Dale Thorn wrote:
The biggest influence on IQ are the so-called "engrams" (fears, super- stitions, anxieties, etc.) planted in your brain early in life.
Some of this can be overcome with mental exercise, and awareness of what negative influences are holding you back. Much easier said than done!
IQ as they attempt to measure it can probably be most easily explained as pattern matching skills. Unfortunately for testing, and although you can be every bit as intelligent at 70 as at 10, your pattern-matching skills change and evolve over time, so any given tests will only apply (more or less) at the age group they are optimized for.
Would you dismiss strong correlations between IQ and success in life and academia as something irrelevant? - Igor.