But imagine if you were born knowing you had the natural aptitude to be the world's best brain surgeon, or guitar player, or graphic designer. I see several pr

But imagine if you were born knowing you had the natural aptitude to be the world's best brain surgeon, or guitar player, or graphic designer. I see several problems with his argument here: 1) Talent is not that important. Geniuses in any field are made, not born, through long hours of focused practice. Granted, some fields (such as sport) have minimum physical standards to be competitive but for the most part it's due to effort. (Focused practice refers to practice that's actively aimed towards identifying weak points and improving them. If, to take a simple example, you spend several years writing similar "hello world" programs in C you aren't going to get very far.) More information on this can be had in the work of Anders Ericcson (a leader in the field of expertise research). A profile can be found here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/success-is-all-in-the-mind/story-e6frg8gf-1111118649674 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/success-... 2) Even if you accept that there's some sort of talent-based destiny, people are still likely to have characteristics that could make them great in a wide array of fields. For example, if you're strongly analytical you could be a programmer, or a quant, or a research scientist, etc. 3) What if the field you're great in isn't valued by society? You might know that you could be a great artist, but there are great artists who are starving and miserable. On the other hand you could be a mediocre accountant (or whatever) and have fun outside your career while not living hand to mouth. 4) Finally, he seems to suggest that what he had was the aptitude to be a great cartoonist. However, looking at Dilbert, Scott Adam's main strengths seem to be excellent persistence and good salesmanship. These qualities (and I'd say they're far more useful qualities than artistic ability and a brilliant sense of humor) could have carried Scott to success in many other fields. The reason he's a great cartoonist is because it interested him, not because of some innate talent.