Things That Need to Be Said - Intelligence

Welcome to Things That Need to be said, a segment that occurs when the normally calm, relaxed atmosphere of the workshop is shattered by something evil, unpleasant, or astonishingly stupid. When those disturbances hit, the Puttering Dev feels compelled to educate the public about whatever ruined everyone’s good time by saying (or writing) what needs to be said.

At its core, this blog is about knowing things and sharing what you know. It’s about making things that are useful and entertaining, which means, by proxy, it is about your mind. It is a celebration of what your mind is capable of doing and building. Some would say it’s about being “smart.”

It is my belief and always will be that there is no single way to be “smart.” Your intellect is the result of the education you receive, the knowledge you can access, and the immediate needs of your environment. Consequently, the human intellect (much like life on Earth) comes in “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful.” You would think this wouldn’t be a controversial statement. You would think it is an objective truth. You would be wrong.

By nature, I do not like conflict. However, recent events have compelled me to speak out on the topic of "intelligence." These include the death of Jason Arday, the Goya-esque orgy of pseudo-intellectual pearl-clutching that led to it, the recent BBC documentary on ADHD, the organized campaign of hate against the disabled led by neo-fascist movements in the English-speaking world (and their “liberal” enablers), and the ever-present assault on the idea of education and its purpose.

The final straw, however, was this quote:

"At some point, the university sector decided that intellectual disability was something that should be mitigated, rather than treated as disqualifying one from scholarly life. Conditions such as dyslexia and dyspraxia, autism, ADHD, speech delay (and so on) were now to be treated as unfair obstacles to a person's dreams of pursuing an academic career, rather than constituting evidence they were unsuited."

This lovely glob of pus was squeezed out by Kathleen Stock at UnHerd. In a single breath, she lumps multiple complex neurodevelopmental disorders together with intellectual disability, a fundamentally incorrect conflation that a five-second Google search could have prevented. Worse, she belittles the idea of neurodivergent people accessing higher education, demeans the accomplishments of those who have secured positions within these institutions, and tops this shit sundae with a putrid assumption: that universities hand out highly coveted academic roles based on internalized guilt, actively favoring disabled candidates.

This inflamed cyst on the ass of civilization manages to pack everything wrong with humanity’s relationship with intelligence into two sentences. What set me off the most was the tone: the casual disregard for the humanity of the people she was denigrating, and her treatment of education as nothing more than a mark of normality, a bauble you hang on your wall to prove you are not one of those disgusting "others." This is the mark of a mind that has never challenged itself, has no respect for the abilities of others, and has never had to truly earn its place among peers. It is a prideful ignorance that has sadly come to characterize this age.

Attempting to educate such a mind is beyond my interest and, frankly, beyond my patience. Instead, I will explain why this train of thought is wrong not just on a factual level, but on a philosophical and moral one.

We shall begin by defining what education is and its true value within society. From there, we will explore how education relates to intelligence including how IQ is defined, measured, and misused. We will examine the near-miraculous complexity of the human brain and the diversity that such complexity necessitates, before discussing the inherent value of human beings, regardless of whatever abilities they may have or lack. Finally, we will confront the hateful, disingenuous, and astonishingly stupid ideas surrounding all these topics.

The value of education

Education is the process (whether structured or unstructured) of transmitting knowledge, building skills, and developing a moral framework. It is the structured transmission of this knowledge throughout a community that creates a culture, and it is only from a culture that civilization can arise.

While a handful of species, namely other great apes, cetaceans, and elephants, are capable of sharing knowledge within their social groups, it is only in humans that education evolved into a primary survival strategy. With the relatively recent advent of writing, this survival strategy was supercharged. The accumulation of written knowledge and its systematic sharing allowed for the specialization of labor, making civilization possible. But it also created a new problem: previously recorded knowledge could be proven wrong, or better methods could be discovered. Our existing knowledge base needed constant updating. From this need, the "scholar" was born, a type of laborer whose specific job was the creation and recording of knowledge.

One of the earliest of these scholars, the Greek philosopher Socrates, provided what I consider the foundational mindset for any good student or scholar: "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." True wisdom begins when you accept the limits of your own understanding; by admitting ignorance, you become curious enough to ask better questions. Believing you already know everything not only obscures the truth but halts your personal growth. Education isn't just about extracting value from literal facts; it is about the wisdom gained through the journey of acquiring them.

Ask anyone who has been to university what the most valuable thing they learned was, and they usually won't list a specific fact from a syllabus. Instead, they will say they learned how to approach a complex problem, how to study, or how to critically evaluate information. These aren't skills taught in any single course. They are meta-skills, honed over time through the friction of coursework, and they follow you for the rest of your life, enabling you to acquire new skills whenever your environment demands it.

Crucially, education is not just valuable to the student, but to the teacher as well. The act of passing on acquired knowledge forces an instructor to refine their own understanding and figure out how best to present the material. Good educators learn as much from their students as their students learn from them.

This is exactly why Kathleen Stock’s quote was the final straw for me. Having taught neurodivergent students at the university level, I can say firsthand that they have continually forced me to reexamine my assumptions about how to teach. They have shown me what it actually means to challenge one’s own mind. Teaching these students has not only made me a better instructor, but it has repeatedly affirmed the value of being a lifelong learner. They also demonstrate another vital, yet rarely discussed, aspect of education: when you expose a discipline to students from diverse backgrounds and neurotypes, they bring unique insights that perturb the status quo. In doing so, they enrich the subject matter for all of us.

All of this demonstrates two key facts: education is profoundly valuable to the individual, and educated individuals are profoundly valuable to society. We all benefit from it, which is why it is considered a basic human right.

However, a specific class of business-minded people has managed to reshape how we think about knowledge in the English-speaking world. If you believe that the primary purpose of education is simply to furnish a person with employment so they can be economically "useful" and you tailor your education system to provide only the exact skills employers need at this exact moment you strip away the broad knowledge base and critical thinking skills that allow for innovation. You are left with a population only capable of understanding exactly what is put in front of them. The result is a stagnating society that will eventually collapse from its inability to adapt to a changing world.

Hidden inside the idea that knowledge is only valuable if it can be immediately monetized is a much more insidious premise: the idea that a person is only valuable to society if they are productive, and they are only productive if they are employed.

Here we find one of the greatest hypocrisies of our modern era. People like Ms. Stock, and society at large, will happily disregard the knowledge of actual experts when it conflicts with their own comfortable beliefs. Yet, they will simultaneously assume that anyone who is unable to obtain a formal education for whatever reason is a lesser person, unworthy of participating in society beyond whatever menial station is deemed appropriate for them.

This is the mark of a society that insists upon education, but does not actually value it. It is the mark of a society that fetishizes intelligence, but loathes its effects. And it is the mark of a society that falsely believes intelligence is reflected exclusively in an individual's education level and income. Nowhere has this fallacy been more apparent than in the recent resurgent interest in the intelligence quotient, the IQ.

What is IQ (how it is used and how it should be used)

Before we can dismantle these toxic beliefs, we first need to understand what an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) actually is, which requires taking a moment to define "intelligence" itself. Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, the ability to understand and apply logic, self-awareness, emotional regulation, and the capacity to understand the causes of one's own behavior. It encompasses reasoning, planning, critical analysis, and a general aptitude for problem-solving. But the simplest definition (and the one we will use here) is the ability to perceive or infer information, retain it as knowledge, and apply it to adaptive behaviors within a given environment or context. This definition is crucial because an intelligence quotient is, at its core, an attempt to quantify something highly abstract that encompasses a staggeringly broad array of abilities.

With that in mind, an IQ is a total score derived from a set of standardized psychometric tests designed to assess this abstract concept. The first of these, known as the Stanford-Binet test, was developed by French psychologist Alfred Binet and psychiatrist Théodore Simon. Initially focusing primarily on verbal abilities, it was intended to help identify children with intellectual disabilities. Originally, this score was obtained by dividing a person's estimated "mental age" (determined by the test) by their chronological age, then multiplying the resulting fraction by 100. While this is what most people still picture when they think of an IQ test, it is not how modern tests are scored. Today, tests like the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) transform raw scores into a normal distribution with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. This results in approximately two-thirds of the population scoring between 85 and 115, with about 2 percent scoring above 130 and 2 percent below 70.

It is here that we encounter the reason certain segments of the English-speaking world have become so enamored with these scores. In a society that equates intelligence with wealth, wealth with success, and success with human worth, an IQ score is often held up as an easy, objective way to determine who "counts" as a person and how one individual should be valued against another.

This is completely divorced from how the test was intended to be used. Binet and Simon created their test in response to the introduction of compulsory education in France. At the time, the government was debating how to handle children deemed unfit for regular education, even considering a proposal to build boarding schools inside asylums to house them. Binet and Simon belonged to the Société libre pour l'étude psychologique de l'enfant (Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child), which vehemently opposed the asylum proposal and instead advocated for remedial tracks within regular schools. The intelligence test was created to objectively measure the intellectual functioning of primary school children solely so they could receive appropriate educational support.

Binet and Simon believed that intelligence is malleable. They argued that these tests should be used to identify children who needed extra attention so their intelligence could be advanced. They openly acknowledged the limitations of their own scale, stressing the remarkable diversity of human intellect and the consequent need to study it using qualitative, rather than purely quantitative, measures.

This stands in stark contrast to how the test was eventually weaponized. Historically (and sadly, contemporarily), many prominent proponents of IQ testing have been eugenicists. These individuals propagated entire branches of pseudoscience to push ideas of genetic racial hierarchy, justify segregation, and oppose immigration. They pushed the narrative that intelligence is fixed, almost exclusively genetic, and perfectly reflected in an individual’s education and income.

On the surface, their logic might seem seductive: in a perfectly free and fair society, where access to education is purely merit-based and income is limited only by work ethic, it makes intuitive sense that the smartest, hardest-working people would accumulate the most wealth. If intelligence is primarily genetic, it stands to reason that society would see the greatest return on investment by entrusting power and resources to these genetically gifted individuals. And what a convenient coincidence that these inherently "superior" individuals, supposedly worthy of all society's power and resources, just happen to be the exact same people who already hold that power!

It is a tidy, intuitive explanation that simultaneously extols the value of intelligence and justifies the existing social structure. It claims those in power deserve it because of their evolutionary fitness and industriousness, and those without it deserve their lot because they can never be more than what they are.

It is also pseudo-scientific rubbish.

The idea that any one race has an inherently lower IQ or a lesser capacity for learning is simply not borne out by the data. While a superficial, bad-faith reading of the statistics might seem to support these racist claims, digging into the methodology reveals glaring flaws. For example, some historical studies claimed to show that intelligence was more heritable in people of African descent than those of European descent. Given that all humans alive today share 99.9% of their DNA, this is a nonsensical result. We must either accept the biological absurdity that people of African descent have radically different cellular biology than any other life form on the planet, or we must accept the obvious truth: a third variable such as systemic structural inequality that dictates the environment a person is raised in is skewing the data.

While many aspects of intelligence are heritable, it is far from a fixed trait. The heritability of IQ has been studied for nearly a century, yet intense debate remains over the significance of heritability estimates and the mechanisms of inheritance. What we do know is that IQ scores are heavily associated with environmental factors like nutrition, parental socioeconomic status, perinatal environment, and exposure to disease. What we call "intelligence" emerges from a complex interplay of these factors. It is both heritable and deeply malleable. It is not a matter of "nature versus nurture," but rather nature and nurture interacting in ways we don't yet fully understand.

Nowhere is this malleability better demonstrated than in the Flynn effect, the gradual, documented rise in average IQ scores over time. This phenomenon is generally attributed not to rapid genetic evolution, but to the universal adoption of compulsory education, improved nutrition, and the reduction of exposure to environmental hazards like infectious diseases and leaded gasoline.

Setting aside this mountain of evidence proving that intelligence is highly complex and unfixed, using IQ as a proxy for human worth is fundamentally flawed because the test was never designed for such a purpose. Scores from intelligence tests are merely estimates of intellectual functioning, not hard quantitative measures. Unlike distance or mass, a concrete, objective measurement of intelligence is impossible due to the abstract nature of the concept itself.

Furthermore, the test is mathematically designed to identify people who need additional help, not to rank those who are exceptionally intelligent. In fact, as scores move further above the mean of 100, the measurement error (confidence intervals) drastically widens. Standard tests simply lack enough ultra-difficult questions to precisely or meaningfully differentiate between, say, an IQ of 145 and an IQ of 160, making the test entirely unsuited for that purpose.

The diversity of the human brain and the miracle of thought

Amidst the fervor to identify the gifted and the persistent fear of being labeled subnormal, we lose sight of something profound: the sheer beauty and miraculous complexity of the human brain. Weighing only about 1.4 kilograms, the brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons. These cells form between 100 trillion and 150 trillion synapses that are constantly altering their relationships to one another. They act like an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always meaningful, though never abiding.

This shifting harmony of sub-patterns forms the single most complex system in the known universe. Each configuration gives rise to a different aspect of your awareness: your senses, your memory, your movement, and your understanding of the world. Ultimately, they all come together to create the singular phenomenon we call consciousness.

By virtue of the statistical laws of the cosmos, a 1.4-kilogram lump of protein becomes capable of knowing itself. That this is possible in a universe indifferent to the existence of such complex systems is nothing short of miraculous. That this vast web of 150 trillion connections functions more or less the same way across billions of individuals is a secondary miracle. And yet, for society, it is not enough.

It is not enough that the majority of these infinitely complex systems function in a similar manner; we demand total uniformity. We demand that every single set of 150 trillion connections be configured to allow for the standardized transfer of knowledge, simply because a subset of our population deems it economically efficient. This is perhaps the quintessential example of humanity's arrogance. The idea that we would fail to cherish each unique system and even deem some of them unworthy of existence is the closest thing to secular blasphemy I can imagine.

It is the diversity of these neural configurations that gives rise not just to different skill sets, but to individuals who bring drastically different perspectives to existing problems. In turn, this diversity yields better solutions and new insights. If the human race were wise, it would build its institutions to accommodate the vast variety of the human brain. Instead, we attempt to enforce an artificial uniformity upon a system that, by its sheer complexity, is inherently uncontrollable.

For most of the modern era, the working assumption has been that to be different is to be inferior. In the best of circumstances, those deemed inferior are excluded; in the worst, they are destroyed. Ultimately, it all comes down to how we choose to value human life.

The value of people and other sentient beings

In Western societies, we are taught that all people are created equal, that we have equal standing before the law, an equal voice in our government, and equal access to resources. However, this is an aspiration rather than a reality. In practice, society values people based on their perceived worth, which is often just a proxy for wealth.

This transactional view of human value is rooted in a profound misunderstanding of evolution, famously summarized by Herbert Spencer as "survival of the fittest." Spencer viewed evolution as a contest where only the "best" survive, assuming that all species were evolving toward some final, perfect form. He even believed humanity could accelerate this progress by allowing only the "best" humans to reproduce.

Of course, this is not how evolution works. Natural selection simply dictates that organisms with traits best suited to their specific environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. Evolution is not driven by who is best, but by who is left. The species that survive are not necessarily the fastest, strongest, or smartest; they are simply the ones able to pass on their genes. There is no perfect end-state that life is evolving toward, only countless branches on the tree of life, growing to fill their particular niches.

To understand how contemporary society measures human worth, we must recognize how this "perfect form" fallacy became a societal metric. Spencer not only coined "survival of the fittest," but also helped found Social Darwinism, a pseudoscientific theory that misapplied natural selection to human politics and economics. Its proponents argued that the wealthy and powerful were naturally "fitter" than the poor, and that helping the weak interfered with natural law. This dangerous misinterpretation of biology would go on to shape how modern society values people, heavily influencing Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the "will to power" and Francis Galton’s pseudoscience of eugenics.

Francis Galton was an English polymath and statistician. He pioneered statistical concepts that are now ubiquitous across the sciences, such as correlation and regression analysis, and he was among the first to apply these concepts to biology, laying the groundwork for modern biostatistics. Unfortunately for us, he also turned his attention to human intelligence. Galton became a leading proponent of eugenics, the attempt to "improve" the human species through selective breeding. He also originated the concept of dysgenics, the fear that allowing "undesirable" individuals to reproduce would decrease the prevalence of socially desirable or adaptive traits. He wrongly believed that intelligence, health, and social behavior were entirely inherited and based on race. Ultimately, Galton is the intellectual source of many of the societal plagues we are discussing in this essay.

Then we have Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who introduced the concepts of the "will to power" and the Übermensch (superman). Nietzsche described the will to power as the primary driving force in human behavior and evolution, one that supersedes simple survival. It involves self-determination, overcoming obstacles, and actualizing one's will upon the world, a philosophy that overlaps heavily with egoism. Though Nietzsche himself opposed eugenics (he was an asshole in entirely different ways), early eugenicists latched onto the "will to power" as a convenient justification for how the strong naturally come to dominate the weak.

Nietzsche also put forward the concept of the Übermensch, an evolved human ideal who overcomes traditional religious morality, societal conformity, and nihilism to create their own meaning in life. He characterized the Übermensch as a "Value Creator." Instead of accepting externally imposed rules from religion or tradition, this ideal human defines their own moral code based on grounded, earthly experience. They embrace material reality, accept suffering as part of existence, and say a joyful "yes" to life. Crucially, they master their own instincts, weaknesses, and resentments rather than trying to dominate other people.

However, eugenicists violently twisted this concept. They stripped away Nietzsche's focus on internal mastery and mutated the Übermensch into an ideal man who rules over the material world and dominates others. This bastardized philosophy slotted perfectly into their myth of directional evolution. When combined with the "will to power," it created an ideological shield that allowed the ruling class to inflict great cruelty on anyone they deemed "lesser," all while feeling entirely justified.

By the early 20th century, these movements had successfully synthesized Nietzsche's poetic concept of the Übermensch with Galton’s pseudoscientific eugenics. They used the Übermensch as their end goal and Galton's eugenics as the method to achieve it. And the ruler they chose to measure their progress toward this horrifying utopia? An individual's economic value within a capitalist system.

From these malformed ideas emerges another toxic concept: the cult of giftedness. This is the assumption that only those of exceptional intelligence deserve an exceptional education, equipping them to reshape society for the better. Under this framework, "normal" peers need only enough education to render them economically valuable, while disabled peers require no education at all. This philosophy comes to us directly from Francis Galton (who, coincidentally, was a child prodigy himself). Yet, a century of subsequent research has dismantled these assumptions. While gifted individuals certainly benefit from advanced education, they are fundamentally no more likely to make major societal contributions than their typical peers. Furthermore, as established earlier in this essay, education is inherently valuable. Educated individuals enrich society, which is why education remains a basic human right, regardless of a person's perceived intelligence.

But all of this is ultimately beside the point, because the way we currently value human life relies on a flawed premise: that individuals must justify their existence through economic productivity. The economic system created by human civilization is entirely arbitrary, purposefully structured to benefit a narrow, already-wealthy elite. A person’s ability to thrive or struggle within this system does not reflect their innate human worth. No one is required to justify their existence to an economy; sentient beings hold value by the simple virtue of their sentience. The sheer miracle of hundreds of trillions of neurons firing in tandem to create consciousness is reason enough to exist. Everyday people, whose names will ultimately be lost to history, shape our reality in profound ways that add zero economic value. They listen to those who have no one else; they recognize that a person is more than their vocation; they create art for love rather than profit; they remind others they are not alone. These unquantifiable acts are what make life on this miserable blue rock bearable. If you doubt the value of these things, remove them from your life, come back in two weeks, and tell me how you feel.

Perhaps, even after reading this, you still believe Galton’s views are justified. Perhaps you believe the disabled should be excluded from society simply because it is "unfair" for the collective to expend resources on those who do not generate financial returns. To that, I will say only this: your health is transient, we all die. You may believe you can outrun it. You can devote all your free time to exercise, survive solely on protein and greens, and drink microplastic-free water from a copper bottle, and it may buy yourself a little extra time. But you cannot keep from dying, and in most cases, your body will break long before it fails completely. Your joints will grind away, the macula of your eye will thin, your hearing will fade, the microscopic mistakes in your cells will compound into cancer, and the neural connections in your brain will ultimately fall silent.

When that happens, you will find yourself entirely at the mercy of a society that views you only in terms of your remaining economic value. It therefore behooves all of us to build a civilization where people are valued simply for being, rather than for what they produce. Because in the end, ability is transient, and your body will eventually betray you.

Ignorance, hate, and irony

Of course, none of what I have written so far is new. It has all been said before by men and women much wiser and more eloquent than me. It will be said again, and it will keep being said until the system changes, but it is almost always ignored.

Lyndon B. Johnson once famously observed, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." While LBJ was speaking about race, this truth expands to other attributes, which explains why metrics like the IQ test have come back into fashion among the powerful and those who desperately want to be. One of the core tenets of fascism is the belief in a natural universal order; that societies naturally stratify themselves with the best at the top, the worst at the bottom, and the masses somewhere in the middle. The assumption is that as long as this order is respected and everyone stays in their place, the system works.

This, of course, is bullshit. Societies are not naturally occurring phenomena; they are abstractions created by humans to better organize themselves. Any stratification within these systems is the direct result of how those abstractions are structured. Yet, a large number of people have become convinced that as long as they are not on the very bottom rung, everything will be okay. They constantly reassure themselves of this by making those they view as "below" them miserable. They dangle their baubles of normality over the heads of anyone they deem "less than," ensuring those same people are locked out of the halls of power, be that in elite universities, the boardrooms of international corporations, or the editorial desks of major media outlets. For this segment of society, it is not enough to simply succeed. Someone else must fail so they can remind themselves that, even if they haven't won, at least they didn't lose.

Which brings us all the way back to Kathleen Stock and her quote about the neurodivergent. We have covered a lot of ground since then, so I will summarize my point here: All people benefit from education, and that education holds value regardless of its effect on a person's employability. Intelligence is deeply complex. It is multi-dimensional, and its presentation is highly heterogeneous. The idea that someone is not entitled to an education because this complex, multi-dimensional system does not present itself the "standard" way in their brain is not only foolish, but it echoes the beliefs of the most vile people to ever walk this planet. Those beliefs are not just morally repugnant; they are factually wrong. All sentient beings have value, regardless of how intelligent they may or may not be.

Ultimately, this entire discourse demonstrates the simplistic, one-dimensional way society has come to view intelligence, and how it weaponizes that one-dimensional view as a cudgel against traditionally marginalized people.

I have already said more than enough about this subject. But to those who may still doubt what I have said, or who insist their arguments are being taken out of context, I will leave you with this: You do not know what you are talking about. Your simplistic understanding of intelligence, and your insistence that the complexity and nuance surrounding this topic is some kind of liberal conspiracy, does not make you a brave teller of hard truths. It only proves that you are nowhere near as smart as you think you are.

So please, do everyone a favor, and kindly sit down and shut the fuck up.