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Talent is definitely a thing, morphology of the brain is absolutely relevant. Unfortunately most of us confuse great skill with innate talent, hence these endle

Talent is definitely a thing, morphology of the brain is absolutely relevant. Unfortunately most of us confuse great skill with innate talent, hence these endless articles. There are people out there with whom we simply cannot compete regardless of how much hard work we put in. They have advantages over the rest of us that we won't be able to overcome. Variability of brain structures is even more dramatic than visible physical variability in human beings. With visible traits, you have people who are 4'5" tall and those who are 7' tall. Within the brain the differences of the areas responsible for different functions are much greater: competing against someone with the right combination of brain structures is like an average person competing with a 60' tall basketball player. IIRC there are something like 50 different areas of the brain that are continuously being permuted in size with each next generation. If you get incredibly lucky and get just the right combination of areas that reinforce each other in a certain task (e.g. hand / eye coordination, spatial visualization etc.) you might be a genius. What's fascinating is that we are terrible at finding cognitive geniuses because we have no way yet (or desire) to accurately scan one's brain before death. We most likely fail to detect most geniuses that are born by forcing them to do stuff that doesn't leverage their superior internal hardware. The fact is that there are a few incredibly rare specimens out there, the Michael Phelpses, Grigori Perelmans, Ramanujans, George Soroses of their respective mental fields, and no amount of hard work will help one compete against them in whatever area they excel in. However, they're also so rare that it's pointless to optimize "best practices" for their cases, the vast majority of us will need a ton of quality practice to become good. It appears that these lucky hands are dealt across all races, so IMO the ratial aspect of this is not as important. What's going to be less acceptable to society is being able to know pretty early on (in your later teens actually, when brain development mostly concludes) that someone is not actually that talented. At least early on the elite and the tiger parents will be quite disappointed to find out that their kid is actually not really that gifted or special and might be better off having a very menial career. Sure, you can still try to paint, compose, advance the state of mathematics, but once we're able to consistently identify people who will be naturally 10x better than you at that, you going for it will be a waste of time for society as a whole.

ap22213 10y ago
That statement doesn't align with what I'd learned studying physical anthropology. That is, Almost all genetic adaptations that have been observed across Homo Sapiens have been environmental physical adaptations. I'm not saying that it's wrong - just that I didn't learn it that way (But, I could have went to college too long ago).
- flatline 10y ago
  When I studied anthropology in the 90s, it was a widely held belief that genetics could potentially influence personality, intelligence, etc., but there was no conclusive evidence that it actually did so, and quite a few studies suggesting so had been debunked. There have since been quite a number of studies that indicate this is in fact so, even including more promising studies challenging Gould, et al.'s assertions that racial heritage plays no role in adult intelligence. I still don't know to what level any of these are conclusive, or to what extent we have improved our ability to quantify aspects of, broadly speaking, personality.
- aaron695 10y ago
  It doesn't make a lot of sense that the other organs have evolved but the brain didn't. I put it more down to it's harder to measure politically. But I do think you need 'practice' to maximise your skills which the system fails many people.
- mikebenfield 10y ago
  There are potentially very politically inflammatory issues that could come up if we start talking about genetic variation in intelligence in humans. Modern anthropologists are extremely keen to avoid any semblance of justifying racism. But think about it like this: biological evolution works specifically by exploiting differences within a species. If every member of a species were exactly the same height, there would be no basis on which natural selection can encourage future changes in height. Humans got so much smarter than our primate ancestors specifically because there was a lot of variation in innate intelligence: the human ancestors who were smarter tended to live longer and have more offspring. It would be completely nuts if that process just magically stopped, and humans all suddenly had equal intelligence, and differences in intelligence no longer played any role in reproductive success. That idea is completely counter to everything we know about how evolution works... it didn't happen with height or physical strength or hairiness or baldness or any of our other traits. The only reason to suppose it happened with intelligence or other mental traits is, as I said above, to avoid an inflammatory issue.

ap22213 10y ago

That statement doesn't align with what I'd learned studying physical anthropology. That is, Almost all genetic adaptations that have been observed across Homo Sapiens have been environmental physical adaptations. I'm not saying that it's wrong - just that I didn't learn it that way (But, I could have went to college too long ago).

flatline 10y ago
When I studied anthropology in the 90s, it was a widely held belief that genetics could potentially influence personality, intelligence, etc., but there was no conclusive evidence that it actually did so, and quite a few studies suggesting so had been debunked. There have since been quite a number of studies that indicate this is in fact so, even including more promising studies challenging Gould, et al.'s assertions that racial heritage plays no role in adult intelligence. I still don't know to what level any of these are conclusive, or to what extent we have improved our ability to quantify aspects of, broadly speaking, personality.
aaron695 10y ago
It doesn't make a lot of sense that the other organs have evolved but the brain didn't. I put it more down to it's harder to measure politically. But I do think you need 'practice' to maximise your skills which the system fails many people.
mikebenfield 10y ago
There are potentially very politically inflammatory issues that could come up if we start talking about genetic variation in intelligence in humans. Modern anthropologists are extremely keen to avoid any semblance of justifying racism. But think about it like this: biological evolution works specifically by exploiting differences within a species. If every member of a species were exactly the same height, there would be no basis on which natural selection can encourage future changes in height. Humans got so much smarter than our primate ancestors specifically because there was a lot of variation in innate intelligence: the human ancestors who were smarter tended to live longer and have more offspring. It would be completely nuts if that process just magically stopped, and humans all suddenly had equal intelligence, and differences in intelligence no longer played any role in reproductive success. That idea is completely counter to everything we know about how evolution works... it didn't happen with height or physical strength or hairiness or baldness or any of our other traits. The only reason to suppose it happened with intelligence or other mental traits is, as I said above, to avoid an inflammatory issue.