Smart Is

Hoo boy. This is going to ruffle some dumb feathers.

The brains of high-achieving individuals are wired up differently to those of people with fewer intellectual or social abilities according to one of the first studies to find a physical link between what goes in the brain and a person’s overall lifestyle.

Read the whole thing. But don't read the comments. They will actually make you dumber. I felt my synapses slowing down only a few items in. Most of the reader commentary is summed up by one of the saner commenters:

Some remarkably daft posts below. People do tend to become extremely defensive when studies about the brain are described. They become desperate to distance themselves from such studies, as the reductionist perspective worries them and they maintain they simply aren't like everyone else, for no other reason than they just don't want to be.

The thing is, it's not reductionism they will need to worry about, but specificity. Expect some serious pearl-clutching to ensue as ramifications fall out, and the usual level of disingenuous spin. Even at this early stage the (daft) commentary involved a panicked dodging of issues and moving of goalposts, false equivalency, and a general overview of the most common logical fallacies and rhetorical tricks. Anything to avoid looking it in the face.