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Natural born programmers

programmingisterrible.com

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Re: Natural born programmers

#71

Post by spindritf »

pg wrote: post #36

"belief in gift and natural born ability is toxic to all, and by eliminating it, we won’t alienate so many from technology" There is certainly some inborn variation between people. Anyone with children is aware of it. Two children of the same parents can have very different personalities. So what exactly is it supposed to mean to "eliminate a belief" in variation in inborn ability? That we're supposed to believe some…

What if determination is also significantly inborn?

> Broad genetic influence on the five dimensions of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness was estimated at 41%, 53%, 61%, 41%, and 44%, respectively.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8776880

Re: Natural born programmers

#72

Post by tokenadult »

pg wrote: post #36

"belief in gift and natural born ability is toxic to all, and by eliminating it, we won’t alienate so many from technology" There is certainly some inborn variation between people. Anyone with children is aware of it. Two children of the same parents can have very different personalities. So what exactly is it supposed to mean to "eliminate a belief" in variation in inborn ability? That we're supposed to believe some…

I like the way you expressed the matter in your essay "What You'll Wish You'd Known" (January 2005).

http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

"Don't think that you can't do what other people can. And I agree you shouldn't underestimate your potential. People who've done great things tend to seem as if they were a race apart. And most biographies only exaggerate this illusion, partly due to the worshipful attitude biographers inevitably sink into, and partly because, knowing how the story ends, they can't help streamlining the plot till it seems like the subject's life was a matter of destiny, the mere unfolding of some innate genius. In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.

"Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's not our fault if we can't do something as good.

"I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."

We are NOT sure, on the basis of research, what anyone's upper limit of ability is. We have no idea about the extent of the "reaction range" constrained by the shuffle of genes a person obtains before a person is born, but we are absolutely sure that the reaction range is a RANGE, exquisitely sensitive to environmental influences. The discordance of identical twins for all human behavioral characteristics amply proves that. So, yes, let's say determination can matter as much or more than inborn ability. There are ample examples of that in today's world.

EDIT AFTER SEEING stiff's COMMENT AT THIS LEVEL:

Yes, many children bail out of further study of mathematics because they assume school lessons should be easy, and so they think "they have no talent" for subjects that become hard. A series of FAQs I have written about mathematics learning,

"Problems versus Exercises"

http://www.epsiloncamp.org/ProblemsversusExercises.php

"Repetition and Practice"

http://www.epsiloncamp.org/RepetitionPractice.php

"Resources about Learning Mathematics"

http://www.epsiloncamp.org/LearningMathematics.php

"Courage in the Face of Stupidity"

http://www.epsiloncamp.org/CourageandStupidity.php

were written to encourage learners to be willing to challenge themselves when they feel stuck learning mathematics. Most professional mathematicians feel stuck a lot of the time when they do their daily research work, but they keep going.

Re: Natural born programmers

#73

Post by steveklabnik »

cpuguy83 wrote: post #69
steveklabnik wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul, you are incredibly smart guy, so seeing you respond to scientific studies with "anyone with children is aware of it" is pretty disappointing. As tokenadult points out, these studies are serious business. Anecdata doesn't really cut it.

Steve, How do you explain savants/prodigies? We are all born differently. Our brains work different ways. Our muscles want to do different things. As such we have a propensity towards one thing or another. It is true if you have kids you can see this. Every single baby is completely different, even newborns, in how they respond to things.

When discussing populations, and making statements about them, the presence of an outlier does not invalidate the statement about the characterization of the population.

We are, of course, all different. Diversity is a great strength. That doesn't mean that there's a biological basis for every kind of difference.

Re: Natural born programmers

#74

Post by [deleted] »

pg wrote: post #36

"belief in gift and natural born ability is toxic to all, and by eliminating it, we won’t alienate so many from technology" There is certainly some inborn variation between people. Anyone with children is aware of it. Two children of the same parents can have very different personalities. So what exactly is it supposed to mean to "eliminate a belief" in variation in inborn ability? That we're supposed to believe some…

[deleted]

Re: Natural born programmers

#76

Post by v21 »

chroma wrote: post #47

Let's say I grant the author his points about harming gender balances and programming culture. That still doesn't address the most important question: Is it true? Is programming an innate ability? It's unclear whether programming can be taught, but the most depressing study in this area is called The Camel Has Two Humps [1]: We have found a test for programming aptitude, of which we give details. We can predict succe…

At the risk of sneering at science for it's own sake: why is that the most important question? What extent is programming an innate skill doesn't seem to have many obvious utilities, but finding effective methods to address gender disparities in STEM fields does. Not to mention that these studies also indicate that a belief in effort rather than innate skill improves performance for both genders.

Re: Natural born programmers

#77

Post by stiff »

davedx wrote: post #34
stiff wrote: post #19

There are two distinct things, both being true, as far as current research shows: - People who believe that mathematics is an ability that can be trained perform much better than the ones that believe it is an innate skills some people have some people don't - Intelligence, and as a consequence the upper limit of mathematical ability, is to a large extent genetically determined There is no conflict between those two…

> - Intelligence, and as a consequence the upper limit of mathematical ability, is to a large extent genetically determined Which research?

This has been debated to death, see something like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture, Pinkers "Blank slate" book, or what other people already mentioned. Look at extreme cases of people with genetic diseases on one side of the spectrum, and people like John Von Neumann on the other end, and you really shouldn't have any doubts about this, however bad this makes you feel (I had this reaction first considering this too, and judging by the amount of people who responded to this comment very promptly, I judge this happens to a lot of people). By the way I am just summarizing what seems to be the majority vote of scientists, I don't have any strong personal opinion on it.

Re: Natural born programmers

#78

Post by dragonwriter »

pg wrote: post #36

"belief in gift and natural born ability is toxic to all, and by eliminating it, we won’t alienate so many from technology" There is certainly some inborn variation between people. Anyone with children is aware of it. Two children of the same parents can have very different personalities. So what exactly is it supposed to mean to "eliminate a belief" in variation in inborn ability? That we're supposed to believe some…

As with learning a language, I suspect that both inborn ability and determination are overrated as determinants of eventual programming success, and having the right experiences (opportunity to participate, and social encouragement to engage, and positive feedback for success) early in life -- when the brains ability to learn patterns of thought is at its peak -- related to the kind of symbolic reasoning that applies in the field (whether its just mathematics, or whether its programming directly, or whether its something else that fits the same pattern, or a combination) is underrated.

Re: Natural born programmers

#79

Post by j-wilkins »

pg wrote: post #36

"belief in gift and natural born ability is toxic to all, and by eliminating it, we won’t alienate so many from technology" There is certainly some inborn variation between people. Anyone with children is aware of it. Two children of the same parents can have very different personalities. So what exactly is it supposed to mean to "eliminate a belief" in variation in inborn ability? That we're supposed to believe some…

A persons personality has very little to do with their actual mental ability to learn something.

Their personality might keep them from succeeding at learning (e.g. too lazy to read a book), but that doesn't mean they're mentally incapable of it.

Re: Natural born programmers

#80

Post by stiff »

pg wrote: post #36

"belief in gift and natural born ability is toxic to all, and by eliminating it, we won’t alienate so many from technology" There is certainly some inborn variation between people. Anyone with children is aware of it. Two children of the same parents can have very different personalities. So what exactly is it supposed to mean to "eliminate a belief" in variation in inborn ability? That we're supposed to believe some…

The blog post might not be very clear on this, but I think the research mentioned basically shows that some chlidren are very strongly convinced that they "don't have a mathematical mind" or something along those lines, and believe that other people grasp mathematics without effort, which produces some sort of psychological barrier that stumps their abilities. It's not really about denying genetic variation in intelligence, more about getting the children to understand that even very able people have to struggle quite a bit to learn hard things.
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