Arvin Pourmand
Ms. Graecyn
English 1A
5 September 2019
BBC Video Response
After watching the movie, I would say that the creators’ viewpoints are slightly outdated.
Their perspective of intelligence is based upon the assertion that intelligence is the ability to acquire and execute a certain knowledge set.
As such, they study people with savant syndrome, inquiring into how exactly one would be able to perform operations with machine-like accuracy. Similarly, they compare Einstein’s brain to that of randomized samples, or prodigies of math geniuses. In some ways, this is a folly in the sense that they are examining peculiarities and outliers in an attempt to classify intelligence, but conflating certain facts, as well as failing to take into account anomalous aspects of the cases they examine.
As time goes on, this video seems a bit dated; the research cited, while at one point groundbacking, and by no means irrelevant, carries an inherent bias into what the authors perceive as intelligence. That is, they exhibit a tendency to examine abnormal brains, irreacreatible circumstances, and generally outlier cases. I believe Asimov would be slightly critical as well of their research in this light. This is due to the fact that although their conclusions do yield real, insightful knowledge (such as writing feelings down before a test), their basis of research is biased, which yields imperfect results. I think that this is indicative of the current state of neuroscience in its fledgling years—although the information currently being

presented is astounding, there is quite some room for improvement when answering the deeper questions.