Browse content similar to What Makes Us Clever? A Horizon Guide to Intelligence. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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What is intelligence? | 0:00:14 | 0:00:16 | |
8175 backwards? | 0:00:17 | 0:00:21 | |
-57118. -What does an entomologist study? | 0:00:21 | 0:00:25 | |
Wow! That was tough. Did a lot of people get this one in two minutes? | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
And why do some people apparently have so much more of it than others? | 0:00:34 | 0:00:37 | |
Where does intelligence come from? | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 | |
Is it a matter of luck, biology | 0:00:47 | 0:00:49 | |
or just a good education that makes this guy cleverer than me? | 0:00:49 | 0:00:53 | |
Is there anything that I or my parents could have done to make me more intelligent? | 0:00:53 | 0:00:57 | |
Well, scientists have been battling thorny questions like these for | 0:00:57 | 0:01:01 | |
decades, making intelligence one of the most studied traits in science. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:05 | |
But it's only really now that we are beginning to get some answers. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:08 | |
For nearly 50 years, | 0:01:10 | 0:01:11 | |
Horizon has been following that search to understand our mysterious mental power, | 0:01:11 | 0:01:17 | |
looking at everything from our evolutionary history to whether a computer could outsmart us. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:23 | |
And asking the questions, how do you test for intelligence? | 0:01:23 | 0:01:27 | |
Is it inherited or innate? | 0:01:27 | 0:01:29 | |
Nature or nurture? | 0:01:29 | 0:01:32 | |
In so doing, science has begun to redefine our understanding of what makes every one of us unique. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:39 | |
The benchmark for measuring one person's intelligence against | 0:01:52 | 0:01:56 | |
another is the iconic IQ or Intelligence Quotient test. | 0:01:56 | 0:02:00 | |
Most of us will have sat through one of these at one time or another. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:12 | |
It is the dreaded IQ test, with sections on spatial awareness, general knowledge and reasoning. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:18 | |
And it tots up different areas of skill to create one score. | 0:02:18 | 0:02:22 | |
A single mark that can brand you with either a low, high or maybe an average IQ. | 0:02:22 | 0:02:28 | |
Now, we've been judged on the merits of this test for years now. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:32 | |
What's remarkable about it is that it was introduced in 1912. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:35 | |
So, essentially, this has remained the same for almost 100 years. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:39 | |
In 2006, Horizon tested the IQs of seven experts in their field to see who would come out on top. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:48 | |
Seven people from seven very different backgrounds. | 0:02:50 | 0:02:53 | |
All highly successful. | 0:02:57 | 0:02:59 | |
And all seven prepared to do battle over the elusive nature of intelligence. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:09 | |
The test lasts 30 minutes. | 0:03:13 | 0:03:15 | |
What it revealed would show how our understanding of intelligence | 0:03:15 | 0:03:19 | |
has changed since the IQ test was first devised. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:22 | |
We have spent 100 years on IQ tests that are basically the same. | 0:03:27 | 0:03:34 | |
Imagine if physics or chemistry or medicine or biology were the same today as they were 100 years ago. | 0:03:34 | 0:03:42 | |
That's essentially the state of the testing industry. | 0:03:42 | 0:03:46 | |
It's unusual to find a methodology that has changed so little. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:51 | |
And perhaps this reflects the century-long struggle to work out how intelligence develops. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:57 | |
In their bid to understand human intelligence, scientists have looked for evidence of it in other animals. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:07 | |
During the 1980s, Dr James Gould searched for | 0:04:12 | 0:04:15 | |
signs of intelligent behaviour in the complex lives of bees. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:19 | |
Even now, when I look at bees, it's hard to imagine that these tiny, | 0:04:19 | 0:04:24 | |
nervous little insects could be intelligent. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:27 | |
Yet, in all this apparent chaos, there is a tremendous amount of order. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
Bees are not behaving randomly, they are going about the task of solving a series of specific problems. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:36 | |
They spend the first few days feeding the queen and taking care of her. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:40 | |
And then they spend a few days building honeycomb in the hive. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:43 | |
And then a few days guarding the hive's entrance and | 0:04:43 | 0:04:45 | |
then, finally, several weeks gathering food from flowers. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:50 | |
These are all clever things and yet this behaviour is driven by biological cues. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:54 | |
All through the life of a bee, | 0:04:54 | 0:04:57 | |
an innate sensitivity to certain cues helps guide its behaviour. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:02 | |
And this is by no means an exception, this is the rule in the animal world. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:05 | |
And it makes sense, too. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:07 | |
If the behaviour is sufficiently predictable and the cues are sufficiently predictable, | 0:05:07 | 0:05:11 | |
it makes sense for an animal not to reason out what it ought to do, but to simply respond automatically. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:17 | |
A good example of this is tits open milk bottles | 0:05:17 | 0:05:22 | |
because instinctively they peel back bark to look for grubs. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:26 | |
Gould concluded that, unlike humans, the short lifespans of many insects and animals means they simply don't | 0:05:28 | 0:05:34 | |
have enough time to work out solutions to problems. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
Their apparently intelligent behaviour is just a response to a series of biological cues. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:43 | |
However, there are animals that do appear to display a capacity for intelligent problem-solving. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:51 | |
Research into one species - chimpanzees - has begun to | 0:05:53 | 0:05:57 | |
reveal greater capabilities that go beyond pure instinct. | 0:05:57 | 0:06:00 | |
Writer, Danny Wallace, went to Uganda to find out more. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:04 | |
He was keen to investigate an experiment to test a chimp's ability to solve a complex problem. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:14 | |
This box of bananas placed away from the cage poses a tricky problem. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:22 | |
Ah. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:28 | |
I see what you've done. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:33 | |
'To get the bananas to come towards me, I would have to pull both ends of the rope. | 0:06:33 | 0:06:37 | |
'But they were too far apart.' | 0:06:37 | 0:06:39 | |
Right, OK. I can't. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:44 | |
Diana? Will you be another chimp, please? | 0:06:44 | 0:06:47 | |
Chimp-cam. | 0:06:52 | 0:06:53 | |
'I could see that if I didn't get Diana involved, I'd get no bananas at all. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:58 | |
'And that didn't bear thinking about.' | 0:06:58 | 0:07:01 | |
One, two, three. | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
We did it, we got the bananas. | 0:07:06 | 0:07:07 | |
Now for the chimps. Chimp one has a rational choice. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:11 | |
Share the bananas with chimp two or get no banana at all. | 0:07:11 | 0:07:16 | |
Three, two, one. Release the chimp. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:18 | |
OK. So, he's going a bit mad. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:25 | |
Chimp one can't get the bananas. | 0:07:27 | 0:07:30 | |
Chimp two is going mad, chimp one is wondering what's going on. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:35 | |
Oh, he has let him out. That's amazing. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:39 | |
That's incredible. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:43 | |
Chimp one, he's very happy, and off they go. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:48 | |
That was brilliant. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:50 | |
That was quicker than me. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
The chimp appeared to be making a thoughtful decision, | 0:07:54 | 0:07:58 | |
suggesting that chimps are intelligent enough to co-operate. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
A key human trait. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:04 | |
Yet human intelligence still sets us apart from our closest evolutionary cousins. | 0:08:04 | 0:08:09 | |
Thank you for taking part in this experiment. This is for you. | 0:08:09 | 0:08:14 | |
Scientists have delved deep into our prehistoric | 0:08:17 | 0:08:20 | |
past to try to find out when we developed superior intelligence. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:25 | |
When did our ancestors cease being brute animals | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
and first become truly human? | 0:08:31 | 0:08:36 | |
When did we learn to think? | 0:08:36 | 0:08:39 | |
Thinking is the defining trait of humankind. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:49 | |
It has given us machines. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:51 | |
Technology. Power. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:54 | |
No other animal has the ability to look at the world outside and transform it. | 0:08:56 | 0:09:02 | |
Where all other animals live from day to day, we alone plan ahead. | 0:09:09 | 0:09:15 | |
Dream. And create. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
Find the day we learned to think and you would have identified perhaps | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
the single most important moment in human history. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:28 | |
But it was not going to be simple. Thinking leaves no traces. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:37 | |
There are no fossilised thoughts waiting to be dug out of the ground and dated. | 0:09:39 | 0:09:44 | |
It was like investigating a murder scene without a body. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:49 | |
So, scientists had to look for indirect clues. | 0:09:55 | 0:09:58 | |
Not fossils, but other evidence for when thought began. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
And then they realised that thought must have come hand-in-hand with something else. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:11 | |
What are we going to look for, | 0:10:12 | 0:10:14 | |
first of all, that's going to give us evidence that humans were behaving in a modern way? | 0:10:14 | 0:10:21 | |
So we look, in a way, for proxies. | 0:10:21 | 0:10:24 | |
But there was one kind of evidence archaeologists could look for. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
The obvious line of evidence is art. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:34 | |
When you get unquestionable art that's widespread and common, | 0:10:40 | 0:10:42 | |
I think you can say you're dealing with people just like us. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:47 | |
Only humans create and can make sense of art. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:51 | |
I'm sure that dozens of dogs have walked down this street in the past years | 0:10:53 | 0:10:59 | |
and perhaps not a one has glanced up in awe or wonder | 0:10:59 | 0:11:05 | |
and thought to himself, what does this mean? | 0:11:05 | 0:11:08 | |
For a dog, this is colour on a wall. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:12 | |
Perhaps even less than that. | 0:11:12 | 0:11:14 | |
But to a human being, a painting is far more than just a collection of colours. | 0:11:18 | 0:11:23 | |
An expression of thought. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:25 | |
Suddenly, what they had to look for was clear. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:31 | |
Discover the earliest forms of human art | 0:11:31 | 0:11:35 | |
and you would have found the day we learned to think. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:39 | |
At Blombos, on the east coast of South Africa, | 0:11:46 | 0:11:47 | |
anthropologist Chris Henshilwood had been quietly excavating his prehistoric cave for over a decade. | 0:11:47 | 0:11:55 | |
This is Blombos cave here. | 0:12:02 | 0:12:04 | |
A very special find. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:07 | |
We're really looking at what has been left here | 0:12:13 | 0:12:17 | |
almost as if it was put down here yesterday. | 0:12:17 | 0:12:19 | |
As they dug down through the floor of the cave, his team were going back to | 0:12:24 | 0:12:28 | |
an ancient time of human habitation tens of thousands of years ago. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:34 | |
We came down onto this layer you can see over here, which really was quite remarkable. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:45 | |
On the surface were lying the most beautifully made artefacts. | 0:12:48 | 0:12:52 | |
Bone points, spear points as well. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:56 | |
And immediately I realised we had gone back a very long way in time. | 0:12:56 | 0:13:00 | |
The beautifully crafted objects were dated to over 70,000 years ago. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:14 | |
But there was still not proof the people in the cave were thinking people, | 0:13:23 | 0:13:26 | |
like us. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:28 | |
One type of item started appearing over and over again. | 0:13:32 | 0:13:37 | |
We noticed large numbers of pieces of ochre. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:42 | |
8,000 pieces of ochre in the old levels alone. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:47 | |
Then, one day, Henshilwood found a piece of ochre that was different from the rest. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:06 | |
We found this piece of ochre, brushed up the side and there was | 0:14:07 | 0:14:12 | |
this absolutely remarkable pattern revealed. | 0:14:12 | 0:14:16 | |
There was huge excitement, you can imagine. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
The ochre piece appeared to have been marked with a clear image. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:31 | |
What seemed like an abstract geometric pattern. | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
This was a deliberate construction of a series of crosshatches in each direction. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:41 | |
A line across the top, a line through the middle and a line down the bottom. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:46 | |
So it actually circumscribed that engraving. | 0:14:46 | 0:14:50 | |
As if they had made the crosses and deliberately surrounded it with these other lines as well. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:55 | |
Here is the first example of the ability of humans to store something outside of the human brain. | 0:14:59 | 0:15:07 | |
You're storing a message that somebody else who is part of | 0:15:07 | 0:15:12 | |
that same group can pick up and they will understand what that meant. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:16 | |
This is the beginning of things like art, writing and everything else that follows. | 0:15:20 | 0:15:24 | |
It was the earliest evidence of the thinking brain. | 0:15:27 | 0:15:31 | |
There is still much that we don't know about the evolution of human intelligence. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:38 | |
But it was during the second half of the 19th century that the ideas of | 0:15:38 | 0:15:42 | |
Charles Darwin began to profoundly influence our thinking. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:46 | |
Francis Galton was the first scientist | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
to propose that intelligence was a biologically-based mental faculty. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:55 | |
He was Darwin's cousin and was much inspired by reading his book, On The Origin Of Species. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:04 | |
Galton thought that human mental abilities were inherited in just | 0:16:04 | 0:16:10 | |
the same way as the plant and animal traits outlined by Darwin. | 0:16:10 | 0:16:14 | |
And he set out to prove it. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:16 | |
Galton was obsessed with measuring things. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:20 | |
He was convinced that everything was inherited, from arm length to reaction time. | 0:16:20 | 0:16:25 | |
According to his theory, people with bigger heads, such as himself, | 0:16:25 | 0:16:29 | |
would have a greater capacity for intelligence than others. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:32 | |
So he started to measure the heads of a group of Cambridge students | 0:16:32 | 0:16:35 | |
and compared those measurements to the test results. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
But, disappointingly for him, the correlation between those two sets of data was low. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:43 | |
The evidence simply didn't stack up. | 0:16:43 | 0:16:45 | |
But Galton stuck doggedly to his conviction that intelligence was inherited. | 0:16:47 | 0:16:52 | |
He coined the phrase, "nature versus nurture", | 0:16:52 | 0:16:55 | |
which has proved to be one of the most enduring questions at the heart of the intelligence debate. | 0:16:55 | 0:17:01 | |
But it was Galton's disciple, a psychologist named Cyril Burt, | 0:17:01 | 0:17:05 | |
whose research was to have a huge impact on both our thinking about and our testing of intelligence. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:12 | |
Horizon dramatised Burt's youthful idealisation of Galton, | 0:17:14 | 0:17:17 | |
which would have an enduring influence on his work. | 0:17:17 | 0:17:20 | |
Galton was one of Burt's heroes, maybe the only one. | 0:17:22 | 0:17:25 | |
Of all the psychologists whose names were mentioned | 0:17:28 | 0:17:30 | |
in my discussions with Burt, I think the only one that he seemed to talk about admiringly was Galton. | 0:17:30 | 0:17:37 | |
This is young Loddy, Sir Francis. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:41 | |
-Loddy? -Loderick, sir. It's a shortening. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:43 | |
My first name is Cyril, then Loderick. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:46 | |
Are you good at your schoolwork, Loddy? | 0:17:47 | 0:17:50 | |
Oh, yes, sir. Very good. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:52 | |
He's a very diligent boy. | 0:17:52 | 0:17:54 | |
He has a diligent father. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:56 | |
He will have inherited his father's intelligence. | 0:17:56 | 0:17:59 | |
Burt seemed to worship Francis Galton. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:03 | |
He kept on mentioning the one occasion on which he met him. | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
And he certainly tried to follow in his footsteps. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
Oh, no. Do you read classics? | 0:18:11 | 0:18:13 | |
I want to be a scientist. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:16 | |
Burt was particularly drawn to one of Galton's ideas. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:20 | |
In 1883, Galton had coined the term eugenics, meaning good birth. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:25 | |
He believed that people of high rank had greater intelligence and should be encouraged to marry and have | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
children to preserve these traits, while the poor be strongly discouraged from breeding. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:35 | |
Burt adopted this idea with enthusiasm. | 0:18:35 | 0:18:38 | |
For example, Burt has written out on his hand: "The problem of the very poor. | 0:18:39 | 0:18:43 | |
"They must be segregated, prevented from reproducing their own kind". | 0:18:43 | 0:18:49 | |
This is the kind of atmosphere, obviously, to which he was exposed. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:54 | |
Working in the 1930s, Burt was determined to prove intelligence was inherited. | 0:18:54 | 0:19:01 | |
He brought together more evidence for the inheritance of intelligence | 0:19:02 | 0:19:06 | |
than any other person had done at that time. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:09 | |
His papers were more impressive in terms of the number of different | 0:19:09 | 0:19:12 | |
kinds of kinships on which heritables had been estimated. | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
The fine grain detail in which the analyses were carried out. And so on. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:22 | |
Burt introduced the IQ test as a way of measuring schoolchildren's intelligence. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:29 | |
He was also to influence the introduction of the 11 Plus test, | 0:19:31 | 0:19:34 | |
which was to become a key decider of a child's academic future. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:38 | |
By 1945, every child's intelligence was tested. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:44 | |
In order to study the inherited element of intelligence, Burt looked for subjects that were | 0:19:46 | 0:19:51 | |
the same in every way, except the environment they were brought up in. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:55 | |
Identical twins who had been separated at birth. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
So now, if you can find, when they are old enough to be IQ tested, a fair number of pairs of such twins, | 0:20:00 | 0:20:07 | |
you can give them all IQ tests, and if their measured IQs resemble one another, that must be due to the only | 0:20:07 | 0:20:14 | |
thing they have in common, namely their identical genetic make-up. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:17 | |
It cannot be due to their environment, in theory, because they don't have that in common. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:22 | |
Burt announced his findings with a great flourish, stating that he had | 0:20:22 | 0:20:26 | |
found genetics were responsible for 80% of his subjects' IQ. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:30 | |
In the crucial matter of separated monozygotic twins, | 0:20:30 | 0:20:35 | |
and the measurement of the genetic heritability of intelligence, | 0:20:35 | 0:20:40 | |
over the years we have been fortunate enough to steadily increase our | 0:20:40 | 0:20:44 | |
sample size to the point where our data, based on 52 pairs of twins, | 0:20:44 | 0:20:52 | |
is some 30% greater than that of its closest rival. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:56 | |
Burt's research was highly respected and in 1946 he became the first British psychologist to be knighted | 0:20:58 | 0:21:05 | |
for his contributions to psychological testing. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:09 | |
But his ideas on eugenics had rather lost their appeal. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:14 | |
Adolf Hitler adopted this philosophy to murder thousands of people he labelled mentally defective. | 0:21:14 | 0:21:21 | |
The scientific community began to distance itself | 0:21:21 | 0:21:24 | |
from the idea of engineering society according to intelligence. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:29 | |
Burt continued to defend his ideas, but it was only after his death in 1971 | 0:21:32 | 0:21:38 | |
that scientists, including Professor Leon Kamin, scrutinised his results and came to some uneasy conclusions. | 0:21:38 | 0:21:45 | |
As the sample size increased progressively, in successive papers, | 0:21:47 | 0:21:51 | |
one noted an absolutely incredible thing. | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
The correlations, the statistical results that he reported, remained identical to the third decimal. | 0:21:54 | 0:22:01 | |
Well, theoretically, that sort of thing could happen. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:04 | |
Also theoretically, the sun might not rise tomorrow morning, and that's probably a more probable event than | 0:22:04 | 0:22:10 | |
what one would have had to have believed if one took Burt's number seriously. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:14 | |
All of them remain identical to the third decimal place. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:18 | |
Clearly something was drastically wrong. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:21 | |
There's universal agreement among psychologists that Burt | 0:22:21 | 0:22:24 | |
couldn't possibly have tested 53 pairs of twins. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:27 | |
That at least the last 32 pairs must be figments of his imagination. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:31 | |
I take perhaps an even more sceptical view of Burt. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:34 | |
I think it's reasonable to suppose that he may never have laid eyes on | 0:22:34 | 0:22:38 | |
a separated twin in his entire lifetime. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:41 | |
But Kamin was convinced that Burt was motivated only by his genuine belief in inherited intelligence. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:47 | |
I don't think Burt thought of himself as a manipulator and misleader of the public. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:52 | |
I think Burt had the intellectual audacity to think that he knew the truth prior to any | 0:22:52 | 0:22:58 | |
actual investigation of the facts, and therefore on account of noblesse oblige, he was letting the rest of | 0:22:58 | 0:23:03 | |
us get a handle on the truth by presenting us numbers that would help us to accept it. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:08 | |
And he did us the courtesy of inventing the numbers for us. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:12 | |
Comprehensive proof of the part genetics play in intelligence still remained elusive, | 0:23:17 | 0:23:23 | |
but as the '70s got underway, that didn't deter one man from adopting a radical new approach. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:29 | |
In a rather sinister echo of Burt and Galton's theories, Californian doctor Robert Graham | 0:23:29 | 0:23:35 | |
reasoned that if there were intelligence genes to be had, he could find a way of passing them on. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:41 | |
In 2006, after Graham's death, Horizon looked back at his extraordinary quest. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:48 | |
My name is Robert Klark Graham and I had a dream. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:57 | |
To single-handedly saved the human race, one child at a time. | 0:23:57 | 0:24:02 | |
Robert Graham believed that the gene pool was going downhill and that we needed to do something about that. | 0:24:02 | 0:24:10 | |
He had this grandiose plan to remake all of humanity. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:15 | |
It had the air of James Bond movie meets Disney, or something. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:20 | |
Using the sperm of clever men, I hope to create intelligent kids. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:27 | |
He was this strange scientist | 0:24:27 | 0:24:30 | |
that was trying to breed the super race. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:37 | |
What we're doing is exploring the possibilities of genetics. | 0:24:37 | 0:24:43 | |
I was accused of being a racist and a Nazi. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:48 | |
I can't say that I know much about Hitler or his vision. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:52 | |
Yet my sperm bank was operational for nearly 20 years. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:58 | |
Despite tremendous controversy, I was responsible for the creation of over 200 children. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:08 | |
I would not be here without Robert Graham, without his existence, and in a way, I owe him my life. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:16 | |
Well, I'm Tom Grunwal, and live here in Temecula in southern California. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:26 | |
I'm Andrea Grunwal and I live with Tom. | 0:25:26 | 0:25:29 | |
I had had two children with my first wife, | 0:25:34 | 0:25:38 | |
then with my second wife, I took the steps to have a vasectomy. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:42 | |
The next thing you know, I'm divorced. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:46 | |
I never really thought I would ever have another child in the rest of my life. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:52 | |
Until I met Andrea. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:54 | |
I finally just spilled my gut and said, Tom, I don't know | 0:25:54 | 0:25:57 | |
how to say this, but I would really like to have a baby and I don't know how you feel about that. | 0:25:57 | 0:26:03 | |
And I said, OK, if you can figure out how, | 0:26:03 | 0:26:07 | |
let's go for it. | 0:26:07 | 0:26:09 | |
I wanted to offer these women the seed of clever men, | 0:26:13 | 0:26:17 | |
and for me, scientists were the pinnacle of intelligence. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:22 | |
With proven, measurable, practical ability. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:27 | |
I figured, let's start at the top. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:31 | |
We were trying to have | 0:26:31 | 0:26:33 | |
outstanding genes and Nobel Prize winners possessed them. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:40 | |
Due to your outstanding achievements, you | 0:26:45 | 0:26:49 | |
would be an excellent donor for our Repository for Germinal Choice. | 0:26:49 | 0:26:55 | |
We hope to create some very bright children, possibly a genius or two. | 0:26:55 | 0:27:01 | |
I managed to convince three Nobel laureate scientists to each provide an anonymous sample for my bank. | 0:27:01 | 0:27:10 | |
I actually was a little surprised that some of these older fellows were able to produce specimens so quickly. | 0:27:12 | 0:27:18 | |
Bob was very pleased when we took that first look at the specimen under the microscope and saw | 0:27:19 | 0:27:26 | |
thousands of sperm swimming vigorously. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:29 | |
He beamed with joy. | 0:27:33 | 0:27:34 | |
Good job! | 0:27:36 | 0:27:39 | |
It's peculiar, but I didn't think it was weird. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:42 | |
My name is Dr Afton Blake | 0:27:42 | 0:27:44 | |
and I live in Los Angeles, California, in a little place called Mount Washington. | 0:27:44 | 0:27:49 | |
Om.... | 0:27:49 | 0:27:54 | |
When I first called the repository, they were very friendly. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:59 | |
They came up the next day to meet me and interview me. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:03 | |
And I think the very next month I tried my first insemination. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:07 | |
Choose me as your mother. | 0:28:07 | 0:28:11 | |
Then, 10 months after I had tried the first time, I conceived. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:16 | |
In August 1982, having been impregnated with donor | 0:28:18 | 0:28:22 | |
codenamed Red 28, Dr Afton Blake gave birth to a boy she named Doran. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:31 | |
It was ecstasy from the moment he came out, looked in my eyes, and stopped crying, | 0:28:31 | 0:28:37 | |
immediately that we made contact and the bond was like so incredible. | 0:28:37 | 0:28:42 | |
Everybody liked the name Doran, which means in Greek, a gift from the gods. | 0:28:42 | 0:28:49 | |
I could never imagine life without him. It was like suddenly, | 0:28:51 | 0:28:54 | |
what did I have before I had Doran? | 0:28:54 | 0:28:57 | |
I didn't know, because this was everything. | 0:28:57 | 0:29:00 | |
Do you want to hand me the dog? | 0:29:02 | 0:29:07 | |
I am immensely pleased with the outcome of the mating between Dr Blake and Number 28. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:16 | |
We've had a splendid result. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:21 | |
I think no question about it. | 0:29:21 | 0:29:23 | |
Doran is about as ideal, as nearly as we can judge at his early age, | 0:29:23 | 0:29:29 | |
about as ideal as we could hope. | 0:29:29 | 0:29:34 | |
Everyone wanted to know about my genius sperm bank child. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:44 | |
Doran represented what Dr Graham was trying to achieve. | 0:29:46 | 0:29:51 | |
Smart, beautiful. | 0:29:51 | 0:29:54 | |
Everybody wanted a Doran. | 0:29:54 | 0:29:56 | |
They just wanted to come to our bank and get a Doran. | 0:29:56 | 0:29:59 | |
The phone rang off the hook. | 0:30:02 | 0:30:04 | |
We had arrived. | 0:30:04 | 0:30:07 | |
After 20 years in operation, my genius sperm bank was | 0:30:07 | 0:30:11 | |
ultimately responsible for the production of 217 children. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:18 | |
We've got lots of baby pictures. | 0:30:18 | 0:30:21 | |
Jessie ended up being the 15th baby born to the repository. | 0:30:22 | 0:30:27 | |
People used to just be amazed at his abilities. | 0:30:27 | 0:30:31 | |
I look at myself as being an intelligent person and I think that | 0:30:33 | 0:30:37 | |
I'm achieving in the world all that I can achieve. | 0:30:37 | 0:30:40 | |
And that's something that | 0:30:40 | 0:30:42 | |
I don't think can be said for a lot of people around me. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:47 | |
I really need to make a contribution to realise myself or my potentials. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:53 | |
And what about the repository's poster boy, our second born child, Doran Blake? | 0:30:58 | 0:31:05 | |
He had showed such great promise as a youngster. | 0:31:07 | 0:31:10 | |
I'm exceptional statistically. | 0:31:11 | 0:31:16 | |
You know what I mean? I've always understood it that way. | 0:31:16 | 0:31:18 | |
I'm like, OK, so most people have an IQ here and my IQ is here. | 0:31:18 | 0:31:23 | |
As a child, Doran was good at everything. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
-"I". -He was in a highly gifted programme from first grade on. | 0:31:26 | 0:31:34 | |
By the time he got to Exeter, Doran was taking existentialism and | 0:31:36 | 0:31:40 | |
Buddhism, and he took six separate music lessons. | 0:31:40 | 0:31:46 | |
Throughout my life, I've felt like I have not had to work as hard for the | 0:31:48 | 0:31:51 | |
level of achievement that I've reached as most of my peers did. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:55 | |
I turned out very well. You know, my IQ was off the charts | 0:31:57 | 0:32:00 | |
and is basically everything that Robert Graham wanted. | 0:32:00 | 0:32:04 | |
While at least some of the children did appear to have inherited their | 0:32:04 | 0:32:06 | |
donor's intelligence, the sperm bank's success at producing geniuses could never be fully tested. | 0:32:06 | 0:32:12 | |
Most of the children remained anonymous. | 0:32:14 | 0:32:16 | |
Scientists continued to search for the inherited component of intelligence throughout the | 0:32:18 | 0:32:22 | |
1980s and '90s, as genetic research became increasingly sophisticated. | 0:32:22 | 0:32:28 | |
But even though the genome was fully sequenced in 2003, | 0:32:30 | 0:32:33 | |
no specific genes for intelligence have yet been identified. | 0:32:33 | 0:32:37 | |
Behavioural geneticist Professor Robert Plomin | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
has analysed the little we do know about intelligence genes. | 0:32:44 | 0:32:48 | |
We don't know how many genes we're talking about and if there are very, very many, they're going to | 0:32:49 | 0:32:53 | |
have very, very small effects and be very, very difficult to find. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:57 | |
But I think these genetic differences, when they're expressed, | 0:32:57 | 0:33:00 | |
are going to show up throughout the brain. | 0:33:00 | 0:33:03 | |
It's not going to be this gene does that bit of the brain, this gene affects another bit of the brain. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:07 | |
Now, that's a hypothesis for now but it's a very testable one when we find | 0:33:07 | 0:33:11 | |
these damn genes, if we ever do find them. | 0:33:11 | 0:33:14 | |
Scientists have now gathered data from combined studies of | 0:33:17 | 0:33:20 | |
over 11,000 pairs of twins to give a more up-to-date measure of nature versus nurture. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:25 | |
And it shows that Galton, Burt and Graham were at least partly on the right track. | 0:33:25 | 0:33:30 | |
A large part of intelligence is inherited. | 0:33:30 | 0:33:34 | |
You know, this is one of the most highly heritable characteristics around, intelligence. | 0:33:36 | 0:33:40 | |
In adults, we're talking about at least 50 or 60% | 0:33:40 | 0:33:44 | |
of the variance in the population is due to genetic differences among us. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:49 | |
So, if according to current estimates, about 50% of our intelligence is genetic, | 0:33:51 | 0:33:56 | |
then that of course leaves the other half up for grabs, and that's where environment or nurture comes in. | 0:33:56 | 0:34:02 | |
Scientists began to look at the impact of everything, from diet and supplements, | 0:34:02 | 0:34:05 | |
to good old pushy parenting when fostering intelligence in children. | 0:34:05 | 0:34:11 | |
David Baddiel investigated just how far | 0:34:11 | 0:34:14 | |
a fertile educational environment could affect a child's abilities. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:19 | |
-Hello. -Hello, David. Please do come in. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:22 | |
Hello, nice to meet you. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:23 | |
-Hello. -Hi. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:25 | |
Now, let's deal with... | 0:34:25 | 0:34:27 | |
Zaheib, the younger brother, answers the first question. | 0:34:27 | 0:34:30 | |
-So if this is theta... -OK, so theta is that angle? | 0:34:30 | 0:34:35 | |
-This angle. -Right. -The vertical must be T... | 0:34:35 | 0:34:39 | |
-cos theta. -That's very good. OK. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:42 | |
When do you first remember, either of you, doing a maths problem? | 0:34:42 | 0:34:46 | |
-When I was a toddler. -Really tiny? | 0:34:46 | 0:34:48 | |
-Addition. -Really? -Addition, yeah. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:50 | |
-And what about you? -Yeah, same. | 0:34:50 | 0:34:52 | |
You remember when you were counting 99s? | 0:34:52 | 0:34:56 | |
Oh, yeah. In nursery, I knew my 99 times table. | 0:34:56 | 0:35:01 | |
-How old were you then? -In nursery you did your 99 times table? -Yeah. | 0:35:01 | 0:35:04 | |
You were about three-and-a-half or something. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:06 | |
I can't do my 99 times table! Apart from 99 times one is 99, that's it! | 0:35:06 | 0:35:11 | |
Beyond that, I'm slightly struggling. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:13 | |
And I'm 44. | 0:35:13 | 0:35:15 | |
Which I think is a multiple. No, it's not! | 0:35:15 | 0:35:18 | |
-OK, so you are starting on A level maths now? -Yeah. -It is that right? | 0:35:18 | 0:35:22 | |
-Yes. And when are you planning to take your A level maths? -In January. | 0:35:22 | 0:35:27 | |
And what's very special about that? | 0:35:27 | 0:35:30 | |
If I get A, I'll break the world record. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:32 | |
-You'll be the youngest... -Ever. Ever, ever. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:34 | |
Child ever to get A level maths. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:37 | |
Why has it become important to you to push your children? | 0:35:43 | 0:35:44 | |
Why is that important to you? | 0:35:44 | 0:35:46 | |
To give them something to think about so that their mind is engaged in something useful all the time. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:54 | |
-Right. -It's very important for them to be independent thinker. | 0:35:54 | 0:35:58 | |
So do you feel that mathematics specifically is almost a spiritual | 0:35:58 | 0:36:02 | |
training, then, for kids, in that it will actually train their brains and | 0:36:02 | 0:36:06 | |
their minds to become better thinkers, better opinion formers? Is that what you're saying? | 0:36:06 | 0:36:11 | |
That's exactly right because I did mention maths is the key thinking tool. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:15 | |
-Most of the time, they are not actually studying. -So how much time do they spend? | 0:36:15 | 0:36:19 | |
-When they don't go to school, they spend on average about five hours. -Right. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:24 | |
During school days, about three hours. | 0:36:24 | 0:36:26 | |
So they'll have their school day and then another three hours of study? | 0:36:26 | 0:36:29 | |
-Yes, yeah, on average. -It seems quite a lot to me. | 0:36:29 | 0:36:31 | |
But that means most of the time they are not studying. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:34 | |
Because there are 24 hours in the interval. | 0:36:34 | 0:36:37 | |
-Yeah, but then they're sleeping for quite a lot of that. -Yes, sleeping, yes. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:42 | |
But it isn't just a highly educational environment that can enhance intelligence. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:48 | |
Baddiel also looked at a revealing experiment which showed that other behaviours instilled in very | 0:36:48 | 0:36:54 | |
early childhood can predict a great deal about future academic success. | 0:36:54 | 0:37:00 | |
Now, if you had to choose the one marshmallow or the | 0:37:02 | 0:37:06 | |
three marshmallows, which one do you prefer? | 0:37:06 | 0:37:08 | |
The three marshmallows? OK. | 0:37:10 | 0:37:11 | |
40 years ago, a rather extraordinary experiment was carried out in this nursery at Stanford University. | 0:37:11 | 0:37:17 | |
The nursery is re-running the experiment for David. | 0:37:17 | 0:37:22 | |
All it consists of is a bell, a group of four-year-old children and a plate of marshmallows. | 0:37:22 | 0:37:28 | |
The question is, can a child resist eating the | 0:37:28 | 0:37:30 | |
one marshmallow in front of them for the promise of getting three later? | 0:37:30 | 0:37:35 | |
If they don't want to wait the time, they can ring the bell. | 0:37:35 | 0:37:38 | |
It's like watching a primeval battle between man or woman and their own desire. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:45 | |
The waiting time is ten minutes, just five minutes shorter than in the original. | 0:37:47 | 0:37:52 | |
First to go is Bridie. | 0:37:54 | 0:37:56 | |
See, she's now thinking, when's he coming back? | 0:37:56 | 0:37:59 | |
See, I'm not absolutely convinced that she is now thinking about the marshmallows. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:03 | |
I think she might be thinking about whatever, kid's thoughts, now. | 0:38:03 | 0:38:07 | |
Now she's thinking about the marshmallows. | 0:38:07 | 0:38:10 | |
If Bridie is going to succeed, she will have to devise strategies like the children in the | 0:38:10 | 0:38:16 | |
original study, to look away or stop thinking about the taste and smell of the marshmallow. | 0:38:16 | 0:38:22 | |
Just 30 seconds to go and Bridie is still resisting. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:31 | |
I'm feeling a bit sorry for her now. | 0:38:34 | 0:38:36 | |
Ooh. Oh-oh. | 0:38:37 | 0:38:39 | |
She's gone for the bell, she's gone for the bell. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:40 | |
Is she ringing or is she just looking at the bell? | 0:38:40 | 0:38:44 | |
Now she's rung the bell, she rang the bell. I'm so disappointed for her. | 0:38:44 | 0:38:48 | |
Next up is Olivia. | 0:38:48 | 0:38:51 | |
God, has she eaten one? | 0:38:53 | 0:38:55 | |
Oh, my God, she's eaten a marshmallow before the experiment's started. | 0:38:55 | 0:38:59 | |
But that's ruined it. | 0:38:59 | 0:39:01 | |
That's a shame because she's clearly one with impulse control issues. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:05 | |
So it's over to Jayden. | 0:39:05 | 0:39:08 | |
I think I know which way she's going to go, I tell you. | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
Finally, it's Keira. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:22 | |
Welcome back to Stanford for round two of the marshmallow experiment. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:28 | |
At first, she seems to be losing heart. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:33 | |
I think she can't bear it. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:36 | |
I can hear the devil on her shoulder saying, "eat the marshmallow!" | 0:39:36 | 0:39:41 | |
This must seem so long if you're a child. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:45 | |
If you think that children have a relative idea of time that is about ten times that of an adult. | 0:39:45 | 0:39:50 | |
Some of the children who'd succeeded before had managed to stop thinking | 0:39:53 | 0:39:57 | |
about the marshmallow as a real marshmallow. | 0:39:57 | 0:40:00 | |
They'd imagined it away. | 0:40:00 | 0:40:04 | |
I wonder if she's actually consciously thought, if I don't look at them, | 0:40:04 | 0:40:07 | |
I won't desire them so much. | 0:40:07 | 0:40:09 | |
So therefore I'll be able to get through it. | 0:40:09 | 0:40:11 | |
She did it! She did it! | 0:40:14 | 0:40:16 | |
She did it. I'm so pleased for her. | 0:40:16 | 0:40:19 | |
The scientists tracked the lives of the original children for 40 years. | 0:40:20 | 0:40:25 | |
What they found was that those who could resist the marshmallow did better at school. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:30 | |
And not only that, they were less likely to fall ill, or get divorced. | 0:40:30 | 0:40:35 | |
It seems being able to resist a sweet at four could predict academic success and a happier adult life. | 0:40:35 | 0:40:43 | |
This experiment serves as just one example of the traits which can be affected by nurture. | 0:40:45 | 0:40:50 | |
Now, after decades of scrutinising human intelligence, we are beginning | 0:40:54 | 0:40:58 | |
to understand that it can be affected by many variables, | 0:40:58 | 0:41:02 | |
not only by who your parents are, but also the environmental influences on your upbringing. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:07 | |
And it's not just the causes of intelligence that are wide-ranging. | 0:41:13 | 0:41:16 | |
We're also beginning to broaden our definition of intelligence itself. | 0:41:16 | 0:41:19 | |
100 years ago, it was simple. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:22 | |
Intelligence was a measure of problem solving ability, | 0:41:22 | 0:41:25 | |
general knowledge and memory that could be assessed by one all-encompassing test. | 0:41:25 | 0:41:30 | |
But now we have to look again at whether that stood the test of time. | 0:41:30 | 0:41:33 | |
The IQ test has lasted so long because it's got an almost magical property. | 0:41:37 | 0:41:42 | |
It seems to show that we have one general all-round ability, a kind of | 0:41:44 | 0:41:49 | |
all-purpose thinking skill that can be represented by a single number, the IQ score. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:54 | |
Very convenient, if you want to compare people. | 0:41:54 | 0:41:57 | |
Horizon brought together seven experts from seven very different disciplines to sit the test. | 0:42:02 | 0:42:08 | |
The IQ test consists of many sections that seem unconnected. | 0:42:16 | 0:42:21 | |
What does an entomologist study? | 0:42:21 | 0:42:23 | |
There are sections on vocabulary and general knowledge. | 0:42:23 | 0:42:27 | |
What's the capital of Jordan? | 0:42:27 | 0:42:29 | |
-Amman. -What's the distance between London and Hong Kong in miles? | 0:42:29 | 0:42:35 | |
I would suspect it's around a third of the way around the globe, so about 8,000 miles. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:41 | |
A section on memory. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:43 | |
Eight, one, seven, five, backwards. | 0:42:43 | 0:42:46 | |
Five, seven, one, eight. | 0:42:46 | 0:42:49 | |
And a section to test spatial ability. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:54 | |
-You're doing just fine. -Wow, that was tough. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:00 | |
Do a lot of people get this one in two minutes? | 0:43:00 | 0:43:02 | |
I can't see how that works. | 0:43:02 | 0:43:04 | |
Common sense might tell us that we're good at some of these sections | 0:43:04 | 0:43:08 | |
and bad at others. But that's not the case. | 0:43:08 | 0:43:11 | |
On average, if we're good at one of these sections, we tend to be good at all of them. | 0:43:15 | 0:43:20 | |
And from this comes the idea that intelligence is some kind of general, all-round ability. | 0:43:20 | 0:43:27 | |
Based on a range of difficult IQ problems, the results were predictable. Well, almost. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:38 | |
In third place, fighter pilot, Gary. | 0:43:40 | 0:43:44 | |
In second place, IQ specialist, Nathan. | 0:43:44 | 0:43:49 | |
But he was beaten to the top spot by quantum physicist, Seth Lloyd. | 0:43:49 | 0:43:54 | |
But when the winner was announced, there was an immediate objection. | 0:43:57 | 0:44:02 | |
So I'd actually like to say this is unfair because actually these | 0:44:02 | 0:44:06 | |
tests were things that fit extremely closely with what I do on a day-to-day basis. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:13 | |
Seth's modesty at coming top in the IQ-type problems shows why some people think the IQ test is flawed. | 0:44:13 | 0:44:20 | |
That means the electron, in some funky quantum sense, reads zero and one at the same time. | 0:44:20 | 0:44:26 | |
Was Seth good at the tests merely because of what he does every day? | 0:44:26 | 0:44:31 | |
My job consists of trying to solve hard mathematical | 0:44:31 | 0:44:35 | |
problems related to the physical world, like, you know, how does a black hole evaporate, for instance. | 0:44:35 | 0:44:40 | |
I'm constantly pushed to the very edge of what I can actually do. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:44 | |
So, it's actually fun for me to do something like these puzzles which are relatively easy. | 0:44:46 | 0:44:50 | |
Or did the tests capture something essential about Seth? | 0:44:50 | 0:44:55 | |
We could say he has a high general intelligence as revealed by the | 0:44:55 | 0:45:00 | |
tests, and that this means he's the most intelligent. | 0:45:00 | 0:45:04 | |
But that's not the whole story. | 0:45:08 | 0:45:09 | |
Not even test manufacturers would say the result of this test will tell you how intelligent somebody is. | 0:45:12 | 0:45:18 | |
They would say it's a small component of making those | 0:45:18 | 0:45:21 | |
judgments and that you should be looking at a much broader spectrum of skills, abilities and aptitudes. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:26 | |
The IQ test looks at a lot of old knowledge, like, you know what the capital of Italy is, or, can you add | 0:45:26 | 0:45:32 | |
two-plus-four, can you compare slavery and freedom, those are IQ-kinds of tests. | 0:45:32 | 0:45:36 | |
But they don't tell you anything about whether the person will | 0:45:36 | 0:45:39 | |
actually ever do anything that's productive in the world. | 0:45:39 | 0:45:42 | |
Professor Howard Gardner has come up with a newer, broader way of testing intelligence. | 0:45:42 | 0:45:48 | |
The major move I've made in the study of intelligence is to pluralise it. | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
I've come up with an alternative view which is called multiple intelligence theory. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:56 | |
To perform some kind of an action in the area of music, or in the area of navigation | 0:45:56 | 0:46:01 | |
is very different than to perform in a scholastic kind of assignment. | 0:46:01 | 0:46:05 | |
And my whole analysis over many years suggests it's a mistake. | 0:46:05 | 0:46:09 | |
It's a category error to lump all these together and to call them intelligence. | 0:46:09 | 0:46:14 | |
Professor Gardner is convinced we have at least eight relatively separate intelligences. | 0:46:17 | 0:46:22 | |
This is completely opposite to IQ, which assumes that we all have just one general intelligence. | 0:46:27 | 0:46:34 | |
So, you might be wonderful at understanding other people | 0:46:34 | 0:46:36 | |
but a disaster at doing crossword puzzles, or flying an airplane. | 0:46:36 | 0:46:40 | |
So we do know that an individual's high-performance in one area | 0:46:40 | 0:46:44 | |
simply doesn't predict high performance in other areas. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:47 | |
Horizon put its line-up of high-flyers through Professor | 0:46:47 | 0:46:51 | |
Gardner's new intelligence tests to see if the outcome would be any different to the standard IQ tests. | 0:46:51 | 0:46:58 | |
But there's no agreed system for measuring them. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:03 | |
This could be a drawback for Professor Gardner's approach, | 0:47:06 | 0:47:10 | |
but he still defends the value of non-academic intelligences. | 0:47:10 | 0:47:14 | |
Wow, this collapsed. | 0:47:16 | 0:47:17 | |
Football players may well not be scholastically intelligent and so they | 0:47:17 | 0:47:21 | |
don't do well in a school with reading and writing and so on. | 0:47:21 | 0:47:24 | |
If we lived in a non-literate society, | 0:47:24 | 0:47:27 | |
the people who do well in school would not emerge at all, and perhaps people who are good at football | 0:47:27 | 0:47:32 | |
would be better hunters, and better strategists about survival, and then we'd be calling them smart. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:38 | |
And the people who had the potential to read and write | 0:47:38 | 0:47:40 | |
would be irrelevant because there'd been no reading and writing there. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:43 | |
Based on the combined outcomes of the IQ tests and the newer intelligence tests, | 0:47:47 | 0:47:51 | |
the results should reveal who has the most mental flexibility and all-round intelligence. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:57 | |
Tied equal in third place, fighter pilot, Gary, and musical prodigy, Alex. | 0:48:00 | 0:48:07 | |
In second place, IQ specialist, Nathan. | 0:48:07 | 0:48:11 | |
And in first place, an interesting tie. | 0:48:11 | 0:48:14 | |
One of the winners did fantastically well on the standard IQ test, | 0:48:14 | 0:48:18 | |
but the other one wasn't even in the IQ test top three. | 0:48:18 | 0:48:23 | |
Taken across all the tests, quantum physicist, Seth Lloyd, shared higher scores with dramatist, Bonnie Greer. | 0:48:25 | 0:48:32 | |
Horizon's assessment of the experts show that the IQ test | 0:48:41 | 0:48:45 | |
only identifies a very particular type of intelligence. | 0:48:45 | 0:48:50 | |
It couldn't predict how good someone would be at a wider ranging set of skills. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:55 | |
But the IQ test hasn't been consigned to the history books just yet. | 0:48:57 | 0:49:02 | |
It might not pinpoint everyone's unique intelligence type, but it | 0:49:02 | 0:49:06 | |
has turned out to be useful in a way no-one could have predicted. | 0:49:06 | 0:49:11 | |
You have 45 minutes to do the test, OK? | 0:49:11 | 0:49:12 | |
OK. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:15 | |
Write the three letters between A and E. | 0:49:16 | 0:49:19 | |
And cross out of the middle one. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:21 | |
Bill and Davina are 79 years old. | 0:49:21 | 0:49:24 | |
This is the second time they've done this test. | 0:49:24 | 0:49:27 | |
If H comes before K, write X, unless S comes before Q... | 0:49:27 | 0:49:33 | |
The first time was in 1932 when every 11-year-old in Scotland was put through an intelligence test. | 0:49:33 | 0:49:42 | |
The results were rediscovered recently in an Edinburgh basement. | 0:49:45 | 0:49:49 | |
If you want to know how our intelligence changes as we | 0:49:51 | 0:49:53 | |
get older, these results are a potential goldmine. | 0:49:53 | 0:49:57 | |
We've brought hundreds of people back and we got them to sit the exact | 0:49:57 | 0:50:01 | |
same test they had sat when they were aged 11. | 0:50:01 | 0:50:05 | |
Now, these people were now 79 or 80 years old. | 0:50:05 | 0:50:07 | |
We gave the same instructions, we gave the same test, and we gave the same time limit. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:13 | |
It was a little stickier than I thought it would be. | 0:50:18 | 0:50:20 | |
I walked through it quite happily, quite honestly. | 0:50:20 | 0:50:22 | |
I felt I must have been very bright at 11 if I sat that exam and passed. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:27 | |
There were some intriguing results. | 0:50:27 | 0:50:28 | |
Almost everyone had a better score at 80 than they did at 11. | 0:50:28 | 0:50:33 | |
But some had gone from being just averagely intelligent to a much higher level. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:38 | |
Now that's what really drives our research. | 0:50:38 | 0:50:41 | |
Why are those people who've gone from IQ 100 at age 11, up to 110 or 120? | 0:50:41 | 0:50:47 | |
What have they done right? What can be the recipe for successful ageing? | 0:50:47 | 0:50:52 | |
We're finding that the person with more education, | 0:50:52 | 0:50:56 | |
even though they had the same IQ in childhood, is doing slightly better in old age, on average. | 0:50:56 | 0:51:00 | |
The person who had a more professional job in old age is doing slightly | 0:51:00 | 0:51:04 | |
better, on average, than the person who had a manual job despite the fact that they started at the same level. | 0:51:04 | 0:51:09 | |
The people who smoked have got slightly less good mental ability than you would expect. | 0:51:09 | 0:51:15 | |
What's even more remarkable is that the kids who had higher IQ scores at | 0:51:15 | 0:51:19 | |
11 are the very ones still alive today. | 0:51:19 | 0:51:23 | |
So it seems high IQ in childhood is good for survival. | 0:51:25 | 0:51:28 | |
Maybe an IQ score is a record of how well wired together your brain is, and that might, highly speculative, | 0:51:30 | 0:51:37 | |
that might be associated with how well wired up the rest of your body is. | 0:51:37 | 0:51:41 | |
But if our intelligence can increase as we grow older, can we go one step further and boost it artificially? | 0:51:46 | 0:51:52 | |
Marcus du Sautoy investigated one technique. | 0:51:55 | 0:51:58 | |
At the University of Goettingen in Germany, they're pioneering | 0:52:02 | 0:52:05 | |
technology that could greatly extend our control over our own brains. | 0:52:05 | 0:52:11 | |
They're developing a means to turbo-charge our grey matter. | 0:52:11 | 0:52:15 | |
The aim is to improve the volunteer's ability to subconsciously learn. | 0:52:22 | 0:52:27 | |
The test itself is simple. | 0:52:27 | 0:52:28 | |
When Leila sees a dot appear on the screen, she has to tap a corresponding key on the keyboard. | 0:52:28 | 0:52:36 | |
There is a pattern to when the dots appear. | 0:52:36 | 0:52:39 | |
But it's impossible to detect. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:42 | |
At least before the artificial stimulation of her brain begins. | 0:52:42 | 0:52:47 | |
What we want to do is to facilitate the | 0:52:47 | 0:52:51 | |
excitability of her motor cortex. | 0:52:51 | 0:52:54 | |
-And in order to be able to do that, we have to fix an electrode. -I presume this is perfectly safe. | 0:52:54 | 0:52:58 | |
I mean, I'd be a bit nervous about having electricity shot through my brain. | 0:52:58 | 0:53:05 | |
Well, they're very weak currents. | 0:53:05 | 0:53:07 | |
They're so weak, she doesn't notice anything. | 0:53:07 | 0:53:10 | |
They're so weak that they just manipulate the membrane potential of nerve cells a little bit. | 0:53:10 | 0:53:16 | |
So, now we will stimulate the motor cortex here. | 0:53:16 | 0:53:19 | |
By anodal electricity, positive electricity, for 10 minutes. | 0:53:19 | 0:53:26 | |
So, now stimulation starts. | 0:53:26 | 0:53:29 | |
So there's now electricity passing through Leila's brain. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:32 | |
-Can you feel anything? -No, nothing. | 0:53:32 | 0:53:36 | |
There's no smoke. I can't see any. | 0:53:36 | 0:53:38 | |
And during this stimulation, Leila will move her fingers and do the implicit learning paradigm. | 0:53:38 | 0:53:46 | |
Then we will measure simultaneously how quick she can respond to the visual target during this time. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:53 | |
What we expect to see is with motor cortex depolarisation | 0:53:53 | 0:53:58 | |
that's more excitable and then her reaction time | 0:53:58 | 0:54:02 | |
will improve. | 0:54:02 | 0:54:04 | |
And then we'll see an increase in speed that she's not constantly picking up a pattern, but | 0:54:04 | 0:54:10 | |
subconsciously, she's getting better at learning. | 0:54:10 | 0:54:13 | |
The longer the stimulation lasts, the greater its effects will be. | 0:54:13 | 0:54:17 | |
In previous experiments lasting 24 hours, permanent improvements to the brain were forged. | 0:54:17 | 0:54:25 | |
We know from other research, basic animal research, that | 0:54:25 | 0:54:29 | |
new connections between individual nerve cells will be built after about 30 minutes. | 0:54:29 | 0:54:36 | |
And after about a day, they start to become functional. | 0:54:36 | 0:54:40 | |
-So it's really changing the structure of the brain by doing this? -Yes. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:45 | |
It's not just a temporary effect? | 0:54:45 | 0:54:46 | |
Yes, so we have structural alterations which allow you to move your fingers quicker in this case. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:52 | |
With measuring the reaction times, we will see that you'll probably speed up in the range of 10% or so. | 0:54:54 | 0:55:00 | |
10%, and that's significant, is it? | 0:55:00 | 0:55:02 | |
10%, you wouldn't expect that? | 0:55:02 | 0:55:04 | |
-Not without stimulation. -Right. | 0:55:04 | 0:55:07 | |
The idea of being able to enhance our intelligence, if you don't mind | 0:55:13 | 0:55:17 | |
having your brain stimulated, hints at the dawn of a brave new world. | 0:55:17 | 0:55:21 | |
But if you're going to involve computers, then why stop there? | 0:55:21 | 0:55:24 | |
Some scientists think the creation of artificial intelligence | 0:55:24 | 0:55:28 | |
could transport us to new levels of interaction and understanding. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:32 | |
It's something that has occupied the minds of technology researchers for decades, | 0:55:34 | 0:55:39 | |
and Horizon has featured some of their wilder predictions. | 0:55:39 | 0:55:43 | |
Our descendant will not be the child of the loin, | 0:55:43 | 0:55:46 | |
but the child of the brains, the thing we call the computer, | 0:55:46 | 0:55:49 | |
which does not have to pass through the birth canal. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:52 | |
And does not grow by a tablespoonful of grey matter every 100,000 years, | 0:55:52 | 0:55:57 | |
which is the case in the rapid growth of our brain, | 0:55:57 | 0:56:00 | |
but grows a factor of 10 in power every seven years. | 0:56:00 | 0:56:03 | |
The computer generation. | 0:56:03 | 0:56:05 | |
There's no question that it'll match us in narrow reasoning power by 1990, | 0:56:05 | 0:56:10 | |
and go beyond us to become the great new intelligent race of the future. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:16 | |
The artificial intelligences of the future will be worried about | 0:56:16 | 0:56:18 | |
weighty problems that we simply can't understand. | 0:56:18 | 0:56:21 | |
And they may condescend to talk to us. They may... | 0:56:21 | 0:56:27 | |
amuse us on occasion, or play games that we like to play. | 0:56:27 | 0:56:31 | |
And in some sense, they might keep us as pets. | 0:56:31 | 0:56:33 | |
Although those predictions haven't been borne out, work on artificial intelligence has continued to race | 0:56:38 | 0:56:43 | |
towards the goal of a man-made super-intelligence, leading one | 0:56:43 | 0:56:47 | |
man to predict that a computer will equal a human brain's power by 2029. | 0:56:47 | 0:56:53 | |
His name is Ray Kurzweil, inventor and visionary. | 0:56:56 | 0:57:00 | |
He believes that our understanding of the human brain will soon be complete. | 0:57:02 | 0:57:07 | |
25 years from now, we will have actually mastered human intelligence. | 0:57:09 | 0:57:13 | |
We'll have both the hardware and the software to recreate human intelligence in a machine. | 0:57:13 | 0:57:18 | |
Kurzweil was one of the first to make a computer that could read. | 0:57:22 | 0:57:26 | |
MACHINE: 'For score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this...' | 0:57:26 | 0:57:30 | |
If his latest prediction is right, then we will understand the human brain | 0:57:30 | 0:57:34 | |
at almost exactly the same time as computers equal its power. | 0:57:34 | 0:57:39 | |
It's this culmination of events that would lead to the singularity. | 0:57:40 | 0:57:44 | |
There's really a point in human history where human society will be | 0:57:46 | 0:57:49 | |
profoundly transformed by creating non-biological intelligence. | 0:57:49 | 0:57:53 | |
Machines that are ultimately billions of times more capable than human beings today. | 0:57:53 | 0:57:59 | |
And we will integrate with this technology, and it will enhance human potential. | 0:57:59 | 0:58:04 | |
We'll have to wait until 2029 to find out whether Kurzweil's prediction is correct. | 0:58:06 | 0:58:11 | |
Until then, science can only continue in its quest to fully fathom our unique mental abilities. | 0:58:11 | 0:58:17 | |
Understanding what makes my intelligence different from | 0:58:19 | 0:58:22 | |
that of someone like Einstein's could be a question of my genes, or the way I was brought up. | 0:58:22 | 0:58:28 | |
Maybe I'm just intelligent in a different kind of way? | 0:58:28 | 0:58:31 | |
He was pretty good at physics. I'm pretty good at... | 0:58:31 | 0:58:34 | |
Well, anyway, 2029 is not so far away | 0:58:34 | 0:58:37 | |
so maybe we'll just have to wait and see who's so clever then. | 0:58:37 | 0:58:41 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:59:04 | 0:59:07 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:59:07 | 0:59:10 |