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Comment by marcinzm | Hacker News Reader

From personal experience I agree with this.

I have a friend who has played Go for years, owns a board, played online often and so on. The closest I've been to playing was reading a Go manga and ignoring all the panels about the rules. I never really played chess or other such games either. First four times we played he beat me soundly even with a handicap. Fourth time I had no handicap. Fifth time I won. And sixth time. And seventh time. His tactical moves were superiors to mine but I could intuitively see the strategic view in ways he simply couldn't. That depressed me for a while because by all rights he should have been winning and not me.

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I work with a lot of very talented people.

I frequently watch some of them do a really poor job because they are unable to get over the hangup that "more talented person Y" would be able to do it much better, design it more clearly from the start, etc.

When I look at "more talented person Y", sure, they are more talented, but their work is good because of other behaviors (e.g., a breadth of experimentation before locking in one approach) that have nothing to do with their great intuition/vision about the structure of the result.

Now my advice is "don't look around"...

Preoccupation with talent is a trap, for the more and less talented.

> That depressed me for a while because he should [have won].

Wow, that's a humblebrag taken to the next level.

No, it's accurately conveying the sadness and the loneliness when you see the right moves (in life, in work) and people being oblivious to them and ending up poor/unhappy/etc.

In that case, throw the game, and let the sap win. Problem solved.

This is a thing even without humblebrag.

I am a descendant of fairly strong guys - one grandfather was a rural blacksmith, the other one started as a lumberjack before going to the (still coal powered) railway to coal the engines. I inherited quite a lot of their physique from them, which means that I can do quite good in a gym without trying much.

Yes, that feels unjust. Not that I am depressed about it, but it is definitely something you ponder upon: why this guy who works so much harder than me does not see as much return on his effort?

This is a thing even without humblebrag.

That traits for fitness are heritable? That is "a thing"? Hmmm, you might be onto something here.

The level of heritability of many traits is far from settled, AFAIK, and given the long shadow of Nazi racial pseudoscience, there is a certain air of suspicion around anyone who researches the topic of heritability too eagerly, at least in the West; China does not seem to have this particular taboo.

And I am not even surprised, the possibility of governments latching onto this and "streaming" people towards whatever they are found to be gifted at, cannot really be dismissed.

Sorry that I have big doubts, but if this story is true you should consider a career of a pro player.

Yes, I am just a crappy 3k on kgs after several thousand games, so that puts me in the untalented category. If GP can consistently beat me after playing just four games, I'd recommend him to consider going pro as well. I know after my thousandth game I was still figuring out elementary subtleties.

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