Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
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Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
#2This sort of tracks for me. The smartest people I know as adults mostly fucked around a lot and had wide interests that all culminated in them doing a great thing greatly. The smartest people I know as kids spent hours grinding on something and crashed out in college and are mostly average well-to-dos now.
Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
#3Hardly a recent discovery. This is basically the entire foreword of David Epstein's book called Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
#4This sort of tracks for me. The smartest people I know as adults mostly fucked around a lot and had wide interests that all culminated in them doing a great thing greatly. The smartest people I know as kids spent hours grinding on something and crashed out in college and are mostly average well-to-dos now.
How many of the children in first group didn’t you meet?
Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
#5[flagged]
Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
#6A summary, since the paper isn't open access: https://scientificinquirer.com/2025/12/21/the-counterintuiti...
Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
#7Hardly a recent discovery. This is basically the entire foreword of David Epstein's book called Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
The strength of analogy is one of the more powerful tools humans have. You take findings/experience from a totally different field and use it to escape the local maxima that other field is caught in.
It's a relatively common theme in sciences that someone comes out of nowhere and solves a long standing problem in a field because they don't have the specialized set of biases that keeps everyone else trapped.
Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
#8> For example, world top-10 youth chess players and later world top-10 adult chess players are nearly 90% different individuals across time. Top secondary students and later top university students are also nearly 90% different people. Likewise, international-level youth athletes and later international-level adult athletes are nearly 90% different individuals.
Motivation if you feel like you're young and failing
Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
#9This sort of tracks for me. The smartest people I know as adults mostly fucked around a lot and had wide interests that all culminated in them doing a great thing greatly. The smartest people I know as kids spent hours grinding on something and crashed out in college and are mostly average well-to-dos now.
How many of the children in first group didn’t you meet?
The selection bias might not be relevant if the message is not
"slack around as kid, it will make you great later!"
but
"prodigy youth doesn't guarantee greatness later, as well as non-prodigy youth doesn't prevent you from becoming grat later".
Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
#10That could simply be explained by early high achievers being worked hard by their parents or something else while people with innate abilities making progress slower (because most people are not overworked). For the first group they sizzle either because the pressure is removed as they grow up or because they hit their ceiling.