Practice Doesn't Make Perfect | Hacker News Reader

Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

newyorker.com

203 pointsagarden137 comments

I have my own theory. The idea is that there are lots, lots and lots of tiny unspoken things which could make huge difference in long run. And those who successful doesn't necessary know their own tiny things they got right.

Let's say there are two persons A and B who is training in chess. Person A trained for X hours and became chess master. Person B trained for 10X hours and didn't get even close to master level.

The truth is that person A got some tiny unspoken ideas right (may be he even discovered them by coincidence). And person B got this tiny things wrong. No matter how much person B is training, he or she won't improve in chess until B find right way.

Sad story is that A couldn't even realize what exactly he got right and take it for granted. So when A explains B how he train/play, he or she could say very high level things (which you can find in any grandmaster book) skipping huge unspoken context.

That's why many people who read books written by chess grandmasters, don't become grandmasters. Chess grandmaster could try to explain you how he or she plays but these words has very limited power since unspoken context matters most.

So if you didn't progress much in chess after learning theory and practising and reading grandmaster's book, it could mean that you just missed something very fundamental tiny thing which nobody speaks about. May be your spatial representation of how pieces move in the board is not suitable that's why for you it requires more computational power to imagine whole dynamics of some given chess position. May be if you play other similar games and then return to chess, you fix your spatial representation of chess in your head. May be even solving math geometric puzzles will help you with that.

My point is that if you don't progress don't give up but don't bang your head against the wall. Instead think about more delicate things happen in your brain. Your goal is to find tiny thing in your head and fix it. I do believe if you find this needle in haystack, then you could make huge breakthrough.

I think true intellect lies in metacognition. I mean how you think about thinking, how you think about learning.

Absolutely. I'm a guitarist, and have been for over 30 years. I'm good, but not REALLY good, and I hit a wall in terms of technical ability / speed a long time ago - after about 5 years of playing. Nothing I did improved my speed and I didn't have the accuracy of a Malmsteen or MacAlpine, despite practicing religiously for hours at a time. I thought I had a speed limit and that was that - everyone I consulted felt the same.

It's only been in the last few months and via complete luck on YouTube that I appear to have discovered the missing piece of the jigsaw (two way pick slanting) - had I known this when I was 18 I would have been of a much higher level. Being 45, having old bad habits to overcome and the demands of a family with 4 kids and a chronic bad back means I don't have the time to devote to the improvements I'd love to make, but from my experience, I know that "practice" is not enough, it needs to be the right practice, and sometimes that means a subtle nuance which is not apparent to some, maybe for years. I've helped some of the kids I teach in a similar way, with them then "getting" an idea they've not understood for a long time, so there needs to be more analysis than simply "practice", in my opinion.

Was it just luck, or are you actually not creative enough to figure out new and useful things in your own?

(say, extended guitar playing techniques)

An open question so far.

In the history of skills (guitar playing, mastery of swordplay, music composition, etc), it's not inconceivable that someone could go a long time and not happen to notice the same things that masters of the discipline have been taught. Most human endeavors and learning comes not by independent discovery of everything, but by building on what the people before us have learned. It's a rare genius who can skip that.

Swordmasters in the renaissance studied each others' books and teachings, much as physics students might study the publications of others in their discipline. The insights they each made might not have all been in technique itself, but sometimes in new ways of teaching it, or describing the nuances of what their masters ("no, do it THIS way ...") had told them in a different way which made it easier to teach.

For many physical endeavors, it seems like there are often a few Good ways to do something Right -- shoot a bow, hold a calligraphy pen, etc. You MIGHT stumble upon the best way to do it on your own, but it seems a little ridiculous to scoff that someone is "not creative enough" to figure out what nuance of technique they have been missing.

> Most human endeavors and learning comes not by independent discovery of everything, but by building on what the people before us have learned.

That's correct!

Like Isaac Newton said - if I have seen further, it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants.

Link: http://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/o...

No, I've figured out LOADS of stuff on my own and then found others had done so, or had different names for it. I started doing hybrid picking when no-one I knew was doing it, and other techniques. Remember as well, this was in the 80s - there just wasn't the access to information that is available today; the kids I teach now say "how are you so good at working things out?", but it was the only way to play most of the music I liked when I was a kid; good transcriptions were like hen's teeth, and I remember having to negotiate with the guy who owned the paper shop (where I had a paper round - remember I was 14-15 at the time!) to speak to his distributor to order american guitar magazines so I could get the good stuff. I'd go to London once every couple of months and buy a VHS instructional tape. It wasn't like today when you can find an in-depth lesson from a world master within 5 minutes.

But the point is that it was one specific (and subtle) technique that I missed, and everyone else missed, or didn't instruct people to do - that completely stalled my playing. And I know I'm not the only one!

I play double bass, not guitar, but I suspect there are parallels. My answer is: No, I'm not creative enough, or maybe too creative. In my view, most technical experiments are blind alleys. And a problem with musical instruments, perhaps with double bass as an extreme case, is that some experiments can lead to permanent injury.

I have met two fine young bassists who were both crippled by trying unorthodox techniques, to the point where it interfered with their careers: For instance they had to curtail preparation for critical auditions.

Meanwhile, I have consciously stuck with the stodgy classical technique that I learned as a kid, and at age 52, can still play a four hour gig on the one instrument in the band that never gets a break.

This is why having a good coach can make all the difference. It does no good practicing the wrong techniques.

There is an enormous benefit to having a really good teacher or coach to help the students who got something subtle a bit wrong way back up the chain. You need someone who doesn’t only deeply understand how to do the task perfectly, but also has a deep understanding of all the different ways the task can be done improperly, and what the underlying misunderstandings or problems are which cause those mistakes, who knows the best way to nudge the learner back on track, and who has endless empathy and good will and enough time to make sure the correction happens.

I recommend Shinichi Suzuki’s lovely little 1969 book about “talent education”, Nurtured by Love, https://amzn.com/0874875846

Indeed. I've been playing the kaval (an end blown flute) for more than 10 years and there have been many times when I'd hit the wall. I also play a bit of guitar, but kaval has been much harder to master. I think that this is because, when compared to guitar, kaval has a lot more independent variables, such as breathing, embouchure(lip shape), throat, how hard you push the instrument to your lips, how your hands take turns pushing the instrument to your lips and also some special kinds of vibrato and articulation. With so many independent variables to control it is really inevitable that you fall victim into this "unspoken context". I realized this a couple of years ago when I had the chance to spend time with some of the greatest masters of the instrument. Since I already had some practice and skills behind me, I asked a lot of questions and tried to get as deep as possible in every single nuance of the techniques. I was really surprised to find out that those great masters can't actually explain a lot of things that they do. As you guys said, maybe they just got it right early enough (e.g. by chance). In the beginning I did not believe it, but when I encountered this with several great performers I changed my approach radically. First, I stopped playing for a few months in order to get rid of some bad baggage that I may have accumulated and to start fresh. Then I started watching videos of these masters with the audio turned off and I would then practice in front of a mirror. At some point I discovered that some of the movements that I do are the same as the ones I've seen on the video and focused on them (recording your sessions also helps). This has helped me progress much better. So how do you get as much of this "unspoken context"? Well it depends on your own strengths and abilities. I'd say that it is crucial to seek close contact with great performers that are way ahead of you. E.g. go to live performances, seminars or if that's not possible, just watch videos of these. I must admit that one of these masters, who is also a teacher has given me some really great advice on things I have to improve. This is because he not only got those unspoken things right, but also fully realized them mentally, so he can turn them into advice. But those teachers are really rare to find.

I have some friends in the dance business. Even (especially!) the top professionals routinely hire various coaches to see if they'll catch something missed. They'll also regularly go right back to the basics of how to take a step. They'll be in the studio just walking back and forth.

What's weird about dance is what looks natural and elegant to the observer is a rather contorted and sometimes painful position for the dancer.

I have been practicing the Japanese martial art of Aikido for 25 years or so, and also kenjutsu from 20. It's really interesting to observe different methods of training, and in my teaching to try and work out how best to pass this on.

As a generalisation (take with pinch of salt), the classic Japanese method does not have lots of explanation - teacher demonstrates, teacher works with student, can be quite hands on with corrections to body posture etc, but not typically lots of explanation. There are also exercises shown to develop body conditioning, and awareness. These include exercises such as standing, or slow deep walking, which initially are not obvious as to what is happening and why. The students who take these on trust and go off and do them in their own time are the ones who make progress. There is also quite a lot of focus on "mitori keiko" - training by watching, so training people to become more observant about what they are seeing and then be able to take that understanding or images and apply it to their own training.

Western students tend to require more explanation. They ask "why should I do this (apparently boring) exercise?". There can be a tendency to pursue acquisition of technique rather than fundamentals. They are less likely to take things on trust and work it out for themselves. Of course there are plenty of great Western practitioners and plenty of poor Japanese ones.

As a teacher I found my tendency was to try and explain too much. I find I get better results when working with people and making them feel things. I have seen my main teacher in Japan work on someone for 5-10 minutes and extract out them very signficiant improvement in that time - and he has done that to me. He can give people a taste for a new level and inspire them, but the challenge then is to go off and do the personal work to really own that new level or those insites. That is a goal for me to be able to do the same for my students.

My main teacher in UK was a contemporary dancer for his working life, and with his contacts etc has inspired quite a few dancers to come to the dojo. It has been interesting for me to work with them over the years, and understand how varied dance training can be. Some dance training seems to be more about the externals - make a move look a certain way, without worrying about the internal mechanics of the body. And yet of course other training is at a deeper level, training awareness. I realised over time the distinct difference between someone who is very flexible, and yet can feel relatively "hard" - just due to their background and the focus of their training to that point.

I found Josh Waitzkin's book on learning about his experiences as a chess prodigy and then learning and competing at Taiji Push Hands to highest levels. He writes about deepening his awareness, and also the sheer time spent in practising and analysing his techniques and failures etc.

There is a saying for vocal coaches that singing before going to see one is mostly useless, and that it's a 10 year journey, starting with their lessons, towards being an adequate singer.

That's the thing - I went to a load, including people who were really, REALLY good technically, but they weren't aware of what they were doing; even people like Malmsteen, etc., didn't really know exactly -how- they were doing what they were doing in many cases, and they certainly weren't explaining it clearly. I remember writing to Guitarist magazine (in the UK) about it, and getting a fairly standard reply of "practice the patterns and notch the metronome up every week", but that was what I'd already been doing for years - and had been told to do that by everyone.

It depends. I have a thick skull, even with the best teacher I probably wouldn't "understood" the advices until my own intuition about things was matching them. I took years to learn some stuff, that I could have found in a one afternoon if I asked the right questions. But I couldn't. Now I know that I am capable of finding them, and that I can also communicate to share point of views and ideas. Also, teachers could be wrong too. There's a lot of stuff in my understanding of music that I find no trace of in theory (except for the "swing it" tag on a score).

That is the thing about (good) teachers: they have a lot of pedagogical content knowledge (Fachdidaktik). They know what questions to ask to what student at what time in her learning process. They know what examples, metaphors, strategies, and so on, might work for certain students or situations. They understand the individual nature of a student's learning process and are able to fit their teaching to best guide a student towards deepening their understanding and reaching a learning goal. That is also what makes teaching hard and it is not easily learned or taught either. A teacher not only needs a good understanding of the topic herself, but she also needs expertise teaching the topic, and manage the students and the classroom pedagogically sound to boot.

This is what I worry about the MOOC's: a lot of the best teachers I've had personally, and observed (with children), drew a vast tree of pedagogical techniques, but used their evaluation of a student's individual personality/psychology to inform them of which node/branch to select next. The most sophisticated MOOC's ever get is to brute-force try one node after another, if they support presenting the same material in a different way at all. And there isn't a classification system that I'm aware of to organize all the branches, especially around annotations that say "this branch appropriate if personality/psychology tends towards <this>" (yet another ontological terra incognita, I'm not aware of any classification system to describe students' pedagogical personality/psychology, which can change even depending upon context like subject matter, mood, etc.).

MOOC's are a step in the right direction, but far, far from a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer idealized vision that I would like to see.

If I may add my 2 cents, I almost never interacted positively with teachers at the College level. Mostly because I became borderline sociophobic tbh. MOOCs removed a big barrier between teacher judgement and politics (they're human, they can be prejudiced). Also gave me way more opportunity to collaborate and exchange with other students (mostly through IRC channels).

Very good point. I strongly suspect as an individual's autodidactic capabilities increase, the need for highly-attuned teachers decreases, and by college-level academics MOOCs may be far more effective in that context. I think ironically however, that the need for high-attuned mentors comes up later, as the academics segues into field practice.

Knowing what good technique is is a bit of a red herring I think--the bugbear of people who aren't that good yet, or the recently-good. I say this because I used to watch out for examples of poor guitar technique and be sort of critical of them but in doing so I noticed something--the moment poor technique got in the way of what they were doing they stopped doing it. Immediately, mid tune, no problem. I've seen this countless times--you can watch someone go from having their thumb on the top of the neck and their pinky on the soundboard and all sorts of little deficiencies and just watch each of them drop away and come back as the music requires it. This kind of malleability in the moment is the common element in the best musicians I think. As a matter of practice you'll certainly waste less time if someone points out poor technique early for you, but beyond the edge cases where poor technique is injurious that's about it (and I'd note, the vast majority of steel string guitar finger-style playing is of the injurious sort, but its just rarely played long and vigorously enough to become so). On the other hand, read this interview with Keith Frazer [1], whose slavish devotion to proper technique has left him irreparably damaged.

The fact is, at a certain level of playing, you stop asking "is this correct technique?" and you start asking, "does this make the music I am playing better? am i bringing attention to what i want to bring out of the piece? does it make it easier to play?" Preoccupation with correct technique as a separate existing thing from external authority becomes a hindrance. You want to learn about your art from those around you, and have them learn from you. If you don't feel ready or capable of being independent in this regard, that's fine. But not everyone is an amateur, and no one claims to ever stop learning, so what are they doing differently?

e: What most interests me about the article is that this comment section is filled entirely with people, like myself, who's opinion on the matter has not been changed one iota by the article

[1] http://www.keithfrazer.com/interview.htm

I loved drumming, after 6 years of banging into walls, this was my most precious lesson: be smart in what you do. Practice slow and simple, but deeply and patiently. Everytime I was hitting a wall, it's because I was blinded by my own false assumptions. It was mostly a journey into the self as much as in music (after that I called her the fair bitch).

Is this the pick slanting technique you're talking about? http://troygrady.com/2015/01/08/the-difference-between-picks...

Do you remember which video it was that made you "get it"? I'd like to watch it too!

Yeah, it's all Troy Grady; If you've watched "Cracking The Code" - the entire series, then basically, that was me, aside from me not getting the idea. I'm about the same age as Troy, FTR. The problems I had (particularly playing things such as from Tony MacAlpine's first album) all stem from not being able to get out from "beneath" the strings, and Troy's clear marshalling of all those ideas into a coherent method have opened the door to at least having another go. When I get time to practice - and that shouldn't be underestimated in terms of time - I can make progress, having already been able to play things I couldn't manage in the last 30 despite my lack of time and physical ability to play for long periods now.

I'm curious what the new technique did to your speed. Can you quantify?

Malmsteen plays mostly a single pattern of triplets that he moves around the fretboard. It's a very well-rehearsed parlour trick, that he can use for good effect in real tunes (in combination with his good tone and confident presentation), but that's all it is in the end. It doesn't compare to the labyrinthine gymnastics demanded by actual classical pieces, many of which have passages with unique fingering challenges: no one-size-fits-all fits all shred pattern.

Malmsteen himself is better when he slows down; he really should keep the triplet cheese grating to a minimum. Its effectiveness is inversely proportional to the size. A good example is the "I'm a Viking" guitar solo; there is heap of shred notes at the beginning as an intro, but then it goes slow, with just some connecting speedy bits here and there.

I've been playing mandolin for a few years and discovered the importance of pick angles while improving my tremolo. I realized that you cannot just keep the pick in the same orientation all the time so, nerd that I am, I started thinking about each stroke as a vector in six dimensional space (position and orientation in 3D). The trick for me is to simplify that to the point where I get the results I need.

Most of the material I saw online just had some basic recipes to improve right hand technique, there are very few systematic and rigorous explanations. I think that's where a good teacher can make a massive difference.

On the other hand I also have first-hand experience with nature vs. nurture - I play music with my wife and kids and I'm clearly the least talented although everyone brings something unique to the family band.

As always, the truth is a combination x * talent + y * nurture so I'm glad to see the discussion turning that direction.

I think in a similar way, and one of the nice consequences of this is, as you mention, that there's hope: you can try to attack your problem in as many ways as possible from as many angles as possible and find the "tiny unspoken thing" in a context one might not normally expect it.

Might be that creativity is a heritable part of talent too. Generating multiple contexts, finding those tiny inspirations.

An interesting counterpart is that our current education systems are trying their best to suppress creativity and give fish instead of a fishing rod.

Your theory suggests all people are equivalent, but learn by happenstance. To further your theory, would people in a set of skills have random attributes? It would be interesting to see if all chess grandmasters share any common traits, or not.

My theory doesn't suggest that all people are equivalent. As I stated pure intellect lies in metacognition.

I also think that learning or solving problems is not deterministic algorithm, it's a heuristic. If it's heuristic there are lots of random elements and tuning.

Obviously, everybody have their own "hardware" limit determined by genes but often people make big mistake thinking they already reached their limit by simply getting stuck in some topic without seriously and very fundamentally reconsider their whole approach to the problem or learning process itself.

I think often in these situations, possible limit is much, much, much higher than one might think.

I'm not OP, but I don't think that was an intended implication. It is my understanding that the genetic component of intelligence is widely acknowledged. I think the OP's model is still valid and useful, despite genetically-driven differences.

True. Gene matters. But that does not mean we should give up hope. This is not being stubborn. This is just logical. Its like running two operating systems on a same hardware. One of them must be really faster than the other just because it has the instructions in different order and that's meta cognition. Keep changing the order of instructions, because we don't have a proof for the limit on the hardware.

In my opinion, this is why dyslexic folks think differently and neurodiversity is real.

That's why it's important to work hard AND work smart.

Absolutely. I think you just described what in short hand is normally called talent.

By coincidence, I just finished Anders Ericsson's (the person mentioned in the article as arguing in favour of practice) book and he mentions pretty much exactly this. It's not that it's just about practice, but it's about practicing in the right way and having the correct mental models of what you're doing in order to improve. He believes that if you practice without focusing on the correct things and without knowing how to get better (usually by having a good coach who knows what it will take and what techniques you need to learn) then you can't expect to get as good as other people.

Very Thoughtful comment. Some things we knew intuitively but have never spoken out in words to oneself and those kind of thoughts kind of fades away or lies in very deep in the memory. This comment is one of those kind of Things. Thanks for putting it in words.

Yup. Best thing I ever did for my dancing was reading "The Inner Game of Tennis".

This is basically how I feel about dating.

here are lots, lots and lots of tiny unspoken things which could make huge difference in long run

The technical term for these tiny unspoken things is, I believe, "alleles."

Absolutely, and this is right at the center of Ericsson's theory of excellence, learning and deliberate practice [1]. He calls this 'mental representations', and together with the 'brain's flexibility' they form the 2 pillars of his theory. The rest of the theory (e.g., deliberate practice) stems from these 2, that is, how can we actually change our brain to record in our long-term memory the most and best (pre-computed) mental representations. That's what distinguishes an expert: the quantity and quality of the mental representations.

The method involves 6 factors that have to be adapted to the specific skill:

* 1. having specific goals

* 2. getting slightly out of your comfort zone

* 3. focus and concentration during practice (ideally close to 1 hour)

* 4. feedback

* 5. practising a sufficiently developed human activity

* 6. having a teacher/coach (and keep getting a better one, adjusted to your current level)

* 7. (additional point: starting early in life)

Point 5 is the difference between practising, say, the violin (for which we have literally centuries of the best performers teaching the following generations, always improving, up to a near threshold) to practising say skateboard which is a few decades old of serious practice or any recent boardgame, say. No one knows what are the best tactics and strategies. Even sports: consider how many world records from some years ago would not qualify you for the olympics today. Naturally if you're not learning the violin but something else less developed, you just try to find the best current method and mental representations, and discover better ones to gain a decisive edge on your competion (with perhaps less practice time or talent (eg, height)).

I also agree with your point on metacognition, but that's an even broader subject to discuss.

[1] https://smile.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise/...

Great comment. One thing I believe is worth mentioning is that even if a person practices to find this "tiny thing" in their heads and fix it, they may not find it for a very long time. Some people can practice something for decades and still not be professional with whatever they are doing. They could also figure one "tiny thing" out but their may be many more "tiny things" to uncover after that.

I like this view, that there are many subtle things that one person got right and another didn't - couldn't you say that person A was just naturally (genetically advantaged) to discovering those things in their field of mastery?

I would also add to that curiosity, which leads to desire, which makes mastery that much easier.

You could settle for a genetics explanation, but why would you?

Other hypotheses are much more easily testable, and certainly more inspiring to the newcomer, and haven't been scientifically exhausted yet.

If everyone just said "it's probably not in my genes" they wouldn't even try, disregarding tons of historical factors that may have stopped their ancestors from creating a record.

While I agree with your overall point, that's not the way I would express it. Mistakes that make a big difference are by definition not tiny. It's just that a less sophisticated practitioners don't realize that it matters. Being better at something is often realizing what does and what doesn't matter.

I encountered this in real life in a completely different field.

As a schoolboy I studied the trumpet. My teacher was an excellent trumpeter. He gave me exercises every week and said "Just play these for an hour a day and you'll have no problems".

I would go away and put in my hour a day practice and get no where. I wanted to play the high notes like those jazz bands but I would get no where.

I'd go back to my teacher and he'd give me another set of exercises. Diligently I go away and repeat the same process.

Other students of his seemed to do well, but not everyone. It seemed really rather random.

He was a great player but I believe he had very little introspection and didn't really know what made him great in a pedagogical sense. He was likely making minute movements with the muscles of his mouth that he had no idea about but he just stumbled across with his hours of practice.

After this experience I realised how skill in a topic and teaching ability are quite different. Sometimes a person has both at a high level and is really an excellent teacher, but often there are times where someone is a player, not a teacher.

Coming from the world of classical ballet, this is a very familiar issue.

In ballet, it is often said that the best dancers are the worst teachers.

The very best teachers are the ones who had no talent and spent insane hours trying to figure out which muscles to use, at what moment and with what intensity. They are the ones who will tell you that you need to push the opposing arm in the turn in order to have enough force for multiple turns without falling over.

The best dancers will tell you to "just turn". They have a natural sense for balance in turns and don't understand why you keep falling over.

Anders Ericsson (mentioned in the story) wrote an accessible book ("Peak") about his research.*

He says that the route to optimal performance is "deliberate practice" and that one of the components of deliberate practice is supervision by a coach who can provide feedback and personalized challenges.

I think that kind of fits with your idea, except that he suggests that the source of feedback should be another person.

* Incidentally, he also debunks the whole "20000 hours" thing and seems not too keen on Malcolm Gladwell.

There's a term for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge

This is a case where I really doubt that the studies referenced in the article were rigorous/well controlled. There are WAY too many talent "hot zones" (small training clubs that produce an extremely inordinate number of champions) for me to be swayed without iron-clad evidence to the contrary.

The author talks about being motivated, but I don't think she really understands the scale of motivation. Mozart would typically play until his fingers bled, and they grew somewhat deformed from the volume of playing as a youth. When he wasn't playing, I'm willing to bet he was thinking about or somehow otherwise engaged with music. That is the kind of passion that makes a true master.

The author also talks about her teacher being good. Compared to what? How many music teachers did she have? If teaching ability is normally distributed, even if she had 20 teachers (extremely doubtful), the best teacher in the country is probably two standard deviations above anyone she had in skill. That is a freaking huge difference.

Outside of certain things like being a gymnast or a football lineman where body morphology is absolutely critical, I'm pretty sure talent is overrated. The exact amount of influence it exerts certainly depends on the activity, but I doubt in most cases that it exceeds 2-3 percentile point shift in absolute potential. Unfortunately, when you are at the highest level of competition (e.g. olympics) the spread is probably somewhere between 99.9 and 99.999, so someone at 96.9 isn't going to be competitive.

Wouldn't a small, elite training club only take in a relatively small number of athletes that have already shown innate talent? Likewise, top universities will turn out a large number of top scientists. They've already selected for potential at the point of admission.

You may as well try to reason a Catholic out of the Virgin Birth, friend.

I should know. I'm Catholic.

Heads up: I think you are downvoted mostly because people fail to see the link (I didn't either).

(Yes, another Christian here, although not Catholic. There seems to be a few of us here only it seems we mostly try to stay technical.)

It should be possible to rule that kind of thing. I recall an anecdote about four table-tennis champions who lived on the same street, and their families hadn't moved in years - rather it was simply that an excellent coach lived on that street and offered to teach anyone who was interested.

What about the Polgár sisters? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/László_Polgár

It appears, after reading this article, that the sisters actually had a very talented father and therefore possibly very good prerequisites to become what they did.

He should have accepted the proposed experiment of raising adoptees the same way he did with his children.

There are other fairly common examples without that sort of filtering of applicants.

High school academics and athletics are good places to look. Genetics don't explain how a good coach can turn around a school's athletic program to the point of taking a team to the state championship or how a good teacher can take a population of students with a history of failure and dropping out and turn them into students who score 5's on AP calculus exams.

You say the author must be wrong because of lack of compelling evidence, and then you propose the opposite without any evidence. Why does it have to be confirmed either way? Why can't you admit you just don't know?

It seems to me that by going into things with the idea that you know something that you don't is just limiting your own ability to discover new information about it. Reality is a complicated landscape. By simplifying every question into a predefined yes or no, you are providing a disservice to yourself, and by espousing it vehemently enough so that others believe you, you are also providing them with a disservice.

End of rant.

Part of the problem is that if you admit the idea talent plays a primary role in success, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Research by Carol Dweck has shown that people's own belief in their ability to improve strongly predicts their actual improvement.

Given things like talent hot zones and the Polgar sisters, which to me demonstrate talent isn't a big deal, the level of evidence needed to change my mind is going to be very high. Particularly since believing in talent is so maladaptive. The only benefit to a belief in talent is ego protection for those who live in mediocrity.

Then the idea that belief becomes a self fulfilling prophecy should be explored and understood.

That one poorly understood idea (nature vs nurture) affects another poorly understood idea (that belief of something may help cause it to be true) and may somehow harm you is no reason not to explore them both, since you'll just stagnate.

How exactly am I stagnating by not lending plausibility (and thus some tacit acceptance) to a demonstrably self-limiting belief absent absolutely iron-clad evidence in its favor? I'm not a research psychologist who makes a living or derives self-worth studying expertise.

Remember, I'm not completely discounting talent and fostering unrealistic expectations. In fact, I explicitly stated I believe talent is necessary to succeed at the highest level (i.e. medaling at the olympics). I just think even if you are un-talented, if you do everything right you can still be in the ~97-99th percentile in terms of ability (depending on the activity) which is objectively still pretty awesome.

Talent is definitely a thing, morphology of the brain is absolutely relevant. Unfortunately most of us confuse great skill with innate talent, hence these endless articles. There are people out there with whom we simply cannot compete regardless of how much hard work we put in. They have advantages over the rest of us that we won't be able to overcome.

Variability of brain structures is even more dramatic than visible physical variability in human beings. With visible traits, you have people who are 4'5" tall and those who are 7' tall. Within the brain the differences of the areas responsible for different functions are much greater: competing against someone with the right combination of brain structures is like an average person competing with a 60' tall basketball player. IIRC there are something like 50 different areas of the brain that are continuously being permuted in size with each next generation. If you get incredibly lucky and get just the right combination of areas that reinforce each other in a certain task (e.g. hand / eye coordination, spatial visualization etc.) you might be a genius.

What's fascinating is that we are terrible at finding cognitive geniuses because we have no way yet (or desire) to accurately scan one's brain before death. We most likely fail to detect most geniuses that are born by forcing them to do stuff that doesn't leverage their superior internal hardware. The fact is that there are a few incredibly rare specimens out there, the Michael Phelpses, Grigori Perelmans, Ramanujans, George Soroses of their respective mental fields, and no amount of hard work will help one compete against them in whatever area they excel in. However, they're also so rare that it's pointless to optimize "best practices" for their cases, the vast majority of us will need a ton of quality practice to become good.

It appears that these lucky hands are dealt across all races, so IMO the ratial aspect of this is not as important. What's going to be less acceptable to society is being able to know pretty early on (in your later teens actually, when brain development mostly concludes) that someone is not actually that talented. At least early on the elite and the tiger parents will be quite disappointed to find out that their kid is actually not really that gifted or special and might be better off having a very menial career. Sure, you can still try to paint, compose, advance the state of mathematics, but once we're able to consistently identify people who will be naturally 10x better than you at that, you going for it will be a waste of time for society as a whole.

That statement doesn't align with what I'd learned studying physical anthropology. That is, Almost all genetic adaptations that have been observed across Homo Sapiens have been environmental physical adaptations.

I'm not saying that it's wrong - just that I didn't learn it that way (But, I could have went to college too long ago).

When I studied anthropology in the 90s, it was a widely held belief that genetics could potentially influence personality, intelligence, etc., but there was no conclusive evidence that it actually did so, and quite a few studies suggesting so had been debunked. There have since been quite a number of studies that indicate this is in fact so, even including more promising studies challenging Gould, et al.'s assertions that racial heritage plays no role in adult intelligence. I still don't know to what level any of these are conclusive, or to what extent we have improved our ability to quantify aspects of, broadly speaking, personality.

It doesn't make a lot of sense that the other organs have evolved but the brain didn't.

I put it more down to it's harder to measure politically.

But I do think you need 'practice' to maximise your skills which the system fails many people.

There are potentially very politically inflammatory issues that could come up if we start talking about genetic variation in intelligence in humans. Modern anthropologists are extremely keen to avoid any semblance of justifying racism.

But think about it like this: biological evolution works specifically by exploiting differences within a species. If every member of a species were exactly the same height, there would be no basis on which natural selection can encourage future changes in height. Humans got so much smarter than our primate ancestors specifically because there was a lot of variation in innate intelligence: the human ancestors who were smarter tended to live longer and have more offspring.

It would be completely nuts if that process just magically stopped, and humans all suddenly had equal intelligence, and differences in intelligence no longer played any role in reproductive success. That idea is completely counter to everything we know about how evolution works... it didn't happen with height or physical strength or hairiness or baldness or any of our other traits. The only reason to suppose it happened with intelligence or other mental traits is, as I said above, to avoid an inflammatory issue.

> innate intelligence

The anthropology Issue the GP mentioned is with this. There is no doubt about the need for nurture, not just nature. The mentioned standard deviation which evolution derives from is a compelling argument for intelligence to come neither just from the nurturing.

"IIRC there are something like 50 different areas of the brain that are continuously being permuted in size with each next generation."

I'd be really interested by a source on that.

Not exactly what OP mentioned, but [1] is a potential starting point to look into. I didn't even know there were functional (as opposed to morphological) areas of the brain already mapped to a precision that size could be accurately compared between samplings, but there seems to be some MRI-based work on that [2]. Anything I could find on the changes between generations of the functional areas of the brain are along the lines of [3], at evolutionary time scales instead of successive generations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_brain

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2705206/

[3] http://www.indiana.edu/~brainevo/publications/annurev.anthro...

I've never heard about Mozart's fingers bleeding -- do you have a source? I just ran a web search and found a suggestion that he suffered from rickets in infancy, accounting for curved fingers.

I've never heard of it either, but it's well known that Mozart both played a ton in his youth and actually worked hard when composing. Most people seem to think he was just sitting there and symphonies came to his head at random.

It was mentioned in a book I read about talent, which I believe sourced it from an old Mozart biography. Like many stories about legends, it could certainly be apocryphal.

I'm pretty sure talent is overrated.

but I doubt in most cases that it exceeds 2-3 percentile point shift

I think we'd all like to believe that we can do anything we want if we try hard enough but where is your evidence? This is not a matter for good wishes but scientific proof. It's pretty clear that some physical variations contribute tremendously to ability in sports so it's illogical to accept on faith that no such similar variations exist in the brain.

I agree that the natural variability in potential is such that an average person isn't going to ever get sufficiently good to medal at an olympics, or even attend one (except perhaps in unpopular sports). You shouldn't let the fact that your natural limit is only the 99th percentile instead of the 99.99th percentile make you feel like a failure though, you're still awesome.

One thing I have noticed is that some people learn a skill much faster than others. That being said, the people who learn more slowly seem to reach about the same level eventually, it just takes them longer.

I have not found that to be the case in software development. Some people get good very quickly and others are still mediocre after ten years of coding. That doesn't necessarily prove that coding ability is innate, of course, but it at least suggests that effort alone is not enough.

There's an old saying... Some people have 10 years of experience, others have one year repeated 10 times.

If you're running a race, it doesn't matter how much effort you put in if you're going in the wrong direction. In many cases the ones with "talent" are the ones that chose a direction at random that just happened to be roughly correct.

The root of the issue is that most people don't approach learning and skill development in anything even remotely close to a methodical, focused manner. They "just do it" and hope that the magical improvement fairy will sprinkle skill-dust on them while they sleep. Maybe they read a book or some articles from time to time, and occasionally think to apply the things they read, but that is about it. Do you think that these same people would take that approach if someone put a gun to their family and said "master XYZ or they die" ?

"The author also talks about her teacher being good. Compared to what? How many music teachers did she have?"

pg has a comment on programmers -- you can only tell how good one is by working with them, and there's only so many programmers you can work with.

In the areas of teaching, programming, and training, there's the problem that it takes a very high level of proficiency within an area even to assess the abilities of another. Measures of quality are inherently subjective and limited -- assessement, which is to say information acquisition -- is itself highly expensive.

This is quite related to Dunning-Kruger, though approaching a different element of the problem.

If humans are going to proceed down a track of increased complexity, we're going to have to address how to sensibly make and compare assessments which cannot all be performed by any single entity, but must be reasonably inferred through slightly shared, but very often independent assessments.

I've been around numerous fields in which I hear (very frequently novice) initiates claiming the praises of some particular methodology, teacher, or reference. On my own assessment, all too frequently the case seems to be that the endorser is promoting a concept which is at best useful as a first step, occasionally outright harmful, but is not some holy grail. (And yes, very occasionally there are exceptions.)

It's a thorny problem.

I read The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, co-edited by K. Anders Ericsson, the psychology professor mentioned in this article. His work inspired Malcolm Gladwell's popular work on deliberate practice.

I found Ericsson and co's ideas to be completely counter to their data. A lot of the articles were based on case studies. They studied wrestlers and wrestling coaches, for instance. The wrestling coaches were adamant that their selection process of weeding out less talented athletes and spending their effort grooming the ones who showed lots of promise was one of the keys to success. Somehow the authors completely ignored or glossed over lots of bits like that, strongly emphasized the obvious fact that successful wrestlers practiced a lot, and came to the ridiculous conclusion that practice is the only thing that matters.

On a related note, here is a quote from Ericsson that appears in the article:

“Differences between expert and less accomplished performers reflect acquired knowledge and skills or physiological adaptations effected by training, with the only confirmed exception being height.”

This is so disingenuous it's hard to know where to start. Consider powerlifting champion Andy Bolton. He deadlifted 600 lbs at 18 years old the first time he ever lifted weights. I have been lifting weights for 20 years and have never deadlifted 600 lbs. Bill Kazmaier is another one: he benched 300 lbs the first time he ever tried, and benched 400 a month later. These guys were in a position to win local and regional powerlifting competitions with basically no training at all. And here's Ericsson saying there's no such thing as talent.

When you say "these guys were in a position to win local and regional powerlifting competitions with basically no training at all", do you have any similar examples for things like chess tournaments? Because if not, you're kind of disproving yourself. Of course genetics can assist you in becoming a good chess player but I have a hard time seeing how a genius who never played chess before just sits down, learns the game and then beats a grand master on the first try through genetics alone.

I think there should be at least somewhat of a distinction between athletic events and other activities. Not to dismiss the technical complexity of a deadlift (especially at those poundages), but it's fair to assume most people have picked up an object off the ground. Through general human movement they have more experience/practice with the activity as opposed to chess or the piano

There were some studies on chess that seemed to imply that some people reach a certain level after 3k hours and some don't reach it after 30k.

I don't have the link on hand right now but I could find it tomorrow...

Is this it?

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616...

Highlights • Gf, Gc, Gsm, and Gs all correlated positively and significantly with chess skill. • The relationship between Gf and chess skill was moderated by age and skill level. • Chess skill correlated positively with numerical, visuospatial, and verbal ability. Abstract Why are some people more skilled in complex domains than other people? Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the relationship between cognitive ability and skill in chess. Chess skill correlated positively and significantly with fluid reasoning (Gf) ( = 0.24), comprehension-knowledge (Gc) ( = 0.22), short-term memory (Gsm) ( = 0.25), and processing speed (Gs) ( = 0.24); the meta-analytic average of the correlations was ( = 0.24). Moreover, the correlation between Gf and chess skill was moderated by age ( = 0.32 for youth samples vs. = 0.11 for adult samples), and skill level ( = 0.32 for unranked samples vs. = 0.14 for ranked samples). Interestingly, chess skill correlated more strongly with numerical ability ( = 0.35) than with verbal ability ( = 0.19) or visuospatial ability ( = 0.13). The results suggest that cognitive ability contributes meaningfully to individual differences in chess skill, particularly in young chess players and/or at lower levels of skill.

The names look familiar. Too bad the .pdf is not accessible.

There are numerous cases in mathematics. I can't put names on incidents but:

* The schoolboy who realised the algorithm for adding the integers 1 - 100.

* The UC Berkeley Graduate student who solved 2-3 "extra credit" final exam questions ... only to discover they were previously unsolved proofs.

Chess isn't an area I'm closely familiar with, but there absolutely have been prodigies there as well. Many in music.

FYI, the schoolboy is CF Gauss, early 19th century German mathematician who did... tons of stuff. (That's why so much in mathematics and physics is called "Gauss" or "Gaussian.")

The graduate student was George Dantzig. While I think Dantzig is certainly an example of extraordinary natural talent, if your parent comment was looking for examples of talent manifesting itself before any training at all, I don't think this qualifies. As a grad student in math, Dantzig had already spent years studying mathematics by this point.

Thanks, I suspected someone would provide the names.

On Dantzig: there's training, and there's the capability to come on a problem cold, treat it as an ordinary exam question, and find a solution within a day or so, to something which had dogged the rest of the maths world for years or decades.

I'm not denying that Dantzig had had formal training by this point. But he'd also accomplished in small time what others hadn't in big.

Yet he exceeded hit professor and many experts in the field while he was still a student.

> * The schoolboy who realised the algorithm for adding the integers 1 - 100.

Gauss

> * The UC Berkeley Graduate student who solved 2-3 "extra credit" final exam questions ... only to discover they were previously unsolved proofs.

George Bernard Dantzig

Thanks to you as well.

"Because if not, you're kind of disproving yourself. Of course genetics can assist you in becoming a good chess player..."

I don't understand how I'm disproving myself. I was trying to disprove Ericsson's claim that genetics play basically no role in successful performance, and I think my examples adequately illustrate that in at least some cases it actually does play a very large role.

The fact that no one is a great chess player with no practice is irrelevant. As you acknowledge that genetics can help with chess, it seems you actually agree with my point over Ericsson's.

It's pretty obvious that practice isn't enough. There are so many examples all around us.

If someone is born with down syndrome, they are extremely unlikely to graduate from university. If someone's eyesight isn't perfect, they will probably never become a commercial pilot. If you're autistic, you probably won't become a professional negotiator...

There are so many cases, sometimes rooted in tiny genetic differences which can make a huge difference when it comes to winning and losing...

And when you take luck into account; you could argue that even the most genetically fit human for a specific field is unlikely to become the best in that field even if they practice non-stop. There is so much luck involved, a single tiny problem can ruin an entire career before it even starts.

What does having perfect eyesight have to do with becoming a commercial pilot? In the US, you can become a commercial pilot as long as your vision can be corrected to 20/20 [0].

[0]. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/av...

Growing up, my grandfather tried to instill two major ideas in me and my siblings. The first being that perfect was an impossible goal, only achievable under artificial circumstances. Secondly, that practice makes permanent, so be mindful of what you're practicing.

The first part always seemed reasonable, but I have had a lot of trouble with the second part. I recently gave up playing golf when I finally realized I had spent 20 years practicing being angry.

Secondly, that practice makes permanent, so be mindful of what you're practicing.

That's a pretty common trope amongst musicians, as one example. If you play a part wrong, go back and get it right. Otherwise, all that you're "practicing" is how to play it wrong.

> I recently gave up playing golf when I finally realized I had spent 20 years practicing being angry.

You should read The Inner Game of Tennis. Actually I think there's a version about golf as well. That book has been a life changer for many people and it is exactly about what it seems you have been experiencing.

Off topic but as I read this

> Secondly, that practice makes permanent, so be mindful of what you're practicing

I started thinking about why deits are hard to stick to.

Being a "professor at a music conservatory in Russia" does not necessarily say much about how good of a music teacher this person was. Especially in a competitive field like concert piano. There are probably thousands of people who studied piano from a teacher who was a professor at a music conservatory in Russia. They can't all become world-class.

Ericsson's research stresses "deliberate" practice and previous criticisms of his research were based on studies of just practice - but not specifically "deliberate" practice. It's not just 10,000[1] hours of practice... it's 10,000 hours of practice the right way and ideally with an effective teacher. I admit those caveats make it harder to study his claims in a research environment, but it also doesn't mean research based only on total time practicing disprove his research.

[1] And I know it's not really 10,000 hours. Using that metric to make a comparison.

> ...it's 10,000 hours of practice the right way and ideally with an effective teacher.

There are a few problems with this.

One is that it's unfalsifiable. For any given case of failure you simply say the practice was not deliberate enough.

Two is that we do not have that ideal environment for deliberate practice. There are only so many music conservatories. That's a resource problem.

Three is that we do not know what actually constitutes proper deliberate practice, and that the informational component of the practice is a lot more important than the hard work component. In the common regurgitation of this phrase and the principle, it's typically told the other way around - as if we have already figured out how to deliberately practice, and you can just go do the work. See my rather large post above.

Finally, practice even with the best information can't compensate for motor problems and other related issues, at least, I don't see how. There are most likely genes that code for various degrees of the quality of the physical apparatus, and then there are people whose body is more messed up than normal in general.

> There are probably thousands of people who studied piano from a teacher who was a professor at a music conservatory in Russia. They can't all become world-class.

This is an important point. If you have thousands of people trying to do something, they can't all become world class. Even if you have the absolute best methods, if they are more or less equally practiced, you'll get a homogenization effect and the best practitioners would be purely random. The more this happens, the more inappropriate it is to tell someone that they can become the best, because it requires some weird negative assumptions about all the other participants. It's not even work or genetics at that point, but just general randomness. This is not a problem that necessitates solving, it's an artificial one.

Thats refinement versus improvement. Practice requires understanding, blindly copying and refining is always limited. "Hitting a wall" is like brain neural network stuck at local optimum, which requires forgetting and relearning.

Lets take example with Sudoku: if you know the basics(marking candidates and eliminating rows/columns), you can solve easy puzzles with practice only, but you'll be stuck solving mid-level puzzles. Mid-level puzzles require intuitive understanding of column-row exclusion(where X number candidates in a block are exclusively on one row or column they exclude X from entire row or column), but aren't sufficient for solving high-level puzzles. High-level play requires knowledge of subsets, X-wings,XY chains,coloring, etc to solve the hardest puzzles(and practicing doesn't help, it requires intuitive understanding to find such patterns).

I used to have a band teacher who said "practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect."

that's it I agree, but what does perfect mean also? perfect absolutely, compared to your potential, or relatively to others?

I always think "perfect" meant "intentional" in that just going through the motions doesn't do the trick but actually being thoughtful about what you're trying to achieve and trying really really hard...

there's a difference between grinding out technique and actively confronting the your weaknesses, especially those that have nothing to do with technique e.g confidence, ego etc. there's also the question as to what percentage of practice time is spent trying to replicate the masters as opposed to deepening your understanding of the underlying mechanics or developing intuition. you learn more from a poor creation than a perfect copy.

as for talent, i still think schmid summed it up the best 'Don't bother about whether or not you have it. Just assume that you do, and then forget about it. Talent is a word we use after someone has become accomplished. There is no way to detect it before the fact... or to predict when or if mastery will click into place.'

Except nobody knows how that works.

And even perfect practice will not help a person who is actually tone deaf.

"And even perfect practice will not help a person who is actually tone deaf."

Worked out well enough for Beethoven, Smetana, and Faure.

"When the student is ready the teacher will appear" To me it means that you:

- cultivate genuine curiosity

- You can voluntarily leave your ego apart

- You are good observing

- Not afraid to ask, when reaching certain level some people are afraid to ask others, fearing of being perceived weaker.

Then you start learning those 'unspoken' things mentioned in other comments, also you become more open to mimic what other 'masters' do. I think is related with mirror neurons, and that saying that you become the average of those you have around. I agree hitting walls doesn't make perfect.

I found this highly interesting

" But for education and professions like computer science, military-aircraft piloting, and sales, the effect ranged from small to tiny."

From teaching programming for some years, giving programming workshops to top management, some people got it and others didn't. Since then I've wondered how much programming is teached, practice or inherent in people. Not sure to this day.

I could be a bad teacher, I wonder about that too.

What happened to that guy that gave up his job to spend 10k hours practicing golf in order to test the "10k hour makes perfect" theory? I was reading the article expecting that to come up. A quick google doesn't find anything on what/how he's doing today (it wasn't this guy, was it?)

you're thinking of this guy: http://thedanplan.com/

basically he was going to reach his 10k hour goal next month (Oct 2016) but back in Nov 2015 he had to take a hiatus due to a back injury. Not sure what has happened since he hasn't posted since Nov 2015.

That's the one, thanks. A bit more sleuthing shows he's given up on The Dan Plan and is now selling soda: http://portlandsyrups.com/our-story/ . Too bad it didn't work out.

My summary of the whole discussion:

genius_level = talent_genes * hard_work * know_how

talent_genes - natural ability to be good at something

hard_work - amount of practice, willingness to practice hard is determined by genes, but can be also artificially increased by the demanding parents or trainers

know_how - knowledge of discipline secrets by coaches or teachers

Someone said : practice does not make perfect, only practice of perfection does.

Too few people realize it.

I haven't click through to the article yet, so I'll just respond to the headline now with something I've been saying for a long time:

Practice doesn't necessarily make perfect, it could very well just make you habitually wrong.

"Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent", my music teachers say.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the book "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle.[1] I play several stringed instruments and applying the concepts in that book has made a huge difference in my rate of progress. He talks a lot about Ericsson's work, and is firmly in the camp that believes that improvement can always be achieved through practice, when the practice is done properly.

[1] http://thetalentcode.com/

The bit about athletic performance for the average, advanced and elite categories is fascinating. I had read about this phenomenon in Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength, and reading it here again makes so much sense.

The title really should be "Practice Alone Doesn't Make Perfect". We all have our own genetic potential, but how much of it we're able to harvest then depends on how we are nurtured and how much we're willing to push ourselves. Makes a lot of sense.

Maybe somebody can elaborate on the fine distinction of Skill vs Talent?

Skill: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skill

Talent: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/talent

I'm slightly confused as both these entries in Wiktionary sound like each other!

Talent is the input, skill is the output.

(Talent is what makes one start better or learn quicker)

Talent is the foundation, theoretically an unbounded positive value set in stone. Skill is like a 0-1 multiplier applied over the top of talent to produce the final output.

Talent boils down to physiology, but skill is the ability to use that physiology correctly.

IMO, of course.

The Sports Gene already reduced my confidence in Ericsson's studies in particular. They were not very extensive and there was effectively no control group.

An important thing to remember, though, is that these things are really, really hard to study. The meta-analysis is likely to be negative information in how accurate it is. "deliberate practice" is not a valid term, you can create a whole new field to figure out what it means to "deliberately practice" for any given thing, and there's no evidence whatsoever that we're any good at it. We're trying to measure the efficacy of something the purpose of which is... well, that very thing.

I'd posit that the entire discussion is absurd...

What matters more depends entirely on where you stick your goalposts. That is, it doesn't matter at all. The question doesn't actually make sense.

Hard work matters... among people who are extremely similar to each other. And if we take the hypothesis that hard work is also genetic, it's yet another trait by which those two people are actually different. Outside of the equal genetics factor, hard work matters in a given genetic composition vs hard work in another genetic composition. Very boring equation: genetics1 + hardWork1 vs. genetics2 + hardWork2. Each of the 4 values has a max. Which one matters more? What a silly question! Depends on what the values are! We even have a saying for this: "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard."

Genetics matter so disproportionately that the only reason the genetics vs hard work discussion can hold at all is because we're always having it within carefully defined goalposts around some area we're unsure about. Hard work is, effectively, always given value in situations where genetics are perceived to be "equal enough". The Sports Gene has a section on women in sports and all the interesting implications that entails. It's fairly obvious to everyone that women can't compete with men on, say, physical strength. And people without legs can't compete with runners. Usain Bolt is nowhere near as fast as a cheetah. Let's not talk about Down Syndrome. All that should have shut down the genetics vs hard work argument long time ago. The only reason it didn't is because we moved the goalposts.

Because as long as we move the goalposts, we can keep things interesting. As long as we don't know why someone won, we can get excited about it. We can talk about hard work, dedication, cunning, special approaches, whatever we want to do. It's all dice in the end, but as long as we don't see it, and as long as we can fool ourselves, we love it. We want the randomness. We want to be surprised. Azart.

I'd argue if you're actually trying to measure something, not merely entertain yourself, you don't get to keep moving the goalposts.

But the absurdity is just beginning.

Genetics and hard work are hilariously inferior to information.

I can read and write, because that has been granted to me by society. I can tell a computer what to do, because that framework and profession was created for me. I can lift weights, because someone told me I can. I know where I am, because someone made me a map. I have a chance of learning quantum mechanics, because someone was there to describe them, perhaps even in ways that someone like me can understand. Consider the weight of that: a person with inferior genetics and inferior hard work can get a free informational transfer* from a person with superior genetics and superior hard work. No person of the past, no matter how intelligent or hard working, has any chance against that...

This is also why "deliberate practice" is such a tautological concept - a lot of it is information dependent. If you have much better knowledge on how to practice something you can go a long way.

It gets worse.

People without legs can't compete with runners. I just said that earlier. Well, unless they get metal legs... creating so many problems for people who are now trying to figure out what that means and where we need to stick the goalposts next time. [The whole concept of "cheating" implies goalposts.]

People with certain mental illnesses can't do a whole host of things. But if they can get certain medication and therapy, they suddenly can.

People had genetics to be tall, but they ate so poorly it didn't matter. [the article touches on a few things like this and refers to them as environment, but I think the overall thing is a lot wider]

Athletes engage in some interesting substances to boost performance in ways never before possible.

I can't outrun a cheetah. I can't fly like a bird. Doesn't matter how hard I try. Will never, ever happen. Nobody would even suggest it. I don't have the genetics for it. Doesn't matter, I have an airplane.

My memory may be poor, but I have notes and my phone and lots of other tools. My eyesight at night may be bad, I should be sleeping at this time, but I have the electric light.

The degree to which my fate is affected by information and causality is obscene. In comparison, my hard work, even my genetics, are nothing, beyond the very fact that I am a somewhat healthy human, which is also a product of these very things.

Why, then, are we in such despair? We're improving at an alarming rate! Maybe we're not getting more intelligent and our genetics are not getting that much better but we're still so much more capable of actually achieving things than our ancestors. Why is this so invisible, and why we care so little?

Well, because of competition. When we improve things, we often do it across the board for a large area. Not all that fairly, not all that proportionately, but, at the end of the day, almost everyone gets access to that Wikipedia webpage, and almost everyone gets access to that car. So the things that matter the most, apply to everyone, and the only thing left is the small portion that genetics and hard work take up. Because we've equalized everything else, and because we can't be satisfied with merely just living better, we have to find that last small portion and decide based on it who deserves to live how, because there's simply nothing else left.

For those who understand it, it promotes hoarding power and information. Promoting the notion that hard work or genetics is all that matters moves the attention from the more important things. And that's why you'll never get a clear answer on the whole genetics thing because information and causality absolutely, unambiguously matters. That's probably your Flynn effect. It only doesn't matter in your eyes because you are looking at people who both got the major benefits so genetics and work start kicking in.

We could be elated that we have more children than ever who can read and write, we have so much information available freely that the informational transfer is staggering, we have so many means and tools that modern high school athletes are beating Olympic athletes of the past. This is far greater progress than genetics could even dream of. We could understand how this was all achieved, and how much is gained from every individual person growing, pool our resources, research ways for better information transfer, discover new information, and develop superior tools and enhancements for the human.

But, instead, we're worried about whether or not this particular human can run 1 second faster than this other one. And we agonize over this meager improvement and how to get it. And how to promote it. Because we decided only the very best one deserves anything. We're looking for the diamond in the rough because we don't think the rest of humanity deserve it, all because they're not contributing 100% to a .00000000001% of their fate.

Can you become a musician? Maybe. Maybe not. But don't limit your options to just work and genetics, there are more powerful forces in this world.

* Disclaimer: some amount of intelligence and work required.

> Genetics and hard work are ... inferior to information

I have never seen it put better.

The Soviet Union had a stranglehold on chess for almost 70 years until its collapse in the nineties. Then information fled with grandmasters to the west and the present bloom in talent began. Westerners began to regularly defeat soviet players. An Indian, then a Norwegian became world champion. Before then, it was a small miracle to defeat a soviet player. Reason? Information.

My personal experience: I played chess with a lot of frustration and little improvement for over a decade until I began reading 'honest' books written by Soviet trainers. That was I began to see progress.I gained approximately 200 elo in one year.(I would estimate that 90% of chess books for intermediate players are crap, some of these are deliberately misleading hence the 'honest' term)

Genetics and hard work are vastly inferior to information

>Genetics and hard work are vastly inferior to information

All the more reason to make internet access a free commodity .

What did the Soviet books talk about that the other books were ignoring?

>What did the Soviet books talk about that the other books were ignoring?

Amongst other things they introduced better training methods; diligent classification and cataloging of common and critical positions. For instance, a systematic introduction to pryomes and positional maoeuvers. These books were written by people who had mastered the craft as players or coaches of elite players. Improvement in chess to a large part entails becoming conversant with known positions and manoeuvers.

Recall that it was almost treason to reveal the techniques that soviet grandmasters used. This was one reason why Korchnoi was harrassed.

Three examples of fantastic books:

[1]Find the Right Plan with Anatoly Karpov [https://www.amazon.com/Find-Right-Plan-Anatoly-Karpov/dp/190...]

[2]Techniques of positional play Brozhnik and Terekhin [ https://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Positional-Play-Practical-...]

[3]A practical guide to Rook endgames by Nikolay Minev [https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ds...]

..and I have not even gotten started on the Dvoretsky series

Very true. Totally hits the nail on the head.

But what happens when you take this all the way? Is there anything you can think of that does not ultimately fall under the "cause and effect" clause? If not, then this makes everything, from sports competitions to "life" competitions, expectations and hopes just a big joke, a reality where "God favours the lucky". The reason you could post your reply is that the conditions (your intelligence, experience, interests, mood etc. etc.) were such that this is what happened, in exactly the same way as how cause and effect resulted in these words being typed back.

It starts with a simple question of whether or not "practice makes perfect", but the followup questions of "nature vs. nurture", "can't vs. won't", "free will vs. determinism", "mind vs. matter", etc. are quick to follow. All of them I believe to be a misguided perspective on reality, but one which I admittedly am part of.

> If not, then this makes everything, from sports competitions to "life" competitions, expectations and hopes just a big joke, a reality where "God favours the lucky".

I very much believe this is the case. The unjust-world hypothesis, if you will. The more we realize this is happening, the better.

But my intention here isn't really to go down the slope of how everything is cause and effect. I find the free will question rather absurd, as well, but that'd be another large post...

Rather, I'd want us to move away from this artificially disjointed approach to life where every person is on their own and is supposed to reach their potential through force of will.

I think that someone with a good knowledge of reinforcement learning should give his opinion about exploitation versus exploration. First comment is about being strangled into a local maximum.

"Practice makes habit"

Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development

The modern world looks on with increasing horror:

My God, you are dead, and the eugenicists were right.

Not necessarily. Selective breeding and genetic manipulation might not be the best of things. It may be better to have a bunch of people who love to sweep floors rather than 100% super intelligent. Plus we need different perspectives. To an extent, their should be variance in many things.

Sometimes a janitor solved the problem, by turning the genius thinking around.

There's nothing better about designating a class of people to sweep floors. The loss of power and agency is the problem.

Nature certainly seems to be clobbering nurture as of late, if the recent spate of behavioural genetics research is correct. Parenting, deliberate practice, 'grit' - all seem to be superseded or confounded by genetics. Although it's probably irrational of me, I find this somewhat disheartening - as more of human behaviour is rationalised, the Calvinist picture that emerges is ... less interesting. A very weak and nerdy analogy would be that of an RPG where the dice rolls on the character creation screen led almost directly to the final dungeon. The prospect of more elaborate dice-rolling with the advent of genetic engineering does not make the game that much more appealing.

What a disturbing reading.

In case you weren't paying attention while reading this otherwise fascinating article ... practice has little positive influence on:

1. Academic achievement,

2. Computer science shyte, and

3. Sales

Fuuuuuuck this. I'm off to the beach.

Saying that practice has little influence on computer science skills just sounds wrong to me.

I don't know any computer scientist who looks at the code he wrote a few years ago and won't think of mich better ways to do things.

What is that if it's not an increase in skills due to practice?

> Academic achievement,

That seems counter to my experience. In school and college the kids with the best grades were almost always the ones who studied the most. Though of course, everyone has that one friend who aced the final with a hangover after flipping through lecture notes for 5 minutes.

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