8 ms·

Late Bloomers: Why Do We Equate Genius with Precocity? (2008)

87 points by kawera 8y ago

dang 8y ago
Discussed in 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8229385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8229385
- teddyh 8y ago
  Isn’t that what the “past” link is for at the top of the page?
daviswithanS 8y ago
I recently had the pleasure of reading the book Outliers, also by Malcolm Gladwell. In this book, one of his techniques is to present the typical "genius" or "rags-to-riches" type story and pick it apart, showing that success comes more frequently from environment and having the opportunity to work hard than from some innate genius. Here he uses the same technique. He presents the popular conception of Ben Fountain's story - a man quits his job and becomes a successful author through talent and motivation. Then, throughout the rest of the article, he adds nuance and exposes some of the overlooked details - that man was supported financially by his wife, had free time throughout the day to work, developed his talent excruciatingly slowly and took almost twenty years to catch his first break. While the focus of this article was more to discuss what it means to be or become a genius, I find it refreshing to think that these kinds of success stories often have hidden details that allow them to feel more realistic and attainable. On a more personal level, I really appreciated this article. I recently made the decision to study music at a conservatory rather than go into programming as I had originally planned. Programming has always been something I've been naturally good at (I used to think of myself as a very technical, STEMmy kind of person - I laugh at that now), whereas performing music is a passion I've only recently rekindled. As a result, I've had a few doubts about my ability to become a good musician or whether I've made the right choice. This article, however, reassures me that being born with innate talent is not the only path to becoming a good musician (although it sure would have been nice).
- Retric 8y ago
  Just understand these stories are still focused on the winners. You can be a top 1% musician and still need a day job.
  - imranq 8y ago
    Agreed, top 1% is probably 100,000 musicians and there are probably only about 10,000 people actually making a good living with music
  - maceurt 8y ago
    You can be the most skilled musician in the world, and still not have a job. Luck and politics matters a lot in music, and the margins between the best musician and everyone else is such a small percent that the king makers (record labels, opera houses, etc.) can afford to not have the most skilled musician if they see fit.
    - puranjay 8y ago
      A lot in music depends on the kind of music you want to make. Certain music genres are able to support a much larger section of musicians, regardless of their innate talent. A top 10% violinist doesn't have as many opportunities as a top 10% EDM producer. Music is also strange that you can be a top 1% musician (in terms of sales and popularity) without having the skills of a top 1% musician. As long as you can write pop hits (which doesn't require the strongest technical skills, that is.
      - weliketocode 8y ago
        Agreed on all your points except for that it is strange. I'd say in most fields, expertise is second to sales & politics ability for generating revenues & popularity.
- ivanmaeder 8y ago
  Thanks for this. It sounds like a good reason to read Outliers. I've seen it recommended a lot but haven't wanted to read it because I really struggled to get anything out of The Tipping Point (I thought it was a cliched version of the non-fiction category: a couple of ideas repeated over and over, full of anecdotes and trying to connect unrelated things… completely unscientific).
whitepoplar 8y ago
Because it's a lot easier for someone to convince himself that "genius" is a born trait, lest he look in the mirror and ask himself why he's not working harder to achieve something.
occamschainsaw 8y ago
This podcast by Gladwell also expands on his article: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/07-hallelujah http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/07-hallelujah
iliketosleep 8y ago
I believe this really depends on the field you're looking at. In pursuits where extraordinary levels of raw ability is absolutely paramount, precocity will be there 9/10 (or more). The best example is the quintessential chess genius. It's hard to find a chess champion who wasn't a precocious talent. It's the same with concert pianists. In other fields, some raw ability (but not necessarily an obvious precocious talent) is still necessary but other factors are also paramount. In the field of literature, richness of experience and maturity can take an author to a higher level. In various fields of scientific research, decades of accumulated knowledge/experience can be pivotal to success. My point is that in some fields, it makes complete sense to equate genius with precocity, but in others it makes little sense.
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  > "The best example is the quintessential chess genius. It's hard to find a chess champion who wasn't a precocious talent." Hold on a second there. Becoming a chess champion is effectively a full time job, and it takes a tremendous amount of work to acquire the skill to do so. Who, as an adult, is going to pursue that as a career if they haven't been playing chess tournaments since childhood? I would argue that there really isn't a path to becoming a chess champion except via being a precocious talent. Without that hope the family and the individual isn't going to pursue it as an option. Nobody is out there earning degrees in professional chess and then going into office work or silicon valley or what-have-you, it's just an extremely specialized field.
  - grenoire 8y ago
    I agree, the causation is likely due to the fact that kids who are good at playing chess early on keep playing chess, which by default gives them years of additional training and experience more. As opposed to someone who has only started at 18, they are going to have a hard time competing not due to their intelligence or genius-factor, but lack of training.
- empath75 8y ago
  My kid is 2 years old and knows the names of like 40 different dinosaurs. Does that mean he's a precocious paleontological genius? If I tell him he's a dinosaur genius and enroll him in paleontology training classes and encourage him to spend every waking hour learning more about dinosaurs to the exclusion of everything else, he surely would be, no?
hodgesrm 8y ago
What a great story. The most intriguing person was Sharon, Ben Fountain's wife. She seems like an outstanding human being.
chrissam 8y ago
Because geniuses are often precocious. Here's a critical review from Steven Pinker that criticizes the kind of reasoning Gladwell uses in this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.htm...
- neumann 8y ago
  Thank you, that was a great example of a critical review. I need to find my Igon Values.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    "Readers have much to learn from Gladwell the journalist and essayist. But when it comes to Gladwell the social scientist, they should watch out for those igon values." I didn't know Steven Pinker was tactful!
- gepi79 8y ago
  Yes, but genius should be not synonym with exceptionally talented. Although anything useful including natural perseverance or optimism and motivation should be called a talent. An idea can be called genius. Often it requires knowledge and experience and coincidence for a genius idea (innovative idea, wise idea, disruptive idea). Often it requires many years of efforts to create or to discover something new or great or genius. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius: A genius is a person who displays exceptional intellectual ability, creative productivity, universality in genres or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of new advances in a domain of knowledge. Despite the presence of scholars in many subjects throughout history, many geniuses have shown high achievements in only a single kind of activity.[1]
Blackthorn 8y ago
Media plays such a huge part in this. How often do we see young people saving the world versus old people? I like the Marvel movies because the protagonists are mostly reasonably aged. I try to remind myself at times that Gaston Glock didn't design his first gun until age 52.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
My two biggest counter examples when people say that geniuses are not born are John von Neuman and Srinivasa Ramanujan. These two were surrounded by other people who were regarded as geniuses in their own right, and yet these people viewed von Neuman and Ramanujan as being on a completely different level.
- adventured 8y ago
  Warren Buffett is an interesting example of specialized genius. He has a gifted memory and based on what has been described about him in several books, from birth he was of a certain emotional tilt that would serve him very well in consistently not making investment decisions based on emotion across decades. Buffett is an investment/financial genius, whose quite abnormal birth traits were a prerequisite to his extreme success in the investment world. I favor the notion that genius potential is a combination of specific narrow traits, such that if you swap any of them out, you're very likely to lose the genius outcome (rather than the pop caricature that genius is mentally broad; ie if someone says: he/she is a genius! - the only proper response is: in what narrow regard?). The popular successful genius outcome then further requires a number of external environmental factors, such as luck (where you were born, who your parents were, who you went to school with, who your friends were, what time in history you were born, all the way down to the tiniest of minutia).
  - moate 8y ago
    Like the saying goes "better lucky than good." Being born a white man in America at the time he was to a politically connected, financially stable family were all things that benefited him greatly and which he had 0 control over. The older I get, the more of a fatalist I become. The whole universe is just luck and entropy, and anyone telling you otherwise is probably just trying to sell you something.
rawoke083600 8y ago
Well I can't be one(Genius) - I had to google "precocity"
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  I figured it came from "precocious" but I was like, "is that actually a word?"
eksemplar 8y ago
I think our educational system is flawed as well. I know a lot of talented people who would be able to do great things in science and research if there was a way for them to enter academia after they’ve become full fledged adults. Often it’s people who matured late or spend their youths trying to figure out what they wanted, and now they can’t really enter into academia because the institutions were build to educate the same way we educate children. I know there are masters programs, but a lot of those, and a lot of people who take the time to re-educated, are solely focused on getting more valuable for business, not for research. It’s a shame, because I think we lose a lot of potential by almost entirely focusing our higher learning systems on young people.
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  It is flawed, flawed to the point of being broken. What education should be: teaching children to become mature adults and functional members of a cooperative society, teaching coping skills for adulthood, cultivating and encouraging a sense of curiosity and interest in reading, learning, etc. What education tends to be: a brutal factory that is not unlike prison that babysits children until they are legally (but not emotionally or intellectually) adults while burning out every ounce of curiosity in science and learning in all but a precious few individuals. There are tons of ways the system can be improved. One little thing I'll point out is that in school the expectation is perfection and deviation from "perfection" (orthodoxy, memorization, etc.) is punished. If you "fail" a midterm or a big project but end the course with a high degree of mastery of the material you are punished with a lower grade. If you excel in certain subjects but only passably good in some others then you are again punished. Which is exactly the opposite of the way real life works. If you are a superstar (perhaps literally) in even just one area (science, music, art, writing, comedy, machine tools, what-have-you) whereas in other areas you merely have a basic level of competency, well in that case you can become hugely, wildly successful. And yet the educational system would lead you to believe that you would have a dim future in that case and you should stop focusing on what you are best at and most passionate about to improve your "grades" on everything else.
  - trukterious 8y ago
amelius 8y ago
I'm not sure if this is true. For example, Nobel prizes are usually assigned at quite an old age, and this leads people to think the opposite. Also people usually associate the word "professor" with an old guy. The picture of Einstein that people have in their minds is not of his younger years. Etc. etc.
- TheTrotters 8y ago
  But the relevant research is usually done when these people are much younger. Einstein has made his major contributions to physics by the time he was 36. Fame and prestige are lagging indicators.
motohagiography 8y ago
More interested in why we need to believe in genius in the first place. I find it can be a kind of secular sainthood that has a mythology around it that serves as a post-hoc justification of certain social outcomes. Few understand the contributions of minds like Feynman, Davinci, Einstein, but we hold them up as symbols of a kind of mystery cult around science, which should make people at least a bit curious. There are a lot of prolific artists who aren't included in the genius canon, and it's an almost exclusively masculine archetype, which means it either tells us something about who we are, or it's the noisy artifact of a crude model. My bet is on the latter. While the particular acumen for appreciating and operating on abstractions is probably pareto distributed (like everything), what it represents is much more interesting. When you believe in genius, you likely believe it is meaningful that there are people you will never compare to, who have advantages you are physically incapable of obtaining, who were chosen to receive a gift while you were not, that there are people whose nature or perceived potential means they should be held to different standards, or that someones success can be less legitimate because of a perceived intellectual advantage. Not saying any of those statements are true, but they are definitely the effects of how people relate themselves to the belief in genius. Without those beliefs, we've got some much harder questions to answer. Personally, I think precosity can be cultivated and refined into something great, but genius itself is an artifact reflected from others beliefs, and not an intrinsic quality.
- deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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- Isamu 8y ago
  >Without those beliefs, we've got some much harder questions to answer. Personally, I think precosity can be cultivated and refined into something great Very much so, and sometimes ascribing genius is just shorthand for "I don't plan to try". More insidious is "talent", also held to be an intrinsic quality. But it turns out that "talent" is a trap for those who are talented. Talent is a trap: I came across this when watching a digital painting video, the host was relating how some of the people in art school were obviously talented and some were just slugging it out like he was. He noticed over time that the talented ones were more likely to give up at some point, and the sloggers were more likely to keep going and become successful making art a profession. The problem is that the talented are characterized by things seeming to come easily, but it's not an infinite ability and sooner or later they come up against some technique or assignment that is a problem and that will take real patience and work to get through. That comes as a real shock that can shake your confidence in your "talent", which was an illusion anyway. The sloggers have the advantage of always having to work hard to make progress, so everything is a struggle and the only surprises are when something goes easily. Those kind of expectations set you up better for success in a profession, which is just hard work in the end.
k__ 8y ago
You learn the best when you're young and if you aren't distracted by social stuff you have more time?
wwweston 8y ago
Precocity means early identification of potential in a given field. Early identification of that potential means individuals and institutions around the individual start to dedicate resources towards their development. Having resources dedicated to that development means such individuals can specialize and focus without having to spend as much (or, perhaps, anything) in terms of time/resources on normal life-supporting activities. Early identification also means investment of attention which accrues in reputation (and probably compounds in much the same way early financial investment does), which means less time spent having to convince people to give you opportunities. Basically: there's a path-dependent element to success / prestige. Precocity is not the only route but it helps so much that of course it's often correlated with recognized genius.

87 points by kawera 8y ago

dang 8y ago

Discussed in 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8229385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8229385

teddyh 8y ago
Isn’t that what the “past” link is for at the top of the page?

daviswithanS 8y ago

I recently had the pleasure of reading the book Outliers, also by Malcolm Gladwell. In this book, one of his techniques is to present the typical "genius" or "rags-to-riches" type story and pick it apart, showing that success comes more frequently from environment and having the opportunity to work hard than from some innate genius. Here he uses the same technique. He presents the popular conception of Ben Fountain's story - a man quits his job and becomes a successful author through talent and motivation. Then, throughout the rest of the article, he adds nuance and exposes some of the overlooked details - that man was supported financially by his wife, had free time throughout the day to work, developed his talent excruciatingly slowly and took almost twenty years to catch his first break. While the focus of this article was more to discuss what it means to be or become a genius, I find it refreshing to think that these kinds of success stories often have hidden details that allow them to feel more realistic and attainable. On a more personal level, I really appreciated this article. I recently made the decision to study music at a conservatory rather than go into programming as I had originally planned. Programming has always been something I've been naturally good at (I used to think of myself as a very technical, STEMmy kind of person - I laugh at that now), whereas performing music is a passion I've only recently rekindled. As a result, I've had a few doubts about my ability to become a good musician or whether I've made the right choice. This article, however, reassures me that being born with innate talent is not the only path to becoming a good musician (although it sure would have been nice).

Retric 8y ago
Just understand these stories are still focused on the winners. You can be a top 1% musician and still need a day job.
- imranq 8y ago
  Agreed, top 1% is probably 100,000 musicians and there are probably only about 10,000 people actually making a good living with music
- maceurt 8y ago
  You can be the most skilled musician in the world, and still not have a job. Luck and politics matters a lot in music, and the margins between the best musician and everyone else is such a small percent that the king makers (record labels, opera houses, etc.) can afford to not have the most skilled musician if they see fit.
  - puranjay 8y ago
    A lot in music depends on the kind of music you want to make. Certain music genres are able to support a much larger section of musicians, regardless of their innate talent. A top 10% violinist doesn't have as many opportunities as a top 10% EDM producer. Music is also strange that you can be a top 1% musician (in terms of sales and popularity) without having the skills of a top 1% musician. As long as you can write pop hits (which doesn't require the strongest technical skills, that is.
    - weliketocode 8y ago
      Agreed on all your points except for that it is strange. I'd say in most fields, expertise is second to sales & politics ability for generating revenues & popularity.
ivanmaeder 8y ago
Thanks for this. It sounds like a good reason to read Outliers. I've seen it recommended a lot but haven't wanted to read it because I really struggled to get anything out of The Tipping Point (I thought it was a cliched version of the non-fiction category: a couple of ideas repeated over and over, full of anecdotes and trying to connect unrelated things… completely unscientific).

whitepoplar 8y ago

Because it's a lot easier for someone to convince himself that "genius" is a born trait, lest he look in the mirror and ask himself why he's not working harder to achieve something.

occamschainsaw 8y ago

This podcast by Gladwell also expands on his article: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/07-hallelujah http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/07-hallelujah

iliketosleep 8y ago

I believe this really depends on the field you're looking at. In pursuits where extraordinary levels of raw ability is absolutely paramount, precocity will be there 9/10 (or more). The best example is the quintessential chess genius. It's hard to find a chess champion who wasn't a precocious talent. It's the same with concert pianists. In other fields, some raw ability (but not necessarily an obvious precocious talent) is still necessary but other factors are also paramount. In the field of literature, richness of experience and maturity can take an author to a higher level. In various fields of scientific research, decades of accumulated knowledge/experience can be pivotal to success. My point is that in some fields, it makes complete sense to equate genius with precocity, but in others it makes little sense.

InclinedPlane 8y ago
> "The best example is the quintessential chess genius. It's hard to find a chess champion who wasn't a precocious talent." Hold on a second there. Becoming a chess champion is effectively a full time job, and it takes a tremendous amount of work to acquire the skill to do so. Who, as an adult, is going to pursue that as a career if they haven't been playing chess tournaments since childhood? I would argue that there really isn't a path to becoming a chess champion except via being a precocious talent. Without that hope the family and the individual isn't going to pursue it as an option. Nobody is out there earning degrees in professional chess and then going into office work or silicon valley or what-have-you, it's just an extremely specialized field.
- grenoire 8y ago
  I agree, the causation is likely due to the fact that kids who are good at playing chess early on keep playing chess, which by default gives them years of additional training and experience more. As opposed to someone who has only started at 18, they are going to have a hard time competing not due to their intelligence or genius-factor, but lack of training.
empath75 8y ago
My kid is 2 years old and knows the names of like 40 different dinosaurs. Does that mean he's a precocious paleontological genius? If I tell him he's a dinosaur genius and enroll him in paleontology training classes and encourage him to spend every waking hour learning more about dinosaurs to the exclusion of everything else, he surely would be, no?

hodgesrm 8y ago

What a great story. The most intriguing person was Sharon, Ben Fountain's wife. She seems like an outstanding human being.

chrissam 8y ago

Because geniuses are often precocious. Here's a critical review from Steven Pinker that criticizes the kind of reasoning Gladwell uses in this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.htm...

neumann 8y ago
Thank you, that was a great example of a critical review. I need to find my Igon Values.
- jacobush 8y ago
  "Readers have much to learn from Gladwell the journalist and essayist. But when it comes to Gladwell the social scientist, they should watch out for those igon values." I didn't know Steven Pinker was tactful!
gepi79 8y ago
Yes, but genius should be not synonym with exceptionally talented. Although anything useful including natural perseverance or optimism and motivation should be called a talent. An idea can be called genius. Often it requires knowledge and experience and coincidence for a genius idea (innovative idea, wise idea, disruptive idea). Often it requires many years of efforts to create or to discover something new or great or genius. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius: A genius is a person who displays exceptional intellectual ability, creative productivity, universality in genres or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of new advances in a domain of knowledge. Despite the presence of scholars in many subjects throughout history, many geniuses have shown high achievements in only a single kind of activity.[1]

Blackthorn 8y ago

Media plays such a huge part in this. How often do we see young people saving the world versus old people? I like the Marvel movies because the protagonists are mostly reasonably aged. I try to remind myself at times that Gaston Glock didn't design his first gun until age 52.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

My two biggest counter examples when people say that geniuses are not born are John von Neuman and Srinivasa Ramanujan. These two were surrounded by other people who were regarded as geniuses in their own right, and yet these people viewed von Neuman and Ramanujan as being on a completely different level.

adventured 8y ago
Warren Buffett is an interesting example of specialized genius. He has a gifted memory and based on what has been described about him in several books, from birth he was of a certain emotional tilt that would serve him very well in consistently not making investment decisions based on emotion across decades. Buffett is an investment/financial genius, whose quite abnormal birth traits were a prerequisite to his extreme success in the investment world. I favor the notion that genius potential is a combination of specific narrow traits, such that if you swap any of them out, you're very likely to lose the genius outcome (rather than the pop caricature that genius is mentally broad; ie if someone says: he/she is a genius! - the only proper response is: in what narrow regard?). The popular successful genius outcome then further requires a number of external environmental factors, such as luck (where you were born, who your parents were, who you went to school with, who your friends were, what time in history you were born, all the way down to the tiniest of minutia).
- moate 8y ago
  Like the saying goes "better lucky than good." Being born a white man in America at the time he was to a politically connected, financially stable family were all things that benefited him greatly and which he had 0 control over. The older I get, the more of a fatalist I become. The whole universe is just luck and entropy, and anyone telling you otherwise is probably just trying to sell you something.

rawoke083600 8y ago

Well I can't be one(Genius) - I had to google "precocity"

commandlinefan 8y ago
I figured it came from "precocious" but I was like, "is that actually a word?"

eksemplar 8y ago

I think our educational system is flawed as well. I know a lot of talented people who would be able to do great things in science and research if there was a way for them to enter academia after they’ve become full fledged adults. Often it’s people who matured late or spend their youths trying to figure out what they wanted, and now they can’t really enter into academia because the institutions were build to educate the same way we educate children. I know there are masters programs, but a lot of those, and a lot of people who take the time to re-educated, are solely focused on getting more valuable for business, not for research. It’s a shame, because I think we lose a lot of potential by almost entirely focusing our higher learning systems on young people.

InclinedPlane 8y ago
It is flawed, flawed to the point of being broken. What education should be: teaching children to become mature adults and functional members of a cooperative society, teaching coping skills for adulthood, cultivating and encouraging a sense of curiosity and interest in reading, learning, etc. What education tends to be: a brutal factory that is not unlike prison that babysits children until they are legally (but not emotionally or intellectually) adults while burning out every ounce of curiosity in science and learning in all but a precious few individuals. There are tons of ways the system can be improved. One little thing I'll point out is that in school the expectation is perfection and deviation from "perfection" (orthodoxy, memorization, etc.) is punished. If you "fail" a midterm or a big project but end the course with a high degree of mastery of the material you are punished with a lower grade. If you excel in certain subjects but only passably good in some others then you are again punished. Which is exactly the opposite of the way real life works. If you are a superstar (perhaps literally) in even just one area (science, music, art, writing, comedy, machine tools, what-have-you) whereas in other areas you merely have a basic level of competency, well in that case you can become hugely, wildly successful. And yet the educational system would lead you to believe that you would have a dim future in that case and you should stop focusing on what you are best at and most passionate about to improve your "grades" on everything else.
- trukterious 8y ago

amelius 8y ago

I'm not sure if this is true. For example, Nobel prizes are usually assigned at quite an old age, and this leads people to think the opposite. Also people usually associate the word "professor" with an old guy. The picture of Einstein that people have in their minds is not of his younger years. Etc. etc.

TheTrotters 8y ago
But the relevant research is usually done when these people are much younger. Einstein has made his major contributions to physics by the time he was 36. Fame and prestige are lagging indicators.

motohagiography 8y ago

More interested in why we need to believe in genius in the first place. I find it can be a kind of secular sainthood that has a mythology around it that serves as a post-hoc justification of certain social outcomes. Few understand the contributions of minds like Feynman, Davinci, Einstein, but we hold them up as symbols of a kind of mystery cult around science, which should make people at least a bit curious. There are a lot of prolific artists who aren't included in the genius canon, and it's an almost exclusively masculine archetype, which means it either tells us something about who we are, or it's the noisy artifact of a crude model. My bet is on the latter. While the particular acumen for appreciating and operating on abstractions is probably pareto distributed (like everything), what it represents is much more interesting. When you believe in genius, you likely believe it is meaningful that there are people you will never compare to, who have advantages you are physically incapable of obtaining, who were chosen to receive a gift while you were not, that there are people whose nature or perceived potential means they should be held to different standards, or that someones success can be less legitimate because of a perceived intellectual advantage. Not saying any of those statements are true, but they are definitely the effects of how people relate themselves to the belief in genius. Without those beliefs, we've got some much harder questions to answer. Personally, I think precosity can be cultivated and refined into something great, but genius itself is an artifact reflected from others beliefs, and not an intrinsic quality.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Isamu 8y ago
>Without those beliefs, we've got some much harder questions to answer. Personally, I think precosity can be cultivated and refined into something great Very much so, and sometimes ascribing genius is just shorthand for "I don't plan to try". More insidious is "talent", also held to be an intrinsic quality. But it turns out that "talent" is a trap for those who are talented. Talent is a trap: I came across this when watching a digital painting video, the host was relating how some of the people in art school were obviously talented and some were just slugging it out like he was. He noticed over time that the talented ones were more likely to give up at some point, and the sloggers were more likely to keep going and become successful making art a profession. The problem is that the talented are characterized by things seeming to come easily, but it's not an infinite ability and sooner or later they come up against some technique or assignment that is a problem and that will take real patience and work to get through. That comes as a real shock that can shake your confidence in your "talent", which was an illusion anyway. The sloggers have the advantage of always having to work hard to make progress, so everything is a struggle and the only surprises are when something goes easily. Those kind of expectations set you up better for success in a profession, which is just hard work in the end.

k__ 8y ago

You learn the best when you're young and if you aren't distracted by social stuff you have more time?

wwweston 8y ago

Precocity means early identification of potential in a given field. Early identification of that potential means individuals and institutions around the individual start to dedicate resources towards their development. Having resources dedicated to that development means such individuals can specialize and focus without having to spend as much (or, perhaps, anything) in terms of time/resources on normal life-supporting activities. Early identification also means investment of attention which accrues in reputation (and probably compounds in much the same way early financial investment does), which means less time spent having to convince people to give you opportunities. Basically: there's a path-dependent element to success / prestige. Precocity is not the only route but it helps so much that of course it's often correlated with recognized genius.