[jewelry]

intelligence is a lottery at birth, assuming the education system is good enough at identify talents of all kind. and with the world especially Asian countries better at this, I think we do need more human to maintain the current talents pool.

[stephc_int13]

It is not.

There is a part of genetics, like most things, but if you look at past geniuses, there is a common pattern, wealthy enough families able to afford tutors.

Tutoring is what makes geniuses, not lottery.

[vunderba]

No, it certainly does not. Obviously, a higher socioeconomic background means increased resources and dedicated attention to education which certainly helps, but genius, in the true sense of the word needs a good starting foundation, and that probably has a significant genetic component.

Nikola Tesla, Einstein, Ramanujan were all child prodigies without exceptional access to tutors and other educational resources.

If tutoring could produce geniuses (160 IQ) we would have a billion dollar industry around it instead of snake oil companies like Luminosity.

[throwaway047278]

Einstein actually did have a tutor (Max Talmey). Any access to tutors at the time was exceptional, as the majority of families could not afford that.

Einstein was also raised in a family that can not be described as average.

His father had an interest in mathematics and founded 2 electrical engineering companies

His mother was well-educated and worked as a piano player. She made Albert begin violin lessons at the age of five.

It seems to me that Albert Einstein did not grow up under average conditions. His family had some financial issues, but was able to give him a good education.

[savingsPossible]

> His father had an interest in mathematics and founded 2 electrical engineering companies

I am not saying that you are wrong, but this might not be evidence for a 'nurture' hypothesis as opposed to a 'nature' one.

[stephc_int13]

The only reason that tutoring is not more widely used is because it has scaling issues.

You need one very experienced, patient and skilled tutor for each kid. The cost would be unbearable except for the wealthiest families.

And of course, while it will consistently improve the skills and mental abilities of the tutored kid, it won't produce a genius every time, there are many out-of-control factors, including genetics but also related to early life, bacteria and viruses infections can slow/stunt the growth of an immature body, and impact all its functions.

[em-bee]

i don't agree with the genetic argument but with your other point.

producing geniuses is not a billion dollar industry because we don't yet even know how to teach to that. but that doesn't mean that we could not improve teaching and peoples potential massively.

china used to have a billion dollar tutoring industry (ok, i don't know if it was a billion, but china is huge so it's possible) until a change of laws shut it down.

but this chinese tutoring industry was not aimed at producing geniuses. instead it was aimed at exploiting parents, extracting their money without providing any real value except putting pressure on the children to perform.

that's why it was shut down.

[mensetmanusman]

It was aimed at improving performance on state mandated standardized tests. They were effective, but if everyone did them, the curve was just shifted and no one seemed to benefit in particular (but society is arguably better off if everyone is higher IQ).

[em-bee]

that was what they were selling, but apart from the problem of everyone doing it, there were also many shady operations to outright scams that never even intended to provide the value they promised.

[collyw]

It seems fairly obvious that there is a genetic element to intelligence, otherwise animals would be as intelligent as humans.

[em-bee]

yes, but this only goes as far as being able to explain the difference between humans and other animals. it doesn't at all explain the differences between different humans because other factors are so strong that so far we have not been able to isolate genetic differences as a factor in human intelligence. even twin studies have been flawed in this regard.

[sokoloff]

If we had to wager whether there was any genetic component to intelligence differences among humans, I think the safe wager is on “there is some” over “there is none”.

[thwarted]

producing geniuses is not a billion dollar industry

The concept of producing a specific kind of human being an industry or not is like something out of "A Brave New World".

[em-bee]

exactly this.

the potential of humanity is largely underutilized. the reason we need geniuses now is because our current way of teaching is not enabling peoples potential as well as it could. it doesn't even take individual tutoring. better teaching methods such as montessori, project based learning, smaller groups (say a 10 to 1 ratio in class compared to the 50 to 1 ratio i see in china and other countries i have visited) would be a massive increase in the quality of education creating a potential way beyond what a doubling of the number of geniuses could ever achieve.

[savingsPossible]

research is mixed about small class sizes (maybe 1 in 10 as you said, on 1 in 5, would be beneficial but there is very little difference between 1 in 20 and 1 in 50). Not a rebuttal, just adding some info

[Jensson]

Lots of people get tutored without becoming geniuses, hence tutoring isn't enough to make geniuses. Also many geniuses didn't have tutoring, they need wealthy enough families to afford public school which used to be a high bar but today most people gets it even if you include poor countries.

[sokoloff]

> they need wealthy enough families to afford public school

Note that what the UK origin term “public schools” means is not the same as what that means in other countries, which can confuse these discussions in a global forum. (In the US, we’d call that “private school”.)

[rtz121]

I could just as well argue that those families have better genetic material and that is why they are wealthy.