3 ms·
About the "talent doesn't matter" issue: It's one of these things where the truth may actually hurt you. It's pretty clear that talent does matter, but it's bet
by lutorm 14y ago
About the "talent doesn't matter" issue: It's one of these things where the truth may actually hurt you. It's pretty clear that talent does matter, but it's better for you if you don't know this, since that knowledge may serve as an excuse for you to give up. I don't generally advocate not telling the truth, but this may be one of these cases where everyone is better served by emphasizing the part about malleability and not that about innate talent.
- Nimi 14y agoOr one can plainly tell the truth, like my SAT instructor used to say: you're competing against other people with similar capabilities to yours. If you don't bother to do the coursework, they'll get a higher score and you'll get a lower one, and it won't be because of some inherent reason, it will happen simply because they did take the time to study. (the SAT here is normalized to form a perfect Gauss curve, so essentially the only thing that matters is one's percentile, but I guess this saying is generalizable)
- oz 14y agoUpvoted. This is something I've thought about as well. My general motto is "We gain nothing by denying the truth," but I've also learned that the mind can sabotage us in very subtle ways. On LessWrong, the idea is that "our brains are untrusted hardware."