Mini Ep- IQ Test Origins: Genius or Glue Eater?

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We all think we’re smart… until someone mentions IQ.
But what if the number we use to measure intelligence… was never meant to define it?From its origin as a tool to help struggling children, to its evolution into a global scoreboard for genius, this episode breaks down how IQ shaped education, ego, and even immigration policy.

This isn’t just about intelligence, It’s about how we decided to measure it and why we still believe the number.

Welcome to One Up The Annals

Transcript

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IQ. We usually think we're smart, and we meet people every day we're pretty sure wouldn't pass the test. But what actually is it? IQ stands for intelligence quotient. Seeing how I'm not entirely sure what a quotient is, I'm gonna avoid the test and let you estimate mine. Imagine, a test made to help struggling children becoming the gold standard for genius. No, imagine that number was meant to measure progress, not potential. Welcome back to the annals where numbers become legend, and I styled my hair after Einstein for this episode. I'm Rab Greesson. Let's go. In 1905, French psychologist Alfred Benet and Theodore Simon were given a simple task. The French government wanted to identify children who were struggling in school. So they could give them extra help. That's it. Not to label them, not to rank them, not find the wicked smot ones either. Just help. So they created a test to measure something called mental age. If a child performed like the average 10-year-old, their mental age was 10. Simple, practical. But then, ego got involved. It worked well for kids, but for adults the idea quickly fell apart. In 1912, William Stern, a German site, put together mental age and chronological age. Then 1916 Stanford Man Lewis Terman didn't want decimals anymore and multiplied it by 100. Mental age divided by chronological age times 100. If a 10-year-old performs like a 12-year-old, 12 divided by 10 times 100. IQ, 120. Clean. Mathematical. And that's when things changed. Because somewhere along the way it stopped being about helping struggling kids and became about grown adults trying to prove they were smarter than each other. Suddenly, IQ wasn't a classroom tool anymore, it was a scoreboard of potential. And just like that, IQ bragging was born. And despite Binet explicitly warning that intelligence was too complex to measure with one number, we did it anyway. Because when people think they're smart and can make tests to prove they're smarter than you, struggling kids get glue to eat in class, and everyone else gets ranked. So now we've got categories. Average around 90 to 110, above average gifted, highly gifted, genius above 160. And here's my observation. Somewhere below 100 and somewhere above 160, people start behaving the same in society. I call it the horseshoe theory of intelligence. The people at the very bottom are misunderstood because they can't function in the system. And the people at the very top are misunderstood because they've outgrown the system. Both end up being outcasts. Either way, you don't quite fit. And then things got darker. When the test hit the U.S. at Ellis Island, it stopped being a diagnostic tool and became a gatekeeper and arguably some early racial profiling. They gave IQ tests to immigrants they hand-picked who had just stopped off a bad long seasick boat ride, spoke zero English, and had never seen a standardized test in their lives. When they inevitably failed, the scoreboard was used to label entire nationalities as feeble-minded. And the leader of this disaster, Henry Goddard, got to make use of his own invented word, moron. The fallout? Because of these 1913 results, the number of deportations for mental deficiency skyrocketed. Increasing by 350% in 1913 and 570% in 1914. And here's the twist. The average IQ is always 100. Always. Because it's designed that way. If humanity became twice as smart tomorrow, the average IQ would still be 100. Because IQ doesn't measure intelligence in absolute terms, it measures how you compare to everyone else. It's like measuring height but constantly moving the ruler. And here's what IQ doesn't measure: creativity, emotional intelligence, social skills, work ethic, curiosity, wisdom, humor, resilience, or the decline of civilization. So some of the most important forms of intelligence aren't even on the test. And since I brought up Einstein earlier, he hated rote education. The rigid sit-down, shut up, repeat after me system, which is exactly what early standardized testing leaned on. He became legend because he had something the test doesn't measure. Curiosity and obsession. Because intelligence is messy, it's creative, it's emotional, and unpredictable. And none of that fits neatly into a number. But once we created IQ, we didn't just try to measure intelligence, we started believing the measurement. We label people, rank them, define them. We took something complex and made it simple. Intelligence isn't a number, it's how you think, how you adapt, how you learn, how you see the world. And none of that can be captured on the test. And that is how a helpful classroom tool became one of the most powerful numbers in modern history. Where IQ becomes legend, I came for the glue. You stake for the intelligence, and now it's in the annals. Good night.