<p>Of course it isn’t true. But I think the real question is whether it is something useful to espouse or believe, especially for a young person. Unfortunately, many people do not understand that it is usually the process of trying that is more important than the achievement of a particular goal. While we all have limitations, one never knows one’s limits until you try to exceed them and most people can achieve more than they think they can. Sometimes, an optimistic lie is what gets people moving. </p>
<p>There are so many messages of defeat and limits, especially for low-income and minority kids, that messages that proclaim ability and success are critically important. I also believe that while you may not be able to do everything that you set your mind to, the process of trying, failing, and reinvention, is a success in its own right.</p>
<p>Ah gotcha, so this saying is actually useful (while it can be a lie) in that it motivates kids to shoot high, keep trying right? Eventually, they’ll be able to figure out what they can or can’t do.</p>
<p>OK, I shared the dream to play in the NBA … so for me this lierally could not happen … however, if my dream was “to make the NBA someday” then that would be a different story. While it became clear I would never make it as a player I could have focused on being a coach, scout, or front office person … and yes there was a possibility of making a living in pro basketball. In many cases if the only acceptable outcome is to have the glory job (NBA player, film star, etc) the odds are incredibly bad but being on the inside and making a living in many many industries is a possibility if someone wants it bad enough.</p>
<p>Outliers: The Story of Success is the name of that book. A recommended read, puts a lot of things in perspective (or at least allows you to look at things from a different perspective).</p>
<p>Actually, it’s simple. There’s no such thing as talent. It’s all hard work, practice and attitude. However, you have to do it in a right way. Improve you weakest areas, challenge yourself again and again. That’s it. Don’t get overly excited, though. It is simple, but it is not easy. </p>
<p>Still, there are some exception I can think of. It’s about diseases, being handicapped, physical deficiencies (you just won’t be a great sprinter if you are 7") or even skin color or gender (up to a point in history being black or being a woman meant you will face more obstacles than white males).</p>
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<p>You just did not work hard enough, in a proper way and perhaps not long enough. That’s it. Come on, you can’t tell me there are not any relatively small and not athletic players in the NBA. Look at Earl Boykins, for instance.</p>
<p>Luck is a controversial matter. I would agree that it can play a part up to some point while one develops and improves. However, when you reach a certain level of expertise you are simply above luck. Michael Jordan did not just happen to dominate for a decade, nor did Tiger Woods. Coca-Cola was not created by accident and so on. </p>
<p>Luck can play a part somewhere at the beginning. It can help you find you passion, you could get on a team because a better player got injured etc. However, from some point it’s just about pain, blood and tears.</p>
<p>Well, if you consider that evolution derives from genetic mutations that created more “fit” lifeforms, and having an innate talent for something would amount to having a “genetic mutation,” saying that there is no such thing as innate talent insinuates that there are no genetic mutations, and by extension, no evolution. At least that’s my guess of what Prothero means; I probably worded it badly though–biology is not my forte.</p>
<p>@Kvasek: You may be able to overcome lack of talent through hard work, and talent cannot make up for excessive laziness. However, that doesn’t eliminate the existence of talent.</p>
<p>Oh, I see what you mean. But come on, guys, it is a completely different subject. </p>
<p>In order to survive (as in the survival of the fittest) we do need some skills and abilities, but these are mostly basic ones. You know, feed yourself, protect yourself, family and other members of a species from a threat etc. The talent and ability that I and probably most of other people referred to in previous posts was in terms of greatness, expertise and above average performances, which I think is clearly a different matter.</p>
<p>@nonimagination: I see. However, if, according to what you wrote, means that you cannot achieve that much without hard work, then where does that leave talent?</p>
<p>Someone earlier wrote about Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Galdwell. In that book the author writes about a study conducted by Anders Ericsson. In 1990s the studies a group of violinists from Berlin’s Academy of Music. He divided them in 3 groups. The first one were potential stars. The second - good musicians, nothing more. And the last one - they were not likely to even pursue a professional musical carrier and would probably end up teaching children etc.
What he found out was that by the age of 20 the players from the 1st group have had about 10,000 hours of practice, these from 2nd - 8,000 and from 3rd - 4,000. The rule seems simple - the harder you work, the better you are. Again, where does that leave talent?</p>
<p>You are describing natural selection. Evolution = random genetic variation + natural selection. An “innate talent” would ostensibly have to come from some combination of genetic factors i.e. mutations that resulted in different levels of performance for different skills, etc.</p>
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<p>One thing that confuses me about that study is this:</p>
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<p>How did they end up “best” in their class if there is no natural talent and they all practiced for about the same amount of time…? Maybe natural talent is irrelevant at some point, but this is not to say that it never factors in at all.</p>
If you are in one of the latter groups and lack significant musical talent, why would you waste 10,000 hours practicing? Perhaps only those with talent bother to spend that much time.</p>
<p>I personally recommend reading Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, both by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Both are excellent books, though not necessarily directly relevant to this thread.</p>
<p>@Sithis: Well, it seems that this sentence created this confusion:</p>
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<p>“Would end up the best” means that they started practicing more first and subsequently became the best in their class.</p>
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<p>They are in the worst group because they spent fewer hours practicing.</p>
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<p>At the beginning everyone was on the same level. Than those, who outworked their peers started outperforming them. They did not have any reason to think they have some predisposition when they started practicing more.
The conclusion is simple - the level of performance is proportional to the amount of hours spent practicing.</p>
<p>Ah, it seems that the retrospective writing there was indeed the source of my confusion. Still, it doesn’t explain why they suddenly started practicing more… do you think it was simply because they were forced to by their parents or teachers? Also, it would seem that these people were somewhat self-selecting if they practiced music from ages 5-20 and did not quit. What if they all had some level of talent, and just developed that talent to different extents? The study obviously only accounts for people who were willing and able to practice music for so long; it says nothing of people who might have started at an early age and then quit when they noticed their peers were significantly ahead of them…</p>
You don’t know that. There could be plenty of reasons - I suggested one.
Once again, you don’t know enough to conclude that when there are other plausible alternatives. Look, let’s examine this with the assumption that some people do have more talent than others:</p>
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<li>All start out with the same experience and start practicing.</li>
<li>After a relatively short time, those with additional aptitude or talent find that they are good at playing the violin and increase the amount of time they practice. Meanwhile, the untalented become discouraged with how awful they sound and don’t enjoy practicing as much.</li>
<li>The trend continues for ten years.</li>
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<p>That Outliers book is so depressing. But Gladwell does emphasize that the hours spent working do actually need to be productive–it’s kind of a right person in the right place at the right time situation. Bill Gates got wonderful breaks early on in life to work with computers, but he also had to have the aptitude to take advantage of it. If he had been an English-oriented person, no matter how many hours he put into computers, he wouldn’t have started the, ahem, second-biggest computer company in the nation. I honestly believe that people are hard-wired differently.</p>