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Native skill is largely a myth. According to Matthew Syed in Bounce (a very good read) there are numerous fields in which native or genetic skill is considered

by PM_Tech 12y ago

Native skill is largely a myth. According to Matthew Syed in Bounce (a very good read) there are numerous fields in which native or genetic skill is considered the norm (sports, chess, math) but no studies support that hypothesis. Conversely a number of studies actively disprove that native skill exists. Ultimately, barring true genetic freaks (Michael Phelps wingspan for instance) anyone could achieve any level of any pursuit with enought focussed practice and a degree of luck.

Yunk 12y ago
When I look at a field like sports, I assume the genetic advantages are not so direct to the routine tasks. For example, significant genetic factors may be: healing or failing to heal without permanent damage or being flexible in a way that causes or prevents a frequent injury. For many star players the fact that they can keep playing at all may be the freak of genetics or initial behavior that allowed them to get to their level. For example, football helmet impact data seems to support the direction that many should be dropping out due to traumatic brain injury. Yet some players deteriorate remarkably slower than medical science previously predicted.
- shawnb576 12y ago
  These are good points. I think this 10,000 hour idea is a vast oversimplification. For example, it's often difficult to differentiate rate of progress from final ability. As someone who has been involved with elite athletics, there are people out there who are simply better at absorbing training, in terms of biomechanics (mostly injury resistance), recovery, and compensation (getting stronger). I've seen lots of folks, new to a sport, with little training, absolutely crush mush more seasoned/conditioned folks. There are many examples of this (see: Chrissie Wellington). For each of them you can contrive some story "well, she lived at altitude", but that's the point, these people exist. And to be clear, I take nothing from Chrissie's worth ethic, etc. She's simply better than a whole host of other elite athletes that have worked hard their whole lives and she went out and clowned them for several years. The difficult question is, if an average person kept at it for 10,000 hours, would Chrissie plateau and that average person catch up? And here you can substitute math, chess, coding, whatever. I don't know, but both my sporting and software engineering experience (anecdotally, N=1) says no. Different people are sometimes differently suited to tasks. I'd love to understand the causation.
- jacques_chester 12y ago
  > When I look at a field like sports, I assume the genetic advantages are not so direct to the routine tasks. I assume that larger samples produce more extreme outliers, even as sample variability falls. This means more dominating freaks of nature. The Russians, Bulgarians and Chinese dominate Weightlifting. They also happen to have far more lifters than other countries.
Someone 12y ago
"Ultimately, barring true genetic freaks (Michael Phelps wingspan for instance) anyone could achieve any level of any pursuit with enought focussed practice and a degree of luck." So, why do you think there are so few top basketball players under five feet nine (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_National_Basketball_Association_history http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_N...)? So few rowers average lung volume? I doubt that is self-selection/cultural (you're too short for the NBA, so it isn't worth trying) or correlation vs causation (your lung volume is high because you trained so much)
- kenjackson 12y ago
  The sport has a height bias towards height given the goal location. But if you just assess skills... Dribbling, shooting, etc I think that there are a lot more sub 5'9"master players.
  - PM_Tech 12y ago
    Exactly this. Basketball sits in a quasi-unique category because it rewards height immediately with very few ways to neutralise that. The point that Syed is making is not Play A of X height and Player B of Y height are equal. He reports (cited academic studies) that given the same height Player A and Player B have no intrinsic native advantages over each other - all advantages are cultural and luck. Player A may have a great coach, a great basketballing school etc or Player B may just simply work harder. There are a legion of examples to back up his claims including the Williams sisters. Two prodigies who came from a family that had not even heard of Tennis until their father decided they would be tennis champions. There is also Syed himself who played in the Olympic and Commonwealth Games at table tennis. Curiously enough 50% of the national team for table tennis also came from his street... ...lucky enough to be born next to a world class club.
    - Marazan 12y ago
      And then you have someone like Rupeni Caucau who by everyone's accounts (including himself) is one of the laziest professional rugby players ever to get a contract, repeatedly missing training, unexplained absences, incredibly poor diet and conditioning and yet can do stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3f0BggE__4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3f0BggE__4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0svVz4kSWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0svVz4kSWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6qdM6O26CY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6qdM6O26CY If you want to tell me how many hours training it would take to score that first try I am all ears.
Marazan 12y ago
Matthew Syed's thesis is fundamentally challenged by reality. Certain activities/sports have a clear bias towards certain body types (as a reductive but clear example who would you favour to get an item off a high shelf unaided, the 6 foot 4 inch tall person or the 5 foot 6 inch person?). It is true that training dominates 'talent'/'genetic biomechanics'. But, at similar levels of training some other factor will play a part in determinnig who is best, and at the elite end everyone is basically at the same levels of training so 'talent'/'genetics' will be the deciding factor. There is a reason why each discipline in pro-athletics seems to attract such a homogeneous collection of body shapes and why the people who 'break the mould' are often the most successful at the sport.
- lloeki 12y ago
  > Certain activities/sports have a clear bias towards certain body types None of which are significant enough to not make someone a master. You don't have to be The Best to be a master at anything, as this is again conflating success with mastery. Being arguably masters at the most remotely similar activity to your example in a tall guys field, [0], [1] and [2] beg to differ, and were also successful on top of it: [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Murphy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Murphy [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spud_Webb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spud_Webb
- PM_Tech 12y ago
  It's not challenged by reality at all, you are just misunderstanding it (probably because you have not read the book and probably because of my terrible simplification). You keep referring to talent. Which does not exist, has never been proven and has been disproven numerous times by taking sportsman out of their chosen sport but into a new sport requiring similar talent and testing their performance which is always sub-par and hovering around average. The primary example used is table tennis players are famed for having naturally quick reflexes. In every academic study, table tennis players performed no quicker than average in any reflexes test and in some cases performed worse than various random individuals from the street. There are others but you should read the book before discounting a hypothesis. I have read enough to convince me natural talent is a myth; the equivalent of a rain dance is the reason for rain.
meowface 12y ago
While practice still plays a huge role, I don't think you can compare physical/atheletic skills to more mental or abstract ones in this case.
- PM_Tech 12y ago
  Why not? Human beings can be taught to think mathematically through practice. Language learning is practice.
  - meowface 12y ago
    I was suggesting that it's more common for humans to be physically "gifted from birth" with certain physical attributes that make them excel more at athletic activities, compared to mental activities. Physical prowess is somewhat more nature-driven instead of nurture-driven, even though practice is still very important.
    - PM_Tech 12y ago
      It's not common at all. 99.99999% of humans possess no physical "gifts" at all. Anyone can train to become world class at almost any sport barring those we have placed arbitrary systems in place. The same is true for maths, languages, chess, science - anything you care to name. Proven by Laszlo.
      - meowface 12y ago
        I do not really think that's true...
        PM_Tech 12y ago
        Do you have anything to suggest it is not? Numerous agree natural talent is a myth http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid=1993-40718-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid... http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1974-06238-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1974-06238-001 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1996.tb02591.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1996.... Can you even define natural talent?

by PM_Tech 12y ago

Yunk 12y ago

When I look at a field like sports, I assume the genetic advantages are not so direct to the routine tasks. For example, significant genetic factors may be: healing or failing to heal without permanent damage or being flexible in a way that causes or prevents a frequent injury. For many star players the fact that they can keep playing at all may be the freak of genetics or initial behavior that allowed them to get to their level. For example, football helmet impact data seems to support the direction that many should be dropping out due to traumatic brain injury. Yet some players deteriorate remarkably slower than medical science previously predicted.

shawnb576 12y ago
These are good points. I think this 10,000 hour idea is a vast oversimplification. For example, it's often difficult to differentiate rate of progress from final ability. As someone who has been involved with elite athletics, there are people out there who are simply better at absorbing training, in terms of biomechanics (mostly injury resistance), recovery, and compensation (getting stronger). I've seen lots of folks, new to a sport, with little training, absolutely crush mush more seasoned/conditioned folks. There are many examples of this (see: Chrissie Wellington). For each of them you can contrive some story "well, she lived at altitude", but that's the point, these people exist. And to be clear, I take nothing from Chrissie's worth ethic, etc. She's simply better than a whole host of other elite athletes that have worked hard their whole lives and she went out and clowned them for several years. The difficult question is, if an average person kept at it for 10,000 hours, would Chrissie plateau and that average person catch up? And here you can substitute math, chess, coding, whatever. I don't know, but both my sporting and software engineering experience (anecdotally, N=1) says no. Different people are sometimes differently suited to tasks. I'd love to understand the causation.
jacques_chester 12y ago
> When I look at a field like sports, I assume the genetic advantages are not so direct to the routine tasks. I assume that larger samples produce more extreme outliers, even as sample variability falls. This means more dominating freaks of nature. The Russians, Bulgarians and Chinese dominate Weightlifting. They also happen to have far more lifters than other countries.

Someone 12y ago

"Ultimately, barring true genetic freaks (Michael Phelps wingspan for instance) anyone could achieve any level of any pursuit with enought focussed practice and a degree of luck." So, why do you think there are so few top basketball players under five feet nine (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_National_Basketball_Association_history http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_N...)? So few rowers average lung volume? I doubt that is self-selection/cultural (you're too short for the NBA, so it isn't worth trying) or correlation vs causation (your lung volume is high because you trained so much)

kenjackson 12y ago
The sport has a height bias towards height given the goal location. But if you just assess skills... Dribbling, shooting, etc I think that there are a lot more sub 5'9"master players.
- PM_Tech 12y ago
  Exactly this. Basketball sits in a quasi-unique category because it rewards height immediately with very few ways to neutralise that. The point that Syed is making is not Play A of X height and Player B of Y height are equal. He reports (cited academic studies) that given the same height Player A and Player B have no intrinsic native advantages over each other - all advantages are cultural and luck. Player A may have a great coach, a great basketballing school etc or Player B may just simply work harder. There are a legion of examples to back up his claims including the Williams sisters. Two prodigies who came from a family that had not even heard of Tennis until their father decided they would be tennis champions. There is also Syed himself who played in the Olympic and Commonwealth Games at table tennis. Curiously enough 50% of the national team for table tennis also came from his street... ...lucky enough to be born next to a world class club.
  - Marazan 12y ago
    And then you have someone like Rupeni Caucau who by everyone's accounts (including himself) is one of the laziest professional rugby players ever to get a contract, repeatedly missing training, unexplained absences, incredibly poor diet and conditioning and yet can do stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3f0BggE__4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3f0BggE__4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0svVz4kSWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0svVz4kSWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6qdM6O26CY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6qdM6O26CY If you want to tell me how many hours training it would take to score that first try I am all ears.

Marazan 12y ago

Matthew Syed's thesis is fundamentally challenged by reality. Certain activities/sports have a clear bias towards certain body types (as a reductive but clear example who would you favour to get an item off a high shelf unaided, the 6 foot 4 inch tall person or the 5 foot 6 inch person?). It is true that training dominates 'talent'/'genetic biomechanics'. But, at similar levels of training some other factor will play a part in determinnig who is best, and at the elite end everyone is basically at the same levels of training so 'talent'/'genetics' will be the deciding factor. There is a reason why each discipline in pro-athletics seems to attract such a homogeneous collection of body shapes and why the people who 'break the mould' are often the most successful at the sport.

lloeki 12y ago
> Certain activities/sports have a clear bias towards certain body types None of which are significant enough to not make someone a master. You don't have to be The Best to be a master at anything, as this is again conflating success with mastery. Being arguably masters at the most remotely similar activity to your example in a tall guys field, [0], [1] and [2] beg to differ, and were also successful on top of it: [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Murphy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Murphy [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spud_Webb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spud_Webb
PM_Tech 12y ago
It's not challenged by reality at all, you are just misunderstanding it (probably because you have not read the book and probably because of my terrible simplification). You keep referring to talent. Which does not exist, has never been proven and has been disproven numerous times by taking sportsman out of their chosen sport but into a new sport requiring similar talent and testing their performance which is always sub-par and hovering around average. The primary example used is table tennis players are famed for having naturally quick reflexes. In every academic study, table tennis players performed no quicker than average in any reflexes test and in some cases performed worse than various random individuals from the street. There are others but you should read the book before discounting a hypothesis. I have read enough to convince me natural talent is a myth; the equivalent of a rain dance is the reason for rain.

meowface 12y ago

While practice still plays a huge role, I don't think you can compare physical/atheletic skills to more mental or abstract ones in this case.

PM_Tech 12y ago
Why not? Human beings can be taught to think mathematically through practice. Language learning is practice.
- meowface 12y ago
  I was suggesting that it's more common for humans to be physically "gifted from birth" with certain physical attributes that make them excel more at athletic activities, compared to mental activities. Physical prowess is somewhat more nature-driven instead of nurture-driven, even though practice is still very important.
  - PM_Tech 12y ago
    It's not common at all. 99.99999% of humans possess no physical "gifts" at all. Anyone can train to become world class at almost any sport barring those we have placed arbitrary systems in place. The same is true for maths, languages, chess, science - anything you care to name. Proven by Laszlo.
    - meowface 12y ago
      I do not really think that's true...
      - PM_Tech 12y ago
        Do you have anything to suggest it is not? Numerous agree natural talent is a myth http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid=1993-40718-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid... http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1974-06238-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1974-06238-001 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1996.tb02591.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1996.... Can you even define natural talent?