Why are other people so intelligent?

Answer 1

ANSWER

This is not difficult to understand, we just have to agree on some definitions first.

Lets agree that we will measure intelligence via IQ. (Yes, there are numerous other measures but this is generally accepted by most people so we'll use this one.)

Lets agree that you are not the person with the highest IQ. (Technically IQ can not be measured for some people as they exceed the capability of the test to measure them. Even so we can assume you're not in that small group).

Therefor we can deduce that there will always be others that are more intelligent or even simpler that there are others that are "so intelligent."

The only real question is how large that population of "so intelligent" people is? And the answer is that for most people there are lots who are more intelligent. Even really smart people feel that there are lots of people who are more intelligent than they are.

In a normal population it has been shown that IQ scores fall into a bell curve distribution (see referenced Wikipedia article for more details). I.e there are lots of people scattered around the middle and few as IQ increases or decreases.

There is also a psychological dimension. Since we all don't walk around with out IQ's tattooed on our foreheads its almost impossible to accurately gauge what other people's IQ's are.

I expect that almost all of us would estimate incorrectly what another's IQ is. Another factor is do you know you own IQ?

So when we ask why are others "so intelligent" we put into play a lot of value judgments and error prone estimates. This leads to mistaken assumptions.

ANSWER

If you mean people other than yourself, then you may have a pessimistic outlook on how you fit in with your peers academically - and you may need to explore this further.

If you are asking generally why some people are smarter than others - it's probably no more complicated than the fact that some people love learning and some don't. Capacity for learning increasing with learning in the same way a body-builder's muscle mass increases with repeated workouts. And while we don't all start off equally - we can certainly shape what we've got (i.e., 'nature via nurture').