[leisuresuit]

I don't think it's quite that simple. You're probably born with a base level of intelligence that you can improve to a certain level.

It's like with chess. As you play, you get better and better until you plateau, and that becomes your rank.

[whacked_new]

As I have wrote in response to this article: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=18973

You need to be careful in using the word "intelligence," because it means different things to different people. Paul's post doesn't explicitly address this, but he doesn't need to. The point is the "I can improve" attitude can strongly influence your chances of success.

You are born not with a base level of "intelligence." You are born with natural tendencies to excel at certain domains. You can be an excellent mathematician but find poetry opaque. In that case your Chess analogy holds. Where the tendency isn't immediately obvious though, is where hard work is the determining factor. Some people never seem to hit plateaus, but for those who do, it's the effort that pushes you across it. This is very well investigated by KA Ericsson; it's called "deliberate practice" or something, and the theory is actually quite simple.

Also, brain connections are malleable after adulthood, albeit less dramatic than those of kids, but significant enough to turn an OCD patient into a normal person. Jeffrey Schwartz if you're interested.

man, i kinda miss reading this stuff.

[nostrademons]

I look at it this way:

Intelligence is nothing more or less than a certain set of behaviors. Things like curiosity, experimentation, analysis & reflection, precision of thought, voracious reading, etc. It's genetic because behavior is genetic. But genetic != immutable: it's possible to change your intelligence by changing your behavior.

It's really habits that matter. Somebody could be born predisposed towards learning lots of things, and then gradually become unintelligent because they believe it just doesn't matter. Or they could be born frighteningly intelligent and then gradually go crackpot by falling victim to confirmation bias and only seeking out information that fits their pre-existing mental models (Noam Chomsky and Stephen Wolfram fit this description, and IMNSHO a prominent YC founder is in danger of going down this road). Or they could be born normal, but have parents that encourage them to try things out and explore the world around them. Or they could be born dumb, but choose to adopt habits that involve taking in prodigious amounts of information.