Kriston-- glad to know that you don't adhere to a fixed theory of intelligence because I got from your posts that you did (not looking through 6000 of them to find the quotes though!!
). I remember an argument that kids are born with x maximum level but environment can make it hard to display that level, whereas I'd argue that the whole system is plastic and there's no fixed max at birth.
I'm less and less certain about fixed levels of intelligence the more I find out. However, I do lean toward believing that we all come with a
range. Otherwise, what would one make of studies on heritability of intelligence especially in cases of adoption where the child's adult intelligence more closely resembles that of the birth family than the adoptive family?
I have to admit, nature/nurture discussions just seem to be mostly empty talk to me. It seems pretty obvious that there's *some* genetic component, and it seems just as obvious that environment affects growth and development. Both matter. After that we're just talking about how *much* they matter. How do you measure that? <shrug>
And frankly, whether the top of intelligence is fixed or not seems like a purely intellectual exercise to me. How would we know?
I will say that I don't believe that kids can be "made" gifted through hothousing. In that regard, I guess I think there is some upper limit. Athletics is a good analogy here: I could have run all day every day for my whole life, and I would never be a world-class sprinter. My short-legged little body is made for distance, not speed. Certainly I can improve my speed with training, and no one can say for sure how fast I could actually go if I worked obsessively on it. But there is some upper limit of a sort to how fast I can go.
I think brains work the same way. There is such a thing as native talent, and hard work isn't necessarily a substitute for it anymore than talent is a substitute for hard work. They're complimentary, but different.
The thing is that no one can say for sure how smart any one brain can get with training, so the "fixed" idea--even insofar as I am going with that, which is not far!--would really be just philosophy, not practice. Nor do I think that we can rule someone out as a wicked smart person because they didn't "sprint" intellectually right from birth. Development is too individualized for that. Brains grow and change over time.
