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Comment by ldjkfkdsjnv | Hacker News Reader

Of course it does, the second paragraph in my original response states just that. This doesnt negate the fact that some people are exponentially better at business than others. Its the same in math, chess, basketball, football, writing, and every other human endeavor

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> This doesnt negate the fact that some people are exponentially better at business than others. Its the same in math, chess, basketball, football, writing, and every other human endeavor

Citing chess directly contradicts your thesis about "innate talent".

In chess, the Polgar sisters are proof that training is the key and not genetics. The increasing existence of younger and younger chess grandmasters distributed around the world also shows that it's more about training than "innate talent".

Football and basketball do have a "innate talent" component--at the highest levels the competitors are genetic freaks.

However, any human endeavor not relying on pure physicality does not have "innate talent" limitations. "Talent" is almost always correlated to "early training" and "hard work".

Couldn’t it be both?

I do wonder about the Polgar sisters case. By any measure their parents were also pretty exceptional individuals - just read the Wikipedia page - which is a huge confounding variable. Maybe “being laser focussed about raising a child genius” is a trait that manifests as “being laser focused at getting good at chess” when inherited!

Polgar sisters clearly proves a genetic point if you notice their ancestry? But I dont want to go individual examples, because individual geniuses possibly exist in every genetic pool. Let’s talk about averages where genetics do matter. On average which groups did/do well in intellectual pursuits. The trend is obvious but unfortunately taboo so we can’t have a reasonable conversation about this, even in this forum at times but if you study I think you’ll find some small sub groups overly represented in intellectual pursuits even when given extremely unfair environmental conditions like abject poverty or literal prosecution and you see this trend happening over and over again that it becomes clear to me that some gene pools are better suited to intellectual pursuits than other gene pools.

"the Polgar sisters are proof that training is the key and not genetics"

Look, I don't have a dog in this fight but the idea that the Polgars "prove" that training is more important that genetics doesn't make sense. Evidence maybe, "proof" is just a silly assertion.

They were all born at different times and had different experiences and have different genes!

Here on HN folks are always going on about genes with confident assertions but the number of people that understand the difference between "heritability" and "genetics" seems to be very small.

"Football and basketball do have a "innate talent" component--at the highest levels the competitors are genetic freaks."

This is not a thing you have actual evidence for, and there are players at the highest levels of these sports that don't fit the mould of what you would expect it takes to succeed - it is too broad an assertion.

The number of people who can attribute their exceptionalism to genetics is minuscule compared to people who are just wealthy and connected.

Even those that you assume "just have it" most likely just have enough means and connections to try and fail and eventually succeed than most of us.

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