Is talent born or created with hard work and practice

[Spring Goose]

Screenshot_20220207-121805~2.png

What about children born with no hands?

[Spring Goose]

Especially when it concerns musicality, basic intelligence, mathematics, I'm convinced that some people just don't have it and some others just do.

I think it is evident you are correct.

[Unaspected]

iirc that was bob monkhouse?

It was.

A very funny man and very much missed.

[vurt]

indeed

[zerocrossing]

With that said I dont think it unreasonable for me to have quite a different perspective on genetics,

It is a privilege of human beings to have different opinions about genes, but it is not a privilege of the genes to take them into consideration.

I said different perspective sir, not opinion

There is one perspective to genes, that of hard science. A different perspective is but an opinion.

While I agree with that, let’s not pretend that science is done with this very complex topic. There’s a ton we don’t know. Every scientist I’ve ever heard talk on this topic has basically said that the make up of an organism is always part genetics, part nurture (if you’re an organism that’s nurtured in some way) and even genetics can express themselves differently due to environmental factors. So, it’s a big mess. We’re all the result of a big mess. If you think about it, that really makes sense.

[jancivil]

This is the old nature/nurture question, it's not a simple dichotomy, after all.

[Spring Goose]

hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years of bitter experience, the Army knows that real leaders are born, not made.

That's in the context of the army which is life or death, and it's a very short life at that!

[zerocrossing]

Especially when it concerns musicality, basic intelligence, mathematics, I'm convinced that some people just don't have it and some others just do.

I think it is evident you are correct.

Is it because they don’t have it, or they don’t want it? Is that want caused by physical aspects of the person, or by environment? There’s an anecdote by the famous Robert Fripp. According to him, he sucked at music. No rhythm abilities at all. He says he struggled a lot, while others easily did much better at early stages. But inside him, was a burning desire to play music, so he forced himself to stick with it. Now look at him. Vastly superior to most guitarists on the planet. I even saw something like that in my personal life. While my brother and I took to music pretty quickly, our good friend struggled. Basically, he sucked, even though he was at it as long as we were. No rhythm and he couldn’t sing on pitch at all.

I went away for a year or so to work on a music project, and when I came back, my friend told me that our mutual friend was doing a show. I didn’t expect much, but went to support him and hang out. When I got there, the kid with the out of tune and weedy voice who could barely strum in time, was doing a Bonoesque voice while playing Edge style rhythms. I have to say that his desire trumped his possible lack of inherent physical qualities that others had, but desire comes from the brain and the brain is a physical object.

If there is a trait that can lead to success, it’s definitely having a passion for something. All the physical talent in the world is useless if you don’t really care too much about something. Where does that passion come from? No idea. I heard a physics scientist once talk about creativity as a function of an inability to be able to have easy social communications. This really resonated with me. Her point was, most people have a fairly easy time making friends and communicating with their social group, but for various reasons, some do not. This pressure forces those without the ability to fit in to find other paths. For instance, I’ve always been considered to be pretty funny. Would I have found my comedic sense if I wasn’t a short, chubby, big nosed kid? Probably not. Would I have been able to be funny if I didn’t have some natural affinity for language? Probably not. Is my seemingly natural ease of language manipulation from my genes or my upbringing? It’s complex, because my father was a teacher and my mom a librarian, but their parents weren’t educated at all. It’s a mess.

[zerocrossing]

This is the old nature/nurture question, it's not a simple dichotomy, after all.

I find it fascinating, though. Especially as parents. My wife (primary bread-winner) and I (traditional house-wife role) both made conscious efforts to raise our daughter in as gender neutral way as possible. Always buying her a wide range of clothing, from traditional girl and boy stuff to gender neutral stuff. I always tell a story how when she was 3, I dressed her in (fake) denim jeans and a Superman tee-shirt, complete with built in cape. I left her room for a moment to get her shoes, and when I returned, she had dug out a rainbow sparkle tu-tu. I knew at that point that she was already becoming something that I could only stand in the way of, so I didn’t.

[Spring Goose]

Bono

Vurt will hate you for bringing this into it.

[vurt]

Bono

Vurt will hate you for bringing this into it.

im a changed man. i only noticed when i saw several mentions of phil collins and didn't react

[vurt]

that was never regards talent though, can't argue with the fact they both have talent.
that was always more because they are evil incarnate.

[Spring Goose]

Especially when it concerns musicality, basic intelligence, mathematics, I'm convinced that some people just don't have it and some others just do.

I think it is evident you are correct.

Is it because they don’t have it, or they don’t want it? Is that want caused by physical aspects of the person, or by environment?

I was thinking of reading and writing and mathematics rather than musicality. I think they don't really care about having it.

[Spring Goose]

Bono

Vurt will hate you for bringing this into it.

im a changed man. i only noticed when i saw several mentions of phil collins and didn't react

[jancivil]

I'm tempted to go into old person story mode but I can restrain from.
I would say that people have overassessed my gift majorly, starting around the age of majority, compared to what I think.
That this talent I'm supposed to have is largely built rather than inherited.
And I can tell that the kids in my naborhood I struggled to compete with had more to start with, at least one who was so good so early it has to be called real talent, for the instrument. And that one may have lacked the drive I had, based in life facts and ultimately achievement. Not that he didn't have the work ethic necessarily, just not the insane pursuit I had. Which I had partly because I was playing catch-up.