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I feel like I hold two conflicting beliefs...growth mindset (the brain is a muscle which can be exercised) and inherit talent... My belief in growth mindset ha

I feel like I hold two conflicting beliefs...growth mindset (the brain is a muscle which can be exercised) and inherit talent... My belief in growth mindset has help me improve my communication skills both oral and written. However I also recognise that I have certain limitations based on natural talent. For instance, I’m likely to never to be as good at word games (i.e. scrabble) as many friends and family members. This is at odds with my growth mindset to a certain extent. Maybe any skill can be improved upon but natural talent gives us an inherit advantage over the rest of the field.

apersona 7y ago
The model I have right now is that talent is learning rate, so I don't see how the beliefs conflict with each other. Some people pick things up faster than others, but if you put more effort you can still catch up. It also explains why even talented people still need to practice/learn/etc. to be at the top of their fields.
- rmetzler 7y ago
  Yes, and the article even fails to mention that it might be more important how someone practices than how much the person practices.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  Talent is the amount of work you don't have to do to better than the average person. It also sets a ceiling. Beyond a certain level, no amount of work will make you any better, because you fundamentally don't have the cognitive skill or physical ability to improve further. I've spent a fair amount of time with musicians, and talent can be very obvious. You can have a room full of people who have spent years practicing and been through a degree program. They're all outstanding compared to most of the population. But sometimes one person in that room will still stand out, because their playing will be insightful, compelling, and musical in a way the others can't match. It's an instant thing - it only takes a few bars to hear it. They won't necessarily have done the most work, or put the most hours in. But they will, in some absolutely fundamental way, "get it" - usually from birth. The hours and the work refine that ability and make it more obvious. But they can't create it.
- kerng 7y ago
  A friend of mine is a professional violinist. People say she is really talented and skilled. The interesting thing is that she gets very upset when people say: you are so talented. The reason she explained to me once is that people see her perform and play and think that's just how easy it is for her. She said to me once: "Noone sees the thousands of hours I practiced by myself in a dark rehearsal room without even a window at school". That was quite enlightening to me. So, if someone says it's just "talent", its quite offensive to her. It's hard and dedicated work.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    But it is true. Take any random person and get them to train for this many hours, they won't even come close. Both are necessary. She gets upset because she bought into the culture that tells us we control everything about ourselves. Which is somewhat of a lie in many ways.
    - kerng 7y ago
      No, she gets upset because people ignore the fact that she had to work to become that good. Also, any random person can learn to play violin sufficient enough to play in an orchestra (besides a physical or mental disability maybe). Maybe not professionally because that needs addition passion and dedication and there is a lot of competition. But playing good enough for a community orchestra that requires audition, pretty much anyone can achieve.
yomly 7y ago
If you've ever thought about or done some lifting, you might be familiar with noob gains If you imagine every skill is a dimension, you'll be able to traverse to "proficient/adept" quite easily with some dedicated practice I find the more interesting reflection is how much people overestimate their abilities in the more day to day/mundane skills that everyone has some proficiency in - think "conversation" or separately "running". Both things most humans can do but also most people don't get too much further past novice in them despite being things that we have been doing all our lives. Turns out that without dedicated practice and good feedback loops, it's possible to stay a novice at something your entire life. So for me at least, talent is about your ability to improve at something with little to no direction. When I think of the greatest salespeople I know, they have been honing the skill all life, but they also never had anyone teach them what they needed to know or what was important to learn. And yet when I analyze their lives and realize that from young they were constructing feedback loops for things like "how to be funny" or "how to wow a crowd" or "how to negotiate" with virtually zero guidance, I can only infer that this is what genius looks like...
Daub 7y ago
Completely agreed. Any realistic model of creativity has to accommodate both nature and nurture. Unfortunately, in the humanities, the idea that anything is natural is an unpopular position. In defence of nurture, 28% of Nobel Prize winning physicists come from families where the father was an academic professional. From the same book (The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity) we learn that this number falls to 6% for Nobel Prize winning writers. However, a whopping 30% of these writers lost at least one parent through death, abandonment or desertion. In contrast, physicists lead fairly normal lives.

apersona 7y ago

The model I have right now is that talent is learning rate, so I don't see how the beliefs conflict with each other. Some people pick things up faster than others, but if you put more effort you can still catch up. It also explains why even talented people still need to practice/learn/etc. to be at the top of their fields.

rmetzler 7y ago
Yes, and the article even fails to mention that it might be more important how someone practices than how much the person practices.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
Talent is the amount of work you don't have to do to better than the average person. It also sets a ceiling. Beyond a certain level, no amount of work will make you any better, because you fundamentally don't have the cognitive skill or physical ability to improve further. I've spent a fair amount of time with musicians, and talent can be very obvious. You can have a room full of people who have spent years practicing and been through a degree program. They're all outstanding compared to most of the population. But sometimes one person in that room will still stand out, because their playing will be insightful, compelling, and musical in a way the others can't match. It's an instant thing - it only takes a few bars to hear it. They won't necessarily have done the most work, or put the most hours in. But they will, in some absolutely fundamental way, "get it" - usually from birth. The hours and the work refine that ability and make it more obvious. But they can't create it.
kerng 7y ago
A friend of mine is a professional violinist. People say she is really talented and skilled. The interesting thing is that she gets very upset when people say: you are so talented. The reason she explained to me once is that people see her perform and play and think that's just how easy it is for her. She said to me once: "Noone sees the thousands of hours I practiced by myself in a dark rehearsal room without even a window at school". That was quite enlightening to me. So, if someone says it's just "talent", its quite offensive to her. It's hard and dedicated work.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  But it is true. Take any random person and get them to train for this many hours, they won't even come close. Both are necessary. She gets upset because she bought into the culture that tells us we control everything about ourselves. Which is somewhat of a lie in many ways.
  - kerng 7y ago
    No, she gets upset because people ignore the fact that she had to work to become that good. Also, any random person can learn to play violin sufficient enough to play in an orchestra (besides a physical or mental disability maybe). Maybe not professionally because that needs addition passion and dedication and there is a lot of competition. But playing good enough for a community orchestra that requires audition, pretty much anyone can achieve.

yomly 7y ago

If you've ever thought about or done some lifting, you might be familiar with noob gains If you imagine every skill is a dimension, you'll be able to traverse to "proficient/adept" quite easily with some dedicated practice I find the more interesting reflection is how much people overestimate their abilities in the more day to day/mundane skills that everyone has some proficiency in - think "conversation" or separately "running". Both things most humans can do but also most people don't get too much further past novice in them despite being things that we have been doing all our lives. Turns out that without dedicated practice and good feedback loops, it's possible to stay a novice at something your entire life. So for me at least, talent is about your ability to improve at something with little to no direction. When I think of the greatest salespeople I know, they have been honing the skill all life, but they also never had anyone teach them what they needed to know or what was important to learn. And yet when I analyze their lives and realize that from young they were constructing feedback loops for things like "how to be funny" or "how to wow a crowd" or "how to negotiate" with virtually zero guidance, I can only infer that this is what genius looks like...

Daub 7y ago

Completely agreed. Any realistic model of creativity has to accommodate both nature and nurture. Unfortunately, in the humanities, the idea that anything is natural is an unpopular position. In defence of nurture, 28% of Nobel Prize winning physicists come from families where the father was an academic professional. From the same book (The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity) we learn that this number falls to 6% for Nobel Prize winning writers. However, a whopping 30% of these writers lost at least one parent through death, abandonment or desertion. In contrast, physicists lead fairly normal lives.