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Talent

felixstocker.com

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Re: Talent

#21

Post by BinaryIgor »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #7
BinaryIgor wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the absolutely best-case scenarios is when you both have an innate talent for something and deep interest/obsession about it; I think that the article encourages you to find exactly that and then focus on it, because once you combine innate talent + obsession, you do have unfair advantage over the others

I also think it's not super easy to evaluate whether you have an innate talent for something. The example of Ramanujan reading math textbooks when he was twelve is definitely an exceptional case, but I also think it's not clear to a lot of twelve year olds that such deep resources in a subject even exist. I was lucky that my county's library system had a literal treasure trove of computer science related books that I…

I would partially agree. Speaking from experience, I can say that if you're naturally good at something, you can learn it pretty well even if resources are of poor quality. Obviously it makes all the difference if they're good, but you get it easily in any case

Re: Talent

#22

Post by iambateman »

I stopped reading after there was a quote about how amphetamines helped improve his math.

Like...maybe. But I think it's pretty well understood that taking amphetamines is a net-negative for individuals and society.

Re: Talent

#23

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Eh. It's possible to do well at stuff, without getting high. Just sayin'. I've been doing it for over 40 years. Just takes some self-work.

I think people get hung up on "keeping score." Things like GitHub Activity graphs, where people write scripts, to game theirs, or pumping out mountains of really bad code, in order to jack up their LoC scores.

And, of course, there's money. If you don't generate money for silly rich people, then what you do is worthless.

Re: Talent

#24

Post by autarch »

commandlinefan wrote: post #16

(tangent) That referenced Scott Alexander article was how I figured out his real last name before the New York Times doxxed him - he gave so many details about his brother I realized who he was talking about.

FWIW, I don't think he wanted to hide his identity. He talked about just not wanting patients to google his full name and find his blog, as opposed to preventing people who read his blog from finding out his name.

Re: Talent

#25

Post by ekelsen »

Vetch wrote: post #15
noelwelsh wrote: post #8

Two things: * Don't work in power-law / winner-take-all industries, unless you are truly remarkable (and even then, you need a lot of luck). Entertainment is the most obvious example of such an industry. * No shit talent exists. Just look at basketball players. Presumably nobody thinks Wemby is 7'5" because he just trained harder at growing tall than anyone else? Why would any other characteristic be different?

Being tall doesn't automatically make you good or dominant at basketball, you can even be too tall. Wemby might just be at that threshold, but the unusual thing about him is his dexterity despite his height; such maneuverability and flexibility is trainable. I hear he also spent the summer training, likely harder than most.

No, but being short is completely disqualifying, so being tall is certainly a component of the physical traits that make you good at basketball. If you're 5'2" , it doesn't matter what other gifts you have -- you will not be a pro male basketball player today.

In tennis, being too tall is clearly net bad, but being too short is also definitely bad. 80% of male pro tennis players are 5'10" - 6'4", which is certainly not the statistics of the general population.

Re: Talent

#27

Post by JonChesterfield »

If you think differently to people around you, treat their advice with some scepticism. Including the things about work life balance and burn out.

Erdos did _great_. I had no idea he spent decades working for longer than most people spend awake but I know the name. If he'd listened to the advice he was given, we'd have a lot less mathematics and he'd have been less content.

Some other people would have been a little less worried about him. Bad tradeoff.

Re: Talent

#28

Post by yapyap »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #4

The author concludes that "I should make sure I sweated blood working on a strength, [and] do more of what comes naturally." Something I found was that sometimes the things I have the most passion and interest for are _not_ the things that are strengths. But they have become strengths. Today, I would consider myself to be an OS and systems programmer person. It was abjectly _not_ something that came to me naturally.…

fwiw i think u hit the nail closer on the head.

especially the example of the indian boy who borrowed and worked through math textbooks of local college students made it pretty clear to me that the difference between him and the poor kids in the US was the inherent drive he seemed to have in this anecdote.

Same as for when the author described feeling to be deserving of praise for the work put in to get a C in math. He would not be satisfied with a C if he had an inherent drive to do math, hell he wouldn’t have gotten that C if he had and if he did he wouldn’t have felt deserving of applause since the work he put in would have felt like playing almost.

Re: Talent

#30

Post by Centigonal »

efficax wrote: post #29

The answer is always amphetamines

Everyone says that, but there are plenty of people who take amphetamines every day, and nearly all of them never approach the productivity of Paul Erdos.
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