitive development. So
Speaker 1: I don't think the message is that nothing has been
Speaker 1: shown to work. I think it's more of those really
Speaker 1: cludgy you know, being adapted into a wealthier family or
Speaker 1: going to a school longer. What are the key ingredients
Speaker 1: of those? Can they be replicated? Can they be scaled?
Speaker 1: That's the part that I think is really challenging to do,
Speaker 1: but I would I would definitely push back against the
Speaker 1: idea of focusing only on a Q scores as our
Speaker 1: metric for successful intervention. Oh and I completely agree with that,
Speaker 1: and I not those points are excellent. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: see if we can give the benefit of doubt at
Speaker 1: all to the Jensen and Murray in this in the
Speaker 1: sense that their focus was intelligence and there and maybe
Speaker 1: they were being good scholars at the time, you know,
Speaker 1: in a sense, in a sense Jensen was was brave
Speaker 1: for saying a lot of things. He was saying based
Speaker 1: on the available evidence, on what is the current evidence.
Speaker 1: This is I think from the sixties he wrote this paper.
Speaker 1: It was sixties or seventies, the current the available based
Speaker 1: on the available evidence base, and I'm only going to
Speaker 1: focus on intelligence. He made the point that a large scale,
Speaker 1: socially governmentally sanctioned program has significantly if you improved it now,
Speaker 1: if you were wanted to be a good scholar, and
Speaker 1: you probably would have come to the same conclusion right in,
Speaker 1: if you're rating that report, given the were only focusing
Speaker 1: on intelligence, you were only you know, So I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to give him a little bit of the benefit
Speaker 1: of doubt. I went, we're gonna get to a group
Speaker 1: differences in the second and where I give him less
Speaker 1: much less of a benefit of a doubt. But I
Speaker 1: think that you know, even uh, you know, Charles Murray
Speaker 1: and the Bell curve, you know, he uh, he stuck
Speaker 1: to a lot of the available evidence, which was nice,
Speaker 1: and he did even in the group differences section, did
Speaker 1: say we need to be worry about about extrapolating this
Speaker 1: too much to the group differences level. So I thought
Speaker 1: that was interested. Just rereading his report, I was like,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. But it is a good exercise to go
Speaker 1: back to the primary sources rather than you know, as
Speaker 1: you know, what you think someone has said and what
Speaker 1: they actually said when you go and read them or
Speaker 1: not not always the same thing. I I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's a good point too, in in and in
Speaker 1: the ways in which I think sometimes the response to
Speaker 1: Jensen and then Murray has been counterproductive, which is, if
Speaker 1: someone is blending things that are definitely true, could be
Speaker 1: true speculative and contentious, there's a temptation to throw the
Speaker 1: baby out with the bathwater, to say that all of
Speaker 1: this is bullshit. You know, all of this is wrong,
Speaker 1: and I you know, this is going back to our
Speaker 1: conversation about intelligence. So often the response to the Bell
Speaker 1: curve was like, there's nothing, there's no real science of intelligence.
Speaker 1: Heritability is meaningless. We can't study anything with IQ test scores,
Speaker 1: and I think that's counterproductive because it's so easily countered, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it does not take that much of a Google scholar
Speaker 1: search to find that IQ test scores predict things that
Speaker 1: we care about in populations. So you know, I've definitely
Speaker 1: this is an ongoing project. But I think thinking about, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's an argument that's causing me ajuta, Like I'm responding
Speaker 1: negatively to it. What is the what is the falsehood here?
Speaker 1: And what is the truth here? So that I don't
Speaker 1: back myself into a corner where I'm saying really intellectually
Speaker 1: indefensible things. And obviously that's always a moving target and
Speaker 1: I could always be doing better with that. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think the extent to which the Bell curve points
Speaker 1: out that you can measure a que and it predicts
Speaker 1: labor market outcomes, backing yourself into a corner saying that
Speaker 1: IQ doesn't predict labor market outcomes doesn't really do you
Speaker 1: much good. I think in countering the arguments that maybe
Speaker 1: people find the most objectionable about murraicisis absolutely so let
Speaker 1: me just lay out the argument I made on and
Speaker 1: un gifted. Because I try to lay out on the
Speaker 1: table all the available evidence and say, well, where do
Speaker 1: we go from here? You know, it seems to me
Speaker 1: like probably futile, But I would go Stephenna, say, our
Speaker 1: red herring to focus money on large scale, socially governmently
Speaker 1: sanctioned programs to specifically target IQ or general or even
Speaker 1: the G factor, you know, general intelligence, that it would
Speaker 1: be much much better use of resources to help with
Speaker 1: individual students self actualization in their own way, in their
Speaker 1: own time, their own developmental trajectory, their own dreams, desires.
Speaker 1: You know, you have a lot of these intellectually precocious
Speaker 1: kids and gift education classrooms that are bored out of
Speaker 1: their mind because we're treating them like there are these
Speaker 1: robots where the only thing that's value about them is
Speaker 1: their IQ score, when what they're you're really yearning for
Speaker 1: is meaning, purpose being things that are fundamentally human things
Speaker 1: we don't need to separate out a special room for
Speaker 1: you know, the purpose room, and then kids who don't
Speaker 1: have the purpose, we don't need to be doing that.
Speaker 1: You know, there's something fundamental human that we all have.
Speaker 1: So you know, my one on the one hand, On
Speaker 1: the other hand is that on the one hand, I've
Speaker 1: published data up showing that the correlation between G, the
Speaker 1: G factor extractedly extracted from a large battery cycle of
Speaker 1: IQ tests, and an academic achievement factor extrapolated from all
Speaker 1: the different areas of acatic achievement is the leading correlation
Speaker 1: is zero point nine to sixly, like, that's that's what's
Speaker 1: put that on the table. Let's put it the twin project. Like,
Speaker 1: we give people in our sample a battery of executive
Speaker 1: function tasks, which are very basic cognitive ability tasks, as
Speaker 1: you know. So we give them twelve EF tasks that
Speaker 1: top working memory, inhibition of dating, and switching, and these
Speaker 1: are things like the end back right, So these are
Speaker 1: things that are not the direct target of instruction by schools.
Speaker 1: A general fractor of executive functioning in our sample is
Speaker 1: nearly one hundred percent, is over ninety percent, and Naomi
Speaker 1: Friedman and her group a Colora have replicated that finding.
Speaker 1: So we're seeing this in you know, very highly heritable
Speaker 1: general factor of how well on these computer based lab
Speaker 1: based tasks children you know, regulate and switch their attention
Speaker 1: and can keep things in working memory. Recently, my graduate
Speaker 1: student just completed a project where she obtained official school
Speaker 1: transcripts from all of the kids in our sample, and
Speaker 1: that include their their Star test scores, right, so the
Speaker 1: tests that they have to be take at the end
Speaker 1: of every year, mandated by the state of Texas. I
Speaker 1: talk about this result very briefly in the book because
Speaker 1: it was still in progress. But what we find is
Speaker 1: about a half to three quarters of the variation and
Speaker 1: kids star test scores is related to heritable variation and
Speaker 1: executive functioning. Right, So we have this thing that's testing, yeah,
Speaker 1: like what you know, that's curricular tide, how you are
Speaker 1: learning the math, that'sa on your third grade classroom, and
Speaker 1: then we have you know, these working memory tasks, updating
Speaker 1: switching tasks, and a huge chunk of the variation executive function.
Speaker 1: We do see evidence of the kind of SES disparities
Speaker 1: that are commonly that are you know, well known, but
Speaker 1: those SS disparities are much narrower than what we see
Speaker 1: for executive function. Relationships. So all of that to say,
Speaker 1: I am not in any way surprised by this academic achievement.
Speaker 1: General intelligence we see that very consistently across across school districts,
Speaker 1: across schools, across schooling systems. Is that the sort of things,
Speaker 1: the sort of problem solving and cognitibilities that are tapped
Speaker 1: by these standardized tests are really similar to you know,
Speaker 1: individual differences and what you're learning in school. And I
Speaker 1: just don't think that we've had a conversation about how
Speaker 1: to make sense of that from a policy perspective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're quite right. And I also really resonate a lot
Speaker 1: with the argument about flatting the hierarchy, because you know,
Speaker 1: I would argue that while these questions exist, we we
Speaker 1: create these correlations to a certain degree because we created
Speaker 1: tests unwittingly that are basically IQ tests, thinly designed, and
Speaker 1: then we said those are the gating mechanisms. Those are,
Speaker 1: and we created a hierarchy. If you score high in
Speaker 1: those gating mechanisms, you're worthy of doing anything in your life. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean that to the extent to which education is
Speaker 1: a opens doors, and it's a very large extent to
Speaker 1: which higher education opens doors we created this system. So
Speaker 1: you know, that's why I'm all about a self actualizing school.
Speaker 1: You know that treats all students as human first. And yeah,
Speaker 1: well so I would add to that self actualization And
Speaker 1: by that I mean actualization of the talent and skills
Speaker 1: that you both that you want, you know, as a
Speaker 1: developing autonomous agent like find and intrinsically interesting and valuable
Speaker 1: and that you feel like as your path towards you know,
Speaker 1: contributing to society. That needs to be matched by those
Speaker 1: self actualized skills finding a place in our economy. Right,
Speaker 1: so you know, to say, we want you to self
Speaker 1: actualize your skills, but to be in a country where
Speaker 1: we have, for instance, like very poor labor protections for
Speaker 1: many forms of work, is encouraging the actualization of things
Speaker 1: that then make people vulnerable to you know, I think
Speaker 1: forms of social oppression and and and so we need both.
Speaker 1: There's both the self actualization. But then how does that
Speaker 1: self those self actualized skills find and net to a
Speaker 1: life that isn't precarious, that isn't deprived, that isn't a
Speaker 1: press that isn't exploited. The word that I'm looking for
Speaker 1: in labor markets Uh, those, I think those two things
Speaker 1: have to go together. Dare I say transcendence matters. That's
Speaker 1: the that's the argument of in transcend is that self
Speaker 1: actuation is really just a bridge and when done right,
Speaker 1: it's purpose, it's functions to erase itself. That's that's a
Speaker 1: mas that Maslow said in a beautiful essay, it's functions
Speaker 1: to erase itself because it's a it's it's making such
Speaker 1: an impact on the world in a positive way, helping
Speaker 1: society that there is no boundary anymore between self and
Speaker 1: world that when done right, when done Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: beautiful idea. Yeah. Yeah, this is why I'm such a
Speaker 1: mass that I need to make it talk talk about
Speaker 1: too much. But uh, but it just it resonates with
Speaker 1: my own sort of inherent Uh I don't I don't
Speaker 1: want to use the word inherent in this discussion, but
Speaker 1: my ownness sort of intrinsic value system. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: do want to talk about group differences. You say that
Speaker 1: we must not fear that any statistical result on group
Speaker 1: differences will compromise a commitment to anti racism and racial quality.
Speaker 1: Why is that? Gosh, such a good question. So I
Speaker 1: think of the you know, the anti racist Project and
Speaker 1: the racial equality project as being again it's about do
Speaker 1: we have a system where everyone can both in your words,
Speaker 1: actualize the skills and the talents that they have and
Speaker 1: that they want to develop, and also that those skills
Speaker 1: and talents can be connected to the world in such
Speaker 1: a way that they live a life of you know,
Speaker 1: security and lack of exploitation and lack of oppression. Oftentimes,
Speaker 1: there's this idea that again, the hierarchy that we've currently
Speaker 1: constructed around certain forms of skill is inevitable, and so
Speaker 1: you know, the goal is to try to equalize everyone
Speaker 1: with regards to this one fetishized skill, which are like
Speaker 1: the types of problem solving that are tested by a
Speaker 1: Q task. And I think that's a really limited vision
Speaker 1: for what equality means. In some of my talks, I
Speaker 1: and I briefly talked about this. In the book, I
Speaker 1: talk about like, as a very concrete example, the Americans
Speaker 1: with Disabilities Act, where we're seeing you might differ in
Speaker 1: your functioning, but you are entitled to equal enjoyment of
Speaker 1: and use of this place of public accommodation. And so
Speaker 1: I'm going to recognize difference and what I'm equalizing here
Speaker 1: is your ability to participate as a citizen, your ability
Speaker 1: to inhabit space that uphold and reflects your dignity. I
Speaker 1: think if we take that frame, and what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do is create a society in which everyone can
Speaker 1: participate and contribute, the question of, uh, what are the
Speaker 1: causes of average group differences and measured psychological characteristics becomes
Speaker 1: a lot less important, right, It's just it's drained of
Speaker 1: a lot of its toxicity. Uh So, rather than thinking
Speaker 1: the race is set up, this is the This is
Speaker 1: the neoliberal economic race that we're in, and we need
Speaker 1: to we need to debate why some people compete differently
Speaker 1: in that race, differently than other people. Let's interrogate the
Speaker 1: race to begin with. Let's interrogate the systems of competition
Speaker 1: that gate access to to sharing and wealth to sharing,
Speaker 1: and prosperity to sharing in uh, you know, access to
Speaker 1: leisure and access to that care. That's the thing that
Speaker 1: I think we should be interrogating. And if we set
Speaker 1: up those structures correctly, I think the question about you know,
Speaker 1: the I think the group difference, this question loses a
Speaker 1: lot of its loses a lot of its negative potency
Speaker 1: very interesting. Thank you for leting that out. That argument.
Speaker 1: Do you think that there could be any valuable information
Speaker 1: gleaned once we know more, once more data, large scale
Speaker 1: data and across different cultures comes out on you know,
Speaker 1: genome wide association studies, for instance, once the data comes
Speaker 1: in more on group differences, do you see any valuable
Speaker 1: insights coming out from that? I mean, I think that,
Speaker 1: I mean, of course there's going to be more valuable
Speaker 1: insights as we get more data and more information. And
Speaker 1: I think that the you know, the direction of g
Speaker 1: WOSS and how it's been conducted within kind of narrowly
Speaker 1: defined and ancestry groups, and what people think that they
Speaker 1: will find as they do more kind of large scale
Speaker 1: population genetic studies is you know, it's such an active
Speaker 1: area of dialogue even within population geneticists right now. Again,
Speaker 1: I want to come back to are we using the
Speaker 1: question of cause, like what's causing group differences to deflect
Speaker 1: us from the question of figuring out what we need
Speaker 1: to do to structure society regardless of the cause of
Speaker 1: differences between people. So generally, I think that the lesson
Speaker 1: of genetics has been like it's full of surprises and
Speaker 1: it's you know, it moves in unpredictable directions. I personally
Speaker 1: don't think that we're going to find, even with lots
Speaker 1: of more data, any sort of condensing smoking gun about
Speaker 1: genetically caused differences that fall on racial lines. Like that's
Speaker 1: my prior, and I also I think wonder about how
Speaker 1: much how useful i Q tests could be. I mean,
Speaker 1: I cite the work of Harriet Washington in my book,
Speaker 1: you know, as there's more attention paid to like what
Speaker 1: she called environmental racism, as there's more attention paid to
Speaker 1: the ways in which the environments of children are unequal
Speaker 1: with regards to their exposure to toxicounts, to their exposure
Speaker 1: to the impacts of climate change. I think it's going
Speaker 1: to become a thing. There's a possibility that we're also
Speaker 1: going to learn a lot more on the environmental side too,
Speaker 1: if we if we invest resources into that. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you've made a good point. I've play on sham Harris's podcast.
Speaker 1: It's a point that the weight uh Flynn, you know,
Speaker 1: of the grade of the flint effect also has has
Speaker 1: made you know there is a there does exist a
Speaker 1: significant on average IQ difference UH in America Africa between
Speaker 1: African Americans and whites, that difference does exist, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't say that the cause of the genetic environmental makeup
Speaker 1: that it would account for that difference. And it could
Speaker 1: be that once you remove all the environmental disadvantages and
Speaker 1: forms of racism and forms of all these things that
Speaker 1: are whole suppressing that score among African Americans and average,
Speaker 1: you may actually find is a scientifically open question, which
Speaker 1: people like Murray don't ever open up, that possibility that
Speaker 1: African Americans actually score higher on app You don't know,
Speaker 1: we don't know, so why would you so it kind
Speaker 1: of by assuming that it's going to come out some
Speaker 1: day that there is they're always going to be lower
Speaker 1: to me is kind of like implicit. Like if I
Speaker 1: was like on the there on the stand and I
Speaker 1: was a lawyer, I'd be like, you're admitting some sort
Speaker 1: of unconscious mind. Yeah. I think that there can be
Speaker 1: some sort of ugly racist views sort of lurking under
Speaker 1: people's fear of genetics sometimes because it's like, well, what
Speaker 1: are you afraid that we're going to find exactly? I don't.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times people's fears around where
Speaker 1: the science will go can mask some can can be
Speaker 1: kind of indicative of some of their own prejudicial priors.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I also would say that no
Speaker 1: scientific find that ever comes out is going to justify racism,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a point that needs to be
Speaker 1: made as well. I mean, what's the worst case the
Speaker 1: worst case scenario. Let's say that, like, all this data
Speaker 1: does come out someday and it shows we look at
Speaker 1: the readout and it shows that all the stereotypes are true.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to I'm just like being cheeky and coming out,
Speaker 1: what's what's the So we would read the read out
Speaker 1: and it's like none of that would justify anything. That
Speaker 1: the racists are still going to be racist. It's not
Speaker 1: like the race just are waiting for that data to
Speaker 1: come out so that they can start being racist. They're
Speaker 1: already racist today. And it's also not like you are
Speaker 1: waiting for the data come out to decide you're still
Speaker 1: going to be you. You're still going to care about
Speaker 1: help treating individuals individuals and helping people who are vulnerable. Right, So,
Speaker 1: in a sense, in a sense, in a really like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to really like zoom in really close to
Speaker 1: this the heart of This question is what is that?
Speaker 1: What is the data on group difference ever really gonna matter?
Speaker 1: This is the question I'm trying to get to. Do
Speaker 1: you see I'm saying, yeah, I mean, I guess you know.
Speaker 1: One way I think about this when one thought that
Speaker 1: keeps kind of running through my head as they hear
Speaker 1: you talk, is well two things. One is it is
Speaker 1: just amazing to me, like what a black hole of
Speaker 1: gravitational force the subject of group differences is I know
Speaker 1: of any data? Right, So you know, I've written a
Speaker 1: whole book that's taking on any number of controversial issues,
Speaker 1: and the one thing that I say at the very
Speaker 1: beginning that I cannot really speak to is racial differences.
Speaker 1: I am talking about. It is not a genetic construct, right,
Speaker 1: It's a social construct that's correlated with ancestry, but isn't
Speaker 1: strictly genetic. And all of the studies that are in
Speaker 1: my book are about people who are of European genetic ancestry,
Speaker 1: who would all be racially identified as white. And yet
Speaker 1: there is this this association where it's I think it's
Speaker 1: even stronger than the like heritability is innate association, which
Speaker 1: is that if you're talking about genes. You must be
Speaker 1: talking about race, and I just I just want to
Speaker 1: reflect on that, right that, like it is, it is
Speaker 1: kind of inescapable part of our discourse. And I really
Speaker 1: do feel, like, you know, on the one hand, clearing
Speaker 1: up misperceptions about what the kind of work I do
Speaker 1: has to say about quote unquote racial genetic differences is important.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I just think there's so much
Speaker 1: more heat than light in this subject, Like it's just
Speaker 1: so much, so so speculative in the absence of real evidence,
Speaker 1: and so corrosive to thinking about what we do with
Speaker 1: the information that we do have that you know, I
Speaker 1: don't really know what to do with that. I just
Speaker 1: kind of want to reflect on that as a as
Speaker 1: an observation about the conversation we point point very well taken,
Speaker 1: and I would nothing I would like more than to
Speaker 1: now transition to about taking equality and your proposals about that.
Speaker 1: But I will say and we will transition to that.
Speaker 1: But I will say that because it is such a
Speaker 1: hot topic and because so many people, you know, in
Speaker 1: a way a certain segment of people have controlled the
Speaker 1: narrative around that topic, that I think it's important for
Speaker 1: people like you and dare I say, me and others
Speaker 1: who would like to think through the you know, the practical,
Speaker 1: meaningful applications of this research in a way where the
Speaker 1: goal the explicit goal. We're not shy to say we
Speaker 1: want to help people. The goal is not just you know,
Speaker 1: some people say, well, I'm a pure scientist. I just
Speaker 1: let's look at the readouts and it will speak for itself.
Speaker 1: I don't think that the data ever speaks for itself. Particularly,
Speaker 1: I don't think the data on group differences will ever
Speaker 1: speak for themselves. So I think there's a certain responsibility there.
Speaker 1: But I hear you, and your point is taken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, you know, if anything, the pandemic
Speaker 1: has shown us that data never speaks for itself. Right, data,
Speaker 1: There is data, and then there's how that data is interpreted,
Speaker 1: and how it's used, and how it's met with skepticism,
Speaker 1: and how you know, we in every area of science,
Speaker 1: the data is doesn't stand separate from the communication, interpretation,
Speaker 1: and used to which the data is put. Yeah. Yeah, excellent,
Speaker 1: excellent point. So let's talk a little bit about this, uh,
Speaker 1: this this great synthesis which is the heart of your book,
Speaker 1: and that's really what you're passionate about. It's not like
Speaker 1: you were passionate about writing this book because you wanted
Speaker 1: to talk forever about group differences, intelligence and the genetic
Speaker 1: basis of it. Well, you're really passionate about about really
Speaker 1: moving the conversation forward through this great synthesis, which is
Speaker 1: grounded in what you call anti eugenicism. Being an what
Speaker 1: does it mean to be an anti eugenicist? You out
Speaker 1: five principles? This really kind of I think this is
Speaker 1: really what you're passionate. Is correct me if I'm wrong? Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think of eugenics. Eugenics and genetic difference
Speaker 1: are so tightly wound up in the popular imagination and
Speaker 1: in the imagination of scientists themselves that it's hard for
Speaker 1: us sometimes to imagine that we can observe genetic difference
Speaker 1: is in socially valued outcomes without that being inherently eugenic.
Speaker 1: And so when I'm describing anti eugenics, I'm trying to say,
Speaker 1: what are the kind of flaws or assumptions the bad
Speaker 1: ideas wrapped up in eugenic thinking, and then what is
Speaker 1: the response to them, And in a particular, how can
Speaker 1: we formulate a response and a framework that isn't we
Speaker 1: just shouldn't be doing this research, right, Like, let's just
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think there's putting the DNA genie
Speaker 1: back in the bottle. I don't think that there is
Speaker 1: undoing the knowledge which people already have that genetics makes
Speaker 1: a difference for people's lives lives. So given that and
Speaker 1: given this eugenic history, how do we move forward? What
Speaker 1: are the next steps? So? I think one of those
Speaker 1: ideas in eugenics was around we already touched on, was
Speaker 1: this idea that genes are destiny, that if something, if
Speaker 1: someone has a certain set of genetic characteristics or predispositions,
Speaker 1: you know that the effects of that are sort of
Speaker 1: written in stone and they can only be changed through
Speaker 1: you know, biological means that the social programs or social
Speaker 1: policies will be ineffective at fixing them. Right. Whereas I
Speaker 1: think of anti eugenics as saying, Okay, given that we
Speaker 1: have data on genetics and human outcomes, what are the
Speaker 1: mechanisms by which that happens that will give us opportunities
Speaker 1: for intervention via social policy, or via psychotherapy, or via
Speaker 1: new education. The second kind of big framework of eugenics
Speaker 1: that's very hard for people to kind of step away
Speaker 1: from and see, is this idea that genetic difference means
Speaker 1: genetic inferiority and superiority, and that's a pecking order we
Speaker 1: were already talking about. This. Is why I talk about
Speaker 1: my own family so often when I talk about this,
Speaker 1: is because it's easiest often for people to see how
Speaker 1: difference does not translate into differences in worth when they
Speaker 1: are thinking about their own kids, or their own siblings,
Speaker 1: their own own families, where you can see, well, maybe
Speaker 1: it is because of genetics that I have struggled with
Speaker 1: this relative to my sibling, or one child struggles more,
Speaker 1: but I don't. One of my children is not more
Speaker 1: valuable to me than the other one, Right, So I
Speaker 1: think separating difference from hierarchy is a really important component
Speaker 1: of anti eugenics. And then the third part is thinking about, well,
Speaker 1: like what policies proceed from those ideas. The atrocities in
Speaker 1: the United States where we're thinking about our eugenic history,
Speaker 1: were about justifying abridging people's freedoms, particularly their reproductive freedoms,
Speaker 1: most notably involuntary sterilization laws. When I was a grad
Speaker 1: student of the eu VA I had a practicum year
Speaker 1: at Western State Hospital in Stanton, Virginia, which is where
Speaker 1: they used to do sterilizations of women, you know, well
Speaker 1: into the middle of the twentieth century. So that history
Speaker 1: is there, it's real. You know, carried Back, who was
Speaker 1: the the the subject of the Buck v. Bell Supreme
Speaker 1: Court case, the infamous one that's you know, three generations
Speaker 1: of imbeciles, is enough that upheld the constitutionality of sterilization laws.
Speaker 1: You know, she is buried at Charlottesville, which is where
Speaker 1: I went to grad school. So that history is very real.
Speaker 1: What is the opposite of that? So if eugenic policy
Speaker 1: is I'm going to draw in genetics to justify abridging
Speaker 1: people's freedoms to justify inequalities and resources and welfare, the
Speaker 1: anti eugenic policy is one that guarantees equality of freedom's
Speaker 1: resources and welfare or sort of regardless of the outcome
Speaker 1: of the genetic lottery. And by that we don't mean
Speaker 1: that everyone is necessarily going to make the exact same
Speaker 1: amount of money. Right Like the ADA, the Americans with
Speaker 1: Disabilities Act is not saying we are going to equalize income.
Speaker 1: It's saying we're going to equalize people's ability to participate
Speaker 1: in a public space. And I think that metaphor can
Speaker 1: be extracted out to think about not just participation in
Speaker 1: physical spaces, but in economic spaces and educational spaces, in
Speaker 1: access to healthcare spaces. Anti eugenics is ultimately about can
Speaker 1: we make social structures that are good for everyone, regardless
Speaker 1: of the hand that nature dealt them. That is what
Speaker 1: I think of is a kind of a good litmus
Speaker 1: test for a good social structure. I love it. So
Speaker 1: what is the new synthesis then, and why do we
Speaker 1: need it? So? I mean, I think the new synthesis
Speaker 1: is exactly what I just told you, which is separating,
Speaker 1: you know, genetic difference from genetic hierarchy and thinking about
Speaker 1: using genetics as a tool to identify targets for intervention
Speaker 1: rather than as a barrier to intervention. I think it's
Speaker 1: necessary because the science is accelerated so rapidly, because we
Speaker 1: can observe these differences, we can observe them easily. We
Speaker 1: have this really power tool. If we don't come up
Speaker 1: with a new scent ass then we're trapped in the
Speaker 1: same dilemma that we've been in for decades, which is,
Speaker 1: let's try to understand what works for kids without taking
Speaker 1: some account this major source of variation between them. And
Speaker 1: let's try to convince people that genes don't matter when
Speaker 1: they already know that they do and they can see
Speaker 1: evidence of that in their lives. And I just don't
Speaker 1: think that's a very successful strategy moving forward. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: and I love what you're saying in the In the
Speaker 1: main theoretically, I want to zoom in on what this
Speaker 1: would mean practically to take into account a child's genes.
Speaker 1: I really want to double click on this because I've
Speaker 1: been critical. I've been critical. I've looked at the current
Speaker 1: data a linking trying to predict individual polygenetic traits to
Speaker 1: their educational and the predict that it's too too weak,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, look, the scientists get excited when
Speaker 1: you see, like at a group level, like, oh, we
Speaker 1: found a point three core relation and statistically significant. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's great, Okay, but it does suggest we shouldn't sweep
Speaker 1: under the rug the role of genes. But when you
Speaker 1: look at individual prediction, it's not that great. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to I wouldn't want to hang my hat on
Speaker 1: being able to decide whether or not a child was
Speaker 1: born with quote unlucky genes based on just their polygenic score.
Speaker 1: Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah? No, And I
Speaker 1: totally agree with you. You know, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, most of our correlations in psychology
Speaker 1: are in point three land, right. You know, if we know,
Speaker 1: if we know that your family had this income in
Speaker 1: this year, that's correlated at around point three with your
Speaker 1: likelihood of graduating from college. So that makes that introduces
Speaker 1: a new kind of interesting litmus test of is what
Speaker 1: someone proposing they're doing with a polygenic score, would it
Speaker 1: be sensible if it were the same proposal for a
Speaker 1: different social science variable, one that we ordinarily kind of
Speaker 1: are used to thinking about in psychology socio economic status? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: socioeconomic status. So let's say you had a column in
Speaker 1: your data set that was your classic this is my
Speaker 1: compositive occupational status, income, and educational attainment of parents, and
Speaker 1: it's correlated at point three with kind of everything in
Speaker 1: your data set. Is what people are proposing to do
Speaker 1: with polygenic scores, would it still makes sense to do
Speaker 1: if instead that you were doing it with this sas variable.
Speaker 1: What's clarifying about that is the applications that are less
Speaker 1: sensitive to uncertainty. So, if you are doing a big
Speaker 1: study of parenting practices and trying to figure out which
Speaker 1: one of these are correlated with academic achievement, it is
Speaker 1: routine to control for social class, right, Like, it would
Speaker 1: be impossible to get the study published without control and
Speaker 1: for social class, because there would always be this question
Speaker 1: about like, well, is this you know, is this about
Speaker 1: this parent or is this just like an indicator of
Speaker 1: rich versus poor families? And it's a really massy predictor
Speaker 1: it's only correlated point three, but it acts as a
Speaker 1: filter of how we're a bust. Are these associations to
Speaker 1: this kind of just like really broad brush stroke thing
Speaker 1: if there was that, but in an attempt to control
Speaker 1: for genetics, and this doesn't even have to be necessarily
Speaker 1: a polygenic scores, Like, is your correlation between parent behavior
Speaker 1: and child outcome still there? When you are looking at
Speaker 1: a sample of adoptees versus you know, kids raising their
Speaker 1: kids being raised by their biological parents. Does that solve
Speaker 1: the problem of how hard causal inferences in psychology? No? Like,
Speaker 1: does that move the ball towards addressing a problem that's
Speaker 1: been pointed out for decades and still is a really
Speaker 1: glaring flaw at the heart of a lot of correlational
Speaker 1: psychology research. Yes it does. And so a big part
Speaker 1: of what I'm saying about taking genes into account is
Speaker 1: you already do this. You already use massy social science
Speaker 1: variables to try to control for things, and now you
Speaker 1: have a new layer of information, why are you using it.
Speaker 1: That's a big part of my suggestion to my fellow psychologists,
Speaker 1: my fellow researchers. I hear you, and I share the
Speaker 1: frustration that social scientists, particularly like sociologists, never control for
Speaker 1: genetic variables. I don't think I've ever seen a sociology
Speaker 1: study where they're like, let's talk about the sociology of crime,
Speaker 1: but let's, you know, control for their polygenics score. So look,
Speaker 1: I completely agree that this new synthesis is going to
Speaker 1: have to take serious that they're merging data in behavioral genetics.
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm getting stuck on is the the
Speaker 1: population level prediction goal and the individual Uh, Like, I'm
Speaker 1: really getting into the into the nitty gritty of like
Speaker 1: the concrete policy implications for you know, because in school,
Speaker 1: in our school education system, we do sort kids. You know,
Speaker 1: you make the gifted education program if you score this
Speaker 1: cutoff on an IQ test, we sort you into special
Speaker 1: education if you're have a learning disability. I've argued that
Speaker 1: kids can be twice exceptional, you know, they can be
Speaker 1: both gifted intellectually and have a learning disability, and we
Speaker 1: completely haven't haven't made room in our education system for
Speaker 1: twice exceptional kids. So I guess just I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of your very worthy anti eugenesis uh goal, but
Speaker 1: just on the ground practically in school, because, for instance,
Speaker 1: I read Katherine Astbury and Robert Poeman's book g Is
Speaker 1: for Genes and are very different than a lot of
Speaker 1: you see what I'm saying. You see what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So when I think of I mean, I say this
Speaker 1: as one of the principles in the back of my book,
Speaker 1: which is like, given how uncertain polygenic scores are, uncertainty
Speaker 1: around their prediction and the opacity of their mechanisms, it's
Speaker 1: really a mistake to think of them as diagnostic tests
Speaker 1: about people. There are a source of information about environments. Actually,
Speaker 1: So when you say, okay, right now we track people
Speaker 1: into gifted programs, I immediately go to Well, that's been
Speaker 1: a target of policy experimentation. You know, Let's let's give
Speaker 1: everyone a giftedness test. Let's get rid of gifted programs entirely.
Speaker 1: Let's change the age at which we have gifted and
Speaker 1: talented programs. We see the same thing for math, Right,
Speaker 1: Let's de track math. Let's change how we track math.
Speaker 1: Let's detract math for ninth and tenth grade and then
Speaker 1: retrack it in the eleventh and twelfth grade. What's so
Speaker 1: interesting to me scientifically is thinking about genetics as a
Speaker 1: tool for seeing who is being helped and who is
Speaker 1: being hurt by these policy changes, because by measuring someone's genes,
Speaker 1: you're getting a set of information about them that is
Speaker 1: not reciprocally affected by the policy change that they were
Speaker 1: associated with. Right, So this is I mean, this is
Speaker 1: related to what a ton of people in intervention and
Speaker 1: education are talking about, is the heterogeneity revolution. Not just
Speaker 1: thinking about what are the average treatment effects of things,
Speaker 1: but what are the individual differences and the responses that
Speaker 1: we're seeing to education. Those things can be closing genetically
Speaker 1: associated gaps, they could be widening genetically associated gaps, they
Speaker 1: could be keeping them exactly the same and moving the
Speaker 1: mean they'd be having no effect whatsoever visa be genetics,
Speaker 1: and we don't know anything about that information. So that
Speaker 1: is the part where I feel like, you know, I
Speaker 1: give an example in my book of an evaluation of
Speaker 1: this UK policy reform that happened a long time ago
Speaker 1: that raised the school leading age. That was able to
Speaker 1: show that it worked on average to reduce body size,
Speaker 1: but that was very small, but it had a much
Speaker 1: bigger effect amongst people who were at hygienetic risk for obesity,
Speaker 1: And we would have missed the fact that even though
Speaker 1: it hasn't any of any effect on average, it's helping
Speaker 1: the people who are most at risk for HIGHBMI the most.
Speaker 1: Without that genetic information, that sort of thinking could be
Speaker 1: applied much more regularly when we're thinking about education. But again,
Speaker 1: that's using genetics as a tool for telling us something
Speaker 1: about our environment, not as a tool for telling us
Speaker 1: something about an individual kid. Gosh, there's so much and
Speaker 1: everything you just said, so much, it's so rich that
Speaker 1: there's various components I need to break down for a second.
Speaker 1: So one major difference as I see it, between kind
Speaker 1: of your argument and the Pullman Aspbury argument is I
Speaker 1: could see them more inclined to want school psychologists to
Speaker 1: now have readouts of the apologenic scores of the students
Speaker 1: to help inform what track they put them in, whereas
Speaker 1: I don't see you as making that recommendation. I'm not
Speaker 1: really advocating for like any sort of like little Tommy
Speaker 1: has a lower apologize or a little shoozy sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I think of it more like, you know, like if
Speaker 1: you go to like the What Works clearing House, which
Speaker 1: is a website created by the Institute of the Department
Speaker 1: of Education, and it's basically like a list of well,
Speaker 1: here's outcomes from RCTs, like is there any if you're
Speaker 1: a school district or you're a school administrator and you
Speaker 1: want to know, is there any evidence that me, you know,
Speaker 1: using this math curriculum in pre K has an average
Speaker 1: treatment effect that isn't zero for numerousy and first grade.
Speaker 1: You know, you could see that on what we're in
Speaker 1: it grades like the quality of the evidence. What it
Speaker 1: doesn't tell you is anything around for whom is it
Speaker 1: working right? Is it narrowing income gaps? Is it widening
Speaker 1: income gaps? And we see that there are for reasons
Speaker 1: we don't understand genetically associated inequalities between people. So I
Speaker 1: don't think that the school. You know, in my ideal world,
Speaker 1: the school administrator is not like, oh, we're personalizing the
Speaker 1: education for Tommy versus Suzy. They're singing, Yeah, this math curriculum,
Speaker 1: I know, it doesn't seem like it has a very
Speaker 1: a fact or it almost looks zero. But the analysis
Speaker 1: of head and eighty shows that it's it is working
Speaker 1: for the kids who are most at risk for poor outcomes.
Speaker 1: So that's the one we should go with versus this
Speaker 1: other intervention that you know might have a bigger average
Speaker 1: treatment effect, but it's just exacerbating inequality for instance. We
Speaker 1: don't have that information right now. Yeah, I hear you,
Speaker 1: and and I think there's just no way around the
Speaker 1: politics of this at the end of the day, because
Speaker 1: the question is what is the focus. Now, I'll sell
Speaker 1: what I was with you. You said let's give everyone
Speaker 1: a gift in this test. I was like, I'm with you,
Speaker 1: And then you said let's get rid of all gifted
Speaker 1: talented programs, and I was like, I wasn't with you there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just talking about people of the proposals
Speaker 1: that have been thrown around right. Oh yeah, you're saying,
Speaker 1: if you look districts in America, what are they doing
Speaker 1: right now? Are saying, let's give everyone to get a
Speaker 1: talented test, Let's get rid of gifted and talented, let's
Speaker 1: change you know, these are things that are being proposed
Speaker 1: in our you know, radical experiments that are being done
Speaker 1: in education right now. Yeah, yeah, so you weren't are
Speaker 1: you weren't advocating for getting rid of gifted talent? I
Speaker 1: advocated saying that there's already experimentation with these types of
Speaker 1: things happening. Who is being served and who's not being
Speaker 1: served by those? Gotcha? I think that America has never
Speaker 1: reckoned with the equity versus excellence. I don't even know
Speaker 1: what to call it, because as I don't want to
Speaker 1: live in a zero sum world where we either have
Speaker 1: equity or we have excellence, you know, I think we
Speaker 1: need to work on and nurture both. You know. I
Speaker 1: think that with a lot of these kids that are
Speaker 1: falling between the cracks, we almost act like the best
Speaker 1: we can do with them is to remediate them, as
Speaker 1: opposed to, well, are they capable of excellence? You know?
Speaker 1: So that's why I think that aspiring to to excellence
Speaker 1: and having gifted talented programs, but that allow all children
Speaker 1: and the opportunity is the way forward as opposed to
Speaker 1: completely acting those programs and only focusing on remediation. So
Speaker 1: that's my own sort of view. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think you're right that there's this inherent tension between tension.
Speaker 1: That's the word for it, thank you. Yeah, tension between
Speaker 1: focusing on the absolute levels of skills we want this
Speaker 1: individual child to have, you know, the most ability to
Speaker 1: do academic things as they possibly can, and the distribution
Speaker 1: and relative ordering of people's level of educational skills, and
Speaker 1: then there's also kind of a tension between are we
Speaker 1: focused on you know, the few people that are going
Speaker 1: to be at the highest level of performance or you
Speaker 1: know that making worrying about the floor, basically making sure
Speaker 1: that all children have a minimum. And I agree with
Speaker 1: you that I don't think that those are necessarily opposing goals.
Speaker 1: But when you start thinking about heterogeneity of treatment of
Speaker 1: facts and who's being served by our policy changes, I
Speaker 1: think you're absolutely right that they do surface these these
Speaker 1: tensions and these maybe more implicit conflicts that people have
Speaker 1: about really like what is the point of education, you know,
Speaker 1: is it about is it an equity promoting institution, or
Speaker 1: is it an you know, getting as some few people
Speaker 1: to a certain level of technical skill that they are
Speaker 1: going to be, you know, inventing things that push society forward.
Speaker 1: Both of those things are true, but they can kind
Speaker 1: of mash up against each other around certain policy decisions completely.
Speaker 1: Perhaps I will put the last word here to because
Speaker 1: it's just it ties together. So much of what we
Speaker 1: talked about today, victory or success in life should not
Speaker 1: be defined in terms of someone else's defeat. This point
Speaker 1: must be stressed. I also syndicate that there are so
Speaker 1: many different kinds of quality, so many kinds of capacity,
Speaker 1: and so many jobs to be done, that virtually anyone
Speaker 1: can be very good, even in the ordinary social sense,
Speaker 1: that is successful in hundreds or thousands of different ways. Therefore,
Speaker 1: we all can be proud of our accomplishments and become
Speaker 1: autonomous and self actualizing. Psychological success is a non zero
Speaker 1: sum game because everybody can win. Rather than seeking to
Speaker 1: defeat someone else, is better to seek excellence and perfection
Speaker 1: in one's own accomplishments. So I kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: end on that note and say thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: Page so much for putting forward this egalitarian geneticist view
Speaker 1: that you have, this new synthesis, this anti eugenicist idea.
Speaker 1: It is a much needed counterbalance. But really I think
Speaker 1: synthesis is the better worth than counterbalance. It really is
Speaker 1: a synthesis of a lot of different truths that exist
Speaker 1: on both the left and right side of political ideologies.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much, and for thank you much
Speaker 1: for having me. This was a really thought for booking
Speaker 1: interview and I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Thanks for being such
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