A good starting point for this next essay will be to define what talent is. Talent is often thought of whatever abilities you were born with or innately possess, as opposed to what you've accumulated through experience. In practice, talent and experience are almost inseparable and attempting to separate one from the other almost always results in problems. The whole nature versus nurture debate continues and seemingly never ends, because just when one perspective seems to have all of the answers, the other one fires back in a big way and all of a sudden, the roles of who is in vogue are reversed.
This debate is unlikely to ever be settled, and if you think hard about it, you can see why - nature and nurture are ultimately part of the same system, and separating them is something arbitrary that we do. The human body and all of its parts (genes, brain, muscles, mind, etc.) and it's environment are one continuous system. Just as a person and their environment are constantly and forever interacting, the individual parts of someone are doing the same. This is a bit philosophical, but from the perspective of someone looking from the outside, there is no nature or nurture. Maybe there is a road, or a path through space and time that you travel. But even this path or space you travel through does not exist in isolation - the universe itself is one open system.
I bring this philosophical point up because it's important to understanding why this debate does not and cannot conclude, but also why it will always be useful. We make these arbitrary distinctions for a good reason - we notice effects, and we want to know the causes - or, at least, the most important or fundamental ones (proximate causes). We want to know exactly what role genetics plays because we define genetics to be a certain thing within our explanatory framework of biology, and we see effects that we wish to explain. These effects might not correspond neatly to our framework, but the framework is far from useless and can only improve in accuracy over time as it is revised with respect to scientific advancement through studying nature and nurture.
But we must always be cautious about making labels and prescriptions, and saying things that we aren't certain of. This is especially true with regards to talent - we must carefully define it. If we want to say it has to do with innate ability, we have to tease out all of the ways experience can shape our lives and get to the heart of what we are truly born with. And when we do this, we find it becomes harder and harder to identify what it is about ourselves or others that was there from the beginning. But we can go very far by imagining situations where environments are identical, or creating studies or tests where environmental factors are controlled or eliminated by sampling, or studying identical twins (which have the same genetic code).
Physical traits - height, eye color, hair color, skin color, etc. are all completely determined by genetics but are all irrelevant to the honing of a skill. Other traits like metabolism, lung capacity, physical build and skeletal structure, etc., can influence physical sports but aren't a guarantee of success. Even physical sports require a mind that can learn motor skills very quickly.
Learning traits - intelligence testing demonstrates differences in some cognitive abilities from person to person. The standard IQ test doesn't say much about an individual and what their life will be like, however it has been shown to be a solid statistical tool to examine an aggregate of individuals. Given that a wide variety of backgrounds and environments are included, the disparities present almost certain lead to the conclusion that some people are quicker learners. From experience we all know people that appear more quick to learn, or have other intelligence traits like excellent memory and recall, good visual memory and recognition, an ability to calculate numbers quickly or a particular creative talent like writing, painting, music etc.
But these anecdotal abilities suffer a fatal flaw - how does the genetic code have a one-to-one correlation between itself and excellence at arbitrary human behaviors? The answer is that it doesn't - there must be underlying aspects of physiology in the brain and the rest of the central nervous system that lend themselves to certain behaviors or make other behaviors more difficult - a multitude of intelligence's, instead of one intelligence. Maybe even hundreds, or thousands. If there is one trait that we can say at all defines intelligence, it can only be the ability to learn period, which may be the ability to grow neurons, form connections, and condition your brain faster than others. Anything else runs into enormous difficulties when we try to fit our preconceived notions into a box, and our ignorance on this subject is enormous.
Because nothing else is well established at this time, I will focus on the idea that the ability to learn is the key talent of intelligence, and does vary from person to person. The most important thing about learning ability is that you learn quicker - in the same amount of time, you can acquire knowledge and know-how quicker than someone else. This would be all it takes to be forever above and beyond that person. You are not required to even have a greater understanding of what you learned, or a better ability to analyze it, express it, etc. - simply that you consistently learn faster than others is enough to put you far ahead of someone else when your test results are compared. So learning quickly is an advantage, and all who possess it are perhaps the most intelligent among us.
Yet, everyone can learn, and almost everyone can learn almost anything. Learning at a 'normal' pace is not slow by any means. Even a human of average intelligence can learn an incredible range of behaviors in their life time - humans are truly unmatched in this area in comparison to the rest of the animal kingdom. Let's suppose for a moment that quick learners merely have time on their side - that means greatness isn't out of reach for the rest, it merely takes more time and work. They can go even farther by using methods discovered by those out there granted with quicker learning, which is a point of momentous implication discussed in the technique article. Thankfully, as long as we don't encounter violence, disease, otherwise bad outcomes, we all live a very long time. Also, one of the curses for those who learn quickly is they tend not end up far ahead of others, because their ability to learn quickly and get the same results as others in less time simply conditions them to put less time in. It may be unfair to call this laziness, but certainly those who are gifted but not pushed towards using their gifts can easily become complacent just coasting on talent, which is how I felt I spent a large part of my childhood.
The most important lesson I can conclude with about talent is that so much of talent rests on the question of age, as well as environment rather than in-born ability. It is incredibly hard to tease out these issues and we can't really say at this point whether intelligence and learning are 90 percent in born or 90 percent environment. Most people when they are young are quick learners, and if exposed to the right environment can become professionals in almost anything. Young adult learners have plenty of time to improve their methods so that they can enjoy a lifetime of learning and pursuing hobbies and skills.
It is my belief, and I can't say this with any certainty, but here it is: almost anyone can reach the point where they could be considered "very smart". Genius, maybe not. But in a world where everyone's basic needs are met, everyone receives a good education and a childhood that encourages learning, everyone is in good health through good healthcare and a good diet / exercise, then there would suddenly be a lot more geniuses around. In fact, being exceptionally good at multiple skills would probably become the norm. If this was compounded with widespread knowledge of techniques and practices, which could be made possible by the internet, people would also be able to teach themselves basically anything on their own and the best practices and methods for doing it.
This hypothetical utopian society is used to pose the question - just how much is intelligence determined by something in born? How much of an innate advantage do some people have? How many of us really could be the next Nobel Prize winner?
I truly believe that there are many smart individuals who do not have their skills shown on an IQ test because their talents are not recognized on an exam. I can say for sure (this has been demonstrated) that all humans have an innate desire to learn - our brains are hardwired to reward us for learning something. That "Ah HAH!" moment of learning something new that follows intense frustration and confusion has a physiological basis - our brains are withholding that dopeamine reward until we learn that new, beneficial behavior. This is an evolved response and is one more reason why we are the indestructible super predator of earth (indestructible if you don't count ourselves among our enemies). I think it is our broken system which doesn't create opportunities for some of the less fortunate among us to discover what a pleasure learning is and pursue this passion for life. Just the simple fact that we have proven that nearly every human can start on that upwards spiral of lifelong learning and mastery is a wondrous revelation - if children in school seem distracted, we haven't made learning schoolwork interesting enough. They might be enjoying learning some other skill in their environment instead (such as honing those KZ skills...)
Strangely enough, studying the IQ as a predictor of success in life results in little to no correlation. In addition, studies of Nobel Prize winners shows no correlation between their IQ scores at a young age, and who ends up getting the prize. Many Nobel Prize winners are of average or even below-average intelligence.
-CoC
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