Look up twin studies.

"Intelligence doesn't exist" is just a defense mechanism for above-average intelligence people to feel like they earned all their good outcomes.

But here's the thing: even if it was all hard work and not that you were born of above-average intelligence, it's pure luck that you were born someone who works hard.

But also intelligence exists and it's wildly discrediting to insist it doesn't.

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AnimalMuppet a day ago | parent [-]

You don't think people can choose to work hard?

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estearum a day ago | parent [-]

It is by sheer chance they are the type of person to choose to work hard, that is correct.

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AnimalMuppet 21 hours ago | parent [-]

So there are people who cannot choose to work hard? They have no agency in the matter?

That sounds... suspiciously convenient.

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estearum 19 hours ago | parent [-]

You think there are people who are fortunate enough to have the desire to work hard, but nonetheless choose not to?

No, there's actually nothing convenient about the fact that most people are accidents of their genetic, geographic, and environmental roll of the dice.

The convenient view is: I worked hard because I chose to work hard. I achieved hard things because I worked to be smart. People who did not achieve the same things did not do so because they chose not to work hard or they chose not to be smart.

Very self-serving and transparently wrong.

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AnimalMuppet 19 hours ago | parent [-]

I did not say what your first paragraph says. I think there are people who do not have the desire to work hard, but who never the less choose to do so, even though they don't want to.

I will grant you that there are some people who, due to handicaps or other things beyond their control, do not have the option of choosing to work hard. But I claim (without statistical proof, I admit) that by far the majority of those who do not work hard, still have the real option of choosing to work hard, but do not.

For most of those who won't, "I can't" is also "very self-serving and transparently wrong."

	▲	estearum 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What do you think is going on inside the brain of someone who says "I can't?"