Also intelligence (as measured by IQ) is not linearly correlated with success. After a certain point the higher IQ you have the less likely you are to be successful.
Being much smarter than the people around you must feel very isolating. The expectations placed on you since you are a child can't be easy to deal with either.
Thankfully I'm too stupid to have any of those problems.
> Our results showed that reading for pleasure in early childhood can be beneficial regardless of socioeconomic status. It may also be helpful regardless of the children’s initial intelligence level.
The balance between nature and nurture is tbd, but what we’ve seen is that humans have a lot of plasticity and the major factor is your environment.
Your athletics analogy is apt I think. Here’s the part that’s missing - who’s likely to be better at basketball? A gifted child with no training or an average kid who has spent years drilling and studying basketball.
Through this we can see that even average people can do really well at something if we give them a proper upbringing, something that many kids are denied today.
(For completeness, of course there are kids who are gifted and receive training. Those are gonna be fine and we probably don’t have to worry about them, they already excel)
Once someone starts talking about “culture” though they're usually veering toward some really vicious stereotypes and wink-nudge fig leafs that help people hold & promote racist attitudes without thinking of themselves as racist.
> Once someone starts talking about “culture” though they're usually veering
> toward some really vicious stereotypes and wink-nudge fig leafs that help
> people hold & promote racist attitudes without thinking of themselves as racist.
To be clear, my original comment did not address any of this. I was seriously discussing culture, not race. But I think that I have something to learn from someone who takes such a stance as you have written, so I don't mind if the subject drifts a bit OT.
> Bring up violent tendencies or anything to do with culture, and you'll be demonized.
That's literally everyone in the child's vicinity. What constitutes "culture" to you, if not the values shared and imparted by the influences around you?
> Once someone starts talking about “culture” though they're usually veering toward some really vicious stereotypes and wink-nudge fig leafs that help people hold & promote racist attitudes without thinking of themselves as racist.
You're calling him out for stereotyping...while confidently suggesting discussion of race/culture is usually racist, and anybody daring to initiate it is just a racist in denial? I don't even agree with him but holy shit man, rethink your approach.
> Bring up violent tendencies or anything to do with culture, and you'll be demonized.
Is not all discussions of race/culture. Whose violent tendencies? What does OP mean by culture here? Unclear, it’s left to your imagination.
Should it read: > Bring up violent tendencies or anything to do with culture [of teaching children violence] and you'll be demonized.
Or should it read: > Bring up violent tendencies or anything to do with [violent people’s] culture, and you'll be demonized.
Or should it read: >Bring up violent tendencies or anything to do with [you know who I mean’s] culture, and you'll be demonized.
Why does OP expect to be demonized? Maybe because these are common racist shibboleths, in the same vein as someone trying to tell you about threats to “western civilization”.
Idk if OP actually meant it that way. Their meaning was vague, which is how these things work. A good tule of thumb with strangers on the internet though is that if it quacks like a duck it might be a duck.
edit: on rereading, I think the original comment about “natural parents” was trying to make a point about nature vs nurture, not about parenting.
I don't think this is true; general intelligence is considered to be highly heritable (40-80% according to Wikipedia). If you start suggesting that g is correlated to race then you'll get a lot of push-back, but as far as heritability not really.
To the degree that intelligence is affected by the environment, we should encourage things that help. Not starving kids and preventing them from ingesting lead both probably have a higher effect than reading, but I would not be surprised if reading doesn't at least cause some development to occur earlier (whether or not there are measurable effects that last into adulthood).
> Our results showed that reading for pleasure in early childhood can be beneficial regardless of socioeconomic status. It may also be helpful regardless of the children’s initial intelligence level. That’s because the effect didn’t depend on how many years of education the children’s parents had had – which is our best measure for very young children’s intelligence (IQ is partially heritable).
It's totally possible that intelligent people have well paying careers and give birth to intelligence advantaged children. Mother nature loves bestowing fortune to the fortunate.
There is the pervasive "blank slate" approach to cognition, when there is plenty of evidence that your brain is not in fact a blank slate at birth. I mean people just passively accept that some people are just born physically stronger, or with a more athletic build. Especially if their parents are athletes, or it runs in the family.
But bring up intelligence along with genetic factors and everyone recoils and tenses up. It seems so plainly true, there is plenty of evidence to back it, yet its article after article, discussion after discussion of "Kids who read books end up being more successful" and never "Naturally smart kids enjoy reading books".