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There is no talent

timeless.judofyr.net

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Re: There is no talent

#91
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really disagree with you. You say you could never compose music like Mozart, but how do you know? What if you worked at it every day for the rest of your life? Are you really certain you could never reach his level? (And bear in mind he is an extreme case.) You should read this piece by Derek Sivers called "After 15 years of practice...": http://sivers.org/15-years . Quick excerpt (but really, read the whole piece)…

Mozart was a guy who was on his way to possibly becoming history's best maker of music, except he died an unfortunately early death at the age of 35. He was writing tuneful, listenable, harmonious music at the age of four . This is a level of talent far beyond what Sivers was talking about.

No it's not.

There's actually a lot of ongoing debate about what exactly we mean when we call somebody "the best" at making music. Every brand of music has its own series of ethos, and many of them actively disagree with many others. I love Mozart and think he was a brilliant writer of pop music — his work is very hook-driven and similarly repeats parts until they get stuck in your head — but I have friends who find his work too simplistic to take interest in. Then there's Beethoven, whose works disappoint my more technically-obsessed friends but are so gorgeously emotional. And on the other end of it you have the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols and Merzbow and a line of musicians who go for things Mozart never dreamed of pursuing.

Brian Eno, pioneer of glam rock, pioneer of ambient music, one of the greatest living producers of music of all kinds, is actually very critical of classical music for this reason; he claims it bores him. He has a quote where he expresses skepticism for that kind of prodigious talent where he basically implies that any music so easy to make that you can be a prodigy at it isn't worthy of accolade:

"Classical — perhaps I should say ‘orchestral’ — music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It’s all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities."

Not that I entirely agree with him, either. But the point he's making is that it's stupid for us to make these assumptions that there's such a thing as "better" or "worse" music other than what we subjectively like and dislike. In my opinion, Mozart is very, very, very good; I might even decide he's great as I continue to listen to him. But somebody else can call him shit, and I have no way to argue that they're objectively wrong. (Unless they say he's uneducated, or incompetent, because competence can be objectively argued.)

Re: There is no talent

#92

You will look around and find other people at your age who are way better than you at playing guitar... in reality, all they did was starting earlier than you or have been spending more time doing it. I don't want to disagree with this essay... to first order. But it's important not to take the emphasis on passion too far. Because this hypothesis doesn't explain the existence of passionate but untalented people. Such…

Does anyone have a good definition of talent?

Re: There is no talent

#93
post #22
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really disagree with you. You say you could never compose music like Mozart, but how do you know? What if you worked at it every day for the rest of your life? Are you really certain you could never reach his level? (And bear in mind he is an extreme case.) You should read this piece by Derek Sivers called "After 15 years of practice...": http://sivers.org/15-years . Quick excerpt (but really, read the whole piece)…

He doesn't know , but many many people have composed a lot of music, many with as much passion as the OP has put into computers; but Mozart and a handful of others stand out as something above and beyond. What, if not talent, is what separates the great from the very-good?

According to a study done with violin players, highly structured practice is what separates the great from the very-good. Those that were very good but didn't practice as much ended up becoming violin teachers: http://imgur.com/Wxjqa.png.

What's also striking is that amateurs practice far, far less than the best: http://imgur.com/vIB6i.png. While they may have practiced for the same number of years (e.g., from 4 years old to 20 years old), the amount per day was substantially less.

This is from "The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance": http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti..., pages 17 and 21, respectively.

Re: There is no talent

#94

You will look around and find other people at your age who are way better than you at playing guitar... in reality, all they did was starting earlier than you or have been spending more time doing it. I don't want to disagree with this essay... to first order. But it's important not to take the emphasis on passion too far. Because this hypothesis doesn't explain the existence of passionate but untalented people. Such…

Does anyone have a good definition of talent?

Malcolm Gladwell defined talent as "the love of practicing". That's the best definition I've heard.

Re: There is no talent

#95
post #19

100% disagree. I could try my entire life and I will never be able to sing like Josh Groban, or compose music like Mozart, or win the Iron Man Strongest Man competition, or beat Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France. Yes, a LOT of success comes from effort, but to say that talent doesn't exist is absurd. People who have a talent in a given field, AND work with and hone that talent will always do better than people wi…

I really disagree with you. You say you could never compose music like Mozart, but how do you know? What if you worked at it every day for the rest of your life? Are you really certain you could never reach his level? (And bear in mind he is an extreme case.) You should read this piece by Derek Sivers called "After 15 years of practice...": http://sivers.org/15-years . Quick excerpt (but really, read the whole piece)…

[deleted]

Re: There is no talent

#96
I totally disagree with this article. Some people are naturally better at some things than others. Sure, it helps if you work at something and are focused. But when it comes to doing something of difficulty, some people just "get it" and others... not so much. For example, there are people who get math and those who don't. For the ones who don't it seems that no amount of trying will allow them to understand certain concepts. Based on personal observation.

Re: There is no talent

#97

You will look around and find other people at your age who are way better than you at playing guitar... in reality, all they did was starting earlier than you or have been spending more time doing it. I don't want to disagree with this essay... to first order. But it's important not to take the emphasis on passion too far. Because this hypothesis doesn't explain the existence of passionate but untalented people. Such…

Does anyone have a good definition of talent?

"A special natural ability or aptitude"

Re: There is no talent

#98

You will look around and find other people at your age who are way better than you at playing guitar... in reality, all they did was starting earlier than you or have been spending more time doing it. I don't want to disagree with this essay... to first order. But it's important not to take the emphasis on passion too far. Because this hypothesis doesn't explain the existence of passionate but untalented people. Such…

I agree with you. To me it seems naive to say there is no talent. If humans can play music because our DNA allows us to do so while monkeys can't do the same, why is not possible that the DNA responsible for this varies slightly from person to person making some people better than others? I said music, but the same applies to reflexes in soccer or planning ahead in chess.

Re: There is no talent

#99
post #78
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but in my opinion, an ability to perform mindful practice is part of what we call talent. The person you described here is exactly someone who has passion for something, but is not that much talented. BTW, I wonder, is this some new Internet trend, trying hard to "prove" that talent doesnt exist? I wonder what the motivation is... trying to convince oneself that one can be good at anything? :-) ... just asking

It seems to be a political thing, running during the last hundred years or so. The left likes the tabula rasa approach: if everybody can be a genius, then we need to have a public education system that equalizes the chances. The right prefers the genetic explanation, because it justifies that rich people keep their fortunes in the family: intelligent people's sons are more likely to be intelligent, so it makes sense…

Hi, I actually don't think it's politically incorrect to mention inherited intelligence is necessary in some endeavors. Just impolite, if the person you're speaking to needs a higher level of inherited intelligence.

The point of public schools is to prevent a calcified aristocracy from emerging. Inheritance isn't deterministic, and recessive genes exist. If we don't give everyone some bare minimum shot to improve their intelligence and move up in society, we'll either stagnate in the best case or have violent revolution in the worst.

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