&gt;It seems that excluding extreme cases (e.g. mental deficiencies and the unicorns the likes of Newton) overall intelligence has more to do with your early development than your genetics. This has been getting more and more supportive evidence from adoption studies (including separated twins incidents), use of surrogates, egg and sperm donors show very little correlation between pure genetics and IQ or academic performance.<p>This is, to put it charitably, not the consensus of the relevant science. Once you get adequate nutrition, which western countries have, IQ if influenced far more by genetics than environment. Adoption studies show consistently that adopted children&#x27;s IQs resemble their genetic parents not their adopted parents. Twins separated at birth tend to have very similar IQs and personalities. Programs like Head Start and brain training regimens have proven to have little impact on IQ and future outcomes - which you wouldn&#x27;t expect if environment was the prime factor. We are biological robots, we should expect our source code to have a significant influence on our cognition.<p>The &quot;environment is all that matters&quot; idea is basically Lysenkoism and its popularity is more do to ideology than science. Your statements are from a mirror world. I assure you, you&#x27;re misinformed.