Come on, clearly the right side of this chart with the upward-bound line should be the side with acne. This must have been done by one of those *sexy* chart-makers.

Of course, of COURSE I clicked on this Atlantic article about a study that says teens with acne do better in school. How could you not want science to tell you it was all worth it?

Mialon and Nesson found that having acne in high school was associated with a higher overall GPA—as well as a greater likelihood of earning an A in math, science, history and social studies, and English—and a higher chance of earning a bachelor’s degree. The academic differences between teens with skin problems and those without them weren’t dramatic, but they were statistically significant. For example, acne increases a student’s chances of getting an A in science by 1.8 percentage points.

Now that that’s settled, it did make me think back to my high school self. And college. And early professional self. And current self…

But no, the point was, I started to wonder what might have changed if I had been acne-free (or taller, stronger, thinner, etc). Which is a much more interesting, less scientific, line of inquiry.

How do you think you would have turned out differently if you’d been, say 30% more attractive throughout your life?

Do you think that you’d rather have that life, or do you like what you went through, and where you ended up, just the way you are?

We’re talking way beyond pretentious Mensa member stuff here.

Everyone thinks they’re at least fairly smart. Lots of smart people are humble about how smart they are (but really wonder if they’re even smarter than most people give them credit for). Lots of not very smart people are awfully confident that they’re smarter than you think they are. Is it possible we’d be better off if we all knew for sure exactly how smart we are, or would this be a disaster?

Imagine there were a way to measure intelligence absolutely, taking into account all the factors that you perceive to make someone “smart”. So through some process, your knowledge, wisdom, intuition, insightfulness, critical thinking, and ability to articulate ideas clearly, across all subjects or expertise, could be factored down to a simple number.

Imagine also that this is instantaneously applied to everyone in the world, which makes it possible to know with certainty, based on a percentile, where you or anyone else really stood in relation to every other person on the planet in terms of intelligence. You might be 47% or 83% now, but suddenly, you would know for sure.

Then imagine that some technology (a digital readout across your forehead, online database searchable by your mobile device, whatever you want) allows you to not only know your absolute intelligence rating, but also any other person’s, anytime you want.

[Note: I’m assuming it is possible to change this number with effort. Studying, learning, even just gaining life experience would potentially add to your rating, assuming you were gaining intelligence more than others who are not trying as hard. So this number isn’t a lifetime sentence or privilege (though some might have a genetic head start or natural hurdle to overcome), but a totally accurate real-time measurement relative to everyone else in the world.]

If it were possible to know this, would you want to?

If it were possible to know this about everyone else (and for them to know it about you), would you want that also?

How would this knowledge impact your day-to-day life, and how you deal with the people in your life?

How would it affect society in general, from things like education to job interviews, dating to elections, even just watching TV or sports?