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Natural born programmers

programmingisterrible.com

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Re: Natural born programmers

#81

Post by 3minus1 »

davedx wrote: post #28
rimantas wrote: post #12

Blog post is terrible. First quote talks about of the stupidity of the idea "hereditary wise man". That idea is indeed stupid, but what it has to do with the idea of "natural born"? And while my ability to play basketball can indeed be developed to some degree, can it be developed to be good enough to play it professionally? I doubt that. Now, some my say that there is difference between physical and mental abilities…

> First quote talks about of the stupidity of the idea "hereditary wise man". That idea is indeed stupid, but what it has to do with the idea of "natural born"? Because "natural born" means "genetically determined", and your genes are something you get from your parents, right?

There's a huge difference between saying "Some people are born smart because of their genes" and "Some people must necessarily be smart because of their parents"

Re: Natural born programmers

#82

Post by Argorak »

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 book "Thinking, Fast and Slow", quite often favourably quoted on HN, contains an interesting chapter on how what we perceive as "inborn ability" is much more the result of a very long chain of decisions (willingly or random), influencing an individual in certain directions. It especially quotes studies that many kids that were seen as excelling at a certain point turned out to be rather "normal" in all areas in the long run.

It is, unsurprisingly, called "Regression to the Mean".

Re: Natural born programmers

#83

Post by silentbicycle »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #68
silentbicycle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. The error in your reasoning is that you greatly mischaracterize his point, which is that the concept of the natural-born "10x programmer" is quite destructive.

How did I mischaracterize it? From my post: "The article provides lots of evidence that women react badly to this belief..." Do you disagree that the original author characterizes the belief as false, in addition to destructive?

The effect is not specific to women. The paper he linked is, but it also has a bibliography.

I'm not wasting any more time debating this with you. Cheers.

Re: Natural born programmers

#84

Post by cpuguy83 »

steveklabnik wrote: post #73
cpuguy83 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Certainly not, but I also don't believe that we are all born with the same abilities. Things that comes easy to some are more difficult to others. Even at the youngest ages kids show signs of what they like and don't like, and this will play out later as ability.

Re: Natural born programmers

#85

Post by derekp7 »

One thing that is natural, is people's enjoyment of something when exposed to it. If you don't enjoy programming, or math, or creating art, then you will be hampered in developing a skill for it.

Re: Natural born programmers

#87

Post by hyperpape »

stiff wrote: post #80
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 intell…

A sort of mirror image phenomenon mentioned in related studies is that kids who strongly believe themselves to be gifted may be unwilling to try things that are hard, because their self-image is tied up with things being easy for them.

Re: Natural born programmers

#88

Post by talmand »

steveklabnik wrote: post #66
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…

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.

I can see how it would be disappointing if you didn't have two children growing up in the same environment and the differences between them is the same as between night and day.

Not that I'm saying these type of studies are not useful.

Re: Natural born programmers

#89

Post by pg »

spindritf wrote: post #71
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

Good point. It probably is.

Re: Natural born programmers

#90

Post by steveklabnik »

cpuguy83 wrote: post #84
steveklabnik wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Certainly not, but I also don't believe that we are all born with the same abilities. Things that comes easy to some are more difficult to others. Even at the youngest ages kids show signs of what they like and don't like, and this will play out later as ability.

You should read the studies. What you're saying isn't the same thing.

Also, even if it was, I'll take scientific evidence over 'belief' any day.

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