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can you become cleverer, or are you born with a certian level of intelligence
hi
i would just like to know youre views on this everyone.
for example, if there is someone who works really hard and revises can he grasp subjects like mathematics the same as someone that is naturally better at it.
and is there such a thing as being natureally better at it, or can anyone be as good as anyone else if they try....
i would just like to know youre views on this everyone.
for example, if there is someone who works really hard and revises can he grasp subjects like mathematics the same as someone that is naturally better at it.
and is there such a thing as being natureally better at it, or can anyone be as good as anyone else if they try....
Comments
For one, the term intelligence is a social construct, how can people be born with an artificial quality?
Two, people can be born with a disease that limits their brain development, which would make them less 'intelligent'.
If you look at studies of people who were born neglected or in the wild, their psyches are lost, and aren't able to learn and compare to other human beings.
How are you defining cleverer or knowledge? If you read books clearly you will remember more things, if thats how you define knowledge then you can increase it, and its not innate.
Twins have more in common than regular siblings, thus explaining that possible difference, especially mono-zygotic twins.
Adoptive parents generally have things in common as a group (people who want children that bad generally are going to have the resources to support a child and the will power to really want to take care of a child, unlike some paternal parents).
People aren't born with different levels of being able to figure out square roots of quadratic equations. Maybe they family they are born into (the social environment) has a lot to do with it, or the individuals own desires and goals life, but I extremely doubt anyone is born with a level of capability. Just a level of un-capability when born with biological defects.
For example, asian families often pressuring their children to succeed in school, and thus they tend to get higher grades as a whole on average. It's not that theyre asian, but the social environment.
From what I remember in one of my classes, one of the hypothesis of how "intelligence" works is a natural range that one can achieve depending on how that person goes about maxing out their potential.
For example, person A can have a range of 70-90IQ, he works really really hard at his academic work and takes in knowledge wherever possible, he might be at the high range of his IQ whereas person B has a range of 85-105 but hes quite the slacker and does not do anything more than he is required, so he is probably at the bottom end of his range thus pitting the two at roughly the same IQ
By IQ I just mean the hypothetical measuring bar. I don't want to get into some debate about how the IQ tests favour one over another and such. We can call it QI for all that matters.
Or from a different perspective, do you think we can all write like Shakespeare?
How about the prodigy composers like Mozart and such. Are they not born with an extraordinary level of capability?
Are you saying at age 2 Mozart was composing? You offer no evidence in your claims about these famous people in history, that they were born smarter or cleverer than others.
What about untapped potential in people? Or people who keep things to themselves? People who choose not to aspire to anything because they are content with the status quo and living a peaceful life.
I'm not saying those who put out effort are going to achieve mastery, because each persons maximum effort is different, in accordance to how they were raised, how they think, and how they function.
If you want to debate that some people are born physically better than others I will have to agree with you. Some people are born with birth defects, and some people are born with genes that make them physically competative with others. I personally don't believe intelligence, and however you measure it are innate qualities that are established at birth.
I don't know of any studies that offer any proof of this either, besides twin studies, which are using IQ to establish intelligence, and factors that are not isolated from the effects of socialization. Do you think Mozart would have gotten 130 on an IQ test? I think how you define and measure intelligence is a great deal.
really, even if you don't use proper studies (which point to a difference at birth), you can notice very easily that people who do better don't necessarily work harder, and people who do worse don't necessarily slack off. You're in university, the phenomenon's all around you in very direct, measurable ways.
that is not to ignore the huge socialization factor, of course, but that alone doesn't explain the variation.
Have you taken an intro psyc course?
I don't understand your first comment, I'm acknowledging physial differences, and I don't think intelligence is a physical difference. I recognize that someone born with brain damage, or something like down's syndrome's brains develop in ways that inhibit learning. So are you saying people born with downs are born with that level of 'intelligence'? It's been shown that early intervention with children who have Downs or Aspergers has a critical value. If intelligence was innate this theoretically should have no effect.
University is not a measure of cleverness or intellgence in my opinion, in regards to your second question. In fact, the ability to learn how to do work quicker, and with less effort is something people learn: How is anyone born with that knowledge innately over others? In my first year I learned how to write an essay at the last minute and to get an A doing it, after my first semester was a disaster with me taking days to write essays and doing mediocre. How did I go from getting C's on essays I spent days on, to A's on essays I wrote the night before, was I reborn?
EDIT: Further, how can you prove anyone's lack of effort as a confounding variable when examining innate ability? It would be near impossible. Human potential is not a variable you can measure exponentially, you could never separate all the inhibitions and internal thoughts and processes going on in someones mind and prove whether they gave their all, or did not give their all.
I mean, if we have an entire family of people who dropped out of high school, then all of a sudden we have someone who graduates from University down the genetic line, how would you interpret this? Just recessive genes?
I know noone here is claiming that it is just biology, but I don't think biology has any relevance, except for physical maladies which inhibit the ability to learn through physical pathology. Using twin studies as the sole relationship between intelligence and biology is full of confounding variables, and adoption studies as a check on nurture is full of confounds as well as I mentioned in an earlier post.
I, and others think intelligence is a human created term and has little relevance (I'm not referring to the bias in IQ tests). Some people excel in some categories in life, and that is just that in my opinion. I'm not even some post-modern hippie, I like positivism and biology, I just don't think biology is a good explanation in this scenario. If I'm wrong then I think we should bring back eugenics.
If anyone can formulate a workable / testable definition of intelligence I'm all ears.
Yeah, I just had my exam for PSYC 102 today, haha.
is anyone getting what i'm saying here or am i sounding like a dorkhead? =S
so yeah.. i'd like to believe that we can become cleverer with age and experience (cause i'm a dumb person and if this is all the intelligence i have.. it's going to make me a sad sad person) but i've also seen people who are "naturally gifted" and can also understand where the argument of intelligence being a social construct is coming from.. honestly.. i really don't know where i stand on this..
every brain is different in respect to to the amount of information it can retain (compare a monkeys brain to that of a humans, duh)
Lazyguy: Uh you're comparing monkeys to humans, you're comparing two different species, how is that a valid comparison?
a lot
;)
Please, enlighten me, you cock-sucking asshole.
human brains vary in size, and usually bigger means higher intelligence, but this becomes kind of fuzzy when you take into account the social aspect of intelligence. Also, the brain is still uncharted territory as no one has full understanding to how it works so you cant just ignore biological factors.
I've only skimmed through all of this but are you saying that every human can achieve steven hawking level intelligence if they grow up in the right environment?
haha i love you both
Genome-wide quantitative trait locus association scan of general cognitive ability using pooled DNA and 500K single nucleotide polymorphism microarrays
The Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT) of intelligence: Converging neuroimaging evidence
This was a meta-analysis, I believe. It's just the abstract, but you can get the idea.
I found a few supporting the theory of intelligence/SES as well, but the articles sucked. Either way, like I said before, evidence on both ends. So please, spare me the partisan bullshit.
Who gives a flying fuck what any of them would've scored on the IQ test (or absolute intelligence measure if we can ever come up with one). The whole point was that making harder does not make you equal just because you weren't born with some deficiencies.
I didn't say everyone giving all of their effort can be Steven Hawking, because everyone's effort is different, its not different because of biology, its different for social and internal reasons.
I never said this wasnt nature and nurture, I said that nature is only people being born with the ability to learn hindered. None of you have addressed any of my points regarding methodology, and franky I won't bother repeating myself over and over again.
You can quote as many studies as you want, because there is no conclusive evidence either way. Quoting single studies showing your side does not prove your point.
Morro: "All evidence points to strong genetic pre-determination of potential, and environmental factors determining how much of that potential is realized. But some quite simply don't have the same heights available to them." All evidence does not point to strong genetic per-determination, exaggerating your point does not prove anything.
danoobie: Just because someone 'gives it their all', doesnt mean everyone is equal, everyone has psycho-social hinderences that cannot be measured or developed by science at this point in time. I said this in my last post, please go back and read it.
IQ tests mean jack shit.
First of all, being "normal" is also a social construct. Secondly, the main point is, there are slight biological and genetic variations that can always affect the way people learn. Besides, I think the point lazyguy was trying to make was that if you look at the size of brains across species, let's say, rhesus monkeys vs chimps, vs humans, you will see that the prefrontal cortex of humans is much larger. And it has been shown that the frontal lobe is related to planning and goal directed behavior, as well as problem-solving skills. Plus, the lateral prefrontal cortex is the site of working memory.
My point is, if one child is born with a slightly smaller frontal/pre-frontal cortex, it would undoubtedly affect the way they learn, and as a result, their overall intelligence.