This gives you vicious and virtuous cycles: Students' learning speed increases with time and past success. So "talented" students learn quickly and have extra time to further explore and improve, leading to further success. Students who struggle with the time constraint are forced to take shortcuts like memorizing "magic formulas" without having time to really understand. Trying to close that gap is very hard work.

Reminds me of my personal peeve that "studying" should not be "being taught", studying is pursuit of understanding, "being taught" is what happens in primary school (and I'm aware I'm simplifying here).

This sets them up for fantastic success very quickly. [1] shows a great example of this.

I'm fond of saying "You can do anything you want, but wanting is the hard part", because to truly be a grandmaster, genius-level mathematician, olympic athlete, etc, requires a dedication and amount of preparation that almost nobody can manage. Starting late, with emotional baggage, kids, and having to spend 5 years relearning how to learn? Forget it.

1. https://danielkarim.com/how-to-become-a-genius-the-polgar-ex...

I was having a problem agreeing with this subthread, and I have you to thank for putting it into words that I can finally formulate my disagreement against.

Have you never met one of those people for whom they did not need to "want"? They could literally phone it in and still do better than anyone else, no matter how dedicated they were. Even should practice/study be necessary for them, they benefited from it to some absurd proportion that I couldn't even guess to quantify. I've known more than one of these people.

I think most believe they don't exist for two reasons. The first is the ridiculous number of television shows and movies that depict motivation as being the key to success. We're just inundated with the (unsupported by evidence) that this is the means to extraordinary genius. Second, I would say that this is the most comforting theory. "Why yes, I could have been a gifted whatever or a talented something-or-other if I had put the time in, but I chose this other thing instead."

Maybe some would say we all need to believe this, that a society that doesn't believe in it is harsher or more unkind.

They're just quick. But the ones I've met, at least, are quick to make associations. When I really dig and ask them to explain themselves or a concept, they usually make analogies to things they know, but I don't. Then I have to go learn that thing. Then they try the analogy again, but I haven't fully learned it from years of making analogies about it.

Years of grad school experience was painful like this, until I got to a point 10 years after grad school, after a PhD, and well into research, that I "just got" things (in my subfield) as well. It's these experiences that made me feel that it's 80% preparation and perspiration (both of which are dominated by time), and 20% "other" mythology. Don't get me wrong, that 20% is what makes a 2 year old read earlier than others, and getting started reading at 2 (and continuing it!) for 4 years before starting school will make you light years ahead of your peers. The same goes for chess, math, etc etc. There is something legendary about Oppenheimer learning enough dutch in 6 weeks to deliver a lecture. Or perhaps learning to translate his lecture and memorizing it. Who knows.

Do we really believe there's a magical "genius" such that they can do anything? No, so what are the limits to their genius? The limits are defined by what they are a genius at. This is a tautological definition.

I'm not saying "Anyone at any time can become a genius at anything". I'm saying "If you take a kid, start early, and cultivate them just right so that you have time to realize compounding effects, - you can let them grow into basically anything" (probablistically speaking - there are learning disabilities and physical issues etc).

I add third (okay, 2b) - because the pain of coming up with the fact other people are better than you at a deep, fundamental level is too overwhelming.

"We can't on one hand believe in the plasticity and retrainability of the mind, while simultaneously believing that speed is something only a few are born with."

Sure we can, the initial orientation of neurons differs between people, so some people need less "plasticity and retrainability" to be good at a task. Plasticity is physical characteristic like height and varies between people.

Initial speed usually isn't that important, but speed of learning is important and makes the difference between possible and impossible within a human lifetime.

Likely so, but is suggest that personality, drive and motivation are also very important factors. I know from experience that stuff I had little interest in as a youngster and that I've still little in I still know little about.

Yes, my interests have grown and broadened over the years but simply I regard some stuff so irrelevant to my life that it's not worth a second thought and I am much better off applying my limited number of neurons to matters of greater importance and enjoyment.

Yes - there will be 10x-ers. And that group will have a 10x-er iside it, and so on given exponential dropoff of frequency of talent. Bobby Fisher is a few std dev above even the best, perhaps.

Generally speaking, "You can do anything you want, but wanting (enough, and naturally) is the hardest part" might need a three standard deviation limit.

Have you heard the phrase: Being average among those who practice makes you 9X% among the population? I think that's what I'm saying - you can be a top performer if you dedicate yourself, especially early enough, but almost nobody will.

I think the only thing in autism that I'd call an innate talent is detail-oriented thinking by default. It'd be the same type of "innate talent" as, say, synesthesia, or schizophrenia: a side effect of experiencing the world differently.

A side effect for which there is a substantial, lifelong, and most importantly wide cost, even if it occasionally confers usually small, usually fleeting, and most importantly narrow advantage.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say.

I'm saying, if it doesn't ruin lives to the point of preventing reproduction, then it stays in the gene pool.

Basically, I'm saying this:

> The trait is still here and still prevalent meaning people are still getting laid and starting families and presumably leading fulfilling lives.

Being interested in a subject is massively helpful to learning it. But interest arises circumstantially, it's an emotion. The grim reality that it would be really useful to you to learn a certain subject does not necessarily make you interested in the subject, unfortunately. (Perhaps "financially interested", but that's something else.)

Why does curiosity being natural necessarily mean some people are born without it? It could also mean everyone (or every average human) is born with it, and overtime it gets pushed out of people.

So the minimum might not be zero, but it isn’t some fixed quantity.

People do studies on weeks old babies, it seems unlikely curiosity has been restrained at that point.

I think the case you mentioned is explained by an idea covered in attachment theory. Children explore when they feel safe and secure. Safety and security come from the caregivers, the parents. When that is absent, because the parents' emotional state makes the children feel insecure, then the children are restrained by their own emotions.

My first thought when the article got to the dialog between logic and intuition bit was that the same is true for school level physics.

I met the guitar guy a few years later outside his house. He always had just one guitar but now owned something like 20, something like a hundred books about music. Quite the composer. It looked and sounded highly sophisticated. The dumb guy didn't exist anymore.

If we spent 50% of time thinking productively - inborn thinking speed would matter. But in my estimate even 5% is generous.

So it matters far more what kind of feedback you have to filter out the wrong results, and how much time you spend thinking - than how quickly you can do it.

Also practice helps with speed.

That said, some people received a smaller starting container, and might need some help cracking it. That’s the work of those who think they’ve found a bigger one.

Nonsense!

The brain you are born with materially dictates the ceiling of your talent. A person with average ability can with dedication and focus over many years become reasonably good, but a genius can do the same in 1 year and at a young age.

We have an education system which gives an A Grade if you pass the course, but 1 person may put on 5 hours a week and the other works day and night.

Edit: I don't mean to argue that there aren't genetics involved in determining aptitude on certain tasks, of course, but the assumption that genius is born and never made feels like a very shallow understanding of the capacity of man.

Cool, come and have a coffee with me :) I have older and younger siblings and was the one randomly blessed.

Whereas most recognised talents are associated with hard work and so there is then this visible link, I am a good example as I did the bare minimum throughout education (and beyond...).

The way my brain processes and selectively discards/stores the information it receives is very different to majority of the population. I have no control over it.

I take zero credit for any of my achievments - I regularly meet intelligent people near to retirement who have been to a tier 1 university, may have PHDs, worked 60 hours a week since they were born, been on course and what not and cannot reach the levels I can.

My nurturing was no different to siblings/peers (and was terrible!)

Note: I have my weaknesses too, but as a whole, I am exceptional. Not through effort!! Completely random - neither of my parents are intelligent and nothing up the ancestary tree as far as I know.

And this also gives the proponent (you in this case) an excuse to blame a person for not focusing hard enough or not being dedicated enough if they don't grasp the basics, let alone excel.

I respectfully, but strongly, disagree. There's a reason most NBA players are over 2 meters tall, and one does not become taller with time, dedication nor focus.

It might be different for intellectual skills but I am not that sure.

Almost anyone can become decent at almost anything though. Which is good already!

Being tall isn't a skill. I suspect you could be skillful enough at basketball to overcome the hight disadvantage. However, I think most people who might become that skillful see the high disadvantage (plus the general difficulty of becoming a pro basketball player) and take a different path through life. It's also possible that the amount of time that would be needed to grow your skill past the height disadvantage is too long, so it's not feasible to do it to gain a position in the NBA.

Careful with that "all", even the most highly intelligent humans still have peaks and deficits in different domains.

The interesting finding is that this universal correlation is strong, real, and durable. Of course people in general have cognitive domains where they function better or worse than their g factor indicates, and that's before we get into the fact that intellectual task performance is strongly predicated on knowledge and practice, which is difficult to control for outside of tests designed (successfully, I must add) to do so.

Track and swimming are where innate physical attributes have the most obvious benefits. Michael Phelphs had the perfect body for swimming. There is no amount of trainingg that 99.999% of the population could do to get close to what Usain Bolt ran. Most humans could not train to run under 4 minutes in a mile or under 2:30 in a marathon. They just don't have the right muscular and cardiovascular physiology.

Team sports are of course more complicated as other qualities come into play that aren't as directly physiological.

Of course, but I don't think anyone was seriously suggesting that. The vast majority of humans can become pretty good at swimming though. And that was my interpretation of the original claim about cognitive tasks, mathematics, etc.

https://www.lines.com/guides/average-height-nba-players/1519

A paid promotion of International Median is not Average Association.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lentini

The fact that he has a wiki page, and that many folks with born without or who have lost legs (~500,000/year Americans experience limb loss or are born with a limb difference https://amputee-coalition.org/resources/limb-loss-statistics...) do not, suggest that the number of people with < 2 is far greater than the number of people with > 2. So the average is still less than 2.

For better or worse, number of legs (or number of arms) is canonical example people use to demonstrate the statistical principal a significant majority of a population can be above average of some metric.

> Lentini was so respected among his peers that he was often called "The King".

Because it turns out that, in the NBA, height does not correspond with ability! This of course makes sense, because all the players are filtered by being NBA professional basketballers. A shorter player simply has more exceptional ability in another dimension, be that dodging reflex, ability to visualize and then hit a ball trajectory from the three point line, and so on. Conversely, a very tall player is inherently useful for blocking, and doesn't have to be as objectively good at basketball in order to be a valuable teammate.

Despite this lack of correlation, when you look at an NBA team you see a bunch of very tall fellows indeed. Simpson's Paradox.

We see the same thing in intellectual pursuits. "I'm not nearly as smart as the smartest programmer I know, but I get promoted at work so I must be doing something right. Therefore anyone could do this, they just have to work hard like I did". Nope. You've already been selected into "professional programmer", this logic doesn't work.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox

Absolutely correct. And that begins with getting their interest, thus their attention; and that's a whole subject in and of itself.

In practice your views result in stinting access of non-existent (in your opinion) talented children to a faster education track. They don't exist therefore they don't need different treatment (finer points get lost when the idea disseminates). Quite a hot theme in American education two (or so) years ago.

I see you're familiar with Ryan North.