What you say is true, but this is why I said what I did only in relation to someone's passion. People generally don't develop passions they're not wired to be good at. Someone who is obsessed with computers is probably that way because they understand computers. It's a kind of chicken and egg thing, but I am shit at most maths, so I couldn't possibly be passionate about it. I feel like I understand computers better than people, so I have long been driven to learn as much as I can about them.
Part of this is just how my brain is sure. Autistic people don't have a good time with social interactions and find they relate to their interests a lot more than people. But I was chatting to a guy the other day whose interest was fonts. He can look at any font and tell me exactly what it is, when it was created, what it derived from, and so on... which is impressive, but functionally useless, and it's just plain old memorising rather than a skill as such. Like when I was a kid I could look at the wheels of a car and tell you exactly what model it was. Kinda cool, but utterly useless, and just a good memory not anything more.
I don't like it when people call me intelligent to be honest. Mostly because for one they're making that assumption based on stereotypes (I'm a nerdy type with glasses, must be smart) and for another once people put you in that box they hold you to an unrealistically high standard. Then when you inevitably can't hold yourself up to the standard others have set for you based on their own preconceptions they go "but I thought you were meant to be smart!" I'm just like... the fuck did you get that idea from? I think Nietzsche already put it better than I can: “No one believes in the stupidities of clever people: what a loss of human rights!”
In fact Nietzsche had something to say about the topic of talents too: “Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became 'geniuses’.”
I mostly do agree. I think we see adults as the "finished product" of themselves if that makes sense. As in if you took the people you know couldn't do your job, and I'm sure there's many, but in another life that same person were to develop an intense interest in your field from a young age, they'd probably grow up to be talented at it. Intelligence, at least as measured by IQ, is variable and flexible. It changes over time and is highly environmentally influenced.
My IQ is nothing special, I don't see myself as being clever, I just know a lot about a thing I've had an intense interest in all my life. But if I talk to someone about my interests they will almost always comment on how smart I am. Even though most of my interests outside computers have no practical element, I just memorised stuff. Like my drug knowledge. If you put me in a lab I'd have no fucking clue what I'm doing. I can tell you in the abstract that benzodiazepines are GABA agonists and shit like that. But I just memorised that. I'm still not a chemist or pharmacist or doctor.
