The Mirage of the Gifted Child

I find amusing the: "IQ is inherited/its geneticslly related" argument. If you study all the factors that shape an individual (socio-economic status, environment, dietary habits, etc), you can see the impact those factors have on an individual. For instance, if toddlers consume excesive sugar around 3 years old, it has been observed that around 8-9 years they have lower IQ than their peers that have a more healty diet. Not just that, we now know about the microbiota-gut-brain axis, and we know how our mood affect our performance in everything we do.

If individuals are exposed to different environments, there are likely to learn more things. This is only possible if you have the means (usually money) to acces those new and different environments.

What about Quality of life? If you struggle to meet your basic needs, then its more likely that you will strugle in everything else.

If you present this facts to people, most of the time they would agree. But if you use this information to discuss IQ, a lot of people, including experts, would dismiss them in favor of the genetics argument.

The article does a good job debunking the myth, however, as the article says, the issue is systemic and I think that it can't be solved because it is not about the intelligence of individuals, we need to solve the issues related to the factors that affects an indivdual. Intelligence is a subproduct of an individual's development. And this makes feel less special to people that have some social privileges.