[nl]

Yes, environment counts but if you give everyone their own personal most ideal environment, they will all taper off at an intelligence level that is determined by their genetics.

You say this like it's a fact, but I'm not aware of anything showing this.

Indeed, some studies show that motivation is a much bigger factor than the genetic effects shown here.

For example [1] discusses a study where they paid people to motivate them to do well in IQ tests:

Duckworth's team found that the average effect was 0.64 (which is equivalent to nearly 10 points on the IQ scale of 100), and remained higher than 0.5 even when three studies with unusually high g values were thrown out. Moreover, the effect of financial rewards on IQ scores increased dramatically the higher the reward: Thus rewards higher than $10 produced g values of more than 1.6 (roughly equivalent to more than 20 IQ points), whereas rewards of less than $1 were only one-tenth as effective.

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/04/what-does-iq-really-m...

[pixl97]

So what you're saying is, if I pay you enough you'll become a genius?