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<p>yes that’s true - the Internet allows people to have more such venues to explore (hence why some psychologist said that variance due to environment decreases as opportunity increases). I suppose that the “top few percentiles of ability” is a vaguely defined term - although it does seem to apply for the majority of individuals who are inquisitive enough to have the self-initiative to read anything scientific. It may just be that I don’t find most of my social interactions particularly rewarding so I only know of few people - and those are those who are at the top few percentiles of academic standing (there are many errors - but I still tend to think that the correlation is positive and somewhat significant - at the level of 0.5ish). There are definitely exceptions to this rule - and I don’t use IQ tests as a way to measure that - given Feynman’s IQ of 126, Watson’s of 124, and Shockley’s of 125.</p>
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<p>That’s true for individuals - but if entire groups of people haven’t picked up any books - that certainly does speak for lack of interest/motivation (given the variation in behavior that people have in pursuing their interest).</p>
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<p>I think one of the main issues is that a lot of people have difficulty distinguishing between ability and motivation - or just use one word to describe the two (either “gifted” or “highly motivated” - but rarely some conglomerate of the two). I do believe that intelligence does make a difference - it’s just that it’s not easily measurable.</p>