Sorry, Strivers: Talent Matters | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, Strivers: Talent Matters

nytimes.com

32 pointswallflower13 comments

One logical flaw in their argument, one I've seen frequently made by professors of psychology who focus on individual differences, is that they don't know whether or not the difference among participants in the Study of Exceptional Talent (a group of young people who score high on the SAT at a young age, a group that includes an immediate relative of mine) is from what they call "talent" or from practice. Nothing about the way the Study of Exceptional Talent gathers its rather limited data about study participants allow distinguishing one possibility from the other. There is no basis from the data-gathering done in that study to conclude that there is ANY difference between the "99.1 percentile" and the "99.9 percentile," especially given the error bands around SAT scores.

One of the really amazing things about the export performance literature by Ericsson, Charness, and others

http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-Handbo...

is that it comes out of a tradition in psychology--individual differences psychology--that very readily defaults to genetic explanations and very readily ignores possible environmental explanations of the same individual differences. Ericsson's experimental results in training digit span (which is part of the item content of same IQ test batteries) were completely surprising when published in peer-reviewed journals--no one ever imagined that digit span

http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~kantor/t/MLIS/551/public_dump/m...

was such a malleable ability.

But digit span, which is malleable (trainable), is closely related to the "working memory capacity" that the authors are implicitly claiming is not malleable. That is not at all clear, and much experimental work suggests that working memory capacity is more malleable than the authors acknowledge in this opinion piece.

Also on-point here is pg's comment from his essay "What You'll Wish You'd Known"

http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html

"I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."

Reading this article bummed me out until I was reminded of my own experiences with increasing working/short-term memory through the use of N-Back games. In my own n = 1 study, I struggled through dual 2 back initially, but with a few weeks of practice, I gradually was able to climb up to the dual 4 back level, and stopped there out of sheer laziness.

Anyways, for anyone interested in N-Back games, check out the Brain Workshop software and website.

http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/

Did you feel there was actually any benefit between your day to day life? I'd suppose that the benefit would be different person to person due to what they do in their average day but am still curious.

Honestly, I haven't noticed any dramatic improvements. However, as strange as it may sound, I feel better about myself knowing that I was able to increase my short-term memory within that specific N-Back game since I was almost positive I would never make progress in it. I'm unsure if it has translated into other activities, but overall I feel sharper for what it's worth.

Totally makes sense, part of the reason why I play musical instruments so much.

I think I'm gonna try doing it for a few minutes every day and see what happens. When I was younger I used to be able to remember everything vividly very effortlessly and I envy that again.

I have a quibble with the piece's core scrap of evidence: "The remarkable finding of their study is that, compared with the participants who were “only” in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability at age 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work. A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-world advantage."

Most of those achievements--earning a doctorate, publishing a journal article or a literary work or even securing a patent--all seem to be items that favor dogged effort rather than pure smarts. Moreover, I would bet it's also the case that the kids in the 99.9 percentile spent more time drilling, practicing and studying for their early-age SATs than did the 99.1 percentile group, although I'm fairly certain the time both groups spent studying standardized test questions--at the age of 12--would frighten me.

That said, it only figures that the 99.9 group would continue through life outworking most people they go up against, hence the improved rates of adult "achievement," a word I employ loosely.

Totally agreed.

> Nor is it to say that it's impossible for a person with an average I.Q. to, say, earn a Ph.D. in physics

I know few physics PhDs that are above average. Earning a degree has a lot more to do with grit than talent. Making real breakthroughs in science... that's a different thing.

> In fact, the total amount of practice the pianists had accumulated in their piano careers accounted for nearly half of the performance differences across participants. But working memory capacity made a statistically significant contribution as well (about 7 percent, a medium-size effect).

... except not nearly as much as practice ...

But if you assume that all the top competitors are practicing with equal diligence then that 7% can easily be decisive.

Only if you want to be the best, if you want to be really good at something that 7% is irrelevant, and a lot of the top results aren't just created by the best.

In our own recent research, we have discovered that “working memory capacity,” a core component of intellectual ability, predicts success in a wide variety of complex activities.

I feel like this is the limiting factor in my own coding work. The more I can keep in my head at one time the faster I can work and the more coherent my codebase becomes.

Not sure if this is really breakthrough stuff. Gladwell finds that a minimum IQ and hours practiced is what translates to becoming good, great, etc.

This article states that once you have achieved that level than talent starts to matter. Uh, yah. I think we are all aware from simply watching professional sports that at a certain point the practice can only help so much. To be a Lebron James you not only need practice but a unique level of god given talent. Natural talent is why we have legends in every field of professionals. This is not really a breakthrough or news to most of us.

I wonder if the boundaries between nature and nature are as distinct as talent and industry. For one, the ability to practice requires an ability to concentrate on the task at hand. Is this ability innate or can it be forged through practice. Perhaps, it is similar to our experience with premature babies - babies who are born earlier will never catch up in terms of stature or development. Perhaps those who don't have the initial ability to do focussed work never truly catch up either.

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