Intelligence is mostly genetic, its just politically incorrect to announce it because it takes away peoples hope. Musical talent is also genetic. No one in my family has any musical talent. Not me, not my siblings, not my parents, not my aunts or uncles, not my cousins, no one. I don't come from a small family either, I have a very large family, and if music talent was just environment, than by rule of numbers someone in my family would have the slightest bit of musical talent. Instead, no one does because genetically it is not something that my grandparents possessed. The debate (maybe not on facebook or at a hipster bar, but in the scientific community) isn't so much that intelligence is genetic or not its exactly how to test it and which genes carry intelligence. They are leaning towards intelligence being carried on the X chromosome and with there being different tests to measure IQ that return marginally different results, the means to objectively map it all to a one-to-one relationship is what is debated.
Speaking of twins, I have an identical twin brother for anyone who didn't know (which I'm assuming is most of you) and we are exactly the same. People always ask us who is smarter or if we have different interests or anything because they like to believe that things can change even for people that are genetically identical. People like to believe that personality is something special to them and it wasn't defined by nature or nurture, they like to think the reason they do things, "make decisions", or their behavior is special and not predetermined by genetics. Unfortunately, those dreams are the stuff of pipes and we are not different, we are exactly the same, in every way. We took the same classes, got the same scores on tests and the SATs and had the same scores on AP exams. There is nothing special about you other than the assembly of your DNA, other than that, everything is controlled by your genetics and environment, you are a ball rolling down a hill.
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