kaladin-jasnah
BinaryIgor
Well, the absolutely best-case scenarios is when you both have an innate talent for something and deep interest/obsession about it; I think that the article encourages you to find exactly that and then focus on it, because once you combine innate talent + obsession, you do have unfair advantage over the others
kaladin-jasnah
I also think it's not super easy to evaluate whether you have an innate talent for something. The example of Ramanujan reading math textbooks when he was twelve is definitely an exceptional case, but I also think it's not clear to a lot of twelve year olds that such deep resources in a subject even exist. I was lucky that my county's library system had a literal treasure trove of computer science related books that I could check out as a tween and teen, so I was exposed to a subject before most people were.
If your parents present you with your first computer when you're five years old, and it drops you to a bash prompt, and that's all you have, then you'll probably know considerably more than everyone else just from that being your only choice for a computing environment.
So sometimes it's hard to quantify whether or not being more successful and growing faster is about the luck of exposure. There are times when I have switched textbooks for learning something or changed my learning style and suddenly catapaulted myself to having the highest scores in classes or understanding a topic infinitely better. People said assembly was easy for them, but maybe spending a year aimlessly typing "si" into GDB was not the most effective way to learn assembly.
But having access to all these resources for exposure allows people to develop their interests and find their talents. It's just hard to say sometimes if that's innate talent and aptitude or just interest and being exposed before everyone else.
BinaryIgor
I would partially agree. Speaking from experience, I can say that if you're naturally good at something, you can learn it pretty well even if resources are of poor quality. Obviously it makes all the difference if they're good, but you get it easily in any case
IT4MD
>Sometimes I wonder if interest influences not just my motivation, but my capacity for learning and talent.
It does. Anything you have an interest in, you will spend more time thinking about in general, be more focused while learning the relevant bits, and will breed a willingness to learn something related, but not specific to what you need.
I'm senior technical in my dept and have had a lifelong interest in tech, how it works, why it works, etc. and in my case, my interest definitely influenced my ability to handle work, broad skillset, practical application and more.
YMMV, but imo, your statement is true.
GL!
BinaryIgor
True! But it feels like that if you find something that you're both naturaly good at and interested in - you're unstoppable
dzink
I think it has to do with the Brain’s favorite sources of dopamine. If you steer clear of the hedonistic approaches and focus on finding constructive ways to get your dopamine, those constructive ways may give you a living you enjoy. Physics, math, trading, coding, writing - all self-feedback field you can iterate on in your own to get as good as you want to be. The fact that you don’t depend on others to make progress can give you infinite dopamine rewards and fuel more desire to work. The key is finding your Brain’s most constructive sources of dopamine and see how much you can feed it.
babblingfish
This reminds me of Oliver Burkeman's insight in "Meditations for Mortals" that we can only control quantity, not quality. He suggests we focus on what's within our control: showing up consistently and doing the work, rather than obsessing over outcomes. Another piece of his advice is to choose pursuits where you have a natural aptitude. Otherwise, there's too much friction. People enjoy being competent.
Haruki Murakami describes a similar discovery in his memoir "Novelist as a Vocation." He didn't set out knowing he had talent for writing, he discovered it through consistent practice. Only by writing his first novel did he realize he might have aptitude for it. Talent wasn't something he was born knowing about, but something he uncovered through action.
BinaryIgor
True; and the best case scenario is to discover something that you do have a natural, above average talent/aptitude for and you're interested/obsessive about it as well. This very thing is possibly your biggest leverage in life
Exoristos
I'd caution against equating talent with drugs-enhanced mania, especially today when illnesses such as bipolar are on the rise and do shorten lives.
omeysalvi
I was impressed by the writer and glad about reading the article until I found out he works for Palantir
iambateman
I stopped reading after there was a quote about how amphetamines helped improve his math.
Like...maybe. But I think it's pretty well understood that taking amphetamines is a net-negative for individuals and society.
commandlinefan
(tangent) That referenced Scott Alexander article was how I figured out his real last name before the New York Times doxxed him - he gave so many details about his brother I realized who he was talking about.
noelwelsh
Two things:
* Don't work in power-law / winner-take-all industries, unless you are truly remarkable (and even then, you need a lot of luck). Entertainment is the most obvious example of such an industry.
* No shit talent exists. Just look at basketball players. Presumably nobody thinks Wemby is 7'5" because he just trained harder at growing tall than anyone else? Why would any other characteristic be different?
Vetch
Being tall doesn't automatically make you good or dominant at basketball, you can even be too tall. Wemby might just be at that threshold, but the unusual thing about him is his dexterity despite his height; such maneuverability and flexibility is trainable. I hear he also spent the summer training, likely harder than most.
noelwelsh
Absolutely it's a combination of many factors. However height is undeniably very important. Wemby at 5'5" won't be as impressive a player, no matter how much he trained.
treetalker
> Entertainment is the most obvious example of such an industry.
Is it? Consider the case of nepo babies: often no extreme talent (or perhaps any at all), yet extreme luck.
noelwelsh
Winner takes all just means that a few people capture most of the value. That is the case in entertainment. It doesn't say anything about the talent needed to succeed in that industry. What you need to succeed varies depends on the exact industry. Athletes (who are entertainers) have more objective criteria than, say, pop stars. Even in the case of athletes there are factors beyond genetics (e.g. access to coaching.)
For pop stars you need to have some combination of the right look and ability to perform. Ed Sheeran looks a bit like a muppet but seems to be very good at creating catchy songs. Taylor Swift, to me at least, isn't that good at catchy tunes but she has the look and lives the life style. I imagine there are aspects of personality that are not as obvious but very important to survive in the industry.
trhway
one can wonder about the biological nature of the talent:
"Like all of Erdös's friends, Graham was concerned about his drug-taking. In 1979, Graham bet Erdös $500 that he couldn't stop taking amphetamines for a month. Erdös accepted the challenge, and went cold turkey for thirty days. After Graham paid up--and wrote the $500 off as a business expense--Erdös said, "You've showed me I'm not an addict. But I didn't get any work done. I'd get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I'd have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You've set mathematics back a month." He promptly resumed taking pills, and mathematics was the better for it."
CaptainOfCoit
Sounds like Erdős might have had ADD/ADHD or something similar, and amphetamines was his medication.
Edit: Never read about Erdős before and came across this: "Erdős published around 1,500 mathematical papers during his lifetime, a figure that remains unsurpassed". Maybe he was just a functional addict :)
linkregister
Millions of Americans take amphetamines daily, yet very few publish papers. I wager that Erdös simply had talent locked behind a common dopamine disorder.
The author concludes that "I should make sure I sweated blood working on a strength, [and] do more of what comes naturally." Something I found was that sometimes the things I have the most passion and interest for are _not_ the things that are strengths. But they have become strengths. Today, I would consider myself to be an OS and systems programmer person. It was abjectly _not_ something that came to me naturally. To understand assembly language, C, and other things, and gain any sort of a proper grasp on, it took years. Sometimes, I tell people how long it took me and how much I struggled, and they are bewildered that I found these subjects so difficult. But I did.
However, my motivating factor was my interest in the subject, not my innate strength in it, and that has pushed me to study it and become strong enough that I can (hopefully, I'm still in college!) succeed in that space.
There are subjects where I could probably succeed if I tried harder and effusively sweated blood (probably pure math related). Pure math is one of those things I just suck at. But the difference is that I don't find it personally interesting, and so the burden of learning and building talent feels infinitely more overwhelming.
Sometimes I wonder if interest influences not just my motivation, but my capacity for learning and talent. Sometimes I also wonder if my "lack of innate talent" is that actually "I generally learn more slowly." But maybe learning more slowly helps me learn things more deeply as well. Who knows.
* As a side note, the quote I was told is "if you want to be known as a dog killer, you should kill dogs."