3 ms·

"Natural ability" is a cop-out and PG should know better. It'd be fine if this came with a disclaimer, "we don't know what natural ability is and the more we le

"Natural ability" is a cop-out and PG should know better. It'd be fine if this came with a disclaimer, "we don't know what natural ability is and the more we learn the more complex and diverse this umbrella term becomes." But taking it at face value is fuzzy thinking. It feels like this was included to hedge his bets. The Polgar sisters(1) serve as evidence that while "natural ability" may be a thing it's even less important than you might imagine. Instead this and work like that of Ericsson(2) on the development of expertise point to repeatable environmental factors for success. I look forward to a day when we can eliminate this phrase and replace it with measurable phenomena and repeatable processes. (1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r (2) - https://smile.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-Handbooks-Psychology/dp/0521600812/ https://smile.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-Han...

mikewarot 5y ago
"Natural ability" is when your skills and interests happen to have a good impedance match with a problem to be solved.
- jahewson 5y ago
  That’s not what it means.
newacct583 5y ago
Is anyone else distressed by pg's sudden turn to these sorts of para-culture-war issues? He's gotten increasingly anti-woke over the past year or two and it's starting to leak into sloppy argumentation like this. In decades past, he'd discuss similar issues ("how to identify a good hacker", stuff like that), but the focus was on the talent and what it meant and how it worked. Now... suddenly this kind of genetic stratification is just a given? Not a good smell.
- s5300 5y ago
  Appears that he's having some sort of internal struggle/identity crisis the past few years that he can't come to terms with.
  - newacct583 5y ago
    So... I actually have a theory. He had kids. His kids are precocious and bright. And if you watch him on twitter he loves to talk about how smart they are. Which is hardly weird. But read back through his early writing: PG's school experience seems kinda traumatic. He hated it, he has an essay likening schools to prisons. So he's projecting his anxieties onto his kids. And modern educational thought (be it "woke" or not), has very much moved away from a focus on the Best and Brightest students and onto a theory of education that prioritizes the needs of the disadvantaged. PG's kids just aren't what people are talking about. Educators tend to assume they'll do just fine given their existing advantages. But PG didn't do fine, in his mind. He thinks society is moving in the wrong direction. Which is ironic, because if anything modern educational environments (my kids are almost the same age) are much MORE inclusive and benign and much less likely to produce the kind of anxiety he experienced. His kids will do better than he did BECAUSE the school brings everyone else into the discussion and doesn't drive a competetive prison. He just can't see it.

mikewarot 5y ago

"Natural ability" is when your skills and interests happen to have a good impedance match with a problem to be solved.

jahewson 5y ago
That’s not what it means.

newacct583 5y ago

Is anyone else distressed by pg's sudden turn to these sorts of para-culture-war issues? He's gotten increasingly anti-woke over the past year or two and it's starting to leak into sloppy argumentation like this. In decades past, he'd discuss similar issues ("how to identify a good hacker", stuff like that), but the focus was on the talent and what it meant and how it worked. Now... suddenly this kind of genetic stratification is just a given? Not a good smell.

s5300 5y ago
Appears that he's having some sort of internal struggle/identity crisis the past few years that he can't come to terms with.
- newacct583 5y ago
  So... I actually have a theory. He had kids. His kids are precocious and bright. And if you watch him on twitter he loves to talk about how smart they are. Which is hardly weird. But read back through his early writing: PG's school experience seems kinda traumatic. He hated it, he has an essay likening schools to prisons. So he's projecting his anxieties onto his kids. And modern educational thought (be it "woke" or not), has very much moved away from a focus on the Best and Brightest students and onto a theory of education that prioritizes the needs of the disadvantaged. PG's kids just aren't what people are talking about. Educators tend to assume they'll do just fine given their existing advantages. But PG didn't do fine, in his mind. He thinks society is moving in the wrong direction. Which is ironic, because if anything modern educational environments (my kids are almost the same age) are much MORE inclusive and benign and much less likely to produce the kind of anxiety he experienced. His kids will do better than he did BECAUSE the school brings everyone else into the discussion and doesn't drive a competetive prison. He just can't see it.