Comment by K0balt

The correlation between success and intelligence is as you say highly circumstantial. There are few areas of endeavor where intellectual prowess is the determining factor—normally persistence, luck, and resources are more determinant.

That said, the experiences of my youth in animal husbandry make me a strong believer in genetic determinism.

It is empirically practical to use breeding alone to predict cognitive abilities, behaviors, tendencies, and elicitable capabilities in animals, given identical rearing environments. Right down to nervous ticks, inherent fears, very specific nuisance behaviors, as well as predictable desirable behaviors, dispositions, and fascinations. Even preference for certain types and even colors (shades?) of toys over others. The fine grained nature of determinism in behavioral tendencies is remarkable.

There is so much overlap of structure and function within mammals that it is extraordinary to claim that apes are somehow exceptional by categorically fundamental properties rather than degree.

Great apes are much more adaptable and capable than most animals, and environment probably plays a much greater role in our development because of the power of our faculty for learning, but that does nothing to negate the underlying heritability of extremely fine grained cognitive traits.

Animals are in no way blank slates when they are born. Genetic or in-utero programming plays a huge role in cognitive processes, and cognitive capacity is a direct dependent of physical structure.

One does not predict the other necessarily, but there is still a difference between a partially full mug and an overflowing shot glass, even if they hold the same volume in practice.

We are born with unequal capacities in both physical and cognitive realms. It is an uncomfortable truth. We do ourselves a disservice when we try to pretend inconvenient things are not so just so we don’t have to face uncomfortable choices.