They've done some pretty extensive studies on ability / achievement. The big driver being parents wanting to ensure their kids turn out great, or to make their kids smart.

Turns out environment can only really have _detrimental_ effects on outcomes for kids. You can't increase what they don't have, but you definitely can fuck them up. I thought it was pretty interesting.

So basically, the advice most parents get now is, don't drop them on their head :) Of course, that also means provide them with the opportunities to learn / use their ability.

Can you link to these? I'm interested in what they found out, if a little skeptical about how thinking can be precisely measured.

I went back and dug to find the exact source I was thinking of (I heard it in a freakonomics podcast long ago, took awhile to find).

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/reasons-to-be-cheerful/ https://www.inquirer.com/philly/health/Nature_vs_Nurture__Do...

The big thing is this is purely about IQ.

Think of it like folks being born at a certain IQ, and you can really only maintain it (exercise, love, healthy eating, sleep, etc.) You can't bolster it beyond what is innate. However, you (and your environment, typically our parents) can definitely cause decreases in your IQ (poor sleep, anxiety, poor nutrition, toxins like lead, etc.)

I found it pretty interesting, but also kind of obvious in hindsight. I would love to be able to increase my IQ, as would many others, but we all gotta just work the best to maximize what we got. Maybe tech / gene manipulation will make it possible in the future though.

So, there are a ton of resources out there on how unreliable IQ is, and whether it's a valid indicator of general cognitive ability. Instead of linking them, I'll just link to the place that has the most good links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliabil...

My understanding is that save for general statistical measures of a large aggregate, IQ is a poor measure for an individual (as it has been shown to change quite a bit for individuals over the course of a lifetime).

It’s probably not important whether the talent is encoded in someone’s DNA or whether it was formed during their childhood and early education they got. But by the time people are teenagers, there can be large differences in learning ability that are impossible to level anymore. You can push through those differences through “belief, drive, focus, grit,” etc, but the baselines are different.

there are differences between any two people anywhere ever, though. Is there some reason that being over 20 means you're done developing?

You can learn a new foreign language when you’re 20. But it’s way easier when you’re 10 or 5. Same goes for learning to play chess, to code, and more broadly, for learning to learn.

I'm 35. I started learning to code 5 years ago. I have a job in the industry, and I advance my understanding of the space daily - I'm sorry, but that just doesn't gel with the actual, firsthand experience I have with this stuff.

You're never past expanding your understanding of the world.

Isn't this because everything is new to you when you have close to no life experience? Aside from our default programming mode of eat, sleep, walk the bucket we call brain is practically empty of experiences and theories when we are 5.