[rowanG077]

> In case of losing weight, it very much does. You don't even need to do anything, you need to not eat (as much). Given high heritability of obesity it may very well be that some genetic configurations make it harder to stop eating. Plenty of studies show that most fail at dieting. Statistically speaking, it may be impossible to lose weight for most. So if you don't believe in even soft free will, you may as well conclude it is in fact impossible for these people to lose weight.

That's way too much black and white thinking. It's pretty safe to say most obese people would like to lose weight. They just don't want to sacrifice the things they are doing, either consciously or subconsciously. This is orthogonal to free will. What you are talking about is the whether the conscious mind can win over the subconscious mind. That's called discipline. Not free will.

[auganov]

That's fine we can call it discipline (which some in the weight loss debate believe is impossible to cultivate, not myself). The point is, if there is indeed a conceptually simple way to increase intelligence, there's no inherent contradiction in most being unable to do it and statistical evidence looking the way it does.