Zim,
I don't care to go on and on about this, but (unless I am mistaken) you seem to be over attached to to a belief that IQ tests are nonsense and, perhaps, that fundamental intellectual CAPACITY isn't an inheritable trait?
This research article argues that current IQ tests are imperfect: http://medcraveonline.com/JNSK/factors-influencing-intelligence-quotient.html
excerpt: "IQ tests generally are reliable enough that most people ages ten and older have similar IQ scores throughout life.3 But some individuals score very differently when taking the same test at different times or when taking more than one kind of IQ test at the same age. It has been noted that 25% of assessed individuals will obtain a 10-point IQ score difference with another IQ battery. Even though not all studies indicate significant discrepancies between intelligence batteries at the group level the absence of differences at the individual level cannot be automatically assumed.4 Variations in IQ scores are based on an individual’s specific knowledge, vocabulary, expressive language and memory skills, visual special abilities, fine motor coordination and perceptual skills. Moreover ones emotional anxiety, tension and unfamiliarity with the testing process can also influence the IQ score5 Many children in the famous longitudinal Genetic Studies of Genius begun in 1921 by Lewis Terman showed declines in IQ as they grew up."
The point I am trying to make is that different people DO have different, biophysical brain capacities. I am not arguing that current tests are perfect, and it only makes sense that we all have better and worse times for thinking, as with any skill. However, something like an SAT test is QUITE different from an IQ test designed to measure fundamental thinking skill+speed.
I am all in favor of better techniques for using what intelligence you have, but the fact remains that certain individuals and families tend to rise to the top in effectively ALL competitions, in school or out, and much of this doesn't seem very related to prior "schooling" in the subject.
For example, some people can memorize visual information almost as if they have a photographic memory. Other people can barely visualize anything. Some of the people who can visualize well can actually take a complicated image (like a complicated organic molecule or a diagram) and manipulate / extrapolate from it in their head, while others cannot. Great organic chemists, architects, and geologists all have this ability to an uncommon degree.
Other people can listen to a stream of random sounds and reproduce it hours later on a piano, or do something similar.
Other people have incredible facility to "intuitively" deal with complex mathematics, which shows up pretty much spontaneously and, often, with very little formal prior applicable study. Consider https://theconversation.com/the-man-who-taught-infinity-how-gh-hardy-tamed-srinivasa-ramanujans-genius-57585 and try to tell us that ramanujans had some sort of "better education", better health, more money, or "white privilege".
Other people have an incredible facility with words such that they can pick up a completely new foreign language in matter of weeks, while most of us take years for decades.
If these are teachable skills, I'd like you to point me to ANY school which teaches them. It is THESE sorts of skills which IQ tests attempt to measure. And the measurement is a comparison to other large pools of people, using sophisticated statistical techniques to analyze.
Anyway, what you seem to be arguing for doesn't at the end of the day hold up very well.
While there are unquestionably differences in different intellectual base skills, such that a GENERALIZED IQ measurement will always fail to fully capture that some people have more neuronal capacity in one type of brain function vs. another, the truth is that people who score significantly higher on general IQ tests than others tend to rise to the top in ANY discipline where they invest their time.
Please don't tell me that Roger Penrose just had a better education and better nutrition:
"It is quite surprising to know that Penrose was not always the brilliant man he is today. After winning the Nobel prize, in an interview, he revealed:Â "I was always very slow. I was good at maths, yes, but I didn't necessarily do very well in my tests."
Genius family – There also was added pressure due to the fact that he was born in the Penrose family, a family of artists, scientists and chess players.
Penrose's paternal grandfather was a famous portrait artist while his maternal grandfather was a physiologist and an early biochemist.
His father Lionel was a geneticist whose interests extended well beyond his profession and included such fields as geometry and chess, which he often shared with his children.
No surprise that Penrose's older brother went on to become a distinguished physicist himself. The younger brother and sister became Chess grandmaster and geneticist respectively.
In summary, maybe I don't quite get the point you are trying to make, and I acknowledge that there is some room for improvement in current IQ tests to better estimate fundamental BRAIN CAPACITY (number of neurons, number of interconnections, speed of signals, capacity of short and long term memory circuits, etc.). But it's not credible that better education, or even better nurture in general, significantly explains differences in general intelligence. Lots of people would like to prove the opposite, and they would doubtless be world celebrated if they could. So it isn't for lack of TRYING that we are left with genetics as the primary contributor to general, and even specialized, intelligence.
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