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?

May the odds… oh wait, wrong movie.

Recently I revisited the classic (and influential; looking at you, Hunger Games) film Battle Royale, about a near-future Japan where every year a class of students is shipped off to an island to battle to the death. Though it doesn’t delve into some of the class issues that makes the later Hunger Games so provocative and interesting, it’s still a must-see film. In fact, I love how Royale deals with dissatisfaction on both sides in a very Japanese way. The adults see ungrateful, unruly teens and feel like they need to be taught a lesson (which one could say about today’s entitled youth), but how can you not also sympathize with teens growing up into a world lacking in opportunity? It’s a fascinating exaggeration of reality where kids are forced into a cutthroat system against their will, and how they deal with that by trying to find rebellious ways out, whether suicide, bucking the system, or just finding their own way together despite the ‘rules’ that they’re supposed to play by.

But at the end of the day how can we not focus on the amazing hypothetical scenario the film (and its successor) proposes:

If you were in a Battle Royale/Hunger Games scenario, what do you do when you’re forced to kill or be killed? Make allies? Go fully aggressive homicidal? Play nice to get close, then betray those who trust you? Or opt out and kill yourself before they can do it to you, in some final act of defiance?