You need to be careful in using the word "intelligence," because it means different things to different people. Paul's post doesn't explicitly address this, but he doesn't need to. The point is the "I can improve" attitude can strongly influence your chances of success.
You are born not with a base level of "intelligence." You are born with natural tendencies to excel at certain domains. You can be an excellent mathematician but find poetry opaque. In that case your Chess analogy holds. Where the tendency isn't immediately obvious though, is where hard work is the determining factor. Some people never seem to hit plateaus, but for those who do, it's the effort that pushes you across it. This is very well investigated by KA Ericsson; it's called "deliberate practice" or something, and the theory is actually quite simple.
Also, brain connections are malleable after adulthood, albeit less dramatic than those of kids, but significant enough to turn an OCD patient into a normal person. Jeffrey Schwartz if you're interested.
You need to be careful in using the word "intelligence," because it means different things to different people. Paul's post doesn't explicitly address this, but he doesn't need to. The point is the "I can improve" attitude can strongly influence your chances of success.
You are born not with a base level of "intelligence." You are born with natural tendencies to excel at certain domains. You can be an excellent mathematician but find poetry opaque. In that case your Chess analogy holds. Where the tendency isn't immediately obvious though, is where hard work is the determining factor. Some people never seem to hit plateaus, but for those who do, it's the effort that pushes you across it. This is very well investigated by KA Ericsson; it's called "deliberate practice" or something, and the theory is actually quite simple.
Also, brain connections are malleable after adulthood, albeit less dramatic than those of kids, but significant enough to turn an OCD patient into a normal person. Jeffrey Schwartz if you're interested.
man, i kinda miss reading this stuff.