*** Warning *** Warning ***
Very long post! Read at your own risk!rodderz wrote:
Nature verses Nurture.... hmmmm Country of berth has every thing to do with it
The nature versus nurture argument is very old, with much still to be decided, However, Syed devotes quite a bit of his time to looking at the question of "country of birth" and most of his observations favour nurture. For example, East African distance runners, especially Kenyans. Yes, the world of distance running is currently dominated by Kenyans but there are many factors involved in that. For a start, not all Kenyans are good distance runners (just the same as not all Australians are good swimmers or all Chinese good TT players). Of the world's elite Kenyan runners, the great majority of them come from the Rift Valley, with the great majority of them from the Eldoret region - 1 small portion of the overall population. What is special about the Eldoret region? 2 things: 1. its altitude is amongst the highest in Africa, and 2. a lot of children have to run to school (some as much as 20km per day). Put those 2 things together and you have distance altitude training. By the time some leave school they have maximum oxygen uptakes very similar to elite distance runners. That is nurture in the form of practice and not nature in the form of special genes.
Syed also tells his own story - he was one of an extraordinary number of elite TT players who all came from the same small part of his home town, a significant number from the same street he was born in. Why? It wasn't a genetic factor, but the combination of a TT obsessed school teacher, a local 24 hour TT centre, and the opportunity to be trained and encouraged by very good coaches. Again, location was important, but only because it provided the opportunity for enthusiasm for the game to be nurtured.
RebornTTEvnglist wrote:
I'm not saying Syed's observations are wrong, but just that it can only really look at the side of those that "made it", not the ones who didn't (and the latter may outnumber the former by a lot).
Of course, but this misses the point. The question is, "How to get to the top" not "How not to get there". Nowhere (and this is important to stress), nowhere does Syed suggest that it is only practice that gets you there. Nor does he anywhere suggest that the same amount of practice will yield the same results. Of the 10 chapters in the book, only 3 are primarily about practice vs talent. Much of the rest of the book deals with the other mysterious variables which also influence success, things such as internal motivation, fixed versus growth mindset, the placebo effect, rituals, brain processes, and the influence or otherwise of genes.
cyber1call wrote:
[I don't dispute the basic premise as it applies to most activities and people. I merely dispute the proposition that there is no such thing as talent...
Take the 10,000 hours of practice paradigm. If person A practices TT 10,000 hours he may wind up in the top world rankings. Yet Person B might also practice 10,000 hours and never get that good. To me, that defines "talent." Person A had talent that Person B did not have. It is an intangible. Someone with "talent" won't likely get to the top without putting in the hours, but just putting in the hours may not get you there either no matter how hard one tries. So I think this concept is mostly true when applied to a general population's distribution (statistically speaking), but ignores simple innate differences that apply to everyone.
What is talent if it is "intangible"? How can it be identified or measured? Our TV screens are littered with "talent" shows, but in the main they are incorrectly labelled. What is being identified and judged is mainly the result of practice and training. No-one gets up on the stage and dances perfectly without having practised first. What is being called talent is what Syed calls "the iceberg illusion": what we see is only the tip of the iceberg which is the thousands of hours of training which has got that person to that point.
The other major issue with the fixation on talent is the negative effect which this has on both those "with talent" and those "without talent". From personal experience: we had at our school a young man who was "immensely talented" - he was Australian schoolboys sprint champion for his age group for a number of years. One day in 1968 I saw him run 100 m in 10.7 seconds. An extraordinary achievement. Do you know his name? NO - because he never made it. He became a victim of the talent myth. For a start, he received so much adulation for his "talent" that he came to believe he didn't need to train - his "talent" was enough. Secondly, he became fearful of losing and having his "talent" label taken away from him so he stopped competing. He could have been... but he never did. At the same time, his "talent" affected everyone around him. The rest of us who had to live with him day by day simply stopped trying to improve. We simply assumed that we would never be as talented as he was and therefore there was no point trying.
If we had all been encouraged to be the best each of us could be through hard work and perseverance and if we had been encouraged to believe that we could be better than we were, we would all have been better off, the "talented" one included.
roundrobin wrote:
Tassie52 wrote:
roundrobin wrote:
In other fields, check out this young painter's gallery and tell me straight away she is not "talented", but just happened to have lots of deliberate practice:
http://www.akiane.com/store/No, she's not talented as in some mystical, unmeasurable power; yes, she is talented as in she's a fine painter - as a result of thousands of hours of practice.
Sorry, your explanation is way too simplistic. There has to be much more than that, to say the least... She did not become an incredible painter by simply "practicing". The more you are attempting to apply Syed's theory to real cases of undeniable "talent" the more I find it unconvincing...
I'm sorry that you find the arguments unconvincing, but I'm fascinated by the fact that each example of "talent" that gets thrown up - Iverson, Bryant, Mozart, Akiane - when their lives are examined we find exactly the things that Syed is talking about. Each of them started at a very early age, each dedicated huge amounts of time to pursuing their passion, and each only gained recognition after they had done the necessary hours.
I've been interested to look at the "talent" of Jackie Evancho. Lots and lots of comments gushing about how "gifted" she is, but again it's the iceberg illusion. Added to which, many of the quotes are conditional, saying things like, "She has a remarkable voice
for someone of her age." In other words, it is not her talent which is being praised but how early she has been able to develop her voice - the result of doing something which kids don't usually do: practice for thousands of hours. Secondly, Jackie Evancho is not a star because she possesses a quality which others don't. There are hundreds of thousands of kids around the world with voices as good as or better than hers, but... they have not had the opportunities which she has had to be recognised. Where you are born
does make a difference - try becoming an opera singer when living in poverty in Bangladesh.
antipip wrote:
I tend to see genetics as a ceiling or limit.
Practice (along with other factors) allows you to get close to that ceiling.
People have different ceilings.
The closer you get to the ceiling the more practice you have to put in for a little gain (similar to law of diminsihing returns).
I would say you'd be amazed how good you could get with practice, but I don't see how you can dismiss all the other factors.
I think antipip is close here. Our physiology is always going to set a limit upon what we can do - the tiny females we see performing amazingly in Olympic gymnastics are never going to be sumo wrestlers and vice versa.
High jumpers are never going to win shot put events and shot putters aren't going to win the Tour de France (although it could be fun to watch them try).
But the term "genetics" is a little troubling. For virtually all human beings our genetic make-up is virtually identical. When comparing the genes of African-American sprinters and people from Nigeria there are no significant differences, but only one of those groups dominates the Olympic sprint events. Equally, it's not aberrant genes or special genes which set stars apart. Wayne Gretsky is regarded as arguably the greatest ice hockey player ever but has no special genes. In his own words: "I wasn't naturally gifted in terms of size and speed; everything I did in hockey I worked for." Whoops! That sounds like the 10,000 hours practice thing to me
At the same time, Syed is quick to acknowledge the difference between complex events like ice hockey and simple events like running or lifting. It is true that the first thing you need to do to become an olympic sprinter is to choose your parents carefully. But, as important as that is, that on its own is not enough. When it comes to complex tasks, the physiological dimension becomes less important; see the Gretsky quote above.
Fish wrote:
Syed never said it was hard work alone. The path to the top is a combination of opportunity; being in the right place at the right time - and hard work. And Syed's insight is not new. Thomas Edison made the point about genius being 1 per cent inspiration, 99 per cent perspiration more than 100 years ago.
And a number of "someone elses" said:
Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get. Ray Kroc
The harder I work, the luckier I get. Samuel Goldwyn
The harder you work, the luckier you get. Gary Player
The more I practice, the luckier I get. Gene Sarazen
And perhaps "more talented" could be substituted for "luckier"?
roundrobin wrote:
That's it? No individual "talent" involved at all to get to the TOP of any field?
What about differences in intelligence, determination, hand-eye coordination, cardio-vascular capacity, jumping ability, correct split-second decision making under extreme pressure, etc., etc.? The fact is everyone is different physiologically.
"Willing to work hard" as often touted by Syed and his supporters is actually a personal trait, an unique kind of "talent" that simply can not be taught.
For a start, intelligence is
not a talent. Nor is determination. Hand-eye co-ordination is purely the result of training. Do you know any babies who can catch a ball? Cardio-vascular capacity is the result of two things: 1. physiology, and 2. training. When I was training for marathons I increased my cardio-vascular capacity immensely - my resting heart rate was down to 40 beats per minute; it's not nowadays!
Cardio-vascular capacity is not a talent. Jumping ability - trainable. Split-second decision making ability is always the result of practice: the only way any of us know which kind of stroke to play is because we've done it before!
Also, I'm quite sure that "willing to work hard" can be taught. A long time ago I was a primary school teacher. My first ever class was eight year olds, including one who was consistently the worst speller in the class. His father was a dairy farmer and John (the boy) said, "My dad says you don't need to go to school to be a farmer." Each week John would only manage to learn 2 or 3 of the 20 words set to learn. Towards the end of the year there came a day when he fluked getting 3 of the day's 5 words correct. I praised John's "hard work".
The next day he also got 3 right. I got the whole class to applaud him for doing so well.
That week, when we tested the whole 20 words, John got 6 correct - this was unheard of for him and we made a huge fuss over the effort he had made. The next week he got 9 out of 20! By the end of the year he was consistently getting between 16 and 19 out of 20 - this from the "no talent" worst speller in the room! The only thing that had changed was that the class was rewarding his "hard work", and he learned to make an effort. That was one of the highlights of my primary school teaching career.
This illustration is exactly what Syed talks about as a "growth mindset" - teaching people to believe that they can improve through effort. Up until that time, John had a "fixed mindset" believing that he was "no good at spelling". His ability to spell changed when his mindset changed. "Willing to work hard" is
not 'a unique kind of "talent" that simply can not be taught.'
I know I haven't responded to the Carl Danner article yet. Apologies, but I've kind of got lots of other things on my plate at the moment. Hopefully I'll get to it in the coming week.
I'm heading to the UK for a two week study trip soon. Anybody in Cambridge fancy beating a "no talent" Aussie?
I'll bring my bat if you like?
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