What's your take on "talent"?

[keltingmeith]

An interesting viewpoint on the concept of "talent", where the author argues that talent isn't a thing that inherently exists. Rather, it's a thing which is molded through hard work, and then given a misleading title.

So, do you think you're good at things because you have some "talent"? Or do you believe you've worked hard for what you have? Maybe, have you been held back in life because you've seen other people who were "more talented", and you couldn't ever think of yourself as being in their league?

[pi]

I believe in "talent". The saying does ring true: "Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard", but when talent does work hard I don't think someone without it can catch up.

[Orb]

I believe in "talent". The saying does ring true: "Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard", but when talent does work hard I don't think someone without it can catch up.

Agreed. When you look at the top level of competitions around the world, whether it's the Olympics, or the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), the competitors have each put in the 'required' hard work and beyond. What differentiates the people that get the Gold Medals from the people that get the Bronze Medals (which is, undoubtedly, an amazing achievement) is talent, and a bit of luck.

[slothpomba]

I'm not sure if talent exists or if its all that much of a useful or interesting idea.

It's clear talent is a human thing. Computers run extremely fast out of the box, the number of things they can do is astounding, yet, we don't say they are talented. Partly because it's what we expect them to do but partly because i think talent is linked to a wider concept of (human level) intelligence or more broadly, aptitude.

In some sense, Usain Bolt is "talented" in the ordinary sense of the world. His level of speed is sufficiently above the ordinary level that we're somewhat amazed and call him talented. Obviously, the man has an aptitude for running. Part of this is hard work i'm sure but part of it is just a roll of the dice. He won the genetic and developmental lottery. He has the right kind of proportions of muscle fibres (probably) that aid him greatly in being a good sprinter, he has the right build and height and so on. So in this case at least, he's not as much talented as "lucky".

Let's look at the other side of the coin for a moment, what does it mean to be "untalented". I'm pretty poor at art, does it mean i'm "untalented" at art? I guess it does. It is somewhat of a relative measure as well, it's more or less like a bell curve really (once you remove modesty). A lot of people can sketch something or other, a few cant even draw a circle or a straight line, a few can draw amazing things. We say it's a very rainy or hot day when it's out of the ordinary we expect for that climate, another bell-curve like thing.



If you take this approach, being talented means you're in the top, you're above most people. It's just by a pure relative measure that you happen to be talented. You could have my shit drawing skill but if you're trapped on a planet of people who cant draw straight lines, you would be talented.

Of course, this also means there is a flip side and you can be untalented. Take another example: Someone with Nonverbal learning disorder may find the hand-eye-muscle coordination necessary to play sports difficult, in this sense, they may result in being below average in this activity and "untalented" or "handicapped" at it. It's not difficult to imagine that if you look at a bell curve, there are some people who may be rather bad at somethings and correspondingly some people rather good at some things. This is all down to your biological lottery though.

TL;DR - Not sure if talent is real. If so, it's just a relative scaled thing that emerges out of natural human variation. Usain bolt is only called "talented" because he won the genetic lottery regarding his build and muscle fibres. Correspondingly, there will be some who are "untalented" or "handicapped". It's just another word for normal human variation and it might not be that useful or interesting of a concept in my opinion. 

[keltingmeith]

What gets me most interested there, slothpomba, is that you mention things which are inherently linked to genetics, such as the the body-type that Usain Bolt was born with, or sufferers of an NLD. However, what about something that (whilst possibly still linked to genetics, as my lack of biology teachings would be unable to tell me) may not be inherently linked to genetics? Such as someone who is able to completely analyse a situation and notice all the little things, or somebody who has an amazing capacity to compute simple maths operations?

From that, would you then say that "having a talent" in those areas would imply a strong talent in the overall area? For example, is one with a strong analytical mind going to be a brilliant philosopher, or is a "human calculator" bound to be a great mathematician?

[nerdgasm]

So, do you think you're good at things because you have some "talent"? Or do you believe you've worked hard for what you have? Maybe, have you been held back in life because you've seen other people who were "more talented", and you couldn't ever think of yourself as being in their league?

I don't think that being talented and working hard are necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd argue that talent often leads to hard work - being talented at something may mean a reasonably quick rate of progress through lower skill levels, which probably feeds in to our sense of achievement, leading to further pursuit of the activity. Regarding the link you provided, I found the comments about people's expectations of progress when one becomes older to be interesting. In general, I think "playing to your strengths" is commonly espoused in today's society. In a way, it goes hand-in-hand with the skill progression idea - one is more likely to enjoy oneself and be more productive to society in a field where they can acquire and progress through skills and tasks. However, I do think that being able to freely enjoy and participate in activities where one isn't necessarily as good as other people simply leads to overall more happiness. Unless you are actually at the 'gold-medal' level at something, there's probably going to be either a few or heaps of people who are more skilled than you, and there's simply not enough time in our lives to reach our full potential at everything. So I think it's good not to worry too much about not being talented - unless you actually need a certain level of competency in your job, or something like that.

The introductory paragraphs of that link also lead to some interesting questions, in my mind. When the author says "Take all of my knowledge of computer related matters and divide it by the number of hours I’ve spent in front of my computer. That’s my “speed” of learning", how exactly do we take all of his/her knowledge? Different pieces of knowledge can take different amounts of time to learn. It may be that given the same number of hours and focusing on the same kinds of things, the author's friends may not have learned as much as he did. It may be that there are 'near-hurdle' requirements required to have good understanding of certain concepts. If one struggles to think algorithmically, does higher-level coding become almost impossible?

In some sense, Usain Bolt is "talented" in the ordinary sense of the world. His level of speed is sufficiently above the ordinary level that we're somewhat amazed and call him talented. Obviously, the man has an aptitude for running. Part of this is hard work i'm sure but part of it is just a roll of the dice. He won the genetic and developmental lottery. He has the right kind of proportions of muscle fibres (probably) that aid him greatly in being a good sprinter, he has the right build and height and so on. So in this case at least, he's not as much talented as "lucky".

Let's look at the other side of the coin for a moment, what does it mean to be "untalented". I'm pretty poor at art, does it mean i'm "untalented" at art? I guess it does. It is somewhat of a relative measure as well, it's more or less like a bell curve really (once you remove modesty). A lot of people can sketch something or other, a few cant even draw a circle or a straight line, a few can draw amazing things. We say it's a very rainy or hot day when it's out of the ordinary we expect for that climate, another bell-curve like thing.

TL;DR - Not sure if talent is real. If so, it's just a relative scaled thing that emerges out of natural human variation. Usain bolt is only called "talented" because he won the genetic lottery regarding his build and muscle fibres. Correspondingly, there will be some who are "untalented" or "handicapped". It's just another word for normal human variation and it might not be that useful or interesting of a concept in my opinion. 

In some sense, I do agree with you. My personal opinion is that both genetic and environmental factors give rise to our current ways of thinking. These ways of thinking are better at resolving some types of questions, or learning some kinds of procedures, etc. than others. Therefore, this can lead to greater learning or skill compared to other people, thus giving rise to 'talent'. So, I do agree that 'talent' is partly decided by genetic lottery and is both a human and relative concept.

Does this mean that 'talent' is simply 'luck' by another name? I am reminded of a speech given by one of the professors at Melbourne University, who said something along the lines of: "None of you deserve to be congratulated for your talent. You didn't have anything to do with that. But where you do deserve credit is for taking the steps required to develop your talent into something which has been expressed here." My point is that, yes, luck is at the root of what I consider to be 'talent'. But do we see talent by itself? I would argue that in a majority of cases, when we say that we have seen talent, we have actually seen talent AND hard work. If Mozart were given one year to practice piano, he would be worse than any professional piano player today. If we only saw his performance, would we say he was talented? For all we know, he could simply be a person with average innate ability who worked hard. This raises two points. Firstly, there are some cases where talent may not be apparent simply by observing the 'end-product' alone. Secondly, perhaps we judge whether someone is talented, by considering the probability that an 'average' person (relative to the person in question) could attain a similar level of skill to what has been demonstrated. When what is being demonstrated reaches a certain threshold, we come to the conclusion that there must be some   above-average innate ability there. How much is talent and how much is hard work? Again, without knowledge of circumstances, it is hard to say.

Even if talent were simply luck, I don't see why this should 'take away' from the value of talent as a concept. Could we interchange 'talent' with 'luck' and expect all interpretation to be the same? My intuition tells me 'no'. Maybe it's because 'talent' as it is used today actually means 'enough of a mixture of talent + hard work such that it is extremely unlikely that hard work alone could replicate it'. In any case, seeing how the 'talented' go about doing things in their areas of talent can help us, and also provide some sense of wonder and satisfaction. Who hasn't wondered what Einstein sees when he ponders the physical world? Who wouldn't like to know how Van Gogh replicates his visions through his artcraft? Even if we could never hope to understand the patterns that these people see, these people let us know that the pattern is actually there. In this sense, the concept of 'talent' and 'talented people', although it could be called other things, provides a quick designation of people. I imagine the concept is very useful for a team leader, for example. So to me, it's certainly not a useless term.

What gets me most interested there, slothpomba, is that you mention things which are inherently linked to genetics, such as the the body-type that Usain Bolt was born with, or sufferers of an NLD. However, what about something that (whilst possibly still linked to genetics, as my lack of biology teachings would be unable to tell me) may not be inherently linked to genetics? Such as someone who is able to completely analyse a situation and notice all the little things, or somebody who has an amazing capacity to compute simple maths operations?

From that, would you then say that "having a talent" in those areas would imply a strong talent in the overall area? For example, is one with a strong analytical mind going to be a brilliant philosopher, or is a "human calculator" bound to be a great mathematician?

That's an interesting question. I personally think that the end results of what you mention (i.e. "brilliant philosopher" and "great mathematician") are attainable only with a combination of both high levels of talent and lots of hard work. Therefore, I would say that it's a possibility, but not necessarily a guarantee, regardless of how much talent you have. Imagine the number of people who are being held back today (with respect to developing their talent) because of not receiving a good education, monetary issues, or having their time and effort otherwise diverted. That being said, I am reminded of Srinivasa Ramanujan - with very little formal training, he was able to deduce mathematical identities of great brilliance, before he was 'noticed' by G.H.Hardy and sent to England.

However, I would like to say that perhaps talent isn't best measured by who can pick things up more quickly. Who has more talent - a person who easily masters basic, intermediate and lower advanced concepts of a field, but struggles at the highest level, or someone who takes considerably longer to go through the lower levels, but never hits a 'wall' where they find it impossible to progress?

[spectroscopy]

my input isnt as deep or well thought out as the other posts in this thread but all i know is me and my cousins spent hours upon days upon months learning how to skateboard when we were younger. they could all ollie within a week and i never managed to do it after months. i am just untalented at skateboarding LOL

[enwiabe]

Academic talent is almost always worthless unaccompanied by wide-eyed wonder, competence and hard work (a powerful triumvirate that will often defeat stand-alone raw talent).

Combine all four, and you get a Terence Tao, an Ahmad, a Thushan etc.

Where talent originates from is another question altogether. It is not always simply genetic lottery. If you look at the stories of many child geniuses, there were often diligent parents nurturing their children to learn at an accelerated rate. It is quickly emerging that accelerated learning in a child's formative years has a profound effect on their intelligence, or "natural academic talent" (these two concepts are often conflated with one another).

[vobinhood]

Academic talent is almost always worthless unaccompanied by wide-eyed wonder, competence and hard work (a powerful triumvirate that will often defeat stand-alone raw talent).

Combine all four, and you get a Terence Tao, an Ahmad, a Thushan etc.

Where talent originates from is another question altogether. It is not always simply genetic lottery. If you look at the stories of many child geniuses, there were often diligent parents nurturing their children to learn at an accelerated rate. It is quickly emerging that accelerated learning in a child's formative years has a profound effect on their intelligence, or "natural academic talent" (these two concepts are often conflated with one another).

Completely agree with this.

Take enwiabe's argument for example,

Where talent originates from is another question altogether. It is not always simply genetic lottery. If you look at the stories of many child geniuses, there were often diligent parents nurturing their children to learn at an accelerated rate. It is quickly emerging that accelerated learning in a child's formative years has a profound effect on their intelligence, or "natural academic talent" (these two concepts are often conflated with one another).

Many deem students who do very well in school as "academically gifted". However, hard work HAS been done to achieve such results. Many diligent parents are putting their kids through tuition to accelerate their child's learning, expose them to more academic content relevant to their skills to help build upon them and hence, develop "a high academic ability".
However, many conflate "high academic ability" with "natural academic talent". Such action only hinders their will to try to achieve the same success as the one who worked harder earlier on. They pin those with higher academic ability as having academic talent, therefore believing that they will never be in the same position - as they believe they lack this talent.
This is false.
With hard work and determination, they can make up for the early years of extra tuition that they missed out on and rise up to the same academic level as those who are deemed "academically gifted".
The idea that people who worked harder at an earlier age has "natural talent" and will therefore do greater things in life is a misconception.
Both parties, those who worked hard at an early age and those who worked hard later on, can achieve the same success.

Many of the most successful people on earth did not achieve their success from talent. They all have a success story that comes from a place much similar to ours. Hard work and determination was what got them so far.