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> The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. T

by lloeki 5y ago

> The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft. - Will Smith This kind of exploration, banging your head against the wall, is exactly "beating on your craft". No matter if the result is crappy by any metric, trying to wrap one's head around things and producing output - any output - over and over is oh so important. And dare I say talent without practice is useless and a waste, because one's going to stay in the comfort zone, and usually get cocky about it, whereas relentless practice teaches humility. s/art/literally anything/g in this comic: https://www.deviantart.com/scotchi/art/keep-tryin-690533685 https://www.deviantart.com/scotchi/art/keep-tryin-690533685

marginalia_nu 5y ago
There is also an epistemological aspect to a lot of this. In school you are often taught true statements ("facts"), but that is not the same as knowledge. If I accurately predict that the next time I flip a coin, it's going to land heads; I did not know it would. I made a correct correct statement, but I did not know. Knowledge is about understanding how and why things work. That is what I was attempting to figure out about these linear algebra-operations. My classmates were attempting to retain the facts for the test, that typically doesn't work particularly well, and long term retention is poor. I've done that too. I could barely tell you what it is I'm supposed to have learned in those classes. But I could still probably construct 3D rotation matrices by hand without looking them up, all these years later.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  You also had a goal beyond "pass a test", which I think is more important still. After all, Geometry isn't generally something taught or tested as merely a collection of facts (but rather their application, a la "given this, prove that", and you have to intuit a path through applying other proofs to get to the final one), and yet it still sucks as a subject in school. Because there isn't a real "why".
novok 5y ago
A per-cursor form of talent is burning passion, focus and interest, which leads to better & more practice. The person who is willing to push hard into their field is probably %80 of what people call talent. And then when they encounter the obsessed after the fact, they call it talent because they're effectively the same outliers. Beyond that, what you describe as talent should be called built in ability, much like IQ or similar, because current usage of talent is too muddled with the well practiced.

by lloeki 5y ago

marginalia_nu 5y ago

There is also an epistemological aspect to a lot of this. In school you are often taught true statements ("facts"), but that is not the same as knowledge. If I accurately predict that the next time I flip a coin, it's going to land heads; I did not know it would. I made a correct correct statement, but I did not know. Knowledge is about understanding how and why things work. That is what I was attempting to figure out about these linear algebra-operations. My classmates were attempting to retain the facts for the test, that typically doesn't work particularly well, and long term retention is poor. I've done that too. I could barely tell you what it is I'm supposed to have learned in those classes. But I could still probably construct 3D rotation matrices by hand without looking them up, all these years later.

lostcolony 5y ago
You also had a goal beyond "pass a test", which I think is more important still. After all, Geometry isn't generally something taught or tested as merely a collection of facts (but rather their application, a la "given this, prove that", and you have to intuit a path through applying other proofs to get to the final one), and yet it still sucks as a subject in school. Because there isn't a real "why".

novok 5y ago

A per-cursor form of talent is burning passion, focus and interest, which leads to better & more practice. The person who is willing to push hard into their field is probably %80 of what people call talent. And then when they encounter the obsessed after the fact, they call it talent because they're effectively the same outliers. Beyond that, what you describe as talent should be called built in ability, much like IQ or similar, because current usage of talent is too muddled with the well practiced.