Why people reward innate talent over hard work
bbc.com
bbc.com
Saw Tom Cruise’s latest stunt video last night
When they show you the final stunt cut, it’s very impressive
When you watch the process, you realize they started with a super safe basic version of the stunt and practiced incrementally for months/years until they got it right
It took a lot of hard work to put it together and do it safely
The thing is at first you might think: oh wow, Tom Cruise is so incredibly talented,
then when watching the process you might think: oh, it’s just hard work
But then when you see how much hard work, you realize: oh, that’s also talent
It's also why having great parents encourage this consistency at a young age is so powerful, it's not really innate talent anointed by the gods, but decades of consistency. We just see a 20 year old show up and be great at [skill] compared to their counterparts and then label them innately talented, but ignore the years of showing up. It's universally true, Celine Dion started singing when she was 5, Michael Jordan when he was 5. We aren't just talking carelessly singing or mindless games (although it might have felt that way to the child), but serious efforts: Celine for example was encouraged by family to sing at weddings at a young age. She came from a musical family so she was encouraged to compose, work on musical technique, etc. it wasn't random singing but already "professionally" training.
For some this is dreadful to hear, if they weren't doing some skill as a child their lives are over. However I would reframe that, it's quite optimistic. You can do what you dream of if you start right now and realize it's going to take years of showing up.
Potentially, our extreme infantilization of kids and teens (helicopter parenting, baby voice talking, avoiding responsibilities/recognition of skill, etc) have likely been a huge reason why many are stuck with this "fixed mindset" noted in the article.
It feeds into the myth as well, someone like Leonardo appearing in public "fully formed" would seem like he was god-like when you're the same age.
Is that talent or hard work ? How did THEY become great ?
There are a lot of links on the causal chain
And I've never heard of anywhere that's looking for genius slackers, that's absolutely the worst profile to have.
So, I'd say the opposite is true.
They probably don't have the top 1% of hard workers, but getting and staying there almost certainly requires a certain amount of hard work.
Contrast to the US: American colleagues I've had have all agreed that it's kind of the reverse on that side of the pond. I've heard people brag about the hours they've put in to work; that would be a complete embarrassment over here, especially if the work turns out not to be top-tier.
As Chief of the Army High Command, Hammerstein-Equord oversaw the composition of the German manual on military unit command (Truppenführung), dated 17 October 1933.
He conceived of a classification scheme for officers: I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.[32]
The other cliche we often hear is: never let them see you sweat. In competition, you don't want to give away when you are at the limits of your ability.
Consider two athletes that can both achieve some specific result, e.g. run a quarter mile in some equal fixed time. The first athlete does so with almost no effort and with very little recovery time while the second athlete does so with clear strain, and significant exhaustion after the test.
My contention is that a coach who is forced to choose one of those athletes for advanced training (solely on the information I provided above) may favor the athlete that achieved the equal result with less effort. He can't differentiate them on performance (they got equal time after all) so he will use their perceived effort as a guide.
It may not be an accurate decision, but I am suggesting that the coach may reason that the athlete who appears less exhausted could be pushed harder through advanced coaching. It may be assumed (again, incorrectly but somewhat reasonably) that by pushing the first athlete to the same level of exhaustion as experienced by the second athlete, their performance (e.g. the time to finish a quarter mile) may be improved more drastically than pushing the second athlete. This is what I mean when I say "the first athlete appears to have more room to grow".
Remember, the article isn't about which athlete can actually improve more, the article is about how we reward and judge other people based on their effort. I'm suggesting we are making a prediction about possible future capabilities in a similar way as my fictional coach.
Which is why your hypothetical and the above theory doesn't make much sense. In your case, the coach would be told that one of them is naturally gifted, leading to bias. You're theorizing that visual effort is the reason, but the article goes into some ideas as to why this bias exists (ie: the idea of naturalness being better, religious beliefs, status effects, etc) and visual effort is not one of them. Again, all else is equal, but one side is explicitly told to be naturally talented.
> With each track, the participants were given a short biographical text that either emphasised the natural talent of the performer, or the hard work that had helped them to develop their art.
You said:
> one side gets explicitly talked about as a natural talent, or being naturally gifted. This is a bonus with zero counterpart
Which is incorrect. It is important to clearly and accurately read the source material to avoid your own bias.
We cannot know, based on the article, which statements (the emphasis on the natural talent or the hard work that helped them develop their art) were the primary cause of the findings. You can either assume or you can create a new experiment that tries to distinguish between them.
I can't say that I am correct, but to suggest my analysis "doesn't make much sense" is both inaccurate and frankly rude.
I have only grown in times where I absolutely pushed myself to my known limits, only to realize that my limits stretched much farther than I could have imagined.
There is also something about have a fire lit on your ass, that makes your motivation & productivity/hr go way up. Sustained motivation & productivity of this type stays with you even after the fire is long gone.
This article is about how we reward others based on our perceptions. The unstated assumption is that these two things are independent. That is, it seems possible that the things that you do that cause you to grow may be independent from the things that cause others to perceive you as deserving reward.
If they are independent (and there is no proof in this article or in my comment that they are, they are unstated assumptions) then the mechanisms that govern them are independent. So while it may be true that pushing yourself to your limit does indeed lead to growth (I have no immediate opinion on this but have no issue granting it) it does not necessarily also lead to others perceiving you as deserving reward.
The natural question ... why doesn't it? What is the source of this discrepancy between activities that lead to growth and people's perception of individuals and the desire to give out rewards. It is to that questions my original comment was addressed.
That people have a keen sense for innate talent isn't some flawed bias, it's just very common sense recognition of facts. The irony is that we could have much better outcomes for most people if we ditched the egalitarian myth that just frees top performers from responsibility.
It can result in a lot of poorly done work that needs to be fixed or redone. They can create more problems than they fix.
Hard work cannot overcome extreme lack of talent.
You can build a house that will fall apart.
You can code a website with security vulnerabilities and bugs.
Doing something and doing something well are not the same. But dumb or untalented people can accomplish a task in a substandard manner, and they may not even realize their work is substandard.
Then they have not completed the task. The task is to reach the standard. Someone who does not has not completed the task.
This hard working but dumb person does not exist in reality. Dumb people do, but they are not hard working in whatever domain they are dumb in.
Not everyone lives by that however. Peoples standards are different.
This is hypothetical, it's real and I have experienced people like this.
If anyone could have the athleticism of Michael Jordan or the intelligence of von Neumann or the musical ability of Mozart or the artistic ability of Michelangelo through hard work alone, there would be a lot more people with those respective skills, and the skills would no longer be considered extraordinary.
Some might argue that in the grand scheme of things, fame is a far greater reward than money. They say that you die twice: the first time is when your body passes away, and the second time is when your legacy passes away. The money earned by that trader will be likely be gone within a couple generations [0], but Terence Tao will be a name remembered by many for centuries if not millennia.
Many come to this conclusion and focus primarily on optics. This can work to a point, but it can also lead one to lose the plot on ground reality. At this point you are vulnerable to any higher up with a clue coming in, and the higher you go the bigger risk this is because senior management make their bones sniffing out bullshit even when they might not personally have all the details.
For that reason I think it's very important to develop hard skills from the ground up, and not focusing primarily on optics from a young age when you don't yet have a deep understanding of how things work. It's much easier to sell quality work than to try paper over a gap in fundamentals.
Ahaha, good one. They couldn’t smell shit on their own shoes.
“You know what Pasteur said: ‘Chance favors the prepared mind.’ Take one of the chanciest things in the world, like war. Both Kitchener and Frederick the Great, when they were considering a general's qualifications, would always ask, ‘Is he considered lucky?’ It was a perfectly legitimate question, because if he was considered lucky, it meant he was prepared to take advantage of chance.“ - Eric Hoffer
The abilities still have to be applied. Talent is the potential but need the work to realize it.
If you believe this then you will price talent + hard work over only hard work
This is a naive over-simplification; we don't live in a pure meritocracy. All sorts of other factors beyond the personal (talent or grit) have an impact.