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Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

Some people are lucky enough that the things they focused on early in life are things they were good at. Unfortunately, I think some subset of those people also develop an aversion to things that they don't appear to reach competence in as quickly as prior endeavors.

That's a shame, because often I think people that have competence in a subject come naturally to them end up at a disadvantage later, because their foundational knowledge is lacking (at least in cases where that's possible and learning was self driven).

One example of this is learning a programming language through doing compared to actual study and research. By "doing" I'm not referring to a project to cement details, but for example how most people know bash.

Another example would be spoken languages and some of my college professors. I'm not sure I ever heard anyone speak with as good of a vocabularity and diction as one of my CS professors that English wasn't his first language.

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I find the opposite. If you know how it feels like to learn something you have a natural talent for, and you know what it feels like to be struggling, then you can choose to focus on the things that are most "efficient use of your time". Especially considering that life is short.

Of course, you can always choose to learn something you aren't best at, but at least you know the trade offs (i.e. needing to spend relatively more time to reach the same level of competence as more talented person).

I'm not convinced there is such a thing as natural talent. (there is such a thing as lack of talent) All the greats are just average people who focused until they became great.

You just have forgotten what it is like to be a child who knows nothing. I've been speaking English since I was a toddler, I'm learning Spanish now and I make tons of mistakes and often can't understand even a basic sentence - but in fact I'm a lot better at Spanish than I was at English when I had equivalent amounts of study into English.

Once you are a minimal level of competency it is a lot easier to study as well. So if you have only a tiny head start you will be top of your class, and that is always more enjoyable.

In my layman’s view it’s obviously a balance, like all things. Look at the top athletes - Michael Phelps has more upper body than he does lower. The best UFC fighters often have insane wingspan for their height (and therefore reach for punches). Usain Bolt is not a short man. Certain people are tuned for certain things. Then whether they combine that baseline with total obsession and hard work is up to them.

The mental sphere is where it becomes super vague for me. Did John Von Neumann just study really hard? The anecdotes told about Feigenbaum of Chaos Theory make him sound like a savant among savants. They just kept that childlike curiosity? Doesn’t make any sense to me. It seems they are tuned differently.

> I'm not convinced there is such a thing as natural talent. (there is such a thing as lack of talent)

....That doesn't track.

If there is such a thing as lack of talent, then "talent" is just "not lack of talent".

The concept of a thing called G factor shows there is such a thing as a natural innate talent.

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