3 ms·

I think you underestimate the role that hardware acceleration plays. Take the Clinton example — about 2% of the population has prosopagnosia (“face blindness”),

I think you underestimate the role that hardware acceleration plays. Take the Clinton example — about 2% of the population has prosopagnosia (“face blindness”), where no amount of practice will improve recognition because of defects in the fusiform gyrus. But! Just like some percentage don’t have the neurons to be great at recognizing people, there are “super recognizers” where the fusiform gyrus overperforms. fMRI studies have shown these people have more activity in this area. Some skills, like your letter counting, probably do not have an evolved area of the brain and are purely cognitive, so perhaps more amenable to training. But even then there may be aspects that are hardware accelerated with some intrinsic genetic predisposition to be good / bad at.

emseetech 2y ago
Sure, maybe. Some people might have some level of cognitive multiplier, but most of us aren't Ramanujan, most of us are some gradient of normal. Putting emphasis on practice and hard work and finding joy in getting good at something would pay greater dividends generally than trying to pinpoint a perfectly quantifiable intelligence.
- brookst 2y ago
  I don’t disagree, with the caveat that setting expectations that anyone can be a [notably exceptional person] with practice and hard work is a recipe for creating unhappiness. A face blind person will never have eidetic memory for someone they met 30 years ago, an average person will never be Ramanujan, and there are mediocre athletes who work harder than Jordan ever did. We excel when we align hard work to areas where we won the genetic lottery.
  - emseetech 2y ago
    Famously, Michael Jordan was cut from his sophomore high school team. I won't deny there are people who have disabilities or genetic advantages. But we overestimate the necessity of innate talent and severely underestimate the potential of practice, hard work and mentorship (and raw obsession if we're being honest) in most people, outliers notwithstanding.
    - brookst 2y ago
      Yeah, I think “outlier” is the key word there. Within the realm of typical physiology, typical genetics, typical nurture (say within two standard deviations for all of those), there’s huge opportunity for hard work and growth.
somenameforme 2y ago
> fMRI studies have shown these people have more activity in this area. Neuroscience is paradoxically a poor indicator for how the brain works in response to stimuli. The reason is that what you do literally reshapes your brain and how you respond to things. For a common example a chess master and a chess amateur use different parts of then brain when analyzing positions. Here [1] is some random study on it - there's a bunch. It's well known and not controversial. But the thing is, that chess master was also once a chess amateur. And so practice literally changes how your brain responds to various stimuli to the point of complete shifting the area used for processing. So showing that [people of this group] have [this distinct brain activity] in response to [whatever] doesn't really say anything at all, which it makes for endless easy mode studies for now. Hence people exposed to [video games, porn, gender dysmorphia, etc] all 'change the brain' and/or have 'different brains than normal.' Well duh, now so do you after reading this paragraph. That said, I obviously would not dispute that people are inherently different, but I think the most obvious ways to try to demonstrate that are irreparably flawed. [1] - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-study-shows-grandma/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-study-shows...
- milesrout 2y ago
  >But the thing is, that chess master was also once a chess amateur. And so practice literally changes how your brain responds to various stimuli to the point of complete shifting the area used for processing. How do we know that people that go on to become chess masters don't just have better brains for chess? Have studies tracked people learning chess and shown different brain structures being used later in chess careers? Or looked at kids and then looked again at them as adults and seen the ones that became chess masters moved their chess processing? I wouldnt be surprised at either outcome.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    I can speak from personal experience there, for myself, or for students. I've worked with students from when they were complete beginners all the way to master, and they were still very much amateurs (with 'amateur brain') at the beginning. And in fact while you can kind of get some vague impressions, you can't really tell who's going to excel. Famously, Mikhail Botvinnik (a world champion seen as the 'patriarch' of the Soviet Chess school) chided a young Anatoly Karpov who showed up to one of his chess schools, "The boy doesn't have a clue about Chess, and there's no future at all for him in this profession." Anatoly Karpov would go on to be one of the most dominant world champions of all time. Even Magnus Carlsen - he is arguably the strongest player of all time and had one of the most meteoric rises to the top. Yet he was at one time rated 900. A year later, with world class coaching and living and breathing chess, he made extremely rapid progress (to about 1900) yet that's still very far from master class.

emseetech 2y ago

Sure, maybe. Some people might have some level of cognitive multiplier, but most of us aren't Ramanujan, most of us are some gradient of normal. Putting emphasis on practice and hard work and finding joy in getting good at something would pay greater dividends generally than trying to pinpoint a perfectly quantifiable intelligence.

brookst 2y ago
I don’t disagree, with the caveat that setting expectations that anyone can be a [notably exceptional person] with practice and hard work is a recipe for creating unhappiness. A face blind person will never have eidetic memory for someone they met 30 years ago, an average person will never be Ramanujan, and there are mediocre athletes who work harder than Jordan ever did. We excel when we align hard work to areas where we won the genetic lottery.
- emseetech 2y ago
  Famously, Michael Jordan was cut from his sophomore high school team. I won't deny there are people who have disabilities or genetic advantages. But we overestimate the necessity of innate talent and severely underestimate the potential of practice, hard work and mentorship (and raw obsession if we're being honest) in most people, outliers notwithstanding.
  - brookst 2y ago
    Yeah, I think “outlier” is the key word there. Within the realm of typical physiology, typical genetics, typical nurture (say within two standard deviations for all of those), there’s huge opportunity for hard work and growth.

somenameforme 2y ago

> fMRI studies have shown these people have more activity in this area. Neuroscience is paradoxically a poor indicator for how the brain works in response to stimuli. The reason is that what you do literally reshapes your brain and how you respond to things. For a common example a chess master and a chess amateur use different parts of then brain when analyzing positions. Here [1] is some random study on it - there's a bunch. It's well known and not controversial. But the thing is, that chess master was also once a chess amateur. And so practice literally changes how your brain responds to various stimuli to the point of complete shifting the area used for processing. So showing that [people of this group] have [this distinct brain activity] in response to [whatever] doesn't really say anything at all, which it makes for endless easy mode studies for now. Hence people exposed to [video games, porn, gender dysmorphia, etc] all 'change the brain' and/or have 'different brains than normal.' Well duh, now so do you after reading this paragraph. That said, I obviously would not dispute that people are inherently different, but I think the most obvious ways to try to demonstrate that are irreparably flawed. [1] - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-study-shows-grandma/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-study-shows...

milesrout 2y ago
>But the thing is, that chess master was also once a chess amateur. And so practice literally changes how your brain responds to various stimuli to the point of complete shifting the area used for processing. How do we know that people that go on to become chess masters don't just have better brains for chess? Have studies tracked people learning chess and shown different brain structures being used later in chess careers? Or looked at kids and then looked again at them as adults and seen the ones that became chess masters moved their chess processing? I wouldnt be surprised at either outcome.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  I can speak from personal experience there, for myself, or for students. I've worked with students from when they were complete beginners all the way to master, and they were still very much amateurs (with 'amateur brain') at the beginning. And in fact while you can kind of get some vague impressions, you can't really tell who's going to excel. Famously, Mikhail Botvinnik (a world champion seen as the 'patriarch' of the Soviet Chess school) chided a young Anatoly Karpov who showed up to one of his chess schools, "The boy doesn't have a clue about Chess, and there's no future at all for him in this profession." Anatoly Karpov would go on to be one of the most dominant world champions of all time. Even Magnus Carlsen - he is arguably the strongest player of all time and had one of the most meteoric rises to the top. Yet he was at one time rated 900. A year later, with world class coaching and living and breathing chess, he made extremely rapid progress (to about 1900) yet that's still very far from master class.