Hacker News Reader

Comment by Volpe | Hacker News Reader

> Almost anyone can learn playing the guitar, but it takes a special talent to excel at it.

Curious about this notion of 'special talent' - So some people are just born to be better guitar players? Are you saying that something in the brain is pre-wired to be a better guitar player?

I'd say for a claim like that, you need a citation (preferably multiple).

In my opinion: You can excel at anything you like, you just have to work at it (it helps if you do it when you're really young, as your brain has higher plasticity). Get rid of this "special talent" notion.

View on HN

I partially agree with the GP, except I would say it takes a special talent to excel at it in a given amount of time. A "special talent" in this case would be a predisposition to learning how to play a guitar.

>Are you saying that something in the brain is pre-wired to be a better guitar player?

Yes, whether due to nature or nurture, I would say certain people will be faster at learning how to play the guitar, and thus, be a better guitar player given an equal amount of exposure. Of course, you could always put more time into it, but there is only a finite amount of time available to a given individual.

No citations, but I believe this agrees with the general consensus. In fact, I would be greatly interested if anyone could provide studies showing the contrary.

What about Salman Khan's TED talk, where he shows that it is a frequent occurrence that kids stumble on a math concept, but then rapidly catch up or exceed their peers. If learning as a general phenomenon occurs in plateaus, but turns out linearly the same in the long run for most everybody (like a graph of the prime counting function seems choppy up close but a line out far), perhaps it is the case we intuitively think some people have a talent, because they didn't experience any early plateaus, but experience some later instead, when they aren't under as careful scrutiny. In other words, it might be a statistical phenomenon of the learning progression (assuming the plateaus are uniformly randomly distributed). Having thought a lot about this issue, I think it is closer to the truth.

In any case, I second the request for more studies.

What you're talking about is known generically as the General Learning, which is an aptitude in itself. Some people learn better than others. It also depends on what you learn.

Nurture: At various ages, the ability to learn changes (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.88....). It might well be true that there is a lot of optimization to be done in the way we teach -- something that Salman Khan illustrates well with his new teaching methodologies. That doesn't necessarily mean however that at all stages, ages, circumstances, people will be equally able to learn something.

Nature: Some people have an innate aptitude; I won't look for papers, as I find this to be truly obvious.

I wasn't actually arguing that people are born to be better at anything, although I suppose this is the general consensus.

Talent = "a special natural ability or aptitude" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Talent)

Aptitude = "capability; ability; innate or acquired capacity for something" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aptitude)

Like tentonwire argued, whether it's nature or nurture, people are better at some things than others.

From what I understand, you are effectively making the argument that anyone can excel at anything. In this case, I also concur with tentonwire, that the burden might be on you to prove that hypothesis.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com