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Social conditioning or not, brain malleability decreases rapidly after 25. Neuroplasticity is no longer what it was, and the quicker one reconciles themselves t

Social conditioning or not, brain malleability decreases rapidly after 25. Neuroplasticity is no longer what it was, and the quicker one reconciles themselves to that fact the quicker they can figure out what they both excel at and enjoy. There's tons of things that are just in the brain. I come from a family of academics where every male in my family was either a PhD or an MD except for my paternal grandfather. Most of them are of Oxbridge pedigree, ranging from post-docs with Nobel Laureates to tenured faculty at those East-coast liberal schools Ann Coulter hates so much. Math came ridiculously easy to me, nature or nurture I'm not sure. Then I started going to conferences and seeing people who were of Terrance Tao caliber. No matter how hard I train, I'll never win a Fields medal. My brain is no longer malleable. One of the reasons I went into industry instead of academia was meeting people 20 year old first year grad students who were of one subset of mathematics, take 4 months to sit down and study an entirely different subset and start collaborating, then outperforming post-docs who've spent ~10 years on it. I'm convinced we all have more or less the same ability to perform at that level, just in different fields. Most of us will never be able to out-return Andre Agassi, but they might just be naturally[I use this term loosely since we know so little about the neurological methodologies by which we acquire and integrate knowledge, problem solve, etc we can't quantify what differentiates one's propensity for a skillset from anothers] great at poker, tearing down an engine in 20 minutes, or precision pilotry.

moron4hire 11y ago
None of this is considered hard fact. There are studies that support what you say and there are studies that completely dispute it. And neither have been replicated with very much success. However, if you are correct, it would suggest our modern efforts at treating stroke victims are a complete waste of time and effort, a statement I think the patients and their families post-treatment would find puzzling. People who have early success within an area of study will tend to think of themselves as a natural and will put in more practice time than a person who has not had early success. People who had early failures will continue to see themselves as "struggling" at the subject, regardless of their actual skill level. The only advantage the "natural" has is that this emotional response to the subject makes it easier to decide to practice: people of equal practice level are almost always equally skilled, even in opposition to their subjective self-evaluation, barring general mental deficiency. There's no "math" gene. There's no "art" gene. There's only intelligence and it can be applied to any subject. The idea that people's neuroplasticity somehow "hardens" in the mid-20s or whatever is just an excuse that people make for themselves for why they bought an electric guitar but then never practiced at it. When you're a kid, you don't have a lot of different concerns competing for your time. When you're an adult, it's easy to put off a new subject when you can be productive doing something else. It's completely social.

moron4hire 11y ago

None of this is considered hard fact. There are studies that support what you say and there are studies that completely dispute it. And neither have been replicated with very much success. However, if you are correct, it would suggest our modern efforts at treating stroke victims are a complete waste of time and effort, a statement I think the patients and their families post-treatment would find puzzling. People who have early success within an area of study will tend to think of themselves as a natural and will put in more practice time than a person who has not had early success. People who had early failures will continue to see themselves as "struggling" at the subject, regardless of their actual skill level. The only advantage the "natural" has is that this emotional response to the subject makes it easier to decide to practice: people of equal practice level are almost always equally skilled, even in opposition to their subjective self-evaluation, barring general mental deficiency. There's no "math" gene. There's no "art" gene. There's only intelligence and it can be applied to any subject. The idea that people's neuroplasticity somehow "hardens" in the mid-20s or whatever is just an excuse that people make for themselves for why they bought an electric guitar but then never practiced at it. When you're a kid, you don't have a lot of different concerns competing for your time. When you're an adult, it's easy to put off a new subject when you can be productive doing something else. It's completely social.