Brain Hunting

White Paper

Jul 22

Intelligence is the principal characteristic that distinguishes humans from other species. Our creativity, reasoning, and other cognitive traits have driven human ecological domination and the case for human exceptionalism. However, what has spurred more thought and research than human exceptionalism has been cognitive differences between humans. This curiosity is ancient. Many myths, legends, and tales celebrate a clever hero who used their wit to conquer a foe or difficulty. Formal studies and inquiry can be found as far back as the Greek philosophers. In The Republic, Book IV, Plato discusses with his student the qualities necessary to make a great philosopher.

Plato: And again, if he is forgetful and retains nothing of what he learns, will he not be an empty vessel?
Glaucon: That is certain.
…
Plato: Then a soul which forgets cannot be ranked among genuine philosophic natures; we must insist that the philosopher should have a good memory?
Glaucon: Certainly.
…
Plato: Then, besides other qualities, we must try to find a naturally well-proportioned and gracious mind, which will move spontaneously towards the true being of everything.
Glaucon: Certainly.

Mental tests comparable to the ones we find today weren’t pursued until the 19th century, yet there existed proxy measures of intellectual acumen and competence before the Industrial Revolution. Most of these measures took the form of puzzles, riddles, and games that still are shared today. While versions of these questions can be found across myriad cultures, a formal collection called Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes (English: Problems to Sharpen the Young) was developed around in the 8th or 9th century by a scholar and educator named Alcuin of York. ¹ The project was supported by Charlemagne to bolster the education reforms within the newly founded Carolingian Empire.

The questions are by no means explicit cognitive tests but require intellect and creativity to solve. Within this publication exist many problem-types that are still popular today: knights and knaves, river crossing, and packing problems. There are many modern derivatives of these problems, such as the ‘Fork in the Road’ problem (Example in Appendix A). This problem presents a situation where you don’t know if someone is telling the truth and you can ask one question to get the right directions.

This questioning style permits many correct answers. The problems force a creative and thoughtful approach and, like most cognitive questions, do not require subject knowledge like a math or history question does. There isn’t an algorithm or procedure for solving them. The mark of cognitive questions and assessments is that the prerequisites to complete them are elementary. To solve the ‘Fork in the Road’ riddle you only need to be literate (unless the riddle is spoken to you).

Unfortunately, these problems were largely used as math games for children. The reasons for this are varied, but one was a lack of scholarly interest in the individual differences of humans. The prevailing theory at the time was coined ‘tabula rasa’ – blank slate – by John Locke. This theory posited that human behaviors and abilities are solely the product of their environment. Proponents of similar theories before Locke were supported by Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. While it was an appealing and spuriously moral stance after the eugenics era of the late 19th and early 20th century, tabula rasa had dreadful consequences for the peoples of the time. Social hierarchies were rigid and an individual’s life outcomes were almost entirely the consequence of paternal social status. The logical derivative of tabula rasa is that the children of the aristocracy were more capable than those of lower-strata families. Nepotism and cronyism were common. It wasn’t until Darwin’s theory of natural selection and Sir Francis Galton’s Hereditary Genius that the case against tabula rasa emerged. Today, the most influential predictor of socioeconomic mobility is an IQ score. ²

The 19th century was a pivot for psychological and sociobiological research. Natural selection ushered in new ideas about the human brain and Hereditary Genius revealed the uncanny relatedness of England’s most eminent judges. Before Darwin, theology and philosophy backed the notion that the mind was inextricable from the soul; ergo, human abilities could not be measured objectively. Galton pursued mental tests to learn more about the variation in human cognitive abilities, but a breakthrough in psychometrics wasn’t made until the dawn of the 20th century.

In 1904 a young graduate student under the first experimental psychologist, Wilhelm Wundt, published a paper using a newly developed mathematical technique. This paper demonstrated the existence of a single variable influencing the subject exams of children. Scores in algebra, english, history, and more were highly correlated. Charles Spearman’s discovery of g, the general factor, revealed that the human mind can be studied quantitatively. New models of human mental abilities emerged with many centered around the idea of a single, general ability that has since become synonymous with intelligence.

Modern psychological testing began in 1905 after Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon, at the behest of the French government, completed an assessment to parse children with mental disabilities from those who were simply uninterested in school. This way special curricula could be developed to help students based upon their weaknesses. The potential of these tests was picked up globally, and revisions eventually brought us the IQ test. The Binet-Simon test was revised into the Stanford-Binet test – a test that is still in use today (Example in Appendix A). Binet and Simon’s seminal work on a validated mental test was accompanied by many new assessments with distinct question styles. Among these unique styles was one called Raven’s Progressive Matrices. The RPM is a matrix test, meaning the question is a matrix containing a pattern across the rows and columns (Example in Appendix A). The pattern is then used to complete one of the cells in the matrix. This style of testing has since become very popular and variations are used in research, education, and talent recruitment.

Much research has been done on the utility of IQ tests for job screening since the first IQ tests. The major patron of the early research was the United States Army. Amid the World War 1 draft, the Army was desperate for better means of sorting millions of draftees into myriad roles of varying complexity. Tests were developed to assess how well recruits could follow instructions; however, there was a problem. The mass immigration from southern and eastern Europe meant many of the recruits could not read or speak English. This resulted in the Army Performance Scale, a nonverbal test that could be completed by non-English speakers. By the end of the Great War, 1.7 million soldiers had taken the test and cognitive research became a priority for the military. ³ This became the impetus for cognitive testing outside of education and demonstrated the promise and value of psychological research.

What fascinated many researchers were the few people at the high end of this scale. Researchers employed IQ tests to recruit precocious youth whose development they could observe from early childhood through retirement. The first of these longitudinal studies was begun by Lewis Terman, a researcher who helped design the Army's intelligence tests, in 1921. This program inspired the ongoing Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth by Julian Stanley (now supervised by Dave Lubinski). Some of the results on education, finances, eminence, and creativity were astronomical and drove more research into recruitment. ⁴

After Spearman’s monumental discovery of g, there was a heated debate on whether intelligence is a single ability or multiple cognitive abilities. The main proponent of the second hypothesis was Louis Thurstone. After much research, it was discovered that neither Spearman nor Thurstone was wrong. Improvements in the mathematical technique used by Spearman showed that there was a single general factor; however, it could be decomposed into multiple subfactors, supporting Thurstone’s hypothesis as well. Over many amendments, the Cattell-Horn-Carroll Three-Stratum Theory emerged which integrated these two theories of human intelligence (See Appendix B). The unearthing of these many abilities had profound consequences for psychometrics and education. Instead of applying a blanket strategy to students with cognitive impediments, educators could target the cognitive abilities with the greatest deficits and adjust curricula accordingly. Researchers could now investigate specific abilities as well as their consequences for individuals and origins in the brain. Cognitive ability research related to the nature v. nurture debate was stymied for a brief period following World War II. The eugenics movement that outlived Sir Galton had culminated into the mass sterilization, oppression, and purge of people seen as genetically inferior. However, research on the effects of cognitive abilities in the workplace and culture continued during this time. The United States Supreme Court ruled in Griggs v. Duke Power Company(1971) that IQ tests could not be used by employers to screen applicants. However, human ingenuity prevailed, and similar tests were developed under different names to get around the court’s ruling. Extant research at the time showed that these test scores could predict job-training results and posttraining performance across many occupations. ⁵ The cost of these tests was next to nothing compared to an extra month of training necessary to prepare the new hire and organizations were willing to go to great lengths to find loopholes.

Cognitive selection was a dark horse that helped drive one of the most successful and innovative companies of the 20th century. In 1993 a Forbes journalist, Rich Karlgaard, sat down with Bill Gates to discuss Microsoft and its challenges going into the future. Karlgaard asked the world-renowned CEO which competitor worries him. Gates responded, “Goldman Sachs”. Perplexed, the journalist asked if Microsoft was entering the finance space. “Software”, Gates answered, “is an IQ business. Microsoft must win the IQ war, or we won't have a future. I don't worry about Lotus or IBM, because the smartest guys would rather come to work for Microsoft. Our competitors for IQ are investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.” Microsoft was one of the companies that sought loopholes in the Griggs v. Duke Power Company ruling. Their approach was clever, and modern tests such as the Cognitive Reflection Test adopted a similar genre. The questions are deceptively simple, containing intuitive, yet erroneous answers. People who don’t reason through the problem fully will easily fall into the question’s trap (See Appendix A).

The search for top talent, which I like to call ‘brain hunting’, is a critical step for improvement within organizations operating at mass scale. Yet brain hunting isn’t all there is to the story. The next phase is the brain refinery. How can education systems cultivate the select few who make it past the most stringent application processes? This question has a long answer that deserves an essay of its own, but I can deliver a short example of what happens when it is answered correctly. Stanford’s admission process is extraordinarily difficult. Of the 47.5 thousand applications they received for the class of 2022, only two thousand students ever woke up to acceptance letters. The real kicker is in that class’s standardized test scores. 75% of their students scored a 32 or greater on the ACT. Less than 2% of students in the U.S. score a 32 or greater. Only three of their graduate programs aren’t on top 10 national rankings for U.S. News. ⁶ However, several other universities have comparable (if not greater) statistics: Caltech, UChicago, MIT, and more. Most private research universities can boast selectivity and high scores, but Stanford has a statistic that only MIT can keep up with. Businesses founded by Stanford graduates pull an annual revenue of 2.7 trillion dollars. The ‘Stanford GDP’ is on par with the entire countries of the United Kingdom and France. MIT trails with 1.9 trillion dollars. This is a testament to not only Stanford's selectivity but the effectiveness of their education, organization, and resource allocation from the undergraduate to doctorate levels.

The application of cognitive tests in business and education elevated the efficiency of talent recruitment and this has had incalculable effects on the rate of economic advancement. But performance researchers now find themselves asking, “What’s the next g, model, or test to raise the bar for human exceptionalism and carry us into a new epoch of science, technology, and culture?” and more interestingly, “What can we do to raise everyone to top-tier performance?”

¹ There is uncertainty whether Alcuin is the true author.
² This is the best single predictor without an array of variables such as education, industriousness, etc. Models that include these are even more powerful. But when divided, the one that stands out is an IQ score.
³ The ASVAB was developed with sections that assess cognitive ability. Other sections search for skills that could be useful during job placement.
⁴ The requirement for these tests was scoring a 539 or higher on the SAT math section before the child’s 14th birthday. Almost 1 in 3 of the participants completed a doctorate, a monumental difference from the national frequency of 4%. In one cohort, 5 out of roughly 1150 participants were CEOs at Fortune 500 companies and 23 were CEOs at name-brand organizations. In a random sample, you would expect about 1 in 660,000 people to be a Fortune 500 CEO. That's about 2800x less likely than a SMPY subject.
⁵ Much of this early research on job training and performance was conducted by the U.S. military. ⁶ Elementary Teacher Education, Medical: Primary Care, Physician Assistant

Apendix A

The Fork in the Road

You are traveling on foot when suddenly there is a fork in the road. You are trying to get to a town called Truthville, where everybody always tells the truth and never lies. You know that one of the paths leads to Truthville, but that the other leads to Lieville, where everybody always lies and never tells the truth. A stranger is standing in the fork in the road, and she is from either Truthville or Lieville, but you can't tell which. You can ask this person only one question to help you find your way to Truthville. What do you ask?

Example IQ Question

Example RPM Question

Microsoft Logic Test Example Question

A spider fell down a 50 foot well. Every day it climbs up 3 feet and then slips down 2 feet. How many days until the spider reaches the top?

Answers

Apendix B

Cattell-Horn-Carroll Three-Stratum Theory Model

g - The general factor

Breadth and depth of knowledge

Ability to reason and problem solve

Ability to understand and employ quantitative/mathematical concepts

Ability to comprehend and use language

Ability to understand and retain information for a short time before use

Ability to store and later recall information during thought

Ability to process and think with visual information

Ability to process and think with auditory information

Ability to perform automatic tasks while under time constraints

Speed of information processing and subsequent action