Attention is all we have: A conjectural theory of cognitive inequality(davidbessis.substack.com)
20 pointsby rzk9 hours ago1 comment
  • 3170708 hours ago
    I think that important in this context is to consider Polgar's experiments on his own daughters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

    This one is for the bucket "Geniuses are made, not born", and kind of supports the thesis that early habits are important.

    > The experiment began in 1970 "with a simple premise: that any child has the innate capacity to become a genius in any chosen field, as long as education starts before their third birthday and they begin to specialize at six."

    Another point the author misses is the medical trajectory. If you have ever done math under viral fatigue or low blood sugar, you can appreciate that many people probably operate their whole life under what others would consider "brain fog".

    • hudmal7 hours ago
      A set of [humans] start with a genetic baseline that allows them to more naturally jump higher or throw a ball faster than others. This is an indisputable fact. A different set have a more baseline genetic natural ability in other intellectual domains. This is also a fact.
      • 3170704 hours ago
        These facts are absolutely disputable, in the sense that they might be very theoretically sensible, but not relevant in practice.

        What good is a "genetic natural ability" that is theoretically there, when it cannot be extracted from the statistical noise. Not just for the person itself, but also for the parents.

        The nature vs nurture debate is really hard because the data is so hard to get and disentangle. And that actually leads to another conclusion, that no matter where the truth falls, this "genetic predisposition" property only observable on big populations doesn't matter on the individual level in terms of decision making. And even on the population-level decision making it might not be relevant.

        If an effect is too weak to measure, it's too weak to base decisions on.

    • readthenotes18 hours ago
      And doesn't conflict with the conjecture that heredity sets boundaries on what can be achieved...
      • tancop7 hours ago
        And that doesn't conflict with the possibility that some combination of explicit mental training, meditation, psychedelics or other chemical and biological agents can permanently expand those boundaries.

        If intelligence comes from neural connections it might be enough to spam compounds that create a lot of new ones and then do exercise to reinforce them while the unused connection naturally decay. A kind of simulated annealing for the brain. If you don't get smarter on the first try you might be able to repeat the process until it works. You only need to get it once.

        I think a lot of us are stuck with the idea that something that is fixed in nature will always be fixed even after we try to change it.