I've held this hypothesis for a few years now, and somehow never managed to sit down and write it out properly. Here it is.

I believe geniuses -- the word as is used to describe people with impressive "talent" and not the flashes of ingenuity, flow, and creativity that all of us (hopefully will) experience in life -- are made. The overwhelming majority of what makes a person who they are, their intelligence, their emotional depth, personality, skills, discipline, and curiosity, is shaped by their environment. By nurture. And genes, the thing we, particularly Indian society, love to credit for everything from athletic prowess to mathematical ability, play a far smaller role than we're comfortable admitting.

This is far from a new idea. But I think we treat it as a nice philosophical footnote rather than what it actually is: probably the most consequential insight about raising a child that parents, educators, and policymakers continue to ignore.

The simplest way I can put my hypothesis forward: a baby comes into the world as an empty sponge. For the first few years of their life, they absorb everything. Every sound, every touch, every visual cue, every emotional signal from the people around them. This absorption isn't passive; it's literally building their brain. Neural pathways forming, pruning, strengthening based on what stimuli the child is exposed to.

This part isn't controversial in neuroscience. We know that the first five years are disproportionately important for brain development. What I think we underestimate, massively, is just how far this extends. We acknowledge it for language (of course kids pick up the language they hear at home) but somehow refuse to extend the same logic to intelligence, emotional regulation, curiosity, discipline, physical development, and basically everything else that matters.

Think about language for a second. A kid raised in a bilingual household picks up both languages. A kid raised in a trilingual household picks up three. And they don't just learn to speak those languages; they speak them without an accent. An adult learning French at 35 will almost certainly sound like an adult learning French at 35. A four-year-old raised in Paris sounds Parisian. Same core brain hardware. Completely different outcome. The only variables? Age and environment.

If these variables can shape something as complex as language acquisition, including accent, cadence, and vocabulary depth, why would we assume it stops there? Why wouldn't the same mechanism apply to mathematical thinking, musical ability, emotional intelligence, physical development, and more?

My challenge, and I mean it genuinely: show me a "genius", give me every detail of their childhood, and I'll map every capability back to something in their early environment. Every extraordinary skill, every unusual depth of knowledge, every personality trait that sets them apart.

The Polgár sisters are probably the cleanest example of this. László Polgár, a Hungarian educational psychologist, had a hypothesis: geniuses are made. So he set out to prove it with his own children. He and his wife raised all three daughters (Susan, Sofia, and Judit) to be chess prodigies from early childhood. Through deliberate environmental design, chess became ambient in the household. It was play, it was conversation, it was life.

Consequently, all three became extraordinary chess players. Judit became arguably the strongest female chess player in history and broke into the top ten players worldwide, competing with and beating world champions. Three daughters. Same household. Same methodology. All (chess) prodigies.

People might wave this away as a one-off. But I think the reason we wave it away is because the alternative is uncomfortable. If the Polgárs demonstrate that environment can reliably produce genius-level ability, we have to ask some very inconvenient questions about what are we doing to normalise healthy approach to excellence and why many might not attain the theoretical bar of self-actualisation.

And look, the counter to Polgár is often "well, László was himself an exceptional person, maybe his kids inherited exceptional genes." Sure. But László's capability as an educator, as a deliberate parent, as someone who understood cognitive development: where did that come from? His environment. His education. His exposure to ideas about learning and potential. It's nurture building on nurture. At some point, crediting genes alone becomes a circular argument where we attribute to biology what is largely the product of accumulated environmental advantages.

I want to be clear about something, because this is where people usually misunderstand the argument. This goes well beyond "teach a kid chess and they'll be good at chess." That's the surface-level reading.

What I'm talking about is environmental osmosis. A parent who is a mathematician doesn't need to sit their two-year-old down with a calculus textbook. They just exist in a household where mathematical thinking is ambient. They quantify things casually. They notice patterns out loud. They approach problems with a certain kind of logical structure. The kid absorbs this as the texture of daily life, as background radiation that shapes how their brain learns to process the world.

And the important thing to understand: this transfer is rarely one-to-one. The mathematician's kid doesn't necessarily become a mathematician. They might become a designer with an unusually structured approach to problem-solving, or a writer who thinks in systems rather than anecdotes. What they absorbed wasn't "maths" as a profession; it was rigour, pattern recognition, and analytical thinking as a way of engaging with the world. The same applies everywhere. Kids of voracious readers don't just become readers; they might develop attention spans, curiosity, and comfort with long-form thinking that serves them in whatever direction they go. The parents modelled sustained focus and intellectual engagement as a normal part of life. Books were everywhere. The act of sitting down and engaging with something deeply was just what people in this house did.

Same with musicians, athletes, multilingual speakers. Children of musicians don't just hear music discussed at dinner; they naturally pick up instruments, sing along, get drawn into the practice because it's ambient in their household. And through that engagement, they're building discipline, creative expression, and a relationship with sustained effort that serves them far beyond music. Kids whose parents play basketball naturally end up on the court with them, and through that they're absorbing teamwork, physical discipline, the habit of pushing yourself, the rhythm of showing up and putting in the reps. The benefits go well beyond basketball, but the kid has to be in it for the wiring to take hold. And something I think goes underappreciated: kids who are physically active and engaged in sports from early childhood tend to push their physical development further than their family's genetic baseline might suggest. A kid who swims from age three, who plays basketball from age five, who is physically engaged throughout childhood; they tend to develop stronger, more capable bodies than if they'd been sedentary. Genes set a range, sure. But where you land in that range is largely environment.

It's the same story with emotional development. Kids who grow up in households where emotions are discussed openly, where conflict is resolved through conversation rather than shouting, where empathy is modelled daily: those kids develop higher emotional intelligence. A child whose parents give them space to make decisions, who let them fail in small ways while keeping them safe, who build their confidence through gradual autonomy rather than either suffocating protection or neglectful indifference. That child develops resilience, self-awareness, and emotional depth that serves them for life. We call this "personality" or "temperament" as if it were innate. I think, overwhelmingly, it's learned. Osmosed.

What makes early childhood exposure so powerful is the compounding.

A kid exposed to mathematical concepts at age two has a 15-year head start on a kid who encounters them at 17 in a classroom. But it's more than a time advantage. The early-exposed kid has built neural pathways, developed intuitions, formed a relationship with mathematical thinking that makes every subsequent exposure more productive. They don't just know more maths; they think mathematically. Their brain has been structured around it.

This is why child prodigies almost always have origin stories that trace back to ridiculously early exposure. The 13-year-old who has memorised the entire periodic table? Their parents were some researchers in the subject. The seven-year-old concert pianist? They grew up in a house with a piano and parents who played. The "prodigy" is the product of environmental conditions that most other kids didn't ever experience the same way.

And the compounding works in the other direction too. I've read about cases where babies in their formative couple of years didn't receive enough verbal stimulation. The parents, for whatever life circumstances, didn't talk to their baby as much as they should have. Those kids, at five-plus years old, have noticeably less developed speech compared to peers whose parents were more verbally engaged from day one. No physiological difference other than neural pathways nurtured by external stimuli. Different environmental input. Measurably different outcome.

The window matters enormously. The first 20 (stretching maybe to 25) years are when the sponge that is the human brain is most absorbent. This doesn't mean people can't change, learn, and grow after that. Of course they can. Yet the foundational wiring, the deep patterns, the intuitions and instincts that feel so innate that we mistake them for genetic traits and/or genius: those get laid down early. And the earlier the exposure, the deeper it embeds.

Quick aside on something related: I'm a strong believer that there are no bad subjects. There are only bad teachers.

When someone says "I hate maths" or "I'm just not a science person," what they're really saying, usually without realising it, is that they had a formative experience with that subject that went badly. A teacher who explained it poorly. A textbook that made it feel alien. A classroom environment that was rigid, punitive, or just deeply boring. The environment around the subject failed them.

This is nurture in action, just in the negative direction. The same mechanism that can build a prodigy can also build an aversion. And we rarely interrogate it. We just accept "I'm not a maths person" as if it's a genetic fact, rather than what it almost always is: an environmental injury that happened during a formative window. Imagine if instead of that one terrible maths teacher in year seven, the kid had someone who made numbers feel like puzzles instead of punishment. Different teacher, same kid, completely different relationship with the subject.

The strongest counterargument to everything I've said: twin studies. The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, run by Thomas Bouchard starting in 1979, studied over a hundred pairs of twins (about 80 of them identical) separated at birth and raised in different environments. The findings seemed to show striking similarities in IQ, personality traits, even quirky habits and preferences.

I've looked into these. And I think they prove less than the headlines suggest.

First, "raised in different environments" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in those studies. Many of these twins were placed with relatives or families in similar socioeconomic brackets. The environments weren't actually that different. A twin raised by a middle-class family in suburban Ohio and another raised by a middle-class family in suburban Michigan aren't exactly controlled experiments in radically different nurture. Similar class, similar culture, similar era, similar parenting norms. Of course the outcomes look similar.

Second, there's a possible selection bias worth considering. Many of these twin pairs entered the study after seeking each other out, reuniting through adoption records or registries, and then volunteering to participate. It's at least plausible that twins who felt a pull to find their sibling were already skewed toward being more similar, while twins who never sought reunion are underrepresented in the data.

Third, and this one matters most for my argument: not all these twins were actually separated at birth. Some weren't separated until after infancy, and some had been in contact with each other before the study even began. If twins shared the first months or years of life, the exact window I've spent this entire essay arguing is the most formative, then their similarities tell us about shared early environment, not shared DNA.

Fourth, some of the "striking similarities" are just probability at work. Two men in 1970s America both being named James, both driving Chevrolets, both having dogs? That's less shocking when you account for how common those names, cars, and pets were in that specific demographic and era. James was one of the most popular names for decades. Chevrolet was one of the most common car brands. It'd almost be weirder if they didn't share some of these things.

I'm not dismissing twin studies entirely. But they get cited as if they've settled the nature-nurture debate, when what they've really shown is that similar environments produce similar outcomes. Which is exactly my point?

People will call this sampling bias. Confirmation bias. Survivorship bias. I know. I've thought about it.

You can't run a controlled experiment on this. You can't take two genetically identical babies, raise them in radically different environments from birth to adulthood, and compare outcomes. That would be unethical. Brutal, even. So we're left with observational evidence, case studies, and the kind of pattern-matching that will never satisfy someone who demands a p-value.

But my counterargument is pragmatic: even if you think my hypothesis is unfalsifiable, what's the downside of acting on it?

If I'm right, parents who deliberately, carefully, empathetically shape their child's environment can meaningfully influence who that child becomes. If I'm wrong, and genes dominate, then... you've still given your kid an incredibly stimulating, supportive, and enriching childhood. The worst case of my hypothesis being wrong is that you've been an exceptionally engaged parent for no reason.

The worst case of the genes hypothesis being accepted and parents resigning to it? "Well, they're just not a maths person." "They didn't get the athletic genes." "Intelligence runs in the family." You surrender agency over probably the most important thing you'll ever influence.

Call it bias. I'd rather have a productive bias than a resigned one.

And this is where most people get the argument wrong, and it's the most important caveat: this is emphatically a case against helicopter parenting, tiger parenting, or whatever else term that is about cramming a three-year-old's schedule with violin lessons, Mandarin tutoring, and competitive chess simultaneously.

That approach potentially traumatises kids.

What I'm describing is something far more subtle. Creating an environment where the stimuli exist naturally. Where the kid encounters ideas, activities, and experiences because they're woven into daily life, as the fabric of the household rather than items on a schedule. There's a world of difference between a parent who reads in front of their child every evening and a parent who mandates thirty minutes of reading time. Both expose the kid to reading. One builds a reader. The other builds resentment.

The parents who can do this well, who can shape an environment that's stimulating without being overwhelming, challenging without being pressuring, broad without being chaotic: they need to be extraordinary themselves. Self-aware. Emotionally intelligent. Disciplined. Patient. Knowledgeable about child development. Willing to put in work that has no immediate visible payoff. And they need to walk the finest of lines: giving kids space to make their own decisions and develop autonomy, while still creating a structure that subtly nudges them toward growth. Too much control and you get a traumatised kid with crushed self-esteem. Too little and the sponge doesn't get enough to absorb. The sweet spot is narrow, and finding it requires parents who are deeply attuned to their child as an individual.

It goes beyond intellect, too. Building a child's physical capability means encouraging movement and sport in a way that feels like play. Building their emotional intelligence means modelling vulnerability, discussing feelings, letting them navigate social situations with just enough support and just enough room to struggle. Building their discipline means showing them through your own behaviour what sustained effort looks like rather than lecturing about it. The whole person needs shaping; not just the part that scores well on tests.

Now, some people will hear all of this and say: "But isn't this going against the child's free will? You're moulding them to suit your vision." And I get why it sounds that way. But I think it's exactly backwards.

The entire point of requiring parents to have high EQ, discipline, and self-awareness is precisely this: so that the shaping happens in a way where the child feels like they are doing what they want to do. The environment is designed so that curiosity, engagement, and exploration feel like the kid's own choice. That's the art of it. That's why it's so hard. If the kid feels pushed, you've already failed.

And here's the irony: conventional parenting is far more adversarial to free will than anything I'm describing. Kids don't want to go to school, but they're forced to go. Kids don't want to sit through subjects they find boring, but they're made to. Kids don't choose the rigid, siloed curriculum they're put through, the arbitrary schedules, the homework they're assigned. Conventional child-rearing is full of coercion that we've just normalised because everyone does it. What I'm proposing is actually more respectful of a child's autonomy, because it works with their natural curiosity rather than against it. The child isn't being told what to do; they're being placed in an environment where they naturally gravitate toward growth and being nurtured.

This is exactly why we see the pattern we see: well-travelled, well-educated, well-exposed parents tend to raise kids who are curious, adaptable, and capable across a wide range of domains. The common language is "good genes". I think genes are a part of it, but the far bigger factor is the environment those parents created, shaped by the environments they themselves grew up in.

It's a cycle. And right now, it's a cycle that benefits a narrow slice of the population: the families that already have the awareness, the resources, the education to create these environments. Everyone else gets told their kids' outcomes are a matter of genetics and luck. Which is, frankly, an orthodox, unscientific cop-out that we keep defaulting to because the alternative requires actual effort playing the "long game".

If I'm even partially right, the implications go way beyond individual parenting choices. When we talk about inequality in outcomes, we're talking about environmental deprivation on a massive scale. Kids who grow up without books, without engaged parents (often because those parents are working multiple jobs, not because they don't care), without exposure to diverse ideas and experiences: those kids are being failed by their environment. The sponge that is their developing brain was never given the right stimuli to absorb.

And that's fixable. Unlike genes, which we can't change reliably (yet), environments can be designed, funded, and improved. Early childhood programmes, parental education and support, access to diverse experiences and quality teaching: these aren't charity. They're investments in literally shaping the next generation's cognitive and emotional capabilities. Every government, every community, every school system that takes this seriously has the potential to break the cycle of environmental deprivation and create a new virtuous cycle. One where more families have the tools, the awareness, and the support to give their kids the kind of environment that lets them thrive.

The problem is when genes become the whole narrative. "Some people are born smart." "Athletic talent runs in families." "They have the music gene." It sounds believable. It feels like acceptance. But when it's used as the entire explanation, it becomes fatalism dressed up in a lab coat. It lets everyone off the hook: parents, schools, governments, society. Genes are real. Resigning to them is the problem.

Am I 100% right? Probably not. Human development is messy, and anyone claiming a single factor explains everything is oversimplifying. Genes clearly contribute, particularly to physical traits where there are measurable biological constraints. I'm not arguing that a five-foot-two parent's child will grow to be six-foot-six purely through basketball exposure. There are floors and ceilings that biology imposes, and those are real. What I am arguing is that nurture can optimise what's there, enhance strengths, and even mitigate the adverse effects of less "coveted" hereditary traits.

But cognitively? Emotionally? In terms of personality, curiosity, discipline, resilience, creativity? I think nurture is running the show, for the most part.

I also want to be honest about the limits of my evidence. I'm working from patterns, case studies, observed correlations, and a hypothesis I've been mulling over for a while. I haven't run double-blind studies. I can't give you a clean data set. And I know that the examples I notice and remember are probably the ones that confirm what I already believe. That's how brains work.

But I've been waiting to be proven wrong for a long time now, and it didn't happen so far. Every time I look at a remarkable person and trace the lines back to their childhood, the pattern holds. Every time I see a kid struggling and learn about their early environment, the pattern holds. Every time someone attributes a capability to "natural talent" or "genes," I dig a little deeper and find environmental explanations that are simpler and more consistent.

I could be wrong. Would genuinely love to be proven wrong actually; it would mean I could stop thinking about this and just trust the genetic lottery. But so far, nothing has convinced me otherwise. And until something does, I'll keep looking at every remarkable person and asking: what were their first ten years like?

The way I see it, we have a choice. We can keep talking about genes and blood and innate talent in ways that sound sophisticated but ultimately give us zero agency. Or we can take this hypothesis seriously, that the environment we create around our children and ourselves can optimise, enhance, and shape who they and we become far beyond what genes alone would dictate, and actually do something with it.