The Expert Mind 395
Vicissidude writes "Teachers in sports, music, and other fields tend to believe that talent matters and that they know it when they see it. In fact, they appear to be confusing ability with precocity. There is usually no way to tell, from a recital alone, whether a young violinist's extraordinary performance stems from innate ability or from years of Suzuki-style training. The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born. In fact, it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field. Even child prodigies, such as Gauss in mathematics, Mozart in music, and Bobby Fischer in chess, must have made an equivalent effort, perhaps by starting earlier and working harder than others. It is no coincidence that the incidence of chess prodigies multiplied after László Polgár published a book on chess education. The number of musical prodigies underwent a similar increase after Mozart's father did the equivalent two centuries earlier."
the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that at a young age, are not tremendous ability and precocity the same thing?
Re:the same thing (Score:2, Informative)
Re:the same thing (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:the same thing (Score:2, Informative)
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
It's much easier to believe that they are just innately better and it's not really your fault that you can't reach their level.
Re:Of course (Score:3, Funny)
I am, as a matter of fact, extraordinarily talented. I'm also extraordinarily lazy. I excel at a variety of fields including a very specialist field that I work in. I refuse to study though and have done ever since school. I cheat my way through every test of rote memorisation that I can, and don't need to study at all to do very well in things that interest me. In no way have I studied anywhere near as much as most
Or it's evidence of better training and motivation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or it's evidence of better training and motivat (Score:3, Insightful)
The supply and demand of knowledge (Score:4, Insightful)
Or where it's increasingly difficult to find the information necessary to progress. example...
Starting at 0% of the subject, 100% is available.
50% knowledge, 50% is available to learn.
90% knowledge learned only 10% is available to learn.
99% knowledge, only 1% is available to be learned.
As you progress it becomes harder and harder to find the information nesessary to progress so progress plateus. Extraordinary drive and motivation is necessary to search out those extra 0.5% and 0.1% bits of skill/knowledge because you have to search/train constantly for little reward.
Re:The supply and demand of knowledge (Score:3, Insightful)
This of course assumes that not only is there a finite amount of information relevant to a given field, but also that this amount is limited enough that you can master a significant proportion of it in your lifetime.
It m
Re:Of course (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was an undergraduate, I was amazed at the amount of effort people spent which could have been avoided by taking a moment longer to think about the problem. I am firmly of the opinion that I am not much more talented that the people around me; just much more lazy.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I just don't like the idea of someone being 'better' than me. If someone trains, or works harder than me, that doesn't make them better, just a harder worker, which I don't mind.
Re:Of course (Score:4, Funny)
Unless, of course, you place value upon a strong work ethic, in which case they're still 'better' than you.
Re:Of course (Score:3)
Italy
Re:Of course (Score:3, Informative)
Your view of things agrees with some of the available resesarch [indiana.edu] on who tends to be more successful:
Re:Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
I would say they both can be fixed, to some extent but:
1. We tend to decide between smart and stupid or between lazy and hardworking as if the scale were discrete, rather than continuous.
2. We tend to only look at one or two facets of intelligence, and think they're the whole thing. Consider someone that can read between Melville's lines, but can't factor a trinomial to save their life. Smart, or stupid?
3. Lazy vs. hardworking is, in the cultures I'm familiar with, an issue relating to character, not ability.
Re:Of course (Score:2)
I find the opposite true, that almost anyone, with enough work and effort, can achieve these mental/skill levels - it's an egalitarian thought and somehow liberating (now, I don't know if this is true or not, but I ascribe to it to some extent).
If I'll ever see someone like Mozart, I'd marvel at his/her skill, not jealous of their ability - maybe because I am good at other things and can't do e
Re:Give me a break (Score:3, Interesting)
"If you think you can, you might, if you think you can't, you never will."
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." - Thomas Edison
"I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious." --Albert Einstein
I think what sets these men apart from normal people is the extraordinary focus, concentration, and obsession they had in t
Re:the same thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the same thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Missed the queue for the expert mind? (Score:5, Funny)
Mod points at the ready
Sorry, but... (Score:2, Funny)
Partial credit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Partial credit (Score:5, Interesting)
So, to argue that intellectual experts are partially born, you compare them to a field where we know that being an expert is mostly born (bodybuilding)?
There are no studies showing a trainer taking a few average joes and getting them into the world championships of bodybuilding. But there are such examples in chess, as TFA states.
I remember learning about the "10-year theory" of genius in a graduate course in psychology (that it takes around 10 years of practice to make an expert, not innate talent). It was portrayed as a 'radical' theory in that it flew in the face of the common belief of innateness. But the evidence does support it.
The one area where the theory wasn't completely fleshed out in TFA, however, was the issue of age. While it is possible that nearly any child can be turned into a chess master with appropriate training and time, it isn't at all clear that the same is true for adults. Whether this is because adults have less time (or motivation), or because they are missing some biological advantage that children have, we don't know. But compare this to language: we know that children learn languages very fast during a 'critical period' of childhood. Children who don't learn a language at that age cannot learn one later in life. So perhaps there is a 'critical period' for being trained to be an expert at chess. We just don't know that yet (or didn't when I was taking the class 4 years ago).
Re:Partial credit (Score:4, Insightful)
Chess isn't a good measure either. A COMPUTER can play chess. The rules and strategies are almost all worked out, so it takes only practice to learn them. A better field for this discussion is music - four lifetimes would not suffice to learn all of music theory.
Re:Partial credit (Score:2, Funny)
Nonsense. You clearly don't watch enough MTV. You can learn enough to be a gaziilionare - look at them jokers that's the way you do it - in about 2.7 minutes.
Re:Partial credit (Score:5, Insightful)
Software chessplayers can beat human ones, but they play completely differently. For example, human chessplayers see only a few moves ahead, while software chessplayers rely more on brute-force search to find good moves.
Computers beat humans at chess not because we understand chess, but because we found a way to make computers do it well, which is different.
Re:Partial credit (Score:4, Insightful)
But this is also equally true for everyone; and the one who works at it the most will learn the most.
Of course learning properly also helps. Did you learn theory from a book at the piano/guitar; or did you sit down with a koto (or better yet a gu zheng, more strings) and meter stick and actually try to tune it by physical measurement and by ear?
You'll learn more about temperament that way in a couple of weeks than the average music student learns in a decade by modern methods. It might even disabuse you of the notion that there are "right" and "wrong" notes, merely consonant and dissonant intervals; and even some of those are a matter of cultural training.
KFG
Re:Partial credit (Score:3, Informative)
That doesn't make any sense (Score:2)
You're mixing up different things which have nothing to do with each other.
A computer plays chess in a very different way from a human; it mostly just calculates game state trees to see how good each play is. Humans rely very heavily on intuition, pattern recognition and strategic principles which no computer so far has mastered (and it is doubtful that th
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
Music isn't a good measure either. A COMPUTER can play music.
There are many studies [americanidol.com] showing trainers taking average joes and getting them into the charts in closer to four weeks than four lifetimes.
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
Re:Partial credit (Score:4, Insightful)
It has nothing to do with how long it takes to learn music theory. Give an instrument to two people and teach them how ot play it. Give them, say, a year to learn the basics. They'll probably both be able to play some songs with similar skill. Now, take away their sheet music. Tell them to play something original.. improvise. I guarantee you you'll separate the naturals from the "robots" in no time. THAT is what innate ability is about.
I like your computer comparison. A computer can be programmed to play just about any music you tell it to play. I have yet to hear a computer compose (good) original music, improvise, and adapt to the playing of others in real time. Question is, how does one quantify this so it can be studied?
-matthew
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
Let me try to be a bit radical here:
Maths is simple. Chess is trivial. The complexity of rocket science itself is next to nothing compared to the complexity of language.
The evidence supports this claim: you can learn to play chess and do maths later in your life, and it takes quite a few years to master rocket science... but once you pass the age you were supposed to master at least one language in, you're done; if you haven't learned a language until then, you never will.
Our brains come prepared for cer
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
There are some other things. For example, children born blind but that see later on in life (because they had something occluding their vision, that was removed by surgery) have problems with 3D vision. It is said that they are surprised that things 'get larger when they move closer', and IIRC never attain normal functionality. Studies have been
Re:Partial credit (Score:2, Interesting)
Lol, that's a good quote, innate language was one of Chomsky's finer moments. However, I think the pets do learn language, they just don't have tongues. Try meowing back at a cat, and seeing the surprised look on his face when he realizes, because you are imitating him, that you didn't understand what he said
If you define language as an audible, message-based communication, then
Re:Partial credit (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, my bad. But vision is something even older and more fundamental than language, so I guess my point remains.
As for the Chomsky quote, and the whole innateness theory, sorry, but I remain unconvinced. The capability of learning, understanding and speaking a language is obviously innate just as much as our senses are, but Chomskian views on that matter I find rather... lacking.
Then again, I'm a convinced cognitivist, so this is no wonder.
Whyever do you seem to think that innateness and complexity have nothing in common?
Take a look at the current optical recognition software, from OCR to robotic sight. How far have we gone in developing those technologies?
Compare that to the state of NLP. Especially for morphologically rich languages, which have made Chomsky alter his theories time and again.
Sight, hearing, language... all these require extensive training at a certain point in life. At a certain early point in life. And the reason for this is, I'd guess, because of their complexity. I've read of jungle tribes whose members can only visually comprehend distances up to 10 m or so; they never get to see anything farther away than that. In our world, they'd be maladjusted; in theirs, we would be.
These perceptive and cognitive functions are way too complex to be fully innate; instead, capabilities for development of those functions are innate, and the functions develop according to the surroundings.
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
Now take a child at age 8 and have a chess master teach them chess for 6 years. At the same time take an adult with relatively the same intelligence at age 24 and teach them chess with the same chess master for 6 years. In 6 years the child would
expert at or expert in? (Score:2)
Most people could become an expert in music just by studying music theory for ten years, but it takes someone gifted to become an expert at music.
The same goes for body building. It doesn't take muscles to be an expert in Body building but it does take the correct generic makeup to become an expert at bodybuilding.
10,000 hours, not 10 years (Score:3, Insightful)
There are still differences between such people though, and that has to come down to 'innate ability'/genetics/IQ/whatever.
I.e. for every intelligent person who immersed herself in programming from an early age, there's still only going to be a very few real gurus.
An example:
A guy like Mike Abrash is pretty well recognized as on
An Example (Score:4, Interesting)
If you've studied comedy, you've run across a couple of truisms. One is that it takes 10 minutes of killer material to make a superstar. If you have a routine 10 minutes long in which every single bit is strongly laugh-inducing (given your delivery), then you should expect to have your own sitcom and endless fame and money in short order. Very, very few people *ever* put together 10 minutes of true, killer material.
Another truism is that your core routine, your truly great material, grows in direct relation to how much time you spend working on it, performing, and writing. If you treat it like a full-time job, write every day, and perform every chance you get, then you'll add about 1 minute of core material to your routine for every year you practice your craft.
In comedy, then, the theory holds. It takes 10 years to become an expert.
On a related note, while talent can reach its potential in a decade, I'm of the opinion that a total lack of talent can never be overcome. Some people can't tell a joke. Ron Jeremy (a name that should be familiar to most Slashdot denizens) used to desperately want to be a standup. (I don't know if he still feels that way.) I've seen his act many times over a number of years. He has no timing and even though the material is pretty good, he just can't tell a joke. He gets some laughs. He may even be just good enough to make a living at it (as a novelty act) if he wanted to. But I'm convinced that he proves that a LACK of talent can never be overcome no matter how hard you work.
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
Well, the issue is that learning a primary language and learning a seconda
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
Re:Partial credit (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're 5'4" you're probably not going to have a career in the NBA, but you can develop just as much skill at basketball as people who do. Maybe you're not "smart" enough to be a chess Grand Master, but a Master
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
I've got to ask, are you a Paul Deem in anything (I sure as hell am not)? I'm betting that with nearly 10,000 posts to Slashdot, posted in a very short amount of time, you probably used to be, but you aren't anymore.
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
Marketing might proclaim jock straps etc. as amazing and heroes because it sells product but is it true. Prior to rampant, I am not lying, I am acting, product promotion by jock straps the only quality that was truly respected was good sportsmanship.
Hard work does not guarantee amazing results (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, that sums it up exactly. Inate ability is essential, as well as hard work over a long time, to achieve true mastery.
The thing that really annoys me is talented people (whether in sports, the arts, science, or any other intellectual area) who say "I got to the top of my chosen field through hard work". My problem i
The science says it does. (Score:2)
The key term being "effortful study". The science almos
Re:The science says it does. (Score:2)
A very good point. However much people push the "you can acheive anything you want" line, I just don't see it. Success is talent, perserverence, and luck. Slashdot's favorite nemesis, Bil
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
We were all at school and were shown new sports/skills/concepts at the same time as our classmates, yet we all know that some of us found one, or some of these things easier than others. I can remember our sixth form school rugby team, I had played and trained outside school for a couple of years, yet there were a couple of my friends who just joined the team and just seem to pick up the skills. Conversely I always couldn't understand how some people jus
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
Algebra was a poor example because it was just the first thing I could think of, it could be extended to Maths I suppose, over my lifetime I did no more work at Maths than other people who went to the same primary schools and had the same teachers but around 11-12 yrs old, other people seemed to hit a 'ceiling' and I found it easy to understand and always wondered why people "asked such obviou
Re:Partial credit (Score:2)
The important inborn ability might be the motivation and ambition to actually do the hard work required to master something. Of the Polgar sisters [psychologytoday.com] Sofia was considered the most talented chess player, but only Susan and Judit had the motivation. As Susan has said, "Everything came easiest to her, but she was lazy."
Read "The origins of exceptional abilities" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Read "The origins of exceptional abilities" (Score:2, Insightful)
Semitonal and quatertonal music never really caught on, but for Charles Ives it was quite natural, because he was familiar with it as a child. However, overlapping music is an entire industry, we call it deejaying today.
Pain vs. Gain. (Score:2)
Those things are funny. About the only thing those gadgets do in 20 minutes of exercise per day performed while you sit in front of your TV, occasionally stopping to munch on a super sized McDonalds menu, is calm your conscience. If you want to lose weight you have to exercise and control your diet. Either one on it's own will not do the job well a
Re:Read "The origins of exceptional abilities" (Score:2)
However, for every single Mozart there's probably several orders of magnitude more people who will not write any music worth listening to, no matter how long they train.
As they say
That explains my innate talent (Score:5, Funny)
In another 10 years I'll be a world-class Slashdot Humorist. Obviously, I'm still working on that one.
Re:That explains my innate talent (Score:2)
Interesting, but a little one sided (Score:2, Informative)
The conclusion:
So, I g
Re:Interesting, but a little one sided (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, there's even a word for "lots of time playing." The word is:
"Practice."
You might have heard an aphorism using that word.
I'll bet he wasn't very good at the subjects he ignored at Columbia. There just might be a relationship.
KFG
Re:Interesting, but a little one sided (Score:2)
Uhh, sorta. (Score:5, Insightful)
It also requires Chess to be a near perfect look into intellect and ability - the author obviously understands this as roughly half the article is an attemp to prove it. If this is not true then the whole theory falls apart and I do not think enough is shown for this to be true (not being in that field I do not know if it is considered a given, but again I doubt it is. I can not see chess having much bearing to archery).
I can assure you that innate talent exists. It is not hard to find. I have two fairly good archery students - one shoots only the one day of our course and the other shoots at home every day. If hard work and focus was the deciding factor the wrong one is getting much higer scores.
We can all find people in our own schooling that exemplifies this. In science/math courses I did very very little and was generally one of the higer grades. I knew quite a number of people who were obsessed and spent WAY more time than I ever did who never came anywhere close to my ability. I knew people who surpassed me that worked less and some that worked more. Of course I still spent quite a bit of time at it. I could not learn how something worked without reading about it or taking it apart, yet I needed only to do so once or twice. Some could do it hundreds of times and never get it, some would only need to get halfway before they understood it. That's innate talent.
It's so trivial to find people that break this theory I can not see how it is talked about much. Obviously hard work will get you a long ways, pure talent on never using it is horrid, and pure talent with hard work is what makes world champions. I can (and have) practiced enough to be a champion in Archery, I'm nowhere close and I'll never be - I just can not hold the bow steady enough. No amount of practice will overcome it.
Coaches and teachers say this because after running thousands of people through thier programs it is obvious that a thing called "talent" exists.
And, lastly, they gloss over that all of thier examples were considered prodigies even before they invested years and years of hard work, to be a world champion requires both. The study pre-assumes that talent is the same, notes that practice is different so it *must* be the cause (how can you say that with more than one variable?). How about we try and hold everything that affects the outcome constant that we can (practice, initial novice level, user motivation, etc) and see if everyone performs at the same level. I bet they do not. Right now there are too many variables from the study listed to draw any conclusion - talent could very well still play a large role, it has not been ruled out. Just as it is obvious that hard work is needed to be a world champion it should be obvious that not including talent will make talent irrelevant in thier study. Unless you control or adjust for a variable you *can not* make any conclsuion on how much it affects your outcome.
I think I can...I think I can (Score:2)
Re:Uhh, sorta. (Score:2)
Close. Too many people think practice makes perfect, when in reality, most people who do so simply perfect their mistakes.
Re:Uhh, sorta. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but it's hard to tell where background stops and talent starts. For example, perhaps your talented student simply had exposure to a range of activities as a child which meant s/he developed better hand/eye coordination - a head start, in other words, which just looks like innate ability.
I imagine "talent" to a degree depends on prediliction. I'm not at all musical, and gave up piano lessons as a child because I just didn't find it fun. Kids who
And, of course, what you like probably depends largely on your home environment. So an inclination to develop talent, perhaps, can be instilled from infancy.
None of which precludes the possibility of innate talent, of course, like you described. Some kids really do just pick up a golf club and show a frightening ability to get it right first time. Seems obvious, really: if talent="physiognomy and mental state being just right to start with", then perhaps everyone's got a statistical chance of being naturally good at any given skill.
Re:Uhh, sorta. (Score:2, Informative)
Read "The Pianist's Talent" (Score:5, Insightful)
"I was taught it this way, I'm good at it, so that's the right way of teaching it." Really, what "it" is doesn't matter. This belief is held by language teachers, sports coaches, music teachers and many more. This belief is then supported with examples of pupils/students who are also good at their particular "it".
Over the last hundred years, many many teachers have studied teaching or their disciplines in new ways which have disproved this commonly-believed falsehood.
The first example I'm aware of is described in Harold Taylor's book The Pianist's Talent. In it, he examines the work of a turn-of-the-19th/20th-century Parisian piano teacher by the name of Raymond Thiberge. Thiberge was vexed by the vastly differing -- even contradictory -- advice coming from the various piano conservatories in Paris, so he went to all the individual conservatories for further study. In one, he would be told that there should be tension in the front of the forearm; in the next, tension in the back of the forearm. Thiberge was blind, so to study another's technique he had to touch them. When he lay his hands on any of the teachers, he found that they all had one technique: no tension anywhere.
The teachers were not successful because they followed their professed technique, but because they didn't. Worse, their pupils who they used as proof of the efficacy of their techniques also used a completely different technique than that which they were taught. Worse still, teachers were dismissing their failures as not the teacher's fault -- they were simply untalented -- while the reason they failed was because they were doing what they were told. To quote shlmco, another \.er: Too many people think practice makes perfect, when in reality, most people who do so simply perfect their mistakes. In another example, over the last few decades, top-level swimming coaching has changed dramatically, leading to athletes capable of such incredible feats as the Thorpedo's alleged ability to cross a swimming pool in two strokes. The trigger for this was the invention of the underwater tracking camera now so commonly used in major competitive events. Traditional teaching of front-crawl stroke said that the arms should travel in an "S-stroke" and that the fingers should be closed against each other. Coaches who were former gold-medal winners professed this technique as the technique that had won them their fame, but when the cameras started rolling, suddenly people could see that their hands were travelling in an almost straight line, and that their fingers were slightly apart. It became noticed that coaches were ignoring their star students' "non-standard" technique because they were doing so well, but were constantly "correcting" the technique of their other students, hindering their progress.
I was discussing all this with a Scottish country dance teacher recently, trying to demonstrate that another commonly-held notion -- the idea that there are different teaching techniques suited to different people -- was at best an overstatement, at worst a complete falacy, and in any case a result of bad teaching practice. At this point he tied it in to his own personal experience -- one tricky dance-step, the "pas-de-bas", which his student's could never get, although he taught it as all the top teachers do. He eventually came to the conclusion that it was a teaching problem, not a learning problem, so he stopped to study it. At every possible opportunity, he watched the feet of the top dancers until he saw what they were doing and realised that it was not what he was teaching, but it is what he was doing. It is now a point of frustration to him that the teaching fraternity continues to teach it incorrectly when it is perfectly possible to teach it correctly.
Effort will always fail to bear fruit if misdirected. Concientious hard work will make matters worse if the teaching is wrong. In fact, as the Inner Game philosophy is now trying to popularise,
Print Version: 1 page (Score:3, Informative)
In case anyone else prefers one, nearly ad-free, page [scientificamerican.com] over 6 skinny pages full of blinky bits.
The Genius' Expression (Score:5, Interesting)
I think what seperates genius from someone who is simply "good" at something is a geniuine love for what they do later in life. They tend to be more well-rounded and express themselves through the various mediums, but the true geniuses excel in one or more of these modes of expression. The fact that they're well-versed in some skill just makes it all the more likely they'll end up producing something of great value in that area of the arts or science.
Ability to accept training (Score:5, Insightful)
So if you're good at something from the start you're going to get more positive feedback earlier on and you're going to get further and progress more quickly through the same training. But fundamentally yes both the gifted person and the talentless hack are going to need to be exposed to the same tools, techniques and ideas to progress in anything. Mozart wouldn't have gotten anywhere with the piano and orchestras if he'd grown up in a culture that didn't have pianos and orchestras. With his innate abilities perhaps he'd have been Africa's best drummer or a killer on the diggeri doo instead
Another thing. It's important to do things you're not good at for a couple of reasons. One is that some things you're not good at are fun...go to a karoke bar and you won't see people trying to perfect their world class opera voices. You don't even discover what you like if you don't try and life is there to be embraced and tasted. The other is that not everyone progresses at the same rate. It is possible to spend weeks (but probably not more than a few weeks) and make a breakthrough in understanding that suddenly means you improve dramatically even if you're never going to be world class.
However yes, nothing replaces hard work and training. If you're good at something without these you could be much better with the correct focused training.
Arg (Score:5, Interesting)
Just as with the nature versus nurture debate, it's not a question of which one it is; but of how much of each one.
Obviously, the surroundings, encouragement, over-stimulation, lack of stimulation etc are going to have an tremendous on a child. Anybobdy saying anything else is a loony.
On the other hand, it's a well known fact among strategy gamers that everybody has, more or less atleast, a limit to how good they get. During 5-6 years of steady play, most people just max at some point, usually after a couple of years and stop becoming better. Be it lack of intelligence, lack of patentience, lack of anal-retentivness, it still happens. They hit their roof.
What this means for nerds... (Score:2, Insightful)
For nerds in Computing and IT, this means a lot. Which programming languages to learn? Which editor to use? Which IDE to get addicted to? All the answers would slant in the direction of Open Source and Free tools. It makes absolutely no sense for an intellectual, one whose primary assets are cervaux, to go in for expertise and proficiency in proprietary stuff.
This will be the reason why "Developers, Developers and more Developers" will simp
Re:What this means for nerds... (Score:2, Insightful)
IANA Programmer, but I work around them:
Wouldn't focus upon the concepts be a better way to do it? Someone who has spent ten to twelve years writing code should be capable in pretty much any environment, and able to learn a language in a relatively short period, what with buzzwords and all. If you focus on Python, you've learned Python, but if you focus on say, object-orientation, you can use that with any tool that utilizes that concept, be it FOSS or proprietry. And if your commercial tool of choice fad
Re:What this means for nerds... (Score:2)
The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born.
You have the answer right there in the summary, even without reading TFA.
Try to follow along.
That's exactly what I'm suggesting nerds ought to be doing. Instead of a mere theoretical discussion on the topic, nerds would be better off focussing on technologies that would be available and relevant over a decade atleast. Hence the choice of Open Source tools.
I was shocked... (Score:2)
The basis of the article threads itself into and througout chess, and whilst I have a fondness for it, it cannot be the only form of being an expert, mental prowess, etc., can it?
If it had been "The Expert Chess Mind", that would be a different thing altogether.
I'd expected more until I realized the cover picture depicted the meat of the article.
I haven't renewed my subscription yet, but if it had come under the label of a subscription, I'd have asked
Nature vs. nurture redux (Score:4, Interesting)
In music for example, certainly Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Berlioz had to work hard to learn their craft, with some of the best teachers.
Nonetheless, most people would not benefit from that tutelage, because they would be unable to grasp what was important and what was not. A work of genius is not the result of privilege, but of someone whose innate ability to absorb, digest, and then apply in strikingly original ways are simply beyond the grasp of most of us.
The answer to the question of nature vs. nurture is that both are necessary. A genius feral child will not recreate social skills alone. Nor will a privileged imbecile be able to govern a nation.
Re:Nature vs. nurture redux (Score:5, Funny)
We're doing the case study on that right now...
Norvig short essay (Score:2)
Check out his short essay on how to learn to program in 10 years. [norvig.com]
Formal study vs. Hard Work (Score:5, Insightful)
Example: Dizzy Gillespie was an amazing trumpet player, but the way he played was all wrong. Does this mean that our idea of the "right" way to play is wrong? No; Dizzy succeeded despite playing the wrong way, simply because he practiced so goddamned hard. But if you want to learn to play the trumpet, should you just shirk all advice and just practice? Of course not. You'll be a better player if you don't have obstacles - and the "right" way is "right" because it has fewer obstacles. Just don't think you can relax, because you'll get blown away by those who are working hard.
Now take for example the computer programmer. The computer programmer who studies on his own not only has to figure out what is going on from scratch (this is actually beneficial), but he has has to figure out what to study. An education in computer science will prepare this programmer for that. But all too often the computer programmer with an education uses this as a crutch - they soon become stagnant.
FAQ
Can you succeed without working hard? No.
So, do you need education? Maybe not, but it helps.
Would you be better at what you want to do if you have education? Undoubtedly.
Re:Formal study vs. Hard Work (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not talking about "success" as defined as "making lots of money" or "being the highest in the corporate ladder" or even "being promoted." I'm talking about "success" as "being the best at what you want to do." But on the other hand, if what you want to do is make lots of money or climb that corporate ladder, then you have to work at it. Guile and craft take a damn lot of work, and if you don't think so, there's a reason you're not crafty or guile...y. Now, of course it's not fair that those who are the best at their craft don't get promotions, but if you are in fact the best in your craft, the fact is you have succeeded. If you shun the "corporate machine" so much, don't complain when you get screwed by it.
Of course hard work will never guarantee success. But there's the rub - success is never guaranteed. But you can be damn sure that probability will drop damn close to zero if you don't work hard.
Re:Formal study vs. Hard Work (Score:4, Insightful)
The presidency is not won by a person, but a team. The team with the most money and the fewest ethical constraints generally wins.
Genius vs. Expert (Score:5, Interesting)
"There are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest calibre." - Mark Kac
What about things that can't be taught? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Answer: Who the hell knows.
Or how about creative expression? How many years do I have to study Picasso to become a leading force in a revolutionary new art movement?
What about personality? How long do I have to intern with Bill Gates to become a billionaire?
Using chess is an awful example because it's a small closed system with a simple
What a load of crap (Score:2)
There also trying to say that someone who has always had a low IQ can become an expert if they spend ten years in the field.
Given the number of things I cannot do even though I have tried as hard or harder that most people and compairing them to the things I can do and always have been able to do without even thinking about them I'd say this artical is a loa
Effortless Mastery (Score:2, Interesting)
From Amazon [amazon.com]
"Werner, a masterful jazz pianist in his own right, uses his own life story and experiences to explore the barriers to creativity and mastery of music, and in the process reveals that 'Mastery is available to everyone,' providing practical, detailed ways to move towards greater confidence and profici
Mozart was a writer (Score:2)
Mozart was remembered for being a great creator - that kind of insight cannot be given by training alone, though it *usually* does help to know the ground rules of whatever field you are in to be able to be a visionary in it.
In music at least, talent coutns (Score:4, Insightful)
If they did, they had the potential to be quite good. How good they were depended in a large way on how hard they worked, but that "it" allowed for them to do it. If they didn't, no amount of work could make up for it. There was just a wall that they could not surpass with any amount of effort.
In highschool I saw this in quite a pronounced fashion. I had "it", something I discovered in 7th grade. I could produce a tone that sounded good, sounded like the kind of sound professionals get. I don't mean I sounded that good, but I mean it was the same kind of sound. My 2nd chair player didn't have "it". His tone was blatty and sounded more akin to a beginner. I felt really sorry for the guy because he busted his ass. I kinda slacked off, as I like to do, and so while I was good I wasn't a star or anything. I'm sure I could have been much better if I'd been willing to commit more time to it (though in retrospect I spent quite a bit of time on it).
He worked his ASS off. I mean I couldn't believe how much he practised, at least 2 hours a night usually more. He really, really wanted to be better, and in particular wanted to be better than me. He just couldn't do it though. The technical aspects he could get down wutie well through all the repetition but the musicality never came. He had private teachers try to help, I tried to help, but it didn't do any good. He lacked "it", he lacked the talent to ever really get good.
Same thing in university. There was a hard cutoff in trombones at the 4th chair. The first 4 all had "it", we all sounded good. Differeing skills of course, but all sounded as a trombone should. The next 5, nope. It was just painfully obvious. I could switch with the and 2nd, 3rd, or 4th chairs on a solo or something and it would work. They didn't sound just like me, but they sounded right. However sub in any of the others and man, you'd notice straight off.
I think it may have something to do with listening ability. There are things relating to that which can't be trained, like perfect pitch (the ability to identify the absolute pitch of a note with no context). It's not perfect pitch that is required (I don't have perfect pitch) but perhaps something like it.
Either way, I certianly don't disagree that being proficiten/an expert/a master requires a hell of a lot of work, in think in many cases talent is necessary, but not sufficient, condition. Maybe it's genetic, maybe it's something that can only be learned during a critical developmental phase, either way if you don't have it, you'll never be great, no matter how hard you try.
Nature Vs Nurture? (Score:2)
Fundamental Flaw (Score:2)
A persistant delusion (Score:5, Interesting)
productive as regular programmers; their work does not require checking,
they solve complex problems in such a way that the problem can actually
be forgotten about, and they never find that something can't be done
because of the decisions they made earlier. I would rather have one of
these guys with on a project than three regular Joes, and the wise
project manager scours the organization for them and collects them all
in a fiercely guarded hoard. What vast innate aptitude they must have!
And yet I notice that these experts are, coincidentally, also the same
people who use a spell-checker, who ask what terms mean before trying to
use them, who write down what they're going to do before they do it, who
understand what the business context of the work they're doing is, and
who understand the imperfect realities of the workplace. In other words,
they're not natural computer geniuses; they're people who bother to learn
how to do stuff right.
An image of the naturally talented 'geek' or 'nerd' has grown up in the
last 20 years, especially outside of the IT community. These
individuals, the story goes, can be awkward and eccentric in the more
'people' aspects of life but are gifted with tremendous focus and
ability to understand complexity in technical areas. Often seen
watching Star Trek and blowing things up in their back yards, they are
the highly specialized new breed on which the information revolution
depends.
The fact is, the above is half-right. 'Geeks' do exist -- but there
is absolutely no correlation between geek-hood and technical ability.
Quite the reverse, in fact; technical ability is acquired by learning
from others, and you can't learn from others if you don't communicate.
The basement-dwelling machine-code-writing ubergeek of the 80's really
existed, but only due to social factors; had he left his basement and
gotten a girlfreind, he would have become more productive, not less.
This is pretty well recognised in business now; nobody hires the
basement-dweller if they can hire the rugby-player, which is rather bad
luck for the basement-dweller but sound thinking on the part of the
business.
And yet the image persists in popular culture, so much so that people
who learn that I work with computers still occasionally expect me to be
into a whole nerd culture of comics, DIY demolitions, and so forth.
Sure, some people are bigger or stronger or smarter than others to some
degree; but how remarkably seductive this idea that certain people just
naturally fall into certain slots, where they are good and bad at
specific predetermined things, is! And how very different from reality
it is.
Except for mathematicians, mind you. Those guys are born not made, I'm sure of it.
Re:A persistant delusion (Score:3, Insightful)
It takes a certain level of talent to see this. Som
Bad article summary... (Score:3, Insightful)
The real article content is that the expert mind works differently (i.e. uses different brain functions to achieve a better result) from the novice one. Chess is used as an example because it's easy via ratings to objectively measure expertise in this area.
In a nutshell, a novice in a field has to use general (new) problem solving skills to figure out what to do, but the expert, from years of focused experience, instead uses memory recall (not problem solving) of domain-specific chunked memories to determine the best course of action.
This result is proven for chess by brain scans of novice and expert chess players in action showing which areas of the brain are active, as well as by showing that experts perfrom better at memorizing real rather than random chess positions, while novices perform muich the same (poorly) in either case; the inference of the memorization task is that experts are able to chunk real positions into pre-learnt patterns, and therefore have less to remember, but for random positions (which therefore don't occur in their learnt patterns) they have to resort to piece-by-piece memorization like the novice.
The article quotes Casablanca being questioned on how many moves he plans ahead, and answering "one - the right one!". This isn't bragging, but rather reflects the reality of seeing (via automatic memory recall) the right position rather than having to work it out via a computer-like game alogorithm.
Talent is bullshit.... (Score:3, Insightful)
For ancedotal evidence to support this one need only look at the realm of professional sports. Yes these men and women have a genetic predisposition that gives them the basics ability to compete at the highest level and most people do not have that but what made Michael Jordan the greatest basketball player to walk this planet was not his genetic predisposition nor his "innate talent". He worked harder than any other guy out there...I remember being told a story at basketball camp when I was a wee lad; the point guard for UCLA at the time thought that he'd sneak on to the Warner Brothers set to play some ball in the fancy gym set up for Jordan while filming Space Jam (in the evenings they'd play pick up games with Jordan at this facility). He figured that no one would be using the facility and apparently it was quite good. Finally gets in there and whose shooting jumpers? None other than Michael Jordan.
We like to use talent as our scape-goat. It explains why someone else is better at something than we are; reality is it's just an excuse.
Anecdote != evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of people are pointing out that natural ability vs. training isn't a boolean, so the article oversimplifies. But a lot of people are also saying "Natural ability is necessary, I know because I spent 10 years doing [whatever]" or "I saw people who spent 10 years working on [whatever] and they still aren't the best."
That's making very unwarranted assumptions: no one is saying that it's enough to work for 10 years at something, no matter how you work at it. People who drive every day for 10 years still aren't typically world-class drivers, because they aren't spending that daily driving time doing anything that would lead to real improvement. Even people who work hard to improve at something, for years, can still make little or no progress because of how they are working or being taught, completely independent of any innate ability they may have.
I believe in innate ability, and I think it would be very difficult to honestly argue it doesn't exist at all. But I think it can be overstated -- as one of the other commenters noted, in some disciplines the experts don't do things the way they tell their students to (and as a budding mathematician who is appalled with the state of mathematical exposition today, I think the same is true in that field -- it would be very easy for someone with a lot of ability in math to nevertheless become discouraged by the way higher math is presented). Apparent "innate ability" in such cases may just mean that someone happened upon the correct approach to something despite, or at least independently of, their "official" training. If that's true, it doesn't mean natural talent doesn't exist, but it does suggest that there are many more "naturally talented" people than we are aware of because of our limited understanding and education.
Re:Childhood surroundings (Score:2)
A friend of mine recently mentioned Reggio kindergartens (since she only mentioned them, it's just a wild-ass guess at the spelling) which encourage children to practically build their own play area and discover and learn quite a lot in the process; supposedly pre-school children can have the grasp of physics of a 14-year-old. I haven't read into it much yet, and I doubt I'll be able to find or pay for one when I have kids, but you never know...
Anyway, to me it proves that while talent does exist, our educ
Re:conform, obey, or not be with us (Score:2)
Re:SOCIALIST lies, IQ is genetic! (Score:4, Insightful)
Socilist retoric is that we are all born differerent but should be treated equal so those with more tallent should support those with lesser tallent because it's not the fault of those with lesser tallent that they cannot do so well.
Re:SOCIALIST lies, IQ is genetic! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Metatalent? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree - I believe people can be very different at their talents - the minds of different people can work in very different ways.
No matter how hard I tried, I was always terrible at soccer and at juggling. I just don't have enough control of my body for that. On the other hand, learning mathematics has always been effortless for me, and I can "view" in my head 3 and 4-dimensional functions with ease. Regardless of how hard I try, I am definitely NOT good at picking up the correct accent of foreign languages - even languages that I have been speaking for decades. Other people can sound like native speakers in a couple of years. I spent lots hours trying to learn chess, and just about anybody could defeat me. At Go, in scarcely a few months I became good enough to hold my own with most players in my city.
The belief that "education does all" is the kind of belief you have before you see enough students, and especially, before you have children. After that, you know very well that kids are born with very definite personalities and abilities - you can educate them, but the personality and basic abilities are there from day 1, perhaps not fully expressed, but there.
Education, or training, just feeds the prepared mind or body.
Re:Metatalent? (Score:2)
The belief that "education does all" is the kind of belief you have before you see enough students, and especially, before you have children. After that, you know very well that kids are born with very definite personalities and abilities
Correct, insightful, and an explanation of why so many slashdotters hold that erroneous belief. (Note to moderators: that's not meant to be funny. Mod up the parent to this post, not this one.)