“Such results contradict long-established ideas suggesting that expert performance is built mainly through practice — that anyone can get to the top with enough focused effort of the right kind. SMPY, by contrast, suggests that early cognitive ability has more effect on achievement than either deliberate practice or environmental factors such as socio-economic status.” Before you steal the lunch money from a precociously gifted young person, consider the strong likelihood that they will one day be running the world. Sergey Brin was one. So was Mark Zuckerberg. So was Lady Gaga. From Nature (and not nurture), lessons from a 45-year study of super-smart children: How to raise a genius. Step one, start with a genius.

+ “A baby giraffe can stand within an hour of birth, and can even potentially flee predators on its first day of life. A monkey can grasp its mother and hang on for protection and nourishment. A human infant can’t even hold up its own head.” From The New Yorker’s Maria Konnikova: Why are babies so dumb if humans are so smart?