<p>OK one last item. It’s always in the context of intellectual ability/achievement where people are unwilling to put any type of stringent limits. </p>
<p>In physical strength, athletic ability, memorization, musical acumen, etc, everyone agrees that work ethic can significantly improve one’s ability. But people don’t generally make analogous statements as offered in this thread regarding intelligence. If an individual is in his high school band and is 5th chair, but in the top band at the school. So he’s good, but nothing to write home about. The instructors isn’t going to encourage him to practice as much as he can because if he does so, he’ll have a shot at All-State. Come on, that would be mean. I could give a million other situations similiar to that one. One more for good measure then. A guy is 25 years old and weighs 150 lbs and is very skinny with barely any musculature. He goes to a trainer and says give me 10 years of extensive training, nutrition, etc (no steroids of which there’s no equivalent for intelligence, well not yet) and after that’s over, I want to be 200 lbs, with minimal fat gain. The trainer would discourage such unfettered ambition. Maybe the guy can gain 20 lbs, but with his genetics, significant muscle gain is unattainable.</p>
<p>Yet with intelligence, we’re always so unwilling to say the exact same thing.</p>