Well...it's pretty easy to REDUCE your intelligence. Hypoxia, certain drugs, chronic disease, chronic malnutrition, and head injuries spring to mind as tried-and-true methods. So in that regard, intelligence
is quite malleable.
That said, I've never actually met anyone who believes that "talent alone creates success." I'm sure that there are some people like that out there, but if you discount everyone under age 14 or so, there probably won't be many left in that group.
I wonder if this kind of statement is just a feel-good way of dismissing the importance of talent. Americans are inclusive to a fault, and to me, this kind of writing (along with Malcom whatshisname's 10,000 hours garbage) is a way for people to pretend that anyone can be an astronaut, or an engineer, or even the president, and that all children are gifted (tm).
Then we send them to college to drop out of STEM majors and incur extra debt while getting "degrees" in subjects like liberal studies, bizniz, or journalism, after which they end up in low-paying benefit-free jobs in retail.
