[yelsgib]

This is a good point. I agree that my feeling smarter does not actually mean that I am smarter. I -do- produce a lot more, but this could be due to other factors.

I think you're hitting very close to the important issue here which is that all of this is very difficult to define/think about without a really good idea of what sorts of computations our brains perform.

My point isn't really so much that I think it can change, even, it's that we should be way more skeptical when it comes to making claims about subtle concepts like these. Usually I find that those who say "we are only really growing intellectually until we're 5" have a very limited and kind of rigid conception of intelligence.