Actually, the world kinda does work like that.

Most intelligence researchers would agree that people seem to have a genetic cap on their intelligence. While someone can underperform their intellectual potential with an upbringing that doesn't adequately enrich their minds, it's near-impossible for humans to become more intelligent through reading, studying, etc.

When humans learn we gain knowledge, not intelligence.

I think the only real difference is that we humans are born lacking a lot of initial knowledge/data which means we have to go through a decade or more of education to reach our potential intelligence. LLMs on the other hand come pre-loaded with that knowledge.

Passed this point, wherever knowledge is passed in as context or stored in the neural net I don't think is that significant personally. I'm of course not suggesting we're exactly the same as LLMs and there is no noteable difference, I just don't think continual learning is as important as some suggest it is – at least assuming a model is deployed with adequate training such that it reaches its potential given it's size + architecture.