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There is something to this, but it is also quite misleading. It is (sometimes painfully) obvious that there is a huge variation in innate ability. There are extremely talented people, there are those who find just about everything difficult, and all the shades in between. You can see this even with quite small children. Success is very often correlated with hard work, but in no way does that imply that some people aren't much smarter than others.

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The article doesn't imply that hard work trumps smartness at all, and it doesn't imply or state that there is little innate variation in ability. What it says is that if you tell a very smart or talented person how smart they are when they're younger, they're more likely to be afraid to take risks that would jeopardize that label. It's better to emphasize to them that they work hard, according to the author (and, I believe, studies that back him up).

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