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There is no talent

timeless.judofyr.net

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Re: There is no talent

#81

Post by pjscott »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #50
lwhi wrote: post #40

There is such a thing as talent. Talent is a natural aptitude for an activity. Sometimes a person's physical and psychological make-up naturally aligns with the requirements for a specific task or group of tasks; it's entirely reasonable to state that such a person has talent. Passion is important - it's what makes your journey seem less like work, and is what will keep you focused regardless of results. However, the…

Would you say being 6.9 feet tall is a talent for a basketball player?

Sure. I'd say that, all other things being equal, being tall gives an advantage to a basketball player. Therefore under lwhi's definition of talent, it counts. Why wouldn't it?

I realize this may not match up with what people usually mean when they say talent, but I think this definition is more consistent and useful.

Re: There is no talent

#82

Post by _delirium »

narag wrote: post #78
greyman wrote: 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…

I can see how you get that association, especially when discussing education and wealth disparities.

But I think there's also a strong association in the reverse direction (I haven't figured out quite how the two interact). To me, the sort of Puritan conservative approach is "keep your head down, work hard, and you'll succeed", and emphasizes practice, paying your dues, being a diligent worker, slowly moving up the ladder, etc. The left often recoils at that, seeing it as a "cog in the machine" mentality, and certain parts of the left at least have a more Romantic view that emphasizes inspiration, creativity, etc. instead (think of, say, the Beat poets).

Re: There is no talent

#83

Post by sahillavingia »

jscore wrote: post #17
jameskilton wrote: post #10

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…

Or outrun Usain Bolt

True, but he has little talent, and his success is almost purely a combination genetics and hard work (eating + training).

Re: There is no talent

#84

Post by DisposaBoy »

Before we can begin to discuss "what exists" we must first discuss "what".

That is to say. We must first discuss what is talent? What counts as talent? What doesn't? because until then I feel that many of our ideas are going to be based on our own slight understanding and ideas about talent.

For me, I have no idea what talent is the same way i have no idea what a skill is because it all seems so arbitrary.

Re: There is no talent

#85

Post by rue »

emehrkay wrote: post #25
brm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that difference... innate or easier understanding + the ability to execute it IS talent

I feel that things could be broken down so that anyone could understand. Those scenes in movies where the teacher finally breaks through to the kids by relating the subject matter to something that they care about may seem like bs, but I feel that approach really works. I think that is the foundation of the argument for smaller classroom sizes -- the teach can focus in on how to target each student's learning style i…

Most people can learn to be OK at most things, with enough time or a "breakthrough". A significantly smaller number can be great at them.

Re: There is no talent

#86

Post by pingswept »

DisposaBoy wrote: post #84

Before we can begin to discuss "what exists" we must first discuss "what". That is to say. We must first discuss what is talent? What counts as talent? What doesn't? because until then I feel that many of our ideas are going to be based on our own slight understanding and ideas about talent. For me, I have no idea what talent is the same way i have no idea what a skill is because it all seems so arbitrary.

I have the same feeling. There's another comment that says "[Usain Bolt] has little talent, and his success is almost purely a combination genetics and hard work (eating + training)." To me, once you take out genetics, eating, and training, there's nothing left.

Re: There is no talent

#87

Post by _delirium »

DannoHung wrote: post #66
greyman wrote: 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

There has been a significant shift in education to emphasize concerted effort as the most important intrinsic factor to be rewarded. That is to say, saying to someone, "Wow, what a great job, you're so smart", only serves to reinforce the notion that the accomplishment was due to innate ability, whereas saying, "Wow, what a great job, you worked so hard", instead reinforces the idea that accomplishment was due to exe…

If it's just in terms of what you say to students, I can see that working, especially in K-12 education. I've seen some of the "grade on effort" approach in universities, though, and it produces some pretty perverse incentives. It sends the message that effort is more important than results, so students end up optimizing not for "quality of final project", but "effort the professor thinks I put into the final project".

Of course, perhaps that's good training for certain corporate jobs, where the person who stays late every day and works weekends, writing terrible code, often gets promoted ahead of the person who leaves at 5pm every day and actually does most of the work--- because the person who stays late is a "diligent worker".

In both settings, it also leads to an incentive to withhold work and parcel it out. If you did something impressive in two hours, some people might reward you for that: wow, great fix, and in only two hours? you're amazing!. But if it's more of an effort-based reward system, you're better off keeping that fix in your pocket for another week or two while you pretend to still be working on it, in order to get: wow thanks for working so hard on this for two weeks, the fix works great!.

To generalize broadly, I think startups tend to have more of the "results matter" culture, while large companies more often have an "effort matters" culture. The manager will remember the guy who spent two weeks of long nights working on a problem, while the startup will remember the guy who performed wizardry to fix some seemingly intractable problem in 45 minutes.

Re: There is no talent

#88

Post by cynicalkane »

makmanalp wrote: post #77
cynicalkane wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you read this? Musicology journal? Popular biography? Oprah Magazine? In academic musicology unsubstantiated theories and hearsay are unfortunately the rule and not the exception, but in general it should be considered bad practice to so plainly contradict conventional wisdom without giving a convincing reason to do so.

Unubstantiated hearsay? Actually, it's insane to call any of what you're saying "conventional wisdom". It's sort of like saying that Abraham Lincoln chopped down trees with his hands and puffed his enemies away with his breath. All that we have for evidence is some compositions in her sister's notebook that could have been made by anyone, and her sister's account which is likely to be terribly biased.

Hate to lengthen the thread, but it's too late to add this to the original post--

Remember that the Mozart family toured Europe only a few years after these pieces were written, and he was improvising pieces of considerable harmonic difficulty based on audience suggestions. The documentation of this tour is extensive, as the tour was a sensation, attended by many of the most important people of the day, and made young W. A. famous throughout Europe.

The alleged four-year-old compositions are considerably simpler than the things he was reported to improvise a few years later. Really, with this level of talent, it's more wild to say that Mozart was not writing music at a young age; that his ability to imagine melodies and harmonies just popped into his head shortly before the tour started. I was arguing talent is very much natural, but not so natural as that!

Re: There is no talent

#89

Post by klbarry »

DannoHung wrote: post #66
greyman wrote: 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

There has been a significant shift in education to emphasize concerted effort as the most important intrinsic factor to be rewarded. That is to say, saying to someone, "Wow, what a great job, you're so smart", only serves to reinforce the notion that the accomplishment was due to innate ability, whereas saying, "Wow, what a great job, you worked so hard", instead reinforces the idea that accomplishment was due to exe…

There was research in "How We Decide" by Jonah lehrer that in a string of 3 tests, control group students who were told they succeeded on the first test because they worked hard did far better on the last test than students who were told they did well because they were smart.

Re: There is no talent

#90

Post by joeyo »

PakG1 wrote: post #36
binarysoul wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me ask, what were you doing at age 4? IIRC 4 year olds have a lot of free time (to practice etc...)

Wow, you serious? You think just any 4-year-old can play amazing music just because they have a lot of time to practice? I think it'd be better to ask for a scientific study on the subject for 4 year olds, except finding an acceptable sample size would be nigh impossible.

  > You think just any 4-year-old can play amazing music just
  > because they have a lot of time to practice?
Honestly, it's a pretty reasonable hypothesis. That's not to say that narrow-minded focus and incessant practice on a single skill at such a young age (or any age) produces a balanced or happy individual, but I have no problem believing that it would produce someone with skills far in excess of 99% of their peers.
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