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Analyzed from 245 words in the discussion.

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#important#consider#kind#under#others#brain#set#genetic#baseline#more

Discussion (4 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

317070•about 4 hours ago
I think that important in this context is to consider Polgar's experiments on his own daughters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

This one is for the bucket "Geniuses are made, not born", and kind of supports the thesis that early habits are important.

> The experiment began in 1970 "with a simple premise: that any child has the innate capacity to become a genius in any chosen field, as long as education starts before their third birthday and they begin to specialize at six."

Another point the author misses is the medical trajectory. If you have ever done math under viral fatigue or low blood sugar, you can appreciate that many people probably operate their whole life under what others would consider "brain fog".

hudmal•about 2 hours ago
A set of [humans] start with a genetic baseline that allows them to more naturally jump higher or throw a ball faster than others. This is an indisputable fact. A different set have a more baseline genetic natural ability in other intellectual domains. This is also a fact.
readthenotes1•about 3 hours ago
And doesn't conflict with the conjecture that heredity sets boundaries on what can be achieved...
tancop•about 2 hours ago
And that doesn't conflict with the possibility that some combination of explicit mental training, meditation, psychedelics or other chemical and biological agents can permanently expand those boundaries.

If intelligence comes from neural connections it might be enough to spam compounds that create a lot of new ones and then do exercise to reinforce them while the unused connection naturally decay. A kind of simulated annealing for the brain. If you don't get smarter on the first try you might be able to repeat the process until it works. You only need to get it once.

I think a lot of us are stuck with the idea that something that is fixed in nature will always be fixed even after we try to change it.