Intelligence is often used as a tool to generate more sophisticated arguments for what one already believes. A higher IQ correlates with the ability to find reasons supporting your stance, not with an enhanced ability to genuinely consider opposing viewpoints.

According to the "Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis," what makes humans unique is our advanced social reasoning. In experiments, two-year-old toddlers performed no better than chimps on physical IQ tests (like tool use) but vastly outperformed them on social tasks like inferring intent from eye movements.

The fear of 'superhuman' AI is based on a flawed premise. Our definition of measurable intelligence—tallying numbers, memorizing lists—was created for the industrial workforce. AI is simply automating these now-outdated tasks, suggesting we need to recalibrate our measurement of human intelligence itself.

Contrary to expectations of increasing societal complexity, the strongest selection for genetic variants predicting modern IQ test scores and educational attainment occurred between 4,000 and 2,000 years ago. In the last 2,000 years, including the industrial revolution, there has been no detectable selection on these traits.

While hunter-gatherer life seems cognitively demanding, their genetic profile predicts dramatically lower scores on modern intelligence tests. The subsequent rise in Europe's average score was driven primarily by the migration of farming populations with a different genetic setpoint, not gradual evolution within the hunter-gatherer lineage.

The idea of a single 'general intelligence' or IQ is misleading because key cognitive abilities exist in a trade-off. For instance, the capacity for broad exploration (finding new solutions) is in tension with the capacity for exploitation (efficiently executing known tasks), which schools and IQ tests primarily measure.

High IQ scores reflect cognitive skills valuable in modern, abstract environments. As illustrated by the "city dweller vs. nomad" analogy, these skills may be useless in other contexts, demonstrating that intelligence is not a universal measure but is adapted to its environment.

Alfred Binet's original test was a diagnostic tool for the French education system to find children who required extra support. American psychologists later repurposed it as a mass-produced test to rank individuals and identify 'genius,' a use Binet strongly opposed.

Contrary to common fears, the internet likely enhances intelligence in children by providing a vast 'intellectual diet.' The ability to instantly get answers when curious facilitates 'just-in-time' learning, which is neurologically more effective for knowledge retention than the 'just-in-case' model of traditional schooling.