Today we are going to talk about the brain. Human brains.
Have you ever wondered, if some people are really born geniuses while some are born dull? (Shall be very careful about using the seemingly politically incorrect term "stupid", though it means just the same.) I'm sure you had at least once during the course of your life, wonders how the hell did that smart kid in your class breezed through the exams without much effort, while you struggle to even stay awake to read the first page on your exam topic. "He's just born smart," you said to yourself, conceding defeat.
You may had even come across this situation where you are in a peer study group, a friend of yours asks you a question, and the next half an hour was spent just to explain to him why 5+3(2*3) is not the same with (5+3)(2*3), without getting a bit of it into your friend's head. You find an excuse to go to the toilet, leaving him to bug the other friends. "He's just born stupid," you think to yourself, thinking why did you even agreed to study together with him in he first place.
![]() |
| And you wonder if your friend's was eaten by zombie. |
Let me tell you something. You may be right. Some people may be born smart, while some may born with less capable brain.
If this notion makes you uncomfortable, or strike you as a little (or very) offensive, ask yourself, "why not?" Some people are born tall, some are born short; some born with long limbs, some have short stubby fingers; some people are born with darker skins, some are born with lighter skins. It makes perfect sense then, that intelligence could vary between people too, however we chose to define intelligence. Some people could really be born geniuses, with above average mental capability.
Notice here I had been very careful with my words, the use of words "could" and "may" says that I do not have a definite answer for you on whether absolute intelligence varies between people. But I do believe it to be very plausible, if not a sure fact. Unpublished studies have been done on this topic many times before, often treading on ethical minefield and deemed offensive, or biased, or baseless, or racist, or... you get the idea. It is a very difficult study to conduct, given that we people usually do not take personal insults that well. Imagine if you are born short and was stuck with the nickname "shorty" throughout your high school, now imagine if you substitute the words "short" and "shorty" with "stupid"s, how does that feel? Well, sucks I know.
So, studies have been done. Mostly unpublished for the fear of public repercussion, can't really be blamed when most societies would value equality highly, except this country where we still have constitutional discrimination. (You know, sometimes I really wonder if we really think of each other as equals, given the way we treat each other. Hmm... )
I have no published studies to back me up. Which is fine, as I am going to appeal to logical reasoning based on our current model of the theory of evolution. This will get dizzy so hold on.
Suppose we are evolved from earlier hominids (great apes), we have to agree that our ancestors were not as intelligent as we are. How do we know? Well, their brain size are smaller than ours, and they had no evident technological advances. We must take note though that the brain size is not an absolute measurement of intelligence, as we can see from elephants having bigger brains than we do. But gives a fairly good comparative measurement for members of the same evolution lineage and we shall take it as that.
Premise one - Ancestors not as intelligent as modern humans.
Now how does evolution work? It may look complicated, but it is actually many theoretical models unified by one simple concept - survival of the fittest. I am going add a bit of explaining on that - each individual of a species are slightly different from each other because we possess different genes, such as everyone is this world is unique in the sense that no two people share the same characteristics, personality, and identity.
How do we get different genes? Well, sometimes genes mutate when they are passed down from parents to offspring, it may be harmful, it may have no effect, or it may be beneficial to the offspring. The individual who gets the beneficial modification to the genes has an advantage over the other individuals of the species, it then has more chance to mate and reproduce more offspring possessing the same beneficial genes. Over time, the individuals with the beneficial genes will out-compete the ones that do not, replacing the population. Thus the gene gets fixed in the species.
That being said, we have to understand that evolution can only happen if there are genetic variations for a trait. That means, in other for a body part to evolve, the population has to have different versions of the body part for nature to "choose". For example, skin color may evolve easily because we have different versions of gene s coding for skin color; while evolving a whole new limb may be near to impossible because the genes coding for the number of limbs are fixed.
With this in mind, we can establish another premise.
Premise two - evolution of a trait can only happen if there are genetic variations within the population.
Here comes the punchline. If we put the two premises together, we must conclude then that for our ancestors to evolve better brains, some of our ancestors had to be on the duller side, while some had to be on the brighter side. If everyone was born equally smart back then, nature couldn't have selected on smarter brains and brain power couldn't have made any improvement down many generations. But we are in fact smarter than our ancestors, therefore surely they are not all born with equal intelligence then?
It is possible that the variation persisted till today, although there is also a possibility that we have a reduced variation, if not fixed. It could be as varied as skin colors, or it could be as fixed as the number of fingers. Both are probable, but if daily observations were to go by it would probably lean more to the skin color side of the scale.
This does not mean however that we may still evolve into smarter human beings in the future even if there are variation in intelligence. Simply because our society has grown to the point that everyone, regardless of the level of intelligence, gets basic rights that ensure one's survival. People with less than average brain capability do not have selection pressure against them like our ancestors, they get to live and get married and have kids too. And the genes will swim around in the gene pool with other versions of the gene and codes for smarter brains. We may have already reached the point where our raw brain power will not grow on natural selection anymore.
=== === === ===
Although it is quite clear that I do believe that some people are more blessed than others, I do not advocate discrimination based on intelligence any more than I advocate racism. What am I trying to achieve by telling you this? Well, frankly speaking, I do not know. Maybe I think, it would be better if we can all accept the fact that not everyone is equally fast at learning and do not take it too personally. After all, if it's in the genes, we can't do much to change a thing about it. That doesn't mean though, that we should all stop our work on something altogether just because it takes a long time to accomplish it; we just have to try our best and if it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't. Accept the fact that you are born this way.
Till, next time. Cheers~

























