Comment by Marazan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Marazan | Hacker News Reader

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This is Syed's stawman, as I state - training is dominant over any innate 'talent' and there isn't anyone seriously engaged in the debate that disagrees with this.

Hard work and dedication will make anyone good at anything - no-one disputes this. But Syed wants to apply this to the elite level as well. The elite level is where outliers live on an everyday basis

The studies he cites goes the wrong way to draw the conclusion that he wants to draw - it's not about saying table tennis players have super quick reflexes that apply generally it's that some people have super quick reflexes of a type that apply to table tennis. So, whilst Table Tennis players' 'quick reflexes' are clearly trained for the specific situation of Table Tennis rather than being the results of having 'talented' generalist quick reflexes there will be, in the pool of all of humanity, people who's natural bio-mechanic disposition makes them have Table Tennis appropriate quick-reflexes. So if that person applies hard work and dedication to Table Tennis then they will be better than someone without the bio-mechanical advantage who puts in the same hard work and dedication. But if they apply hard work and dedication to another discipline that require fast reflexes they won't be any better as their 'talent' doesn't apply.

I follow rugby, rugby is littered with players who were really good but who's body could not take the strain of the training and broke down through the effort. Clearly hard work and dedication alone was not enough for them - they needed a body that could respond favorably to the punishment they were taking.

You need to read the book, you disagreeing with the hypothesis with nothing to back up your assertions other than your opinion.

Do you think human beings with super quick reflexes exist? That does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. I fear we are at an impasse, you have your views and it appears they preclude reading anything that challenges them.

Interestingly, I had similar views before reading the cited studies.

No, I am saying that people have physiological maximums. No matter how hard I train I am not going to become taller (or shorter), no matter how hard I train my knee and ankles will only support a certain mount of force and torque I cannot push past that (without suffering repeated and continual injury) - this is law of the universe stuff.

At the level of becoming very good indeed these limits have no effect on becoming better as you do not reach them, but at the elite level, at becoming the best they do. Do you really believe that the guy who came 2nd to 7th in the 2012 Olympic 100m sprint trained an appreciable, measurable, amount less than Usain Bolt - with less dedication, application and rigour? Do you think, say, Gatlin, Gaye and Bailyey trained in a worse environment less conducive to success than Bolt?

Are you really saying you can go look Donnie MacFadyen in the face and say he just didn't train with enough dedication?

You are appealing to emotion.

Elite athletes are already outliers within the human race however within athletics there are extreme outliers like Bolt and Phelps who have astronomically rare genetic advantages. To be representative they need to be discounted. Not even the Olympics is N number of Usain Bolts racing against each other. It is N number + Usain Bolt.

Donnie McFayden may have trained as hard as he thought he could. That does not mean he was in the optimum training environment, he apportioned his time correctly or he trained with focus required to be better than he is. His training habits may have become effective simply too late in his career (Maybe he took training seriously at 8 years old but his competitors (in team and other team) took it seriously at 4. Maybe he is absolutely outstanding but the team failed him.

The factors are numerous. It might just be he is unlucky; his coaches didn't recognise his brilliance or they played him out of position. The point is not why is Donnie not the absolute best in history. It is 'Can anyone with the basic requirements reach the level of playing international rugby with the right focus and training and luck - the answer is yes, yes they can.'

They literally just have to want it enough and have the resources (time, money, family, coaches) in place to achieve it.

Anyone can be a Chess Grandmaster with enough study. Proven by Laszlo who specifically taught his children chess in order to prove geniuses are made/trained, not born."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200506/the-grandmast...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

Also proven by the Williams sisters whose father decided* they would be tennis champions and worked them mercilessly towards that goal using any equipment to hand. Unless your hypothesis is that -

Two genius tennis prodigies were born with the gifts required to be a tennis prodigy and their father just happened to settle on the sport of Tennis? I think those odds are considerably more unlikely than "anyone can be a Tennis champion with the basic requirements and dedication which is what the Williams sisters had."

You are literally accepting my premise and then telling me I am wrong.

If you accept that Usain Bolt is a astronomically rare genetic freak (which you just have) then you accept that some people have innate genetic factors that make them better at a sport than others.

Because people exist on a continuum and not in discrete boxes that means for a given subset of people, some people in that group have innate factors that advantage them over others in a particular tasks, just not at the extreme level of Phellps.

That means some people have 'talent', or as I like to say physiological factors that give them greater maximum potential.

Not quite. You are focussing on 1 in 6 Billion type athletes and discounting the 99.9999%.

The Olympics is not full of Usain Bolts. It is professional athletes AND Usain Bolt. Unless you think none of the other 100metre runners are professional athletes because they don't reach Bolts performance?

I think if what you were saying were true, than anyone with more practice could beat anyone with less practice. Is this the case? No, it's not. Sometimes people who practice less do better than those who practice more.

People manifestly and undeniably vary in their native attributes. Do some people have faster reflexes than others? Absolutely. If there is a book that says everyone has the same reflex speed, it may be worth looking at how the research was cherry picked to support a point.

Over a suitably finite series a person with more practice will beat someone with less practice.

In actual fact, studies have been done whereby sports athletes with greater levels of practice were asked to play less accomplished opponents whilst carrying out a simultaneous task unrelated to the sport (foot tapping X times in a minute, mental calculations) etc.

Even under a completely new cognitive load the atheltes were so well drilled in their sport they consistently beat amateurs who were focusing on nothing except trying to win.

Soldiers can do similar feats regarding drill and drivers do similar feats constantly. An accomplished driver can navigate a busy and hazardous environment whilst listening to music and daydreaming whilst a newer driver will struggle even if solely concentrating.

People who practice less very very rarely ever beat those more practiced and even then environmental factors are likely playing a massive part.

Once again, native attributes are largely myth. Barring disability almost all humans start on a relatively level biological playing field. The true modifier is self determination and environment.

"native attributes are largely myth..."

No, no they aren't. At all. A simple glance around a crowded room shows this to be the case.

And if it were true, little girls and grandmas could successfully join the NBA if they just had enough determination. People who had been in the computer industry longer would be the billionaires since they had more experience rather than it being someone in their 20's.

(I'm not saying practice and experience aren't important).

You think being a child or Growing old is the same as genetic advantage?

Why would industry experience of IT automatically result in monetary reward? Your argument is straying way way beyond anything to do with the original comment.

Focussing on children versus adults or elderly people versus professional athletes is not a fair comparison.

Just to be clear, are you trying to say females are not good enough to play in the NBA?

"Just to be clear, are you trying to say females are not good enough to play in the NBA?"

Yes, I'm saying exactly that. Because... there is such thing as native talent and it's not just how much one practices. In general, men are stronger and can run faster than women... training being equal. And men are statistically taller than women. So... they have an advantage in a game where height is an advantage.

I don't even know why you would argue that point. It's biological fact.

Growing old or being a child is the same as genetic advantage? No, and I never claimed it was. The point was simply to illustrate the ridiculousness of the claim of humans being homogenous. Very clearly some people have an advantage over others in some activities. These people may require less practice to become "experts" than others... thus the 10,000 hour rule is at once nullified as "rule".

As for training in IT let me re-iterate the point... those with more practice in both tech and business didn't necessarily make more money while young people with less practice did. Presumably money was the goal of more than got it... even those that really really believed and tried very hard.

There is native grace. Believe it. Accept it. Know your strengths. Know your limitations. This is the key to survival and success. No... sorry in spite of what they told you in grade school, you can't be any thing you want to be if you simply put your mind to it and work really hard. That line might motivate some, but at the end of the day it is inherently and obviously untrue.

You have just written the biggest pile of unsubstantiated bullshit I have read on HN.

You are quite simply wrong. Not just your conclusions, but your entire understanding of native talent is incorrect.

It is not surprising you hold the viewpoint you do. If I started off thinking 2 + 2 = 5 then I would argue 4 + 4 = 10.

That is essentially what has happened here. You have misunderstood native talent, how it is defined and measured and are now arguing from a position of factual incorrectness. No point continuing really. It is obvious you will never read anything to change your own mind.

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