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> "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
by 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 agoI 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.