Interesting you should mention people talking about stuff they know nothing about.
You are one of them.
-16 karma · joined July 4, 2014
You are one of them.
Last time I checked the Dutch East India Company existed before you were learning front end development.
No tech company in history would be able to go public without an army of lawyers, finance and management graduates.
I suggest you educate yourself about the real world. Your post is typical of "CS Engineers need no one else. Ever."
Numerous agree natural talent is a myth
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid...
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1974-06238-001
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1996....
Can you even define natural talent?
The same is true for maths, languages, chess, science - anything you care to name.
Proven by Laszlo.
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?
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?
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.
[Sscene. PM_Tech has phoned his truck driver father]
"*Yes Dad; just build a simple installer to get an email address. An email address...it's like a phone number but letters instead. You know...so the cable company can message you. Well I suppose you could just call them...I don't know, it might take a while to build. You will have to learn programming for a start. I know you are 56. Yes, it will cut into your time for watching sports. I know I am "good" at that "computer stuff" but some guy on HN said this is how you should get an email because he knows how to do it...OK. I will be round for the game. Love to mum."
FYI Any service I have to use that starts with going to GitHUb will be ignored unless
[a] I am trying to learn something from it [b] It is 2048.
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."
Are you emailing yourself on a self hosted, air-gapped system?
If you email me for instance, Google has your email shrug.
"In a highly competitive sport, you need both talent..."
There is no such thing as talent.
This is where our arguments are diverging. Disproving talents shows that anyone in possession of the minimum required attributes (legs, eyes etc) can become World Class at a sport given optimum training conditions and luck.
Claiming that an Olympic sprinter is more naturally talented than someone born without legs is absurd and a hijacking of the word talent beyond all legitimate understanding.
The argument is not about Heavyweight Boxer versus Featherweight. It is about can Person A become a world class boxer at all? The answer is yes, they can with the correct training, mindset and luck.
To argue otherwise is not consistent with scientific research.
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.
The Supreme Court also think so [1] as does the Rational Wiki [2] and Salman Rushdie [3]. Fry has expressed a sentiment that a great deal of thinkers and speakers have expressed. Others that have echoed his statement include Phillip Pullman, Penn and Teller, Christopher Hitchens, Lord Mawhinney and other legislators.
Celebrity endorsements run a distant second to the Supreme Court though.
I am unsure how that qualifies Fry as dumb as a bag of hammers? Do you think that people do have a right to be offended? How would such a right be defended?
[1]http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-751.pdf [2]http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Right_not_to_... [3]http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/739464-nobody-has-the-right-...
Although to be fair, the stories of Rupeni Caucau are anecdotal. Contrast with the weightlifter and actor Carl Weathers who maintained he was just naturally muscled and athletic when he was in fact getting up at 3am to train and returning to bed at 430am so his co-stars never suspected his regime.
It infuriated Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarznegger to the point of on-set arguments. Weathers would just flex and claim "genetics does not need to lift weights."
100metres has a bias towards fast people? What does that mean?
I wager if two males born on the same day on opposite ends of the earth trained 8 hours per day to run the 100 metres eating exactly the same diet and following the same training regime to the same intensity they would post almost identical 100 metres results.
The difference comes from the application of focussed practice. It is the mental intensity through which you train.
Jack Nicklaus famously said he has never just "hit a ball" in his life. Every single stroke of every single session was a genuine attempt to accomplish a defined goal. Every shot analysed. That is why he is arguably the greatest (or second greatest golfer) of all time. 99% of golfers just hit the ball.
Schwarzenegger pioneered the idea that you can literally will your muscles to grow larger by thinking about them tearing and rebuilding. Subsequently proven almost three decades after he was laughed at. [1]
Natural talent is the witch doctor name we give to those who practise harder, longer and better than we do. Syed also subsequently disproves the idea of Kenyan runners as champion long distance athletes. Another cognitive dissonance.
[1] http://docsfitnesstips.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/can-thinking-a... (Ignore the web address, it is the academic study he discusses and links to).
You keep referring to talent. Which does not exist, has never been proven and has been disproven numerous times by taking sportsman out of their chosen sport but into a new sport requiring similar talent and testing their performance which is always sub-par and hovering around average.
The primary example used is table tennis players are famed for having naturally quick reflexes. In every academic study, table tennis players performed no quicker than average in any reflexes test and in some cases performed worse than various random individuals from the street.
There are others but you should read the book before discounting a hypothesis. I have read enough to convince me natural talent is a myth; the equivalent of a rain dance is the reason for rain.
The point that Syed is making is not Play A of X height and Player B of Y height are equal. He reports (cited academic studies) that given the same height Player A and Player B have no intrinsic native advantages over each other - all advantages are cultural and luck. Player A may have a great coach, a great basketballing school etc or Player B may just simply work harder.
There are a legion of examples to back up his claims including the Williams sisters. Two prodigies who came from a family that had not even heard of Tennis until their father decided they would be tennis champions.
There is also Syed himself who played in the Olympic and Commonwealth Games at table tennis. Curiously enough 50% of the national team for table tennis also came from his street...
...lucky enough to be born next to a world class club.
I have not increased the drama at all. Someone posted a totally hyperbolic statement. I called them on it. It was upvoted numerous times I suspect because a consensus agrees with me.
It is not intelligent to tear down popular things because they are popular. You could have very well removed Gladwell and added Apple, Microsoft or French wine.
I haven't yelled, have I?
Your protip is baffling. Who is apparently smart? The OP? How have you reached that conclusion? By the possession of a HN account?
In all likelihood it would be more suitable for the USA to adopt FIFA conventions. FIFA tournaments are astronomically more popular worldwide than any US sports. Even the USA-Portugal game had higher viewing figures in the USA than the World Series and the NBA finals.
Skipping the World Cup for a second...in 2011 the Premier League was broadcast in 212 territories around the world, working with 80 different broadcasters. The TV audience for Premier League games is 4.7 BILLION , and the number of homes reached last season increased 11 per cent to 643m.
It's a bit arrogant to assume some of the best UX designers in the world have not been hired to design and test the experience for a global audience. TV has forgotten more than the Web knows about user experience.
You can hardly blame the community for reacting harshly when presented with a product they never asked for claiming that their current experience is somehow broken when it is not.
The worst part is the new UX is sub-standard.
So nothing that Gladwell writes has justification? Seems like you have a deep hatred of his writing and are unable to critique his ideas objectively.
I read the article; I have read the 10 years/10,000 hours peice and it's detractors numerous times. I don't use that one argument to tear down a man's work though. People fixate on one part of one chapter.
His study of the Gore-Tex working practices and racism in the Caribbean I thought were particularly excellent.
http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/11/04/dont-mind-your-language...
How does your link make Fry out to be as dumb as a bag of hammers? You may dislike him personally (shrug) but that does not make the man stupid.
I would also agree that the Register are being needlessly cruel by inviting readers to comb though his statements and then popularise his mistakes. I very much doubt any person on earth could withstand that kind of scrutiny, not even politicians who have armies of people to protect them from making quantative and qualitative mistakes.
Fry speaks as eccentric British comedians from the upper middle class speak. I guess non-natives just don't get it.
A respected actor, comedian and presenter he has also authored a number of novels and several non-fiction works and graduated from one of the most respected educational institutions in the entire world.
Hardly dumb.
You simulataneously discount his entire canon of work and also every single underlying scientific paper he has quoted, cited or referenced. That is a lot of work to label bullshit.