And not just teach you, but make you outstanding. And of course, once you become outstanding, you’ll have everyone tell you that you’re um, talented.

Skilling up is largely a mechanical activity. The brute force of intelligence can take you where ever you want to go. Well almost. But, yeah it looks like we are going round in circles over the same bone. Woof woof. Natural affinity does exist. Woof Woof

Everyone in our lives: Our teachers, parents, and everyone else made sure we believed in talent as something inborn. And we’re entitled to our own opinion.

I can draw.
I have been the lead in musicals.
I know over twenty software programs (some so well that I can be a teacher).
I write 300-500 (or more articles) a year.
I dance exceedingly well.
I have started to take really good photos and will soon be taking outstanding photos.
I know about five languages, and expect to learn at least five more in the coming years.
I can cook well enough to work in a restaurant.
I can coach people, using specific steps and logic.

All of these and more I can do so well that I could be in a university course, or as a coach. And to me it’s hard to believe that I was given all these talents on arrival. In fact, I only have one thing that propels me forward.

And that’s that I don’t believe in talent: Because of that single belief, I don’t need a crutch. And you see that list above. Before I ‘leave the building’ I’ll be adding a few more skills to that. Skills that may not even exist at this point on the planet.

1. Irrespective whether I have telekinesis I will move that mountain.
2. If I can find a teacher who will teach me telekinesis I will be off like a shot. If I cant find a telekinesis guru I am willing to settle for a CAT D9 guru.
3. I believe there are people who have “innate skills” at moving mountains without the use of clunky clumsy machines.
4. I also believe that you can learn these same skills and “innate” ‘em into yr psychic make up so movin mountains becomes a piece of cake and then you begin to wonder about things like moving solar systems and you get a gentle nudge from edges of your consciousness warning you to be careful at that scale.
5. However, since I don’t have a workable theory or a known guru who can help me unleash my telekinetic superpowers I am willing to work the D9 using the most efficient process possible.
6. I will also recognize that all processes have the inbuilt danger of rigidity attached to ‘em so I will maintain a flexible “beat the control” attitude, which makes it helluva lot more complicated than plugging 1-2-3-bingo …

…I also recognize that Sean D’souza has some hot stuff bakin in his marketing oven which even though he fails to acknowledge is in fact permeated with some of his own innateness…

1) No real belief in born talent.
2) A teacher.
3) A process (that speeds up things).

Then you will achieve a lot more in life than if you believe you were born with innate skills. Or to put it another way, you could learn anything you wanted and become exceptionally good at it.

That’s what Outliers explores.

Conventional thinking (aka society) tries to elevate talent onto a pedestal and everyone gathers around the shining maestro and proclaims “we can’t do that” and everyone else nods in wise agreement and whispers conspiratorially “he has that extra special something” etc which I agree is crap.

However, all of us have something “in” us, a natural affinity for a specific type of task – our talent. And of course it is relative to the normative mean of the abilities present in society. If we could all fly it wouldn’t be a talent – it would be “normal”. Thus many of us have “normal” talents, some of us have “not-so-normal” ones.

Also talent does not equal success. And I am not trying to build a case for needing talent to succeed. But it helps.

Thanks for the authors, will check ‘em out. Are you talking about Malcolm’s Outliers? Just bought it, have yet to dive in. Which book by Geoff?

That is: A person has had to have access to art to be able to draw exceedingly well. If the talent were simply inborn, you would not need any access. You are born with eyes, ears etc. You don’t need external sources to tell you how to use them. That’s innate.

When you have to learn something and there’s a process, that’s a factor of learning. There are a decent number of books out there: One by Geoff Colvin and another by Malcolm Gladwell. And I’ve been exploring this topic for a while at http://www.brainaudit.com/blog

It does answer the question – do you need talent to excel at anything? Answer: NO! It does not answer whether talent is innate or not.

Ramanujan is another example of innate pattern recognition. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan). If pattern recognition was so easy / or so difficult then we should all be on an equal footing given the same inputs. I doubt any of us would be able to tackle advanced math just by having text books. Likewise I doubt if many of us can pick up a musical instrument and start playing it properly within one hour. For some of us some things are just harder.

Tyson was/is a street fighter. In the boxing ring he needed to stick to the rules. But because of his instinctive pattern recognition of the dynamics of a fight he could zero in on his opponents weakness faster than his opponent and move in for the kill. Maybe he learned to fight (not born a fighter) on the street after getting beaten a few hundred times. And maybe he instinctively imbibed the sequence to triumph over his opponents (as compared to his peers) rather than through rigorous practice at the local gym.

If people were born with talent, they would never need any work to improve the talent

Maybe talent is like a plant. In the early years it grows with you naturally – like walking and talking – later it separates itself out and you need to actively tend to it or maybe your consciousness of it as a separate entity never happens and you happily keep feeding it…or ignoring it…in which case it dies or just remains at a rudimentary level – like a pleasant hobby.

All of us have talent – an innate knowledge about something, which enables us to react faster than others in that particular instance. For some of us it stands out ‘coz the particular talent/skill is not so common in the social context.

Even in a seemingly empty kitchen my wife can whip up a tasty meal. Me? I can only see the Maggi noodles pack. But then again she prefers to not eat out so she has an incentive to discover innovative ways to avoid something which she would rather not do.

Hmmm: I think we should ask the freakonomics guys to dig into this. (http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com). With sufficient data we can settle it properly