Why do some people have extremely high intelligence?

Why do some people have extremely high intelligence (very high IQ)? And by high I mean far more than the average intelligence.

For example, look at chess world champion Gary Kasparov. He defeated the supercomputer Deep Blue in 1996 and almost defeated it again in 1997. Also look at expert chess engine programmers who design highly intelligent chess playing algorithms.

All these people are highly intelligent, much more than those who have more physical strength abilities like athletes or football players.

So what causes it?

 

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Evolution

 

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So if it's evolution then why are some people much more evolved than others by qualities such as intelligence or resilience and physical strength? I mean shouldn't evolutionary forces make everyone equally evolved?

I mean some humans are clearly superior to others in certain physical and mental qualities.

 

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Evolution is something that happens by chance. If we as a species were more selective in how we breed we would see more rapid evolution. But instead we have political correctness and emotions which are not so evolved. These emotions cloud the judgement of the otherwise intelligent and so they fall in love with stupid people. Make babies and therefore stagnate the evolutionary progress.Now if we somehow find a way to suppress emotion and rely on pure logic to make our decisions,including who we breed with then evolution rate will increase. But worry not, often the stupid remove themselves from the gene pool before they get a chance to breed. Look up the Darwin awards for some very fun examples of the Darwin affect in action.

disclaimer: These are merely my speculative opinions and should not be taken as expert advice or professional claims. There are others in this forum who will undoubtedly give far more intellectually valid explanations than I have.

 

You'd also have to ask what causes intelligence in the first place- a question which has no solid answer as of yet.

Consider the Brain. It has all these folds- the deeper the folds, or more convoluted, the smarter the brain. The smoother the brain is, the less intellect it has.
This is one factor in intelligence, that is probably influenced by other factors.
Those factors can include:
Nutrition and diet
Nurturing and education (Stimulating the brain)
Genetic disposition (genes to form a brain with heavy folds- less smooth - your evolution dollars at work)
Society and Environment (stimulation of the brain from your peers)

Obviously, the evolutionary traits of Genetics will be the first step, as it's the most basic. Your hereditary genes will determine how your brain will form right off the bat. Sometime after you're born, your parents may get over the initial shock and decide to do something about you. If so, they'll try to stimulate your brain, giving you puzzles (Blocks etc) as a baby to play with. Reading to a child, encouraging thought, questions and research and the like. Even so, they will still get tired of having you around and eventually will appeal to the public educational system to offer them a daily break.
In school, your brain will receive further stimulation. The better the stimulation (Harder the classes), the smarter you will be.
You begin to make friends with the trekkies, chess club champs and school journal (NERDS!) and they, as your own little society and environment, influence you with heavy talks on politics, physics, chemistry and art.
Taking a break from the intellectual stuff, you click on the T.V., needing a good laugh, and watch things like Mitchell and Webb, Rickey Gervais, Eddie Izzard. Society and environment- all working toward developing you into a critical thinker, scientific and well rounded individual- Brain being incessantly hungry, gobbles it up and can never get full.
Speaking of gobbling, you eat a diet high in proteins, steaks and shakes, hoping to gain muscle mass to overcome the nerd appearance and woo the popular school bimbo. Fortunately, those efforts fail (She was a ditz), but you did give your brain a healthy upbringing of proteins to help it have the nutrients needed to develop stronger connections.

All of this leads to developing a strong intellect. Engage in heavy intellectual pursuits and apply at NASA.
Congratulations, you've successfully done your duty for high end living- having fattened your brain up as Prime Filet Mignon for the next coming zombie hoard.

Sidenote- Look up William Sidas.

 

Some people clearly have superhuman abilities while others are just born normal people. These people are not very far away from what you see in X-Men and the Terminator franchise in their aptitudes.

Some people who play chess are almost superhuman and the world champions also earn millions of dollars after every world championship.

 

That's super rich, not super human.

 

Genetics have something to with intelligence but not always. There are many different forms of intelligence such as those who can design things better than anyone else or those who can invent things that no others can come up with.

The main thing always to remember is that those with gifts that enable them to have been given those unique abilities to always help those who didn't have that opportunity for whatever reasons. The strong should help the weak overcome problems and not use their abilities to "get ahead" of others to become above the fray , so to say.

 

Correct Answer:

Many animal lovers will notice Mixed Breed dogs seem more intelligent than Purebreds. This occurs because often purebreds with a bad breeder will breed dogs too closely related.

Now look at Humans.
Why are Brothers and Sisters forbidden to Marry?
Apart from moral/biblical reasons incest can cause birth defects, and can affect the Intelligence of the offspring in a similar manner.
A typical human is a carrier for dozens of deleterious and even lethal recessive mutations. However, he is unlikely to mate with anyone who is a carrier of the same mutations. Therefore, it's unlikely that his children will wind up being homozygous for any of the recessive mutations.

Incest increases the probability that both partners will be carriers of the same recessive mutations. Therefore, the probability that their offspring will wind up being homozygous for at least one recessive mutation goes up.

So DNA as far away from your own family genes would help increase Intelligence in a child in my opinion. An interracial child is likely to have a higher degree of intelligence in my opinion. (Like Obama Black Dad/ White Mom).

I had not seen this argument put forth yet here entirely. Genetics has been mentioned, but inbreeding has not yet been covered as a topic.

Supporting evidence is available in large quantities. This is fact.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC392897/

Having said that. There could be any pairing that results in a freak of nature genius. If I were attempting to breed genius however, I would start by pairing couples born thousands of miles apart, and possibly of different ethnic backgrounds.

Armenian mother and Russian Jewish father might be a good choices as they created Gary Kasparov from the Opening Post.

 

Klingon... hell...
I'd marry a Deltan.

 

Well I envie the vulcans and wish I could suppress my emotions so that pure logic would be easier to recognize and exercise. I admit I have an account on star trek online. the mmorpg. My character is vulcan and I am a science officer/captain of my vessel. But all my tactical officers are andorian. I prefer andorians over klingon because the seem to be slightly less rash. They are very battle proud but they tend to recognize the time to withdraw a bit sooner than klingons who have a fascination with dying in battle, even if it is not strategic. Also andorians are just easier to look at.

If neverfly and I were anything other than human, I'd see me as more vulcan-like and him more andorian-like. And we do balance each other quite well.

 

@ Fraggle Rock,
Letting love go with incest is fine, but will reduce the intelligence of the offspring. You can claim that inbreeding is a norm all you like, but you are ignoring scientific evidence that shows drops in intelligence related to inbreeding. You seem to be posting fanciful thinking against fact. I did support a link in support of my claim which you failed to comment on. There is way too much supporting evidence behind my stance. Maybe Klingons dislike losing arguments, but if you are attempting to breed intelligence I'd stay away from inbreeding.

Since you avoided clicking on my link and prefer to make up your own facts I will try copy/paste instead.

If you still prefer your imaginings over fact I will be happy to bury this thread with facts regarding Intelligence and Genealogy.

I did say that freaks of nature can occur and even people with small IQ's are capable of acts of genius (see Forest Gump), but that is not the normal result.

 

Uh oh.... you dun did it now. Neverfly, don't take too well to being called a Trekkie. It may do ya sum good to head fer the hills.

 

Well, I'm not a trekkie, either, but I did see Star Trek the motion picture. When I was a little kid!
Funny how you say that but then turn around and say this:

A taste of your own medicine?


When Star Trek debuted, you were shopping Montgomery Wards for practical and comfortable cover-alls.
You know what I was doing when Star Trek came out? Nothing- because I wasn't born to the path of OLD yet.
I was slamming home runs when you were trying to figure out which pill to pop for your geriatrics.
When people ask you who William Shatner was, you say, "That young whippersnapper who played Capt. Kirk."
People ask me who he was and I say, "He's that OLD guy."

<Snarl> mmrph urgh gobblesnarf
Where's my hunting gear? I need to go kill something.

 

At that time or possibly before shit hit the fan. Generally, every dumb decision I have ever made in my life was made based on my emotions rather than logic. When I get logical and practical, the outcome of my decisions are far easier to accept and are usually much better in every way.

I learned about Andorians while watching Enterprise, the latest series of Star Trek. IMO, its the best series because it is set in the early formation of the Federation so they don't have transporters yet.

 

They had transporters, they just didn't like them nor use them very often at all. There were a few incidents where they needed to such as in episode...

Aww hell... Damnit. Damnit. Damnit.

 

The incest debate seems to come up again & again. There are always those who claim that incest/inbreeding is inherentlly detrimental. They do not recognize that it is a probability issue. Here are some rational thoughts on the subject.

There is very little, if any, evidence that incest itself results in low intelligence. Incest (at least in modern times) occurs in families with other problems: Parents who are potentially neurotic/psycotic; Parents who have limited intelligence/education; Families which are poor. At least some (if not many) of the examples of incest leading to impaired intelligence are due to malnutrition and/or mistreatement of the child during its early development.

Note that Cleopatra was the result of 4 or more generations of brother sister marriages. History does not tell of inferior intelligence or serious health problems.

The classic example of the royal families of Europe (The Hapsburgs, I think) resulted in a very high percentage of children born with Hemophilia. There is no record of impaired intelligence in that family.

Incest/inbreeding increases the probability of paired recessive genes (or gene groups). If the recessive genes are detrimental, that is bad. If the recessive genes are beneficial, that is good.

If asked how to breed for high intelligence, I would opt for incest involving people with known intelligence (This, of course, assumes that we have some method of selecting such people). I would expect better results from mother/son & father daughter breedings than from brother/sister pairings. I would expect pairing of intelligent siblings to result in a higher than average number of intelligent children. Obviously, there is an increased probability of children with medical or emotional problems due to the pairing of detrimental recessive genes. Equally obvious is that you take the problem children out of the program & breed the more intelligent ones.

German sheperds & standard poodles are very intelligent dogs. It is my guess that early in the breeding of these dogs, there were some bad results due to pairing of detrimental recessive genes. Those dogs were not used for further breeding. Thoroughbred horses & dogs are obviously extremely similar at the genetic level. Breeding two such dogs is almost equivalent to breeding brothers/sisters.​

Most people have moral/ethical objections to inbreeding which distort their view of the issue.

To me, the main moral/ethical issue relates to informed consent. A parent or older sibling can easily dominate the younger person. It is anaolgous to pedophilia, which is not detrimental if viewed as a genetic issue.

BTW: For long term survival of a species, genetic diversity is desirable, making inbreeding a bad idea from an evolutionary POV.