Here you are saying you'll do this, you'll do that, you're gonna do this, you wanna be the best, you wanna cure cancer, you wanna go to the moon, you wanna touch the bottom of the ocean, whatever your dream is, how come it doesn't come true? Ever?

It's honestly because you don't actually mean what you say. Let's say you want to become the best in your school and get straight A's and whatnot, the reason you don't become the best in the school and the reason why you don't get straight A's is because you don't actually want to. You say you want to, but you don't mean it.

If you wanted to be the best so badly, you would have done something about it. You would study all day, all night, you would barely have time to hang out with friends, but you would be the best in your school. Let's face it, these "gifted" students, these "prodigies" etc, don't exist. There's no student in the world that got straight A's (in high school at least), without practice. Anything related to the subject counts as practice, whether it be homework or studying. People are better than you at certain things because they spent more time doing it, and have more experience than you.

I remember my first computer class I ever took. People called me a computer prodigy, and people still do because they just don't know any better, but I've actually had years of experience using the computer before I took that class. So I knew every single thing the teacher was teaching and the new material she taught us seeped into my head a lot more easily than my mates because I've had so much more experience than them and could relate it to other things I've learned and done. The same goes with my friend, he's the best person in math I ever met. Literally, people call him a math genius everyday, he's gotten 100s on every math test, he does problems in less than a second, new material to him is cake. But I know him well, his secret? He spends a lot of time studying his courses.

Same goes with Terence Tao, he's considered the smartest man in mathematics alive today. He 99th percentiled on the Math SAT, when he was 8. He got a PhD at age of 20. He says however that he is no one special, he just spent a lot of time on math as a kid. That's all he did, math, math, math. When he was 2, his parents forced math down his throat, every hour of every day, his mother being a mathematician herself. Look at where that got him, he's the BEST in the WORLD!!!

Same goes for every "talented" person in the world today. The William sisters have spent their whole childhood forced by their father to play tennis with baseball bats, aiming at targets the father put out. In an experiment to prove that talent doesn't exist, a father trained all his daughters in playing chess. Susan, Judit and Sofia Polgar all became chess Grand Masters and the top women chess players in the world, I think even becoming the best chess players overall. All this, during a time ignorant men thought women could never play chess well, because they're minds are not adjusted enough for it.

The IQ test is also something that doesn't make sense, and I don't understand why it is still around today. The creator of the IQ test says  

"The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured."
— Alfred Binet, The creator of the IQ tests, 1905

I've heard people say, I've seen comments posted, etc, that a person would not be able to complete a task because their IQ was not high enough. I hate, completely detest it when people say that. I honestly hate nothing more in the world than how the word "Talent" "prodigy" "IQ test" and relating words are used. The main reason people say that someone is talented is when someone is YOUNG and does an incredible feat, normally done by adults. But it's not that impressive if you take a 25 year old that does the same thing. Even if they have the same experience in the activity. Adults will actually have the advantage and learn faster, since they have lived longer and experienced more.

There are only a few things that interest a person, and if academics is not one of them, even if the person says he wants to become the best in the school, he will never become the best. Unless that person takes up an interest in academics. And if he has disliked it since he was a child, he will most likely continue his habit of hating academics.

However, you find that you are more exceptional than others at the things you LOVE doing. If you LOVE doing something so much, you will do it, all the time. And you will do it, without even thinking about it. You will love doing it. You will enjoy doing it so much you would PAY MONEY to do it. Like talking to friends, I think many people love that activity a lot. So they'll do it all the time without knowing they're "practicing" and "gaining experience." The people that socialize the most leave the others behind, which is why there are some very shy people, they don't have experience in talking to people.

Geniuses are not born, they're made. Never forget that. No matter how old you get, you can always become the best at the thing you love to do. If you love an activity so much, you'll do it, if you don't, you won't. That's all there is.

After reading what I just wrote, I am able to narrow down the things that I love to do, and I can notice that if I say I want to be the best in academics, that I don't really mean it. Just remember my lesson, it's one of the most important things you will learn in your life. There's no such thing as talent. There's no such thing as a prodigy. If you still believe that there is such thing, and that the IQ test is awesome and true, then go ahead living life that way. But you'll never improve in anything. There was a research done, people that believed that "skill" existed, but not talent, did better at new activities than the people that believed "talent" existed, because the people with the talent mindset thought they had no talent for it, and sucked. However, even today, I think the majority, or maybe just the COUNTRY (EVERY SINGLE PERSON I HAVE MET!!!!!!), believe that talent exists. So I hope this has helped you out in some way, I just had to post this somewhere, so I posted it here. I made this up on the spot when the idea came to my head to write about the thing that I hated the most in the whole world, and connected it with the thing I love the most in the world, skill.

Yeah, but talking to a mate, he says that "You can't change your IQ, you're born with it."
So if that's what they believe, and I'm guessing a lot of others believe it too, it's doing more damage than good.

I have to agree with Xeda on both counts. Some people are certainly pre-disposed towards certain things. For example, Einstein was always good at the kind of thinking that won him the Nobel Prize in Physics. He may have struggled to pass classes in his early years, but the core material itself probably never bothered him. Same thing with Isaac Newton and to some extent, Robert Hooke. You aren't going to get the average joe off the street to kickstart new sciences like they did, no matter how hard you train them. But, none of those people would have been half as good as they were if they hadn't continuously practiced and improved their skills. It's the combination of both that makes "geniuses" (or genii, if you prefer).

However, we also need to distinguish "geniuses" from people who are merely experienced. Many of the people here are able to do some very amazing things with calculators, even things that others didn't believe possible before it was done. That doesn't necessarily make them "geniuses" though.

Anyway, IQ as derived from modern testing is a rather idiotic score. It's heavily influenced by social norms and also measures only a small subset of what I would personally consider intelligence. I have friends who fall into the lower 5% of the IQ spectrum (meaning they are held in remedial classes), yet are able to solve problems in minutes that I've seen stump people in the upper 1% for hours. They also display flashes of creativity that are nothing short of brilliant. Yes, it does measure some aspects of "intelligence," but the IQ score is at best a very rough estimate of your problem solving ability.

On a marginally related note, IQ tests are always fun to play around with. A former teacher of mine was a doctoral student in education (and specifically in the area of intelligence/capabilities testing), so she would occasionally give our class tests to figure out our abilities. I figured out the answering system on the first test, so I ended up getting 100% in all categories even though I would be considered deficient in some of them. It's not always intelligence that determines the scores

Have you ever looked into savant's? These are people who are extra-ordinarily good at using their brains (in some areas) and disabled in others.
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/09/05/10-most-fascinating-savants-in-the-world/

I would consider someone who is 5 and is able to use a computer better than a 20 year old as impressive.  I absolutely promise you that there are "prodigies" in some form or other.  Someone who can walk into a room, and start playing a piano having never touched one before is by far a prodigy.  It's not necessarily that the kid does it, but that the kid has like 0 experience with it.  I would consider myself naturally smart at understanding mathematical concepts, and with computers.

It's impossible to change your guy's minds. I guess what you're taught at a young age sticks with you, kinda like a religion. Religion was forced on me, much like everything else I know or knew, and I started thinking about the things I knew, most of it I logically thought out to be lies. Like talent, and prodigies. Maybe you have to be called a prodigy yourself to know what it truly feels like, and to defy it. And I don't mean to offend anyone, I'm just saying religion is related, very related.

Anyway, I think Savants are exceptional. They are, by far, what anyone would call "gifted."  Most of the kids you are talking about that are age 4 and play the piano really well, have played it for years (Tiger Woods learned about / how to play golf before he learned to walk), even though they're still young. But their level of playing, would be the same as a 25 year old that spent the same amount of time learning piano, maybe even worse. But no one is impressed at the 25 year old. However, because the kids are so young. people have an illusion that they must be gifted.

There's no difference between intelligence and how smart someone is. If someone is smart or intelligent, they will spend time working on what's important to them. If not, they'll sit around doing nothing, maybe drugs. Yeah, they're so "intelligent," they fail every class, yet still think they're superior to everyone. I met someone on omegle who said he was the smartest guy in his school. But he had terrible grades. Yet he still says "I'm actually one of the smartest people in my class." If he was so smart, why does he have a D in any class? I can't understand how some people think these days. But yeah, I guess it's the detrimental thought of people being "born" gifted, etc.

Also I've heard others say they're "intelligent" or "smart" but they're lazy, so they don't do well in their classes. If they were so "smart" and "intelligent," they wouldn't be lazy, what excuse do they have not to do their homework? Even on the busiest days, I finish my homework, because it doesn't take very long.

Anyway, back to savants. I have a theory on how they're so intelligent and "talented." For normal people like us, it would take experience to learn something, to master them. For savants however, something ticked in their brains due to their developmental problems and activated functions of the brain that would normally be acquired / created / connected to other neurons only by experience. Why is why it's like they "leveled up" in a skill very quickly.

Please look into Multiple Intelligences. Thanks.

I'm sorry but this thread really makes me rage. Actually, I take it back. I'm not sorry. This thread really makes me rage.