Intelligence

I met the parent of a friend recently and it really got me wondering about hereditary traits and the one that really got me was whether or not people can be born with a ‘natural’ intelligence.

‘Natural’ Intelligence
It didn’t take too long for me to recognise that this isn’t really what would happen whether intelligence levels are hereditary or not because to the best of my knowledge nobody has ever given birth to an intelligent baby. It’s got to be noted than by intelligence there I actually mean something more along the lines of knowledge. So I decided that you probably don’t have facts about the world passed down to you from your parents genes and that you’re not born intelligent but then I moved on to think about something else.

The Ability to Learn
As I said, I don’t believe that anybody has ever given birth to a knowledgable baby but I’m more than sure that there are some babies that learn a hell of a lot faster than others, perhaps giving off an impression of being intelligent without actually having that intelligence but just a faster learning ability. That quickly led me onto maturity but I’m going to leave that for another time. Assuming that some children learn faster than others, how is it that they come to do so? Is it a part of their genetic code that was gained from their parents or is it something that they have learned to do? The latter of these two options seems far too circular for me so I’ve come to the conclusion that there is probably some genetic ability to learn, which moved me onto my final point, for this post anyway.

Why Are There Stupid People?
Now if my ponderings have any holding at all and that the ability to learn is hereditary then why do in every day life we find the general public to be so dense. Is it because the stupid gene is dominant? If this is the case then I wonder what went wrong in evolution to encourage it. Or is it that there is more than just a stupid/smart distinction. Perhaps there is another category, the one that certain individuals fall into that makes the actually smart general public appear to actually belong to the stupid category.

~ by pyrhus on January 18, 2009.