It's nice to get free stuff from nature but you can't go back and ask for more.

How do we know if that is true?

Because right now nootropics (pills that make you smarter) don't actually work and performance enhancing drugs shorten your lifespan and damage your health in various different ways. Furthermore based on the way drug discovery goes you're not likely to go off and invent a safe and effective version of either of those.

That means that for now, a philosophically resigned stance combined if you're contributing to research with curiosity to motivate you rather than an expectation of any results, is the most appropriate stance as far as anyone knows.

Richard Feynman might disagree.

https://youtu.be/IIDLcaQVMqw

I didn’t believe in talent until after I spent over ten years trying to learn music, and then seeing 5 year-olds on YouTube doing stuff I can only dream of. True, some, perhaps most of it is hard work, but talent makes the process a lot easier.

I suspect that there is some overgeneralization going on with the term "talent". We see something that is hard for us and we immediately throw it in the same bag. Even if there can be some better explanation. There is a lot of micro abilities that goes into any complex thing and if You skip on any of is it can change things from easy to impossible. Just look at any disabled person - and compare how hard is for them to do easy things - I believe that the same is going on with Your comparison to talented people - You just do not see those micro abilities that are compounded to create illusion of talent.

I think "talent" can be interpreted as being the amalgamation of those relevant microabilities. But in addition to innate talent, there is luck as well - besides being lucky enough to have been born into the first world, I think connecting with the right teacher or the right material that speaks to the way you learn makes a big difference.

Try any sport and see how some new people come in and start at a level that others won’t achieve even after years. This makes you believe in talent quickly.

With physical abilities this is more accepted but I don’t see a reason why mental capabilities would be any different. Some people just have more powerful brains by birth. You can achieve a lot by exercise and discipline but some people can achieve higher levels than others.

easier to learn as a kid

his humbleness is why he's so popular. But you don't win Putnam by studying. you got to be really brilliant too.

You don't actually know this. I acknowledge it might be true but it also might not. How do you know what you're calling brilliance isn't a different kind of study, for example? Feynman suggests he got a buzz out of puzzles his whole life from a very early age and sought them out. With his local reputation among family, friends, school others brought them to him as well. He did inter-school stand-up math competitions, if I remember that story correctly, and described how he learned to "relax into the solution" not try to force it but look at it in a different way until it just all falls out and so on.

Then he also studied math and then won the Putnum. How would he have gone without doing all that "non-study" about problem solving and looking at problems from different ways and just doing math quite well? Maybe he was so brilliant he still would have won? I suspect not. How many others sitting for the Putnum had done similar amounts of the same quality work by way of preparation?

Genius? Or learned and honed? Both? In what proportions? Whatever I think about it is "Just like my opinion, man." Right?

> Feynman suggests he got a buzz out of puzzles his whole life

Yes, you tend to get good at what gives you a buzz, in a compounding way. But I expect 'buzz' isn't random, either: it'd make sense for personality formation to notice when you show talent at something valued by some of the people around you, and flip some motivational switches in your developing mind. This seems like a better bet for your genes than trying to engineer your motivation and talent towards a common target separately.

No. We do know this. We know cognitive ability varies between people. It's obvious to everyone who's competed with others in mental competitions, and it's born out by a century of psychological research.

You can't just train to win the Putnam if you don't have the talents. Have you ever sat and worked problems with someone exceptional in that area? Try it if you get the chance. The variation in ability will blow you away.

Disagreed. Look at the Polgar sisters for example.

Well if you consider him brilliant then perhaps you would believe him when he says that talent isn't nearly as important as studying.

Lots of people study really hard. Few go on to become Feynman.

Plenty of people are also brilliant and don't go on to become Feynman.

"Study" is also a pretty vague word, that could describe a lot of different activities. Lots of people study hard, buy how many follows the exact same process as Feynman ? Not every studying techniques are equally effective, the same is true for problem solving techniques. Not to say his genetics didn't have _any_ impact, but we don't know the extent of the impact it had

There is no such thing as smart, only time and learning.

so what accounts for variability in ability, outcomes when you control for time & practice?

I'm not sure those things have ever been controlled.

I have been around many many many smart people. So many of them seem naturally gifted. It's effortless how easily they solve things. But if you hang around long enough, it's also impressive when they reveal their magic: they just used so-and-so's technique from some discipline I've never heard of. Oh. Of course! How easy, when you put it that way.

How long did it take them to read, digest, and master all those techniques? Hard to say. Nobody followed them around with a stopwatch 24x7x365 for years.

So, lacking data, I fall back to antecdotes. I personally know very intimately a handful of valedictorian smartest person in the room type people. The kind that everyone knows is just naturally smart. I know their family life intimately. I know that none of it came without enormous time and effort.

We have the testimony of the man himself about the price he paid. I'd be interested in anyone at his level in any endevour who claimed they were just born with it.

I do believe that different people are born with different abilities. But I have seen those "smartest person in the room" people fail elementary math, then spend 100s of hours drilling flash cards to master simple arithmetic tables. I have seen them with reading (I hate the word disabilities) challenges spend 10 years reading 100s of books, then get perfect scores on college entrance exams. I have seen in person some poor child spend 3 hours every single night for a year to master 5 spelling words a week. Just to be average. Then have people think they were born knowing the dictionary.

I believe that if you randomly choose any 20 students from any elementary school in the United States and let me select 10 people from that group, then subject them to what I have seen... those students will graduate high school with perfect grades and nearly perfect standardized test scores. I am certain of it. But I do not condone doing such a thing.

Of course, that doesn't make them Feynman. But I believe Feynman when he says that he was once ordinary and that time and effort transformed him.

There is huge variation in ability.

I was valedictorian. That might be achievable through work. Fair enough. But that's nothing compared to what top-tier minds can do.

I also had a childhood friend who tested 4 standard deviations out on a psychologist administered IQ test in high school. We had similar backgrounds. We sometimes "tied" in grades, but there is a huge gaping ability gap between me and him. You cannot study your way to that level. The raw throughput, creativity, and abstract conceptual ability cannot be achieved through practice. Maybe you have to see it yourself to believe it.

And really this shouldn't surprise us. There is huge variation in athletic talent, and anyone can see it. Why should our brains be different?

I agree discipline is the key not to just life but learning too. But teaching that to someone and applying that discipline to everything is so difficult with all the distractions and easy-ways around us.

I also believe the smartest people also come with a different family/life background that is unknowingly supportive in ways they cannot explain, quantify or teach others to be.