I agree that people throw terms like smart/intelligent around incorrectly, and often try to “sound smart”, and I cringe at those things too.

…but you’re also asserting that intellectual capacity doesn’t exist and that is incorrect, or at least incomplete.

–TL;DR– Intelligence is valuable and varies between people but it seems like everyone has the ability to be intelligent given the right conditions. The taboo around intelligence prevents us from getting underperforming kids the help they need.

The important truth is that we don’t fully understand what contributes to intelligence.

We know that motivation is enormously important. The difference between being offered $1 and $10 explains something wild like >10 points on an IQ test. https://www.science.org/content/article/what-does-iq-really-measure

We also know that mental health and emotional state makes a big difference. So everything impacting mental health would contribute. https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-020-0372-2

These factors alone mean that our intellectual performance can change from moment to moment.

Another important distinction is that there are two kinds of intelligence, fluid and crystalized. Fluid intelligence is our ability to solve moment-to-moment interactions, and new and novel problems. Crystalized intelligence is the ability to take foundational principles that we’ve already been exposed to and use those to solve secondary, abstract, or complex problems. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelligence

That second one is almost entirely based on the types of problems we’ve been exposed to in our lives, meaning that it’s impacted by our previous behavior and our circumstances (which are largely out of our control).

We have no reason to believe that intelligence is some kind of immutable genetic trait that some have and some don’t - in fact that’s largely been debunked as far as I know.

However, the controversial field of behavioral genetics has demonstrated that a large percentage is our personalities and behaviors are impacted by our genetics. This would be an indirect factor. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/201509/what-behaviors-do-we-inherit-genes

Where does this leave us?

A person may be more genetically predisposed to being hard working (trait conscientiousness), which may make them more likely to apply themselves to work and education, meaning that they have a higher intellectual capacity. Or, they may just follow instructions without thinking and have a lower intellectual capacity.

A person may experience an event that makes them highly value health, motivating them to become a doctor. Or they may behind afraid of medicine and avoid the subject altogether.

Similarly, a person may be told that they are stupid and that they will never amount to anything. They may believe it and give up, and never apply themselves. Or they may defy it and work harder to prove it untrue.

Your genetics and your circumstances don’t determine what you will be capable of. However, they do have an impact. Ignoring that would be an enormous mistake.

Having two mentally healthy parents in a stable home with many books and many adults that care about you in your community will give you a better chance at scoring higher on IQ tests.

Having a single parent that’s drug addicted and bouncing from home to home with no books and no caring adults in your community gives you a lower chance of scoring higher on IQ tests.

Higher IQ is correlated with a whole bunch of benefits, like having higher income and life expectancy.

The original implementation of IQ was to identify which school children needed intervention to help them succeed. It was never supposed to be an indicator of human value. That we’ve done that to it is a shame. It’s basically the best tool that we have to figure out which kids need the most help.

I haven’t found research that confirms raising IQ improves outcomes. But I have a hard time believing that helping kids learn (if they wanted the help, at least) would hurt their outcomes.

End rant.

Edit: oh, and the belief in intelligence as an immutable genetic trait is only social darwinism if higher intelligence makes people more likely to reproduce, which it doesn’t. That’s the premise behind Idiocracy. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25131282/