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My take on this is that intelligence is like strength or other physical qualities. If you are in a hyper competitive area, you need good genes. But not everythi

My take on this is that intelligence is like strength or other physical qualities. If you are in a hyper competitive area, you need good genes. But not everything is competitive. Yes, there are absolutely limits on your physical development that you are born with. You won't run 100m under 10s if you're a woman, and you're much more likely if you have recent roots in certain countries. You won't get to play professional basketball unless you're quite a lot taller than average. If you're going to win Mr Olympia, you need to possess the kind of body that can be turned into a hunk of muscle. But you can do better than most people at almost everything by practicing. You can cut your 100m time just by losing the gut. You can practice throwing the ball in the hoop by yourself. You can lift weights and you'll get more muscular. Intelligence is no different. If you're going to be a research mathematician, it's going to be incredibly tough competing with the smartest kids in your generation. But if you just want to appreciate quantum physics or complex numbers, it's actually quite low hanging fruit that you will figure out if you want to. Most people do not figure out complex numbers despite it being taught at every high school. The thing with intelligence, and I suppose we mean the mathematical kind, is it's invisible until you interact with people. If you're very weak or fat there's reasons to do something about it. If you just don't know how vector calculus works, chances are you won't get outed. Our culture in the West also has a static view of intelligence, the opposite of Dweck's growth mindset, which really harms everyone who should be encouraged to practice getting smarter. The loss of not stopping people without world class brains from pursuing math professorships is greatly outweighed by the loss of everyday people not improving strengthening their thinking skills.

rowanG077 4y ago
I thought that intelligence is pretty static by almost(or all?) measurement tools we have. Is that not the case? Not to say that our measurement tools might have serious issues but then you enter the unanswered question of making very concrete what intelligence is.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  At the same time it is static and subject to a small test training effect and test-retest variance. If measured as IQ, the variance tends to be around 5 points on most tests.
- michaelgrafl 4y ago
  Yes and no. Lifestyle has an impact on intelligence. You probably can't train yourself into a higher IQ, but you can many things that will dimish it (not sleeping well, bad nutrition, drugs, stress, etc.) So if you've led a non ideal lifestyle in the past, you might be able to increase your intelligence by making less mistakes, relative to your current abilities.
- Yizahi 4y ago
  Intelligence maybe is static, but Wisdom is not. So you should allocate some points to it, unless going fighter build.
- auganov 4y ago
  The most trivial brain training exercises routinely show major increases in IQ scores. Those who favor a static hypothesis (and they seem to be the majority) like to simply assume these are fake gains. But without ground truth, there's no way to know. You'd also be surprised how few studies there are that have people directly practice IQ test taking. The static hypothesis seems to rely on common sense rather than hard evidence. It's rare for somebody who seems dull to become a genius all of a sudden. And when it does happen it's easy to assume they seemed dull rather than actually were. There is no disconnect between intelligence being simple yet hard to improve. Losing weight is very simple. But it's hard. Obesity is only slightly less heritable than IQ (both highly heritable), yet we know for a fact it's 100% controllable by the individual (unless one is strongly against the notion of free will).
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    Can you source some peer-reviewed research that shows this? Everywhere I look the baseline seems to be IQ scores can't be trained save a tiny few points. And 3 IQ points don't really make a genius out of someone smart. Free will has nothing to do with not being able to do something because physical constraints are placed on a person. e.g. A person in a wheel chair does not have more or less free will then someone who can walk. Even though the latter clearly has more freedom in a certain sense.
    - lordnacho 4y ago
      Are IQ tests what we really mean when we mean someone is intelligent? What about that kid who can't do calculus one year, then the next year they can? Haven't they gotten smarter?
      - rowanG077 4y ago
        Yes unnormalized IQ scores of kids increase when they get older. That's why only the normalized to their age IQ score is reported. I won't get seduced into a discussion about whether IQ is really intelligence. It's the best proxy we have that's all that matters for this discussion.
saiya-jin 4y ago
I wholeheartedly subscribe to this. I was never super smart, mildly above-average in both primary, secondary, high school and university too. You could say I always matched the challenge, but not much more. All the time, there were people around me who were significantly smarter than me, grokking things easily, learning faster, remembering better. Ie my roommate during whole campus was a guy who passed whole high school without the need to study at home, he just remembered it all and did homework just before the classes. there were tons of guys like him. I had to study every day, not too much but consistently. He didn't perform much better than me re grades on university, but he didn't have to work as much. But here lies the rub - I could easily surpass people like him, even better ones, by just putting in enough time and learn things. In many topics that didn't interest people like him, I was much better. Much smarter folks than me were fired from university since at some point stuff became too hard to just visit seminars and they completely lacked the habit to spent time to learn hard stuff, even by far the smartest guy in whole 120-member class had to put in significant time to learn it for exams to pass. I kept working on myself, learned various languages (ie right now battling with french), re-discovered topics that forceful learning in high school made me resent (geography, history, biology, physics) and discovered stuff on my own by backpacking around the world (more history and how everything interacted, cultures, food, appreciation of people sometimes vilified back home like Muslims) and just generally stepping far away of my comfort zone for decade and a half, right after finishing university. Now when I look back (and/or meet some of them), I am much more whole and experienced person, when we meet and their kids come and show me some backward place on globe I tell them some stories I've experienced in that region and a bit about their culture and history (don't want to sound condescending, I love them, and my roommate remained my good friend and has very senior management position). I completed backwardish unknown university and for last decade work among graduates form best European universities. There is very little difference amongst us. Its truly what IIRC Chaplin said - success is 10% talent and 90% hard work.

rowanG077 4y ago

I thought that intelligence is pretty static by almost(or all?) measurement tools we have. Is that not the case? Not to say that our measurement tools might have serious issues but then you enter the unanswered question of making very concrete what intelligence is.

AstralStorm 4y ago
At the same time it is static and subject to a small test training effect and test-retest variance. If measured as IQ, the variance tends to be around 5 points on most tests.
michaelgrafl 4y ago
Yes and no. Lifestyle has an impact on intelligence. You probably can't train yourself into a higher IQ, but you can many things that will dimish it (not sleeping well, bad nutrition, drugs, stress, etc.) So if you've led a non ideal lifestyle in the past, you might be able to increase your intelligence by making less mistakes, relative to your current abilities.
Yizahi 4y ago
Intelligence maybe is static, but Wisdom is not. So you should allocate some points to it, unless going fighter build.
auganov 4y ago
The most trivial brain training exercises routinely show major increases in IQ scores. Those who favor a static hypothesis (and they seem to be the majority) like to simply assume these are fake gains. But without ground truth, there's no way to know. You'd also be surprised how few studies there are that have people directly practice IQ test taking. The static hypothesis seems to rely on common sense rather than hard evidence. It's rare for somebody who seems dull to become a genius all of a sudden. And when it does happen it's easy to assume they seemed dull rather than actually were. There is no disconnect between intelligence being simple yet hard to improve. Losing weight is very simple. But it's hard. Obesity is only slightly less heritable than IQ (both highly heritable), yet we know for a fact it's 100% controllable by the individual (unless one is strongly against the notion of free will).
- rowanG077 4y ago
  Can you source some peer-reviewed research that shows this? Everywhere I look the baseline seems to be IQ scores can't be trained save a tiny few points. And 3 IQ points don't really make a genius out of someone smart. Free will has nothing to do with not being able to do something because physical constraints are placed on a person. e.g. A person in a wheel chair does not have more or less free will then someone who can walk. Even though the latter clearly has more freedom in a certain sense.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    Are IQ tests what we really mean when we mean someone is intelligent? What about that kid who can't do calculus one year, then the next year they can? Haven't they gotten smarter?
    - rowanG077 4y ago
      Yes unnormalized IQ scores of kids increase when they get older. That's why only the normalized to their age IQ score is reported. I won't get seduced into a discussion about whether IQ is really intelligence. It's the best proxy we have that's all that matters for this discussion.

saiya-jin 4y ago

I wholeheartedly subscribe to this. I was never super smart, mildly above-average in both primary, secondary, high school and university too. You could say I always matched the challenge, but not much more. All the time, there were people around me who were significantly smarter than me, grokking things easily, learning faster, remembering better. Ie my roommate during whole campus was a guy who passed whole high school without the need to study at home, he just remembered it all and did homework just before the classes. there were tons of guys like him. I had to study every day, not too much but consistently. He didn't perform much better than me re grades on university, but he didn't have to work as much. But here lies the rub - I could easily surpass people like him, even better ones, by just putting in enough time and learn things. In many topics that didn't interest people like him, I was much better. Much smarter folks than me were fired from university since at some point stuff became too hard to just visit seminars and they completely lacked the habit to spent time to learn hard stuff, even by far the smartest guy in whole 120-member class had to put in significant time to learn it for exams to pass. I kept working on myself, learned various languages (ie right now battling with french), re-discovered topics that forceful learning in high school made me resent (geography, history, biology, physics) and discovered stuff on my own by backpacking around the world (more history and how everything interacted, cultures, food, appreciation of people sometimes vilified back home like Muslims) and just generally stepping far away of my comfort zone for decade and a half, right after finishing university. Now when I look back (and/or meet some of them), I am much more whole and experienced person, when we meet and their kids come and show me some backward place on globe I tell them some stories I've experienced in that region and a bit about their culture and history (don't want to sound condescending, I love them, and my roommate remained my good friend and has very senior management position). I completed backwardish unknown university and for last decade work among graduates form best European universities. There is very little difference amongst us. Its truly what IIRC Chaplin said - success is 10% talent and 90% hard work.