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Comment by source99 | Hacker News Reader

Did not read the article.

All skills can be learned and there is no such thing as natural talent for a specific skill set.

Every time that I hear that I just mention Ramanujan. End of discussion.

Except that's not entirely true and a few minutes thought should convince you that some people are better at playing the piano than others, even after years of practice.

I've read a number of studies that contradict your statement. They say that the ONLY thing that matters is the amount of practice and natural skills play no part in level of mastery.

I highly doubt anybody can make such a study, because nobody can get such an experiment? What did they do? Measured talent in infants, forbade them to practice and compared to practiced individuals? Heh :) Don't be ridiculous. The studies you supposedly read are junk.

> Don't be ridiculous. The studies you supposedly read are junk.

Pretty harsh words for somebody who obviously has no background in psychological research :)

Of course it would be impossible to construct such an experiment. OTOH its not that hard to design robust field studies for topics like this one. And that has been done, many times.

In general, you don't have to measure talent in infants, you just have to be able to correctly predict future perfomance without talent as a variable.

Try to get this book from a library near you for an overview of the current state of expertise research:

http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=052...

You most certainly cannot dissever talent from the rest of the variables.

Field studies? Pp-lee-ase. Take that voodoo science somewhere else. Field studies' purpose is not to give answers but to definite more concrete questions. To serve as a starting point for a controlled experiment and that might be impossible, like in this case. Just because some professor says something, that doesn't mean he is correct. There is more falsification in psychology than in nutrition and medicine and that certainly says something. A lot, if not the overwhelming majority of psychology researchers do not understand p-values and simple theory-hypothesis construction, let a alone the structural equation modeling menu dialogues in SPSS they click on. All they have is theories. No, not like gravity. More like Jesus and Muhammad - unsubstantiated theories.

I read a metric ton of psychographic research because of my job, which is in quantitative marketing research.

Try watching Dancing with The Stars

I assume that that's intended as a reference to a simple method of disproving the contention that only practice time matters.

(It certainly supports the idea that practice time on the specific task matters -- which is noncontroversial -- but it doesn't support the idea that practice time alone determines performance.)

The show demonstrates that some people are inherently better at tasks requiring physical dexterity, timing and grace. Can you teach those things?

Not all practice is equal. Someone who puts in x hours with the help of world class teachers and approaches the task with a focused plan will beat someone who practices just as many hours on their own without a plan or focus.

All skills can be learned. That is true. Without innate talent some of them just cannot be mastered.

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