3 ms·

10,000 hours vs genetics

17 points by Xcelerate 14y ago

sytelus 14y ago
After I read Outliers, I actually believed 10,000 hours myth for sometime until I realized Gladwell is journalist who can convince you with any argument with series of anecdotes as opposed to scientist who gathers data and calculates stats. The turning point for me was mountaineering training which IMO is one of the most demanding "sport". It was very quickly apparent to me that for same amount of conditioning efforts I was no where close in performance to people who were "born with it". As I read more books on mountaineering it was clear that elite or even moderately competent people in this field has significantly larger lung size, fast lactic acid clearance and extremely efficient slow burn metabolism. Most of these comes from genes and with practice you can improve things to some degree and get much better with it but you simply can't climb 8000m without Oxygen like Ed Viester did or do North Face under 2.5 hours like Ueli Steck or speed climb 3 major Yosemite walls in 24 hours like Dean Potter does. All nature vs nurture debates end in one simple conclusion: It's not neither nor or either or, it's both.
- clicks 14y ago
  Okay, so I've been meaning to get this off my chest -- I'm a bit peeved by the fad of deriding Gladwell for a panoply of accounts. All of a sudden it seems that everybody's hopping on the cool wagon where the new thing is scorning Malcolm Gladwell. The 10,000 hours model is rather loosely made in the Outliers book. He does not say '10,000 hours exactly' will give you worldclass skill in area x -- he says roughly 10,000 hours, with expert instruction, constantly pushing the boundaries, etc. will get you mastery. Just like Norvig does not say 10 years exactly will make you a worldclass programmer. [1] It's said in loose terms. Basically, it's just a more marketable and fun way of saying 'Practice makes perfect' -- and I applaud both Gladwell and Norvig for once again saying it again and inspiring people to really work hard at whatever they want to be good at. [1] http://norvig.com/21-days.html http://norvig.com/21-days.html
a_bonobo 14y ago
>Consider this: height is a pretty straightforward characteristic, and it's known to be highly heritable (tall parents = tall children). In fact, 80% of the variance in height is known to be genetic The genetics of human height is much more complicated than he summarises here. In short, environment has a lot to do with height, and there's regression towards the mean too, which leads to children of tall parents being smaller (but still relatively tall). Wikipedia has a good article on it (citing 60-80% heritability): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height

17 points by Xcelerate 14y ago

After I read Outliers, I actually believed 10,000 hours myth for sometime until I realized Gladwell is journalist who can convince you with any argument with series of anecdotes as opposed to scientist who gathers data and calculates stats. The turning point for me was mountaineering training which IMO is one of the most demanding "sport". It was very quickly apparent to me that for same amount of conditioning efforts I was no where close in performance to people who were "born with it". As I read more books on mountaineering it was clear that elite or even moderately competent people in this field has significantly larger lung size, fast lactic acid clearance and extremely efficient slow burn metabolism. Most of these comes from genes and with practice you can improve things to some degree and get much better with it but you simply can't climb 8000m without Oxygen like Ed Viester did or do North Face under 2.5 hours like Ueli Steck or speed climb 3 major Yosemite walls in 24 hours like Dean Potter does. All nature vs nurture debates end in one simple conclusion: It's not neither nor or either or, it's both.

clicks 14y ago
Okay, so I've been meaning to get this off my chest -- I'm a bit peeved by the fad of deriding Gladwell for a panoply of accounts. All of a sudden it seems that everybody's hopping on the cool wagon where the new thing is scorning Malcolm Gladwell. The 10,000 hours model is rather loosely made in the Outliers book. He does not say '10,000 hours exactly' will give you worldclass skill in area x -- he says roughly 10,000 hours, with expert instruction, constantly pushing the boundaries, etc. will get you mastery. Just like Norvig does not say 10 years exactly will make you a worldclass programmer. [1] It's said in loose terms. Basically, it's just a more marketable and fun way of saying 'Practice makes perfect' -- and I applaud both Gladwell and Norvig for once again saying it again and inspiring people to really work hard at whatever they want to be good at. [1] http://norvig.com/21-days.html http://norvig.com/21-days.html

a_bonobo 14y ago

>Consider this: height is a pretty straightforward characteristic, and it's known to be highly heritable (tall parents = tall children). In fact, 80% of the variance in height is known to be genetic The genetics of human height is much more complicated than he summarises here. In short, environment has a lot to do with height, and there's regression towards the mean too, which leads to children of tall parents being smaller (but still relatively tall). Wikipedia has a good article on it (citing 60-80% heritability): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height