Are you born with talent or do you adapt it over time? (Split from TOGS' thread)

[Atmosfear]

The threshold for an NBA player is 6'1" (Wikipedia actually lists lower range for Guards at 6'0 but I'm going to ignore that) or 73".

http://books.google.com/books?id=nmQ...um=1&ct=result

The average male height in America is 69.5" with a standard deviation of about 2.00". The threshold for an NBA player is less than 2 standard deviations from the mean! 4% of the US population is over 6'1" and only 435 players are active in the NBA. Mind you, those are total players drawn from outside the US as well, meaning the number of Americans is even less; regardless, for simplicity you have 435 players drawn from a population of 12,000,000 (assuming 45% males) giving 5.4 million people to draw from.

435/5.4 million is 8.05E-5. This is sorted by height, which is easily measured. What other genes do you think it takes? Do you think these genes are that rare? Or is it coincidence that most American NBA players share similar backgrounds (lower middle class or upper lower class, started at an early age, played pick-up, joined church or rec leagues young, played in highschool, invited to various coaching clinics and camps as recruits, played in college.) Basketball, unlike other sports (baseball most notably in America, hockey in Canada), is a year-round sport that can be played just about anywhere, so it doesn't have as pronounced a cut-off age.

These players were sorted and selected from very young age, before any sort of talent was able to manifest. Nobody is born making free throws, but when you're bigger than the other kids and get the play more, you get more practice. When you get more practice, you get better. When you get better, you get invited to play more with better competition. You get more practice because you now play with your first team and your competition team. The extra practice continues giving you an edge and then you get to high school where a college scout sees you (with the practice-earned edge) and invites you to his school's camp. You go to his camp and get better, the next year a couple more scouts invite you. Before you know it, you're invited to play with the best of the best and none of it ever had to do with some God-given ability to judge your wrist-release. It had to do with the fact that you started playing more than your friends, so you stood out just a little bit. That stand out brought you more practice, so your edge got a little bigger. By the time you're a pro, you're fully-grown 6'3" and playing point guard.

10,000 hours of practice. That's the magic number. If you're good enough to get started on the road to 10,000 hours of practice, your God-given "talents" don't matter.

Gladwell's book is actually more about how society selects the people who can be successful by receiving 10,000 hours of practice, which is largely not merit-based. Bill Gates, for example, happened to go to a high school that had a remote terminal in the 60s before most Universities had them. Bill Joy happened to go to University of Michigan which had a modern mainframe and also had a loophole in its code to allow unlimited computing time. Most of the major Jewish law firms in New York began because traditional old row white law firms would not hire Jews and would not litigate hostile takeovers in the 50s and 60s. The Jews were willing to take any case that came before them and when hostile takeovers because popular in the 70s, the traditional firms didn't have the expertise the Jews did (there were a few other interesting effects that Jewish ethnicity had.) The Beatles were invited to play in Hamburg by a promoter who used them as 8-hour-a-night shows for weeks at a time because the promoter needed someone to play in a pinch. Steve Jobs had a similar story. Mozart began writing symphonies at age 7 but it wasn't till his 20s (say... 10,000 hours later) that he wrote any symphonies of note.

If genetics were so important, why isn't everyone on Forbes' Wealthiest list also in MENSA? Why isn't MENSA dominating every field they can touch? Success is like an amusement park ride: if you aren't 54" tall, you have no chance of having fun on the ride. If you're over 54" tall, there is no guarantee you'll like it, but at least you have a shot at it. Being 54.5" doesn't have any better odds of enjoyment than being 72".

[Killuminati]

wall of text

Again, my point isn't that genetics contribute less or more to success than hard work. My point is that no amount of hard work can allow a person without the right genes to become successful at certain things.

I agree with sole, while genetics are not the soley(lol) responsible for success in basketball or whatever you choose to persue, they are a contributing factor. I'm pretty sure that's all she is trying to say there. Yes hard work, practice, environmental and home factors all come into play. No one is arguing(I don't think) that genes are what determines your success in something. It just comes plays a factor in how easily you will be able to suceed in whatever more easily then someone who has worse genes.

[solecistic]

Do you think these genes are that rare?

I never said they were that rare. The point is that you have to have the genetic makeup to be good at athletics before practicing at athletics means anything.

These players were sorted and selected from very young age, before any sort of talent was able to manifest. Nobody is born making free throws, but when you're bigger than the other kids and get the play more, you get more practice.

Being bigger than the other kids is your genetic predisposition. If you're smaller but someone notices that you're fast, that's a genetic predisposition. Clearly, training can make you faster and bigger (not so much height, but muscle mass), but if you start out being 5'4 and very slow, you're just not ever going to do as well as someone who is 6'1 and lightning fast from the get-go. If training brings out exceptional speeds, it doesn't mean it was just the training. It means that the training allowed your natural traits to come out. My whole point is that without the genes, the practice is meaningless. It doesn't mean that anyone who has the genes can succeed without practice. It just means that one is required for the other to have any meaning.

Before you know it, you're invited to play with the best of the best and none of it ever had to do with some God-given ability to judge your wrist-release.

Of course it did. If you didn't have the genes, no amount of training would have allowed you to get that proficient. Period. Strip all the opportunity and luck out of it, and it just comes down to work and genes, right? Well, if you were never genetically predisposed to building certain skills, no amount of building will ever get you to the level of someone with those predispositions. Not everyone on earth can be a good basketball player. Even if every single human being worked 10,000 hours for it, there would still be bad players, mediocre players, and exceptional players. That's where the genes show themselves. If everything else is equal, disparity still exists. Genes are responsible for that.

10,000 hours of practice. That's the magic number. If you're good enough to get started on the road to 10,000 hours of practice, your God-given "talents" don't matter.

Being "good enough to get started on the road" IS your natural ability.

If genetics were so important, why isn't everyone on Forbes' Wealthiest list also in MENSA?

They don't have to be in MENSA. They just have to be smart enough to do the work that lets them become successful. The people on Forbes' Wealthiest are not idiots. And any idiots who are on lists like that are products of luck. Winning the lottery and becoming a millionaire doesn't make you intelligent, but you do have to be intelligent to get a business into a position where it can make millions. Game theory and probability are separate issues.

If genetics weren't so important, why isn't everyone in the world on Forbes' Wealthiest list?

[Atmosfear]

Being bigger than the other kids is your genetic predisposition. If you're smaller but someone notices that you're fast, that's a genetic predisposition. Clearly, training can make you faster and bigger (not so much height, but muscle mass), but if you start out being 5'4 and very slow, you're just not ever going to do as well as someone who is 6'1 and lightning fast from the get-go. If training brings out exceptional speeds, it doesn't mean it was just the training. It means that the training allowed your natural traits to come out. My whole point is that without the genes, the practice is meaningless. It doesn't mean that anyone who has the genes can succeed without practice. It just means that one is required for the other to have any meaning.

Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Being bigger than the other kids isn't a genetic predisposition as much as it is a product of birthday. Since childhood groups are stratified by grade cutoff ages, those who are closest to the cutoff dates can have as much as a full year advantage of growth over another. If the cutoff is January 1, and you are born on January 2, you are almost a year older than all the kids born in December. By the time this is distilled through continual selection processes, the only kids left are the ones near the cutoff, not because they had any better talent but because they signed up with a good birthday.

Of course it did. If you didn't have the genes, no amount of training would have allowed you to get that proficient. Period. Strip all the opportunity and luck out of it, and it just comes down to work and genes, right? Well, if you were never genetically predisposed to building certain skills, no amount of building will ever get you to the level of someone with those predispositions. Not everyone on earth can be a good basketball player. Even if every single human being worked 10,000 hours for it, there would still be bad players, mediocre players, and exceptional players. That's where the genes show themselves. If everything else is equal, disparity still exists. Genes are responsible for that.

If everyone had 10,000 hours of practice, then they would become average and good would be defined as some larger value.

What disparity exists between Steve Jobs, Bill Joy, and Bill Gates? One of them is going grey.

Being "good enough to get started on the road" IS your natural ability.

Or more likely it's your birthday (or year), your high school's Tech club, or happening to run into a promoter in a bind in a bar.

Genetics probably has more of a role in what you like. If Bill Gates hated fooling with computers, the advantage of his high school's remote terminal would've been lost. But again, it's a low genetic threshold.

[Atmosfear]

Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Being bigger than the other kids isn't a genetic predisposition as much as it is a product of birthday. Since childhood groups are stratified by grade cutoff ages, those who are closest to the cutoff dates can have as much as a full year advantage of growth over another. If the cutoff is January 1, and you are born on January 2, you are almost a year older than all the kids born in December. By the time this is distilled through continual selection processes, the only kids left are the ones near the cutoff, not because they had any better talent but because they signed up with a good birthday.

By the way this has all sorts of implications for the education system and has been a fairly prominent critique of the Ivy selection process. Gifted programs, for example, are naturally biased towards older children.

[coqauvin]

By the way this has all sorts of implications for the education system and has been a fairly prominent critique of the Ivy selection process. Gifted programs, for example, are naturally biased towards older children.

I never really noticed this - I was in a gifted program here, and the birthdays were split pretty evenly across the classroom. There were slightly fewer birthdays later in the year, but close enough to even (probably no more than 3 or 4 kids in a class of 25~) that there wasn't an exceptional difference.

Also, in all the classes I took there, there was no real notable difference in intelligence/capability levels of the olderish kids to the younger ones. I was one of the later ones, being born in late september, but my average was consistently in the top 5 every year.