Re:Productivity
by philwelch on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @05:34PM
(#16805682)
I dunno.
I already acknowledged that there are some counterexamples. In most of those counterexamples, natural talent is necessary but not sufficient. There are probably hundreds or thousands of people with the same level of natural talent as Michael Jordan who are not in the Basketball Hall of Fame, and there are definitely hundreds or thousands of people with the same natural talent as Michio Kaku who never applied themselves.
I don't think it's generally helpful to treat these outlier situations as if they were especially common. Most people err on the side of thinking they're limited by their natural talent and giving up.
Even if you're in a position to become a theoretical physicist--e.g. if you're a 16-year-old high school student and you're struggling with your math homework--it's not really worth having a ten year life plan built around becoming a theoretical physicist and making your day to day decisions based on whether you think you can accomplish that based on the outcome of some IQ test you took. You should still care a lot and work hard on your math homework.
If you don't have the natural talent to become a theoretical physicist, you'll find that out after you get accepted to a good college and start taking theoretical physics classes and you hit that wall. And that might be upsetting for you. It's probably upsetting to the 16 year old kid with dreams of athletic stardom to hit the wall at age 18 and not get an athletic scholarship. But what other option do you have at that point? The only one I can think of is to try and find something else you care a lot about and can work on improving your skills at. There's no getting out of that part.
Re:Productivity
by icc97 on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @01:17AM
(#16808259)
One of Altman's points was doing work you enjoy because then you're productive in it. So there's no point in becoming a Theoretical Physicist if you aren't enjoying the maths homework.
I already acknowledged that there are some counterexamples. In most of those counterexamples, natural talent is necessary but not sufficient. There are probably hundreds or thousands of people with the same level of natural talent as Michael Jordan who are not in the Basketball Hall of Fame, and there are definitely hundreds or thousands of people with the same natural talent as Michio Kaku who never applied themselves.
I don't think it's generally helpful to treat these outlier situations as if they were especially common. Most people err on the side of thinking they're limited by their natural talent and giving up.
Even if you're in a position to become a theoretical physicist--e.g. if you're a 16-year-old high school student and you're struggling with your math homework--it's not really worth having a ten year life plan built around becoming a theoretical physicist and making your day to day decisions based on whether you think you can accomplish that based on the outcome of some IQ test you took. You should still care a lot and work hard on your math homework.
If you don't have the natural talent to become a theoretical physicist, you'll find that out after you get accepted to a good college and start taking theoretical physics classes and you hit that wall. And that might be upsetting for you. It's probably upsetting to the 16 year old kid with dreams of athletic stardom to hit the wall at age 18 and not get an athletic scholarship. But what other option do you have at that point? The only one I can think of is to try and find something else you care a lot about and can work on improving your skills at. There's no getting out of that part.