Just like
with fitness / health / strength, a lot of intelligence is genetic, and there is
nothing you can do about that part. But, like with fitness, even more of it is
environment/experiences, and we have 100% control of that.
All of these things will literally stimulate the creation of new
neural connections, and (to a smaller extent) even brand new brain
cells. This has been definitively confirmed by plenty
of independent tests (which is where the idea of "brain games" came from
- although that is as yet unproven to be effective)
Plus, when you start to understand the underlying reasons for how
things work, everything starts to make sense. Once you learn the
fundamentals of physics, mechanics, and chemistry, all mechanical things
make sense, and you can reverse engineer anything, figure out how it
works, and repair it. Once you learn the fundamentals of human
psychology and sociology, all human behavior makes sense, and you can
avoid conflict and get people on your side, or at least their respect,
no matter how different their life outlook may be.
