Bad versus Stupid versus Mental Couch Potato

[Boojatta]

Some people -- who were born with bodies that could have been trained to win in an Olympic sporting event -- might have never been anything but couch potatoes. Other people -- who might not be capable of winning an Olympic sporting event no matter what they do -- might be getting regular exercise and staying fit.

Is there an analogous idea for mental performance?

There's at least one complication. When people did something that was a bad idea, it is common to say that it was "a stupid thing to do." It would be less confusing if we distinguished between judging ethics and judging cognitive performance. It's legitimate to accuse someone of doing something that is evil or negligent. If you accuse a person of being stupid, then what's the person supposed to do to remedy the problem?

If the topic of mental performance tends to provoke a knee-jerk response of focus on intelligence, then it seems that any person who judges mental performance is tending to support some kind of aristocracy of intelligence. However, there is an alternative. People who are negligent when it comes to putting in the mental effort required to keep their mental muscles toned can be legitimately judged. Those who judge them are not necessarily supportive of any kind of aristocracy.

If you want to be physically fit, then get off the couch. If you want to keep your mental muscles toned, then regularly put in mental effort.

[Boojatta]

1. Kick

[Boojatta]

2. Kick

[Boojatta]

3. Kick

[Didereaux]

4. in one sense I agree, on another no...

Yes, mental laxiness seems to cause mental dullness. Those dullards by choice can recover with exercise, as you've implied the scientists have pretty much established that. However, maybe not intentionally, or maybe I am reading to much into your post, but it seems to imply that you can increase the base intelligence in the same way. No science has yet even come close to establishing that. In fact quite the opposite. It appears that whatever genetics that come into play and whatever pre-natal effects(nutrition, trauma to the mother etc) come into play, at birth we each have a distinct baseline of intelligence. That baseline is our maximum achievable. Now nurture comes into play and it aeefects just how close we can come to our baseline. You will never at present time make a rocket scientist from a Downs Syndrome child or for that matter one that just genetically has a low intelligence baseline.

For the past three decafes or so the egalitarians have caused great harm with their insistence that each child is an einstein or a Newton or simply a genius and all that is preventing it is the lack of proper government nurture with guidelines set by themselves. The idea, thank goodness has tended to fade in the last ten years as it became obvious that the egalitarian children were not themselves turning out very remarkable at all. But there remains pockets of stubborn resistence to this day.