4 ms·
The Rage to Master: The Decisive Role of Talent in the Visual Arts (1996) [pdf]
- hsitz 11y agoI'm not sure their paper establishes it, but I'll given them the point that hard work _alone_ is not enough to reach the highest levels. However, the paper seems to jump directly from that point to the conclusion that "talent is the _decisive_ element", which of course does not logically follow. I will give them that talent is one element, but they didn't need to write a paper to convince me of that. And as far as disentangling the relative importance of talent as compared to hard work, I would say the paper does nothing at all.
- mr_luc 11y agoI'm unfamiliar with this domain, but this stuck out to me: "By talent, we refer to an innate ability or proclivity to learn in a particular domain." Is this redefining "talent" to include people's taste? Ie, does "natural talent" as defined above now include the fact that someone likes/is drawn to something, and thus decides to spend time on it?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- bsder 11y agoNot a particularly good article. It provides no statistical evidence. In addition, we know that many people who claim to be engaging in "deliberate practice" are not. The Bulletproof Musician blog (warning: it's attempting to sell a method) is full of stuff about this. Quite often, there are significant differences in execution and strategy. For example: http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/the-two-most-efficient-and-two-least-efficient-memorization-strategies/ http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/the-two-most-efficient-an... While I might argue that talent matters at the very highest echelons, very few people actually put in enough time to get to the point that it matters.