[snarks_when_bored]

Gee, can Viscardi’s parents please share with us exactly how they brought him up so he would be a math genius? It’s all environment, right? /sar

Anybody who has ever spent any time around mathematically gifted people knows that environmental factors have very little to do with their pure ability, although study does hone their skills. Plato knew this 2,500 years ago. In Book VII of Republic (526b), Socrates engages Glaucon in the following exchange (my underline):

"Do you see, then, my friend," I said, "that it's likely that this study [calculation] is really compulsory for us, since it evidently compels the soul to use the intellect itself on the truth itself?"

"It most certainly does do that," he said.

"What about this? Have you already observed that men who are by nature apt at calculation are naturally quick in virtually all studies, while those who are slow, if they are educated and given gymnastic in it, all make progress by becoming quicker than they were, even if they are benefited in no other way?"

"That's so," he said.

[ari-freedom]

you can be sure that if he spent all his life watching tv and chasing after women, he wouldn’t get very far.
You have to have “rage to master.” I know I have to work on this trait...

[Pharmboy]

Perhaps you did not note or understand my "/sar" tag meaning that I was being sarcastic. We have many discussions on these boards with a surprising number of Freepers arguing for genes having a minimum effect on intelligence.

But, thanks for the Plato quote--not surprising.