00:00:00
when you've written a fascinating and
00:00:02
have to say frankly disturbing piece for
00:00:05
the new Statesman magazine on the rise
00:00:07
of the new tech right and how the cult
00:00:10
of IQ became a toxic ideology in Silicon
00:00:14
Valley and beyond all very optimistic
00:00:17
stuff thanks for that you begin this
00:00:20
piece by exploring the concept of
00:00:23
meritocracy and its Evolution since the
00:00:25
1950s and I think we should start there
00:00:28
by just kind of defining these terms and
00:00:31
introducing this subject
00:00:33
give us a sense of what we're talking
00:00:36
about when we talk about this idea of
00:00:38
meritocracy and how have the
00:00:41
implications of that concept changed
00:00:44
since the 1950s where you start this
00:00:46
piece
00:00:47
sure well the term actually was coined
00:00:50
by a labor politician and sociologist
00:00:53
Michael Young
00:00:55
in a kind of speculative science fiction
00:00:57
novel interestingly enough that he wrote
00:00:59
that was published in 1958
00:01:02
and in the novel the premise is that the
00:01:05
way that the elite would be selected in
00:01:08
the future would not be through their
00:01:10
connections or their kind of class
00:01:13
status but through their ability and
00:01:16
their intelligence above all would be
00:01:18
the kind of criteria that people were
00:01:20
selected by to become basically the
00:01:22
governing class
00:01:24
so the the book sets up this fascinating
00:01:26
situation where you get a kind of a
00:01:29
sorting out of the population according
00:01:31
to their intelligence and a seeming kind
00:01:34
of perfection of a technocratic rule of
00:01:37
society until in a kind of a twist
00:01:39
ending there's a Revolt of a populist
00:01:42
party led by women in this case that
00:01:45
overthrows the the meritocratic elite
00:01:47
and creates a new more kind of
00:01:49
egalitarian system so the term
00:01:52
meritocracy now has entered of course
00:01:54
our mainstream conversations but still I
00:01:57
think has this implication of the kind
00:01:59
of the complement to a democracy where
00:02:02
everyone has one vote is a kind of a
00:02:06
selection of the governing class
00:02:08
according to skill and since then
00:02:11
there's been endless conversations about
00:02:13
whether this is good whether it's bad
00:02:15
whether it's actually happening whether
00:02:18
it's blocked whether there are sort of
00:02:20
unintended consequences of a system like
00:02:22
this as adjusted by the novel itself and
00:02:26
the IQ conversation really sort of
00:02:28
enters this larger meritocracy debate I
00:02:31
would say
00:02:32
and you have
00:02:34
um this term IQ fetishism
00:02:37
um to talk about this idea of IQ and
00:02:39
sorting people into these sort of
00:02:40
cognitive stratospheres where do you see
00:02:45
that debate really start to come back to
00:02:48
to prominence so that that the Michael
00:02:50
Young book I think is is in the 1950s
00:02:52
where do you trace then the Resurgence
00:02:55
of these ideas more recently
00:02:57
well I mean I think it's worth very
00:02:59
briefly sort of remembering where the IQ
00:03:03
thing came from originally it was the IQ
00:03:06
tests were introduced to sort of
00:03:08
um select an officer class and
00:03:11
delegitimize people who were entering
00:03:13
the Armed Forces who might not be able
00:03:16
to reason well enough to be incorporated
00:03:18
into more like high a high
00:03:20
responsibility pop positions so it was
00:03:23
originally intended to kind of do that
00:03:26
sorting in terms of a military that was
00:03:29
going to be fighting in the first world
00:03:30
war in this case it comes back in the
00:03:33
1950s and 60s as you say kind of as part
00:03:36
of the shift to what was then for the
00:03:38
first time being called a knowledge
00:03:39
economy so if you think about people not
00:03:42
as primarily going into the mines or the
00:03:44
factories or the battlefield but doing
00:03:47
things like white collar work teaching
00:03:49
becoming lawyers becoming stock Traders
00:03:52
and so on this was a kind of a new
00:03:55
mandate for Education we're educating
00:03:57
and finding talented people who can do
00:04:00
these kind of mental tasks rather than
00:04:02
physical tasks so in the 60s it really
00:04:05
became a debate especially in the UK
00:04:07
around
00:04:08
streaming and whether or not you should
00:04:11
create a universal education system and
00:04:14
that the old model of sort of public
00:04:17
schools was actually
00:04:19
um suppressing Merit and keeping people
00:04:22
who could be more talented out of the
00:04:25
kind of ruling or governing class
00:04:28
so in the UK that's really where the
00:04:30
debate picks up in the 60s
00:04:33
in the U.S it's around somewhat dormant
00:04:36
but really takes off in the 1990s and
00:04:39
the signature sort of extraordinary flag
00:04:42
post there is the publication of this
00:04:44
book called the bell curve by Charles
00:04:47
Murray who is a kind of libertarian
00:04:49
think tanker and Richard J hertnstein
00:04:52
who is a Harvard psychologist they write
00:04:55
this sort of 800 page dense social
00:04:58
science treaty and it becomes a
00:05:01
bestseller it sells 400 000 copies it's
00:05:05
on the New York Times bestseller list
00:05:07
for months and months and months and it
00:05:10
reopens this debate about IQ
00:05:13
specifically around the question of race
00:05:15
and whether or not there are group
00:05:17
differences in IQ whether or not it's
00:05:20
the case that
00:05:22
groups defined as racial are somehow
00:05:25
also defined by a kind of average lower
00:05:28
or higher level of IQ and most
00:05:31
importantly whether or not a kind of
00:05:33
1960s ideology of racial Liberation and
00:05:38
egalitarianism had kind of
00:05:40
skewed the outcomes such that more
00:05:44
talented people from
00:05:46
high IQ racial groups in their mind
00:05:48
things the white whites East Asians
00:05:51
Ashkenazi Jews were being sort of kept
00:05:54
out of power kept out of meritocratic
00:05:57
uplift in favor of lower IQ groups such
00:06:01
as African-Americans and Latinos so it
00:06:04
was an explosive topic that was you know
00:06:07
extremely disputed by experts the
00:06:10
American psychology Association
00:06:12
published a huge refutation of the
00:06:14
findings of the bell curve but it opened
00:06:17
a conversation that sort of hasn't gone
00:06:19
away and this new tech right that the
00:06:21
piece is built around needs to be seen
00:06:24
as part of their kind of ongoing Ferrari
00:06:27
that opened up in the mid-1990s one of
00:06:31
the things that really struck me about
00:06:32
we
00:06:33
this piece and it is there about the
00:06:35
bell curve
00:06:36
was how phenomenally popular that book
00:06:40
was
00:06:41
um and how these ideas that we might
00:06:44
like to think about as being kind of
00:06:46
really on the fringes really sort of
00:06:49
like extreme series we're clearly
00:06:52
palatable and interesting to to like you
00:06:55
know a large audience I mean is that
00:06:58
still part of the dynamic around
00:07:01
IQ fetishism discussions of intelligence
00:07:04
this idea that there is some sort of
00:07:06
hereditary
00:07:09
um aspect
00:07:10
um of of this of this idea I mean the IQ
00:07:14
fetishism of the right wing of the kind
00:07:16
of tech World in Silicon Valley would be
00:07:19
almost to a person and I almost said to
00:07:21
a man because we are talking about a
00:07:23
conversation like really dominated
00:07:25
almost exclusively by men for reasons
00:07:27
that we maybe we'll talk about in a
00:07:28
second
00:07:29
um is that they would see
00:07:32
um intelligence as
00:07:34
largely hereditary and genetically
00:07:37
determined in a way that as they
00:07:39
understand it the kind of quote-unquote
00:07:41
woke egalitarian ideology that we have
00:07:44
as a legacy of the 1960s keeps on trying
00:07:47
to suppress
00:07:48
so will their their Chief complaint is I
00:07:50
would say and why it was so explosive in
00:07:53
the 90s and still is it's kind of it's
00:07:55
got two sides on the one hand there's a
00:07:58
kind of pushback against what they see
00:08:01
as Government overreach so there's a
00:08:03
feeling that especially affirmative
00:08:05
action programs that try to you know put
00:08:08
people from underrepresented groups kind
00:08:11
of at the head of the queue or create
00:08:13
quotas for minority or underrepresented
00:08:15
groups are skewing the kind of the
00:08:19
quality of people in occupations
00:08:22
and the people who were rising to the
00:08:24
top of government and Corp in the
00:08:26
corporate world so there's a kind of
00:08:28
anti-meritocratic
00:08:29
as they see it thrust to the policies
00:08:34
that came out of the 1960s second
00:08:36
because they in many cases feel like
00:08:38
there are some people that let's say
00:08:41
left-hand side of the bell curve of the
00:08:43
IQ distribution who are kind of not
00:08:46
salvageable as
00:08:48
um productive members of society
00:08:51
and who indeed do need to be kind of
00:08:54
like warehoused or incarcerated that
00:08:57
this is kind of another part of the what
00:09:00
they see as like left-wing Progressive
00:09:01
ideology is repressing so the fact that
00:09:05
there are incorrigible parts of the
00:09:07
population and
00:09:09
um they do just need to be like
00:09:10
sequestered from the rest of the
00:09:11
community
00:09:12
thirdly the the question of immigration
00:09:15
becomes really volatile here because the
00:09:17
argument if you believe as they do that
00:09:21
there are kind of group differences
00:09:22
defined by racial groups in IQ
00:09:25
then if you're letting in people from
00:09:27
groups that you understand to be low IQ
00:09:29
you see this as producing what they call
00:09:32
a kind of downward pressure on overall
00:09:35
intelligence or what they call a
00:09:37
dysgenic rather than eugenic
00:09:40
um tendency if groups with overall lower
00:09:43
IQs they see it are having more children
00:09:46
and are coming into the country in
00:09:47
larger numbers than a lot of these
00:09:50
people on the tech right see this as
00:09:51
kind of a secular Trend towards you know
00:09:54
dumbing down the United States causing
00:09:57
it to lose its Edge economically and
00:10:00
causing a kind of a perverse outcome
00:10:03
where State policies lead to kind of a
00:10:06
worst population quality so it's all I
00:10:09
mean you know it is really repellent way
00:10:12
of looking at humans sort of sorting
00:10:15
them into these these airtight groups
00:10:18
that you know every other scientist
00:10:20
would say they don't belong in that
00:10:21
these sort of hard borders of racial
00:10:24
difference are culturally constructed
00:10:26
they're arbitrary they don't have the
00:10:29
kind of solidity that people on the tech
00:10:32
right or IQ fetishes attribute to them
00:10:36
and they critics say and I would put
00:10:39
myself in that group too that this use
00:10:41
of kind of social science rhetoric is a
00:10:43
way to kind of reintroduce just plain
00:10:46
old racism by the back door and to kind
00:10:49
of legitimize it and give it the gloss
00:10:51
of kind of academic rigor where in fact
00:10:55
it is just a reinforcement of
00:10:57
pre-existing stereotypes if we
00:11:01
beliefs through to their logical
00:11:04
endpoint and the the sort of the vision
00:11:06
of what a society ordered by this idea
00:11:10
of IQ would look like I mean where does
00:11:14
that get us what is the end state that
00:11:18
these individuals believe should follow
00:11:21
from from this ordering of society well
00:11:23
interestingly enough it's a little bit
00:11:25
like the vision that Michael Young had
00:11:26
of the of the future in the sense that
00:11:29
you have a kind of hand and glove
00:11:30
cooperation of the government with the
00:11:33
scientific establishment that figures
00:11:35
out who the highest achieving people are
00:11:38
and then places them in kind of the
00:11:40
positions of of power or decision making
00:11:43
it is
00:11:45
sort of literally a eugenic policy in
00:11:48
the sense that it's an enlightened
00:11:50
government enlightened by race science
00:11:53
the interesting thing about the tech
00:11:55
right and here I would include Nick
00:11:57
Bostrom who was at Oxford who was a
00:11:59
central philosopher of the effect of
00:12:01
altruism movement Dominic Cummings
00:12:03
former advisor to Boris Johnson and
00:12:08
Richard hananya who's become a kind of
00:12:10
sensation in the United States for the
00:12:12
revelations of him writing pseudonymous
00:12:15
alternative right tracks in the earlier
00:12:18
2000s but for all three of these people
00:12:20
anyway as I talk about in the piece
00:12:22
there was a real Fascination about 15
00:12:25
years ago with China
00:12:27
the feeling was that China was taking
00:12:30
seriously the idea of general
00:12:32
intelligence they were allowing briefly
00:12:35
for kind of large-scale DNA Gathering to
00:12:39
create databases of a potential kind of
00:12:41
future Elite who could perhaps be called
00:12:44
out of the larger population and I don't
00:12:46
know encouraged to reproduce given
00:12:48
special bonuses I'm not sure what they
00:12:50
saw as the end game but the interesting
00:12:53
thing about that was there was a kind of
00:12:55
an envious look at a place like People's
00:12:58
Republic of China for not having the
00:13:01
kind of guard rails around intervention
00:13:04
into reproduction
00:13:06
um into the the kind of the flouting of
00:13:09
democratic egalitarianism that this
00:13:11
would involve a few kind of genetically
00:13:14
select out a specific class for
00:13:17
improvement
00:13:19
but that's no coincidence I mean there's
00:13:21
one there's one country in the world
00:13:23
that took seriously the limits to growth
00:13:25
report in the 1970s about the need to
00:13:27
curb population growth and that was
00:13:29
China the one child policy showed that
00:13:32
they were willing to make
00:13:33
very drastic interventions into their
00:13:35
own population for a particular
00:13:38
demographic outcomes so there was there
00:13:41
was some reason for these Tech folks
00:13:44
when they were still in their kind of
00:13:45
China philic phase in the early 2010s to
00:13:50
look kind of longingly at a place that
00:13:52
had more dictatorial kind of capacity to
00:13:55
transform the behavior of its citizens I
00:13:58
mean it sounded almost like there are
00:14:00
echoes there in the attraction that sort
00:14:04
of white white nationalist white
00:14:05
supremacists find in modern Russia under
00:14:08
Putin a sort of Envy of um if only we
00:14:11
could stretch our own Society more along
00:14:13
these lines which is uh you know pretty
00:14:15
pretty chilling and disturbing I mean
00:14:17
you mentioned there that
00:14:19
these ideas and this this revival of IQ
00:14:22
fetishism is really dominated by men and
00:14:26
you talk in the article about you know
00:14:28
specific in individuals who are really
00:14:31
playing an outsized role in in funding
00:14:33
and attempting to mainstream these ideas
00:14:36
I mean who are the key figures to know
00:14:39
about here and and to really be focusing
00:14:41
on well I mean I think Charles Murray
00:14:43
who you know was the original co-author
00:14:45
of that book the bell curve from the 90s
00:14:46
continues to be active and continues to
00:14:49
write
00:14:50
um books that are published on trade
00:14:51
presses about the kind of the science of
00:14:54
race and gender
00:14:56
gender because
00:14:58
the sort of
00:15:00
assumption of this group is that women
00:15:03
have a lower average IQ as a group than
00:15:07
men which just as the racial kind of
00:15:10
results helps to reinforce
00:15:13
conservative and reactionary racial
00:15:15
stereotypes so this apparently
00:15:17
scientific evidence is used to reinforce
00:15:20
the idea that women's role is more
00:15:23
private and reproductive rather than
00:15:25
active and public
00:15:28
the funder who's worked closely with
00:15:30
Charles Murray who I think is a good
00:15:32
name to know is Harlan Crowe which is a
00:15:37
name right out of a sort of Cormac
00:15:38
McCarthy novel
00:15:41
um who was the heir to one of the United
00:15:43
States biggest real estate fortunes his
00:15:45
father was Trammel Crow who was actually
00:15:48
interestingly involved in the early
00:15:50
stages with the revitalization of Canary
00:15:52
Wharf
00:15:53
um he in my book he shows up in a
00:15:55
different context which is you know
00:15:57
talking about
00:15:59
um turning the docklands into a
00:16:01
financial center as they end up doing so
00:16:03
Harlan Crowe has been in the news
00:16:05
recently also for
00:16:07
giving all kinds of gifts and and
00:16:10
unreported vacations and perks to
00:16:12
Clarence Thomas one of the members of
00:16:14
the American Supreme Court
00:16:16
and is got his fingerprints in a lot of
00:16:19
this stuff so he's he's supported the
00:16:21
creation of this this new sort of
00:16:25
startup private
00:16:26
educational institution called the
00:16:28
University of Austin
00:16:29
that promotes its its roots in what was
00:16:33
called intellectual dark web you know a
00:16:35
few years ago and promotes the
00:16:38
investigation of quote unquote Forbidden
00:16:40
Knowledge which often means looking at
00:16:43
the scientific reality of race and
00:16:46
gender difference
00:16:47
the male Factor also comes in
00:16:52
through the influence of what's called
00:16:54
evolutionary psychology which is also
00:16:57
very big in this world the idea that we
00:17:01
still have kind of an important part of
00:17:03
our brains that are hardwired for our
00:17:06
lives you know surviving on the Savannah
00:17:08
where the men went out and fought or
00:17:11
hunted big game and the women attended
00:17:15
the children and you know picked berries
00:17:17
and so on uh again also some very
00:17:20
hackneyed cliches about what early man's
00:17:24
life was like which then get reinforced
00:17:26
with this idea that we still have those
00:17:30
disproportionate levels of aggression in
00:17:32
men and propensity to care in women that
00:17:36
we only kind of deny at our own risk so
00:17:40
interestingly a lot of the stuff that's
00:17:42
coming out of
00:17:44
an attack right is about a kind of
00:17:47
deferring to science whether social
00:17:50
science or human Sciences or even life
00:17:52
sciences
00:17:54
as having the kind of the key to social
00:17:57
organization
00:17:58
in a way that they see
00:18:00
um
00:18:01
the the mainstream as sort of too
00:18:04
quickly dismissing there's a feeling
00:18:06
that the idea that race is a social
00:18:09
construct gender is a social construct
00:18:11
reality is a social construct has become
00:18:14
the kind of
00:18:15
mainstream ideology of higher education
00:18:19
and the Democratic party and so on and
00:18:22
so they're pushing back against that and
00:18:23
saying no in the end we need to build
00:18:25
politics and Society on the Bedrock of
00:18:28
Nature and who knows about nature well
00:18:30
scientists know about nature so let's
00:18:32
turn to the science which
00:18:35
um
00:18:36
is interesting because in in the United
00:18:38
States anyway over the in the Trump
00:18:39
years there was a big discourse about
00:18:41
trusting the science
00:18:43
which was assumed to be kind of a
00:18:45
progressive or you know Center Center
00:18:47
left position to take but in fact the
00:18:50
right wing has been just as interested
00:18:52
in trusting the science perhaps more so
00:18:54
and they actually see it as a way to
00:18:57
push back against ideas of human
00:19:00
equality for them science preaches the
00:19:03
lesson of difference and hierarchy
00:19:07
and
00:19:08
um kind of incorrigibility and on
00:19:11
amelior ability meaning that if you do
00:19:14
listen to the science you accept that
00:19:15
there will always be
00:19:18
more powerful groups and less powerful
00:19:20
groups and surprise surprise the
00:19:23
contents of those groups is very similar
00:19:24
to those that have defined you know
00:19:26
Modern Life for the last
00:19:28
several centuries
00:19:30
so it's very pessimistic and fatalistic
00:19:32
as a political position do these
00:19:35
arguments take account of
00:19:38
existing structural privilege I mean it
00:19:41
strikes me one of the things listening
00:19:43
to these these ideas is it really does
00:19:46
help to justify a world view where you
00:19:49
deserve just through your own genes all
00:19:52
the advantages that you as an already
00:19:54
privileged member of society might might
00:19:56
enjoy I mean how do these arguments
00:19:59
engage with or or not
00:20:02
um the idea um that that some people
00:20:04
just start very far down down the road
00:20:07
in terms of the the advantages and the
00:20:09
systems and the the structural uh the
00:20:12
structure of the society they're born
00:20:13
there is that I mean in in America the
00:20:15
baseball metaphor that's used is being
00:20:17
born on third base right and and only
00:20:19
having one base to run to get home
00:20:22
there is some of that but I think less
00:20:24
than the way it kind of validates
00:20:26
pre-existing class privilege is how it
00:20:29
is inserted in this really specific and
00:20:32
actually very strange
00:20:34
um world historical moment in on the
00:20:37
American West Coast in Silicon Valley so
00:20:40
for in this period from the end of the
00:20:42
global financial crisis and or the the
00:20:45
outbreak of the global financial crisis
00:20:47
in 2008 really until let's say the
00:20:50
pandemic in 2020 you had kind of a
00:20:53
decade plus where interest rates were so
00:20:56
low investor interest was so high that
00:21:00
you know people with this slim most
00:21:03
slender ideas of their own could arrive
00:21:06
in Silicon Valley and Palo Alto area and
00:21:09
start shopping around their idea of what
00:21:11
they wanted to do and suddenly have you
00:21:14
know Millions tens of millions of
00:21:16
dollars of valuation on their you know
00:21:19
harebrained idea just on the Prem is
00:21:22
that if it paid out it could make the
00:21:25
Venture capitalists who were behind it
00:21:26
you know 10 times more money a hundred
00:21:28
times more money so it was worth it for
00:21:31
them to put large amounts of money on
00:21:33
every little bet
00:21:34
what I think that did was it produced
00:21:37
this sort of Illusion of Genius right It
00:21:40
produced this Sense on the behalf of
00:21:43
um the often very young people usually
00:21:46
young men who were part of that world
00:21:48
that they were like uniquely endowed
00:21:50
with some kind of you know special
00:21:52
Insight that nobody else could have
00:21:54
thought about the idea of making you
00:21:56
know like uber for skateboards so they
00:21:58
must have something that is special and
00:22:00
every time someone criticized them and
00:22:02
said you know you're just on the froth
00:22:04
of like attack bubble or your idea is
00:22:07
dumb then they would just say you're
00:22:10
resentful of my genius
00:22:12
my genius is actually something that is
00:22:15
inherent to me in all my my friends here
00:22:18
so the individualism of the tech bubble
00:22:23
I think produce this sense of being
00:22:26
decontextualized as if you didn't
00:22:28
actually you know arrive to where you
00:22:31
were through collaboration through the
00:22:33
kind of work of a collective through
00:22:35
let's say building a Workforce who
00:22:37
actually needed to produce the object it
00:22:40
was just a person and an idea so I think
00:22:43
that idea of the lone genius was both
00:22:46
kind of reinforced and given
00:22:48
reinforcement by these Notions of kind
00:22:52
of inbuilt hereditary
00:22:55
intelligence that that then produced a
00:22:59
kind of a social scientific scaffolding
00:23:01
and a kind of armor for people to hold
00:23:03
up against themselves whenever they were
00:23:05
criticized from outside
00:23:07
and this you can I mean you can really
00:23:09
just see this on the blogs and kind of
00:23:11
list serves that were popular in the in
00:23:14
that period the 2010s I mentioned some
00:23:16
of them in the piece less wrong
00:23:18
um slate star codex
00:23:20
they repeat over and over this feeling
00:23:22
of a kind of small embattled genius
00:23:25
minority who everyone else is resentful
00:23:28
of and only wants to dispossess because
00:23:30
they were not endowed with inbuilt and
00:23:34
inborn
00:23:36
um advantages cognitively that these
00:23:39
people were born of the fact that it's
00:23:40
all happening online too right I mean
00:23:42
you can be a 110 pound weakling and yet
00:23:46
be like a Titan right either let's be
00:23:49
honest in the video game that you play
00:23:51
or in the valuation of the company that
00:23:54
you have helped to found so I think it
00:23:57
was a perfect storm for this idea of
00:24:00
kind of the genetic genius that as it
00:24:03
fades you can predictably see people
00:24:06
sort of clawing to try to keep that
00:24:07
position but High interest rates are
00:24:10
hard uh dragon to fight in any
00:24:11
circumstance I mean one thing that
00:24:14
strikes me is a lot of these individuals
00:24:15
are now at the Forefront of these really
00:24:18
important emerging Technologies like AI
00:24:21
which are going to play a very important
00:24:23
role in our future
00:24:25
how do these kind of beliefs influence
00:24:29
where they see those Technologies going
00:24:32
I mean you you end your peace with quite
00:24:35
a dystopian vision of how this
00:24:38
technology could be used in all of our
00:24:41
features in a society ordered in terms
00:24:44
of intelligence yeah so I end with this
00:24:46
indeed kind of chilling vision from this
00:24:49
person named Curtis yarvin who blogged
00:24:51
under the name mencia's moldbug who is
00:24:54
perfect for the story because he was
00:24:55
kind of plucked out of his high school
00:24:57
as a youngster by a a program that was
00:25:02
out searching for high IQ individuals it
00:25:06
was set up by the psychologist named
00:25:07
Julian Stanley specifically as a
00:25:09
counterweight to what he saw as the
00:25:11
leveling quality of Great Society
00:25:13
programs so yarvin really drank the
00:25:16
Kool-Aid quite early is it kind of like
00:25:18
you have to see him as kind of a
00:25:20
Jonathan Swift type like satirist at
00:25:22
times so I think he can be taken at his
00:25:24
word in a way he is certainly not always
00:25:26
meaning to but he's symptomatic and one
00:25:29
of the interesting kind of chilling
00:25:30
things He suggests is like once work is
00:25:33
manual labor is automated and AI has
00:25:37
become Advanced enough to take over most
00:25:39
human tasks we'll be left with this
00:25:41
problem of surplus populations so his
00:25:43
argument is you just sort of more or
00:25:46
less incarcerate people in their homes
00:25:48
but then give them very Advanced kind of
00:25:50
virtual reality interfaces that they can
00:25:52
play on all day long and thereby like
00:25:55
pacify them and you know reduce the
00:25:58
chance of a popular Revolt of the kind
00:26:00
that ends Michael Young's 1958 novel
00:26:04
so there is definitely an undercurrent
00:26:07
of this IQ talk in the AI conversation
00:26:11
in the sense that many of these these
00:26:13
same members of the kind of TAC right
00:26:15
see themselves as genuses therefore the
00:26:18
only thing that they fear is something
00:26:19
that could be smarter than them which
00:26:21
Ergo which like by definition must not
00:26:24
be human because they're the smartest
00:26:26
humans so it might be something however
00:26:28
that they could program so if they could
00:26:31
create artificial intelligence
00:26:34
through their application of their own
00:26:36
intelligence augment it with you know
00:26:38
the capabilities of the world's best you
00:26:40
know processors and chips and so on then
00:26:43
you're in a territory of
00:26:45
what is often called like the
00:26:47
singularity and there's I think two
00:26:50
things that I would say about that one
00:26:52
is
00:26:53
I think that the idea of AI as you know
00:26:56
the Takeover of The Killer Robots is
00:26:59
very easy to dismiss and I tend to
00:27:03
dismiss it myself
00:27:04
but the idea of AI taking over
00:27:07
the very kind of white-collar jobs that
00:27:10
are essential to the knowledge economy
00:27:12
from the 1960s to the present is much
00:27:15
easier to imagine right I think a lot of
00:27:18
people do have kind of jobs as
00:27:21
David Graber would say that are just
00:27:24
kind of making bad power points writing
00:27:27
silly presentations writing up grants
00:27:29
and reports that actually AI could
00:27:31
probably do pretty well or almost as
00:27:34
well as people do
00:27:36
so the question then about what we can
00:27:39
do with our society once those kind of
00:27:42
automatable tasks have been taken over
00:27:46
is one where I think more than ever the
00:27:49
qualities that are not measured in IQ
00:27:51
tests are necessary
00:27:53
because I think IQ tests indeed sort of
00:27:56
measure the kind of things that AIS can
00:27:58
be good at the kind of spatial reasoning
00:28:00
and sequential reasoning so the
00:28:03
creativity that we will need to figure
00:28:05
out a world once we've automated those
00:28:07
things is one where this fixation on IQ
00:28:10
won't be of much help anymore
