[fmora]

This my response to all the people that have disagreed with me and have asked me for proof. There have been studies like "The Bell Curve" book were they attempt to demonstrate how intelligence varies among people. You can read more about the book here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

Basically it supports the view of many people here that there are great variations of intelligence among people. An article that counteracts this type of belief to some degree is this one:

http://minority-health.pitt.edu/archive/00000515/01/Intellig...

I'm not trying to make this a talk about race but unfortunately these are the closest things I could find that talk about human intelligence overall.

As a young person I used to believe that some students in my class were really indeed smarter than most of us. They always seemed to get good grades. I used to think that you were either smart or not and that there was nothing you could do about it. As a young mind thinking like this was very destructive. Who knows how I got out of it but I finally discovered in high school that just by studying regularly I could achieve good grades even if I were not smart. That I could get as good grades as the smartest kids in class and that sometimes I was "the smart kid". Though I knew that it was only because of the hard work I put in. I've seen a lot of friends doing really bad at school and that once they started putting some real work their grades started to improve. The only time that I've seen work made no difference was with kids that had mental disabilities.

Eventually by reading the biographies of several successful people like Buffet, Edison, Einstein, Newton, Trump, Galileo and books like "All The Money In The World" by Peter W. Bernstein And Annalyn Swan I came to the conclusion that what really makes the difference is hard work. All of the successful people that I read about had one thing in common, they worked really hard to become successful.

I have to admit that I'm still highly surprised that people would disagree with me on this one. I'm still in shock. I know I'm going to get down voted for this but I'm highly suspicious that a lot of people like to believe that some people are smarter than others to make themselves feel special. Honestly I think is complete B.S. and I'm calling you guys out on this one. You guys are all full of B.S. Most human beings posses the same level of intelligence.

Thinking that only some people are smart enough to do certain things is like poison. I certainly do not want to be around people that think like that since if you do they will poison you too. And yes, I won't let let door hit me on the way out.

[rimantas]

You did not read all the books not written about millions of people who did hard work and were not successful anyway. You are also mixing different things there — success ant intelligence. Do you feel you are smarter than us saying we are full of BS? Is that the best argument to support your point of view you can get?

[wazoox]

Well it's quite a complex problem really. It's pretty much obvious that some people run faster, some others swim faster, some see better, etc. On average, some people of a given origin perform slightly better on a particular task ( west african at running) in a way not related to the environment (they don't train differently).

Obviously this difference is extremely slim (though enough to make a difference when looking only at the very end of the bell curve, for instance 100-meters world-class runners). It exists nonetheless.

I don't see that there aren't similar differences between individuals in intellectual abilities, emotional, etc. I, for instance, never ever worked at school. Not once, up until 15 or so. Up until late in high school, I was usually the smart guy, the best in class, doing absolutely nothing out of the classroom. My friends who were working as little as I did (sitting next to me in the back of the class, laughing at my jokes, etc) where very bad performers, with notes half mine or less.

Unfortunately, my utter laziness and lack of discipline got me after some time. I'm almost unable to work at anything that doesn't genuinely interest me. That's why I'll probably be unable to ever get a college degree, because you need to at least attend the most annoying courses, and I just couldn't.

At some point, for the hardest problems (or to be top-world-class) you'll need to be both gifted and hard working. At the same time. See Edison, Einstein, Newton, etc.