Nature/Nurture, Genius and Talent

[Efbe]

RobM77 said:

Efbe said:

Interesting regarding the Russians, and quite correct. The genome is obviously going to be a huge impact on your physique.
This has no bearing on the brain however, well not for a specific talent anyhow.

Surely though our mental abilities have evolved just as our physical abilities have? Natural selection is responsible for everything. Each talent, whether it be driving fast or playing chess, has a series of mental traits that contribute to success in it. There may not be a set of 'driving genes', but surely there must be sets of genes that determine ability in judgement, multi-tasking, spatial awareness, sense of balance, courage, confidence etc? I'd be fairly sure that a 5 year old Lewis Hamilton would have beaten a 5 year old RobM77 in tests of those traits. The story of human evolution is as much about the brain as it is the body.

Rob

As popeye has briefly mentioned above, there is no evidence your genome can have any impact on your talents, which are created through the links(synapses) created between your neurons (synaptogenesis) after you are conceived.

there is a study looking into the effects of your genome and the speed of synapse speed/reaction which in it's early stages indicates a potential for differences, which would be expected, as this has provided part of the route of evolution.
The main part of evolution however is the number of neurons in your brain, this is where we differ from primates, dogs and Donald trump. However though you may expect more neurons would give you an adge over someone else, this is not the case, due to a relatively small variation in neuron numbers between humans, there is no correlation between neuron numbers and intelligence.

So potentially synapse speed could affect overall intelligence, this is an emerging field, though indicative results show the difference created would not be meaningful to impact intelligence. However conclusions cannot be drawn here yet. However neuron number does not. (brain size is a function of this, but it gets more complicated, because the more you use it, the bigger it gets due to supporting structures)

This could mean the concept of IQ being innate is rubbish too

[RobM77]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inte...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

[RobM77]

All I'm saying is that due to evolution's influence on behaviour, it surely must follow that behaviour is genetically determined, genetically variable and heritable - those are the pre-requisites of any evolutionary trait are they not? That's a supposition, not a proven fact of course. It seems logical to me.