[47uF]

Why is the idea of innate IQ still taken seriously if there's so little evidence for it? If intelligence is just the ability to think in a structured abstract way, doesn't it make sense to think of it as a skill developed over time? I mean, it's not hard to think of spending most of your time in a different mode of thought. I'd say that for most people their normal day to day tends to require concrete or social/emotional information processing.

If it seems that intelligence (specifically abstract structured thought) seems to stabilize early in life, maybe it's something that starts developing even earlier. A strategy for prioritizing, filtering, and processing information from a world of endless stimuli (of which abstract/structured would be only one such strategy) would start developing the moment we're born. By the time you're 10, you'd already have 10 years of "practice".

[lumberjack]

You are confusing things.

First and foremost you don't need evidence to look for evidence. A hypothesis is enough.

Secondly, there is evidence that IQ is at least in part genetic. There is no other way to explain geniuses, child prodigies, and mentally retarded individuals whose environments vary greatly.

[Evbn]

Sure there is: chemical exposure balance or random variation in the uterine or infant environment.

Fetal alcohol syndrome reliably retards kids, and it isn't genetically inherited. Hypothetically, maybe something like adderall works in utero with lifelong effects.

Also, hypothesis formation should be motivated by data, or else you are wasting time searching through an exponential space with 0 probability of finding a correct one.