Certainly for player characters, whose future is to some degree known. for NPCs? Call it shroedinger's (dis)advantages.
Why is the PC's future necessarily known? In some cases it is, but in a troupe style game one may well introduce a number of secondary characters who are not PCs in the conventional sense nor NPCs, and whose future is very unknown.
because it's part of the design process- generally- and even when you are playing a child character it is with an understanding of "roughly here is where I intend to wind up" so such abstracts as buying the adult intelligence and adjusting for age (with modifiers for virtues and flaws) works. Maybe your late bloomer character with a high intelligence never had the opportunity to develop their intellect before they were an apprentice, but that is your narrative to decide.
Speak for yourself. Maybe `when you are playing ...'
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The OP was basically asking what happens to the low int gifted people? My responses was a justification that the 15 years of education improves the int score.
People can keep saying RAW doesn't support that interpretation. I agree. At no point does apprentices say, you must add +1 to int and give -1 to strength, etc.
I've always said the beginning child stats are clearly picked taking in to account the intended end point. That is where the education improves int come in to play. If you know the character will serve a 15 year apprenticeship, then choosing a negative int is unlikely and a positive int more likely.
RAW means that a child who has perception +5 who becomes deaf and blind at age 2 somehow still has perception +5. A child with Dex +5 who becomes a quadruple amputee somehow still has Dex +5. To suggest birth stats are the be all and end all is illogical. It makes more sense to assume the childhood stats chosen are based on the likely lifestyle.
That makes sense, since the characteristics still refer to the remaining functions, such as taste/touch and movement of the spine. This is akin to, and just worse than, flaws like lame and poor eyesight.
Maybe. And if you keep sagas sufficiently simple, it is going to have no disadvantage. It is just that ArM seem to encourage complex simulation style games where the «likely lifestyle» is utterly undefined from the start. When you go down that route, your answer is less satisfactory. Certainly YSMV territory.