This subject always seems to get everyone in a twist. That's because there are at least two different things being discussed: necessary vs. sufficient. The Gl

This subject always seems to get everyone in a twist. That's because there are at least two different things being discussed: necessary vs. sufficient. The Gladwell version of 10,000 hours was quite clearly a 'necessary' interpretation of deliberate practice. You look at success vs. amount practiced and see that those who practice more tend to be more successful, at least to a point. Fairly simple idea, wrapped up in a neat pop-sci quip. The 'sufficient' argument is a radically different one that suggests that ultimate ability isn't that different between individuals. Immediately, this seems strongly at odds with other observed intellectual metrics such as IQ which is very highly heritable (h = 0.7 to 0.8) and does not suffer from many of the data quality issues that other metrics do. A much better title for this paper would end with 'ultimate ability' or 'potential' or something, because practice is obviously necessary. There's just a lot of people talking past each other here, and several that clearly didn't read even the introduction to the paper which discusses this difference.