Talent - does it matter or not?
For starters, I am the type of person, who likes to ponder over things. Sometimes important, sometimes not, sometimes on absurd or ridiculous things. And "Talent" is something I'm greatly interested in. How we see it, recognize it, what it is exactly and - the most important thing - does it really matter or it is just matter of hard work, when speaking about achieving great results in art or other activities?
This topic is for people, who like to discuss and share their opinion about things, regardless of what that opinion might be.
In my opinion, talent is a set of benefictial traits that are positively affecting our development in certain area. For example, if you have a good memory, then you'll more likely to become a better student. If you have good imagination, you'll probably become a better artist. If you are learning throught your body, you'll most likely be better at sports. In short, I think that talent exist. And yes, it does matter. If someone's learning curve is better due to certain natural traits, then that person will develop better than non-talented person, given that they will spend the same ammount of time and effort on particular activity. Theoretically, less gifted people can achieve the same result as gifted ones, if they put more time and effort in what are they doing. But it is really true?
Being a psychology student for almost two years, I've had to oportunity to ask one of my lecturers, who is interested in psychology of creativity on the matter. According to her, no. By traning, avarage person can achieve something decent, but not as great as truly gifted people. That only confirmed what I have actually learned throught my life. Back in those happy and cherful days when I used to train martial arts, I've met a kid that just became beginner. In spite of him claining that "he didn't train even once", he had a level of flexibility that I could have only dream of. And I have trained 2 years already. I've also met many people, who were able to draw really well. Some of them were my classmates - their drawings were anatomicaly correct, pretty and sometimes creative, in spite of "drawing only when they were bored durning class". I'm interested in drawing, but most of my works aren't above level of "miserable", in spite trying. So, what's difference between them and me? Talent.
For further proof that it does matter, let's take Savants. These are heavily handicaped people due to mental disorders or brain damage, but in spite of that, they are really talented in one certain area. Drawing a panorama of Rome just by seeing it once? Done, no practice needed. Writing Pi for about 100 numbers after comma? No problem. Being able to solve complex mathematical problems (using really great numbers) in their memory? Easy. There is few Savants, thought.
Also, after living in years of separation, the correlation between IQ of identical twins were very high, with nurture factors having very little matter. That, can be taken as another proof, althought it might be debatable, since even today there is no one abiding deffinition of intelligence in psychology.
Assuming that anyone here is interested in this... What is your view on the topic? Do you have proofs, that there is no such thing as "talent"? Or maybe your view on the topic is very unique? I'll be glad to see a respone.
By the way, I have no intention of this topic becoming "me vs. the rest of the world" kind of thing.
This topic is for people, who like to discuss and share their opinion about things, regardless of what that opinion might be.
In my opinion, talent is a set of benefictial traits that are positively affecting our development in certain area. For example, if you have a good memory, then you'll more likely to become a better student. If you have good imagination, you'll probably become a better artist. If you are learning throught your body, you'll most likely be better at sports. In short, I think that talent exist. And yes, it does matter. If someone's learning curve is better due to certain natural traits, then that person will develop better than non-talented person, given that they will spend the same ammount of time and effort on particular activity. Theoretically, less gifted people can achieve the same result as gifted ones, if they put more time and effort in what are they doing. But it is really true?
Being a psychology student for almost two years, I've had to oportunity to ask one of my lecturers, who is interested in psychology of creativity on the matter. According to her, no. By traning, avarage person can achieve something decent, but not as great as truly gifted people. That only confirmed what I have actually learned throught my life. Back in those happy and cherful days when I used to train martial arts, I've met a kid that just became beginner. In spite of him claining that "he didn't train even once", he had a level of flexibility that I could have only dream of. And I have trained 2 years already. I've also met many people, who were able to draw really well. Some of them were my classmates - their drawings were anatomicaly correct, pretty and sometimes creative, in spite of "drawing only when they were bored durning class". I'm interested in drawing, but most of my works aren't above level of "miserable", in spite trying. So, what's difference between them and me? Talent.
For further proof that it does matter, let's take Savants. These are heavily handicaped people due to mental disorders or brain damage, but in spite of that, they are really talented in one certain area. Drawing a panorama of Rome just by seeing it once? Done, no practice needed. Writing Pi for about 100 numbers after comma? No problem. Being able to solve complex mathematical problems (using really great numbers) in their memory? Easy. There is few Savants, thought.
Also, after living in years of separation, the correlation between IQ of identical twins were very high, with nurture factors having very little matter. That, can be taken as another proof, althought it might be debatable, since even today there is no one abiding deffinition of intelligence in psychology.
Assuming that anyone here is interested in this... What is your view on the topic? Do you have proofs, that there is no such thing as "talent"? Or maybe your view on the topic is very unique? I'll be glad to see a respone.
By the way, I have no intention of this topic becoming "me vs. the rest of the world" kind of thing.
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Though keep in mind, unlike the past, mental disorders have been recognized to be far more widespread these days then were thought in the past, so people who struggle to learn something despite trying their hardest to learn, could simply have a disorder holding them back. Not enough to have readily visible signs, but impairing slightly the way they perceive or process information.
Of course you also can consider people the people who have been involved in life-threatening accidents and spontaneously develop not only a near Savant grade talent, but an almost unstoppable compulsion to engage in that action. There's been several cases where people have been struck by lightning and suddenly developed master level piano playing, drawing, or painting skills, despite having never trained or learned anything about those fields prior to their accident. On the other hand, they also have an uncontrollable physical need to engage in that outlet, or they go through terrible withdrawal symptoms if they don't or are prevented in doing so.
Thank you for reminding me of factors I didn't mentioned in my first post. But, I think or even rather know, that mental disorders aren't the only factors that can hold someone back. Think of such factors like level of introvestion/extroversion, people's self-esteem and other traits like these. Depending how they are mixed, they in fact can minimalize the rewards of your efforts.
I don't know about your example with lightning struck, nor I ever heard of it. If you have any links to articles regarding this topic, I'll be grateful for sharing them with me.
@Imperator
Ok, but note that composing music and actualy playing it are different things. Thought, connecting creativity and talent is still a viable outlook.
Sensibility (which actually means to use your senses) is something that everyone has, but only those who practice it (by observing, listening, feeling, remembering) will make you better at something.
You've mentioned introversion/extroversion . Both must be balanced - a very extroverted person needs to learn concentration and self discovery , while a shy person must learn to talk and listen to others.
You also mentioned self-steem . Well, it comes from knowing yourself , doesn't it? So sensibility is also important.
Creativity also comes from observing - how can you make something new without really looking at what we already have? If there's one thing I can say that I really learned at Art School is that nothing comes so easily, it takes observation and practice.
I must say that I as much agree with you as I disagree. You certainly have right about introverts and extroverts having to learn to cope with their imperfections. But, no matter what they do, they'll still have some tendencies in their behaviour. Also, people cannot change the way how they nervous system is reacting to stimuli and how much it needs of those stimuli to become actuated. Introverts always will have tendency to avoid uneccesary stimuli, since they nervous system is easily actuated. Extroverts, on the other hands, needs more stimuli and that is why they are seeking them.
Self-steem comes from knowing yourself, true, but that's not all. Also, it comes from accepting yourself. For many people, accepting themselves is very hard, believe me.
I also agree that nothing comes easy. For me, that is. I know many people who don't have to work particulary hard to earn something. In art, sports, studies etc. Hence I believe they are talented, and I am not. Well, maybe in videogames, but that is useless trait, I'm afraid ;p.
I might not agree with your view in 100%, but I find it interesting and insightful.
Firstly I do believe that "Talent" exists. Some people seems to naturally grasp ideas better than others, some seem naturally faster or stronger naturally with less training. Obviously, this points towards it being on the "nature" side of the argument. However, I can also agree with what Awong124 says about hard work being able to compensate for such deficiencies, especially if the person with the talent refuses to capitalise on it.
Using your martial arts suppleness as an example: you CAN get to that level of suppleness, but my God would it take years up on years. My girlfriend was an ex-ballet dancer (she just got her degree in Psychology, funnily enough) and I can testify the effort which many people put in to get to that level. However, had you and this other guy BOTH undertaken that same training, he would have still been better, or you would have both reached some form of physical limit. At least, that's my opinion and experience on the matter.
The same sort of thing applies for most physical "talents", for example extra muscle mass, sprinting, etc. Yet for mental ones, I am a pupil of the Tabula Rasa school of thought. I full believe that everybody is capable of understanding everything. Whether they want to or not is down to their own personality. It could be their lack of confidence or that they lack prerequisite understanding (E.g. you need a certain level of mathematics to understand physics) or that they merely don't find it interesting because of their personality or mindset, which is mostly influenced by their environment.
Drawing is also a fantastic example. I remember a girl in the year above me when I was around 8 or 9 who could draw beautifully, fully formed hands grasping objects... while I could barely do stickmen. However, I do have no doubt that should I ever be interested in drawing, I could get to her level with a lot of hard work. Far, far more work than she ever put in; just to get the same results.
On the introvert/extrovert thing: I believe there is a misunderstanding here. Most people consider introverted people to be "shy", this is a common misconception. The specific definitions are:
Extraversion is "the act, state, or habit of being predominantly concerned with and obtaining gratification from what is outside the self"
Introversion is "the state of or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one's own mental life"
Note: Introversion is not seen as being identical to shy or to being a social outcast. Introverts prefer solitary activities over social ones, whereas shy people (who may be extroverts at heart) avoid social encounters out of fear.
[source: Wikipedia. Not the best source, but it will do for these purposes]
As an introvert myself, I would explain it more as not caring about others opinions of your actions, whilst extended social interaction becomes draining. I am by no means a "shy" person, I am very confident and able to articulate myself when and where it is needed; I prefer to choose not to as social interaction is draining for me.
But yes, I can agree with you to a large extent: talent can make a huge amount of difference. However, I note that some people (including your lecturer who, in my experience, are always self-indulgent half wits who couldn't find a career. Not that I'm saying people who share this opinion are halfwits, just a reminder that lecturers are often very, very fallible) consider talent to "extend" a person's potential, whereas I would argue that we all have the same potential, yet talent can give us a huge boost to start with. Maybe even an increased learning rate. But I would disagree that it gives anybody more potential.
For example, if I am talented at art, I will probably find it interesting. If I find it interesting, I will invest more time into it, becoming better and better. You then have this kind of positive cycle which allows people to excel. Tying this into the intro/extrovert argument: an extrovert would probably also be more influenced by environmental factors in this case. If their parents discover the child's talent and interest for art; they may decide to nurture that talent and help it develop or may hinder it. Introverts may have this issue too, but may not let it affect their interest as much as they don't seek as much external gratification. Those extroverts that do receive approval/encouragement from their environment are obviously more likely to take it positively than introverts.
Being less dependent on environmental factors, particularly external gratification, I would suggest that introverts are more likely to develop their talent further, left to their devices; providing they were interested in it to begin with. But then, I am a little biased there.
I think talent is rare and very overrated, I think practice is the essential component to aqcuire skills.
For instance, the most talented musicians consistently train the most, and even footballers like Messi and Ronaldo trained for an impressive amount of hours. However, there may be people training as much as these, the difference, as I interpret modern psychology (check out Bandura or Deci & Ryan) is the building of self-efficacy, which is belief in personal abilites to overcome obstacles and perservere when overcoming challenges in a particular field.
So, I think that Messi probably has great genetic groundwork as in perception, reflexes and balance, but that these have been developed through a long time through practice from very early childhood. Wherein increased skill ahs only fueled the will to practice and internalise more and more skills. Others might train the same amount as exceptional atheletes, but to acquire amazing skills the activity has to be qualitative good and be connected with eventual success.
1) You're right , no one can be 100% balanced. But this is natural to any human, and knowing it allows you to at least orient yourself.
2) Indeed , accepting yourself can be hard. But dealing with it takes a lot of patience and intelligence. People who spend most of their lives not accepting themselves tend to attract all sorts of health and mental problems, so the best thing to do is to be flexible and tolerant about yourself and others.
3) Well, some people work less than others to get what they want. Britney Spears lipsynchs in front of thousands and earns millions , but I don't think she has much talent. Competent musicians work really hard for an opportunity to perform, and they're way too talented.
Talent alone is not enough , it also takes hard work and intelligence to persevere.
Personally, I agree with the idea that we say we lack talent when we do not wish to or cannot invest the time in learning ourselves. It makes us feel better to believe that we are simply not predestined to be good at something rather than that we lack the resources to get there.
Consider the next time you compliment someone on their "talent," are you acknowledging the work they have put in?
Hi, and thank you for your reply. If this is your "two cents", then you must be a wealthy man, indeed!
About introversion and extroversion, there is much more to that than wikipedia says, thought explaining it in non-native language for me would be too troublesome, to be honest. Generally, I can see that you are rather optimistic about things, thinking that every person has capabilities of learning what they want. Then again, opinion is an opinion, I can't really argue with it.
@DJKajuru
I can't deny it. Talent by itself doesn't guarantee success.
@Moomintroll
I get an impression that you aren't talking about talent, but skills. Because developing skills takes time, patience and hard work. Talent, on the other hand, is something than enhaces your growth in those skills. And, who said that the truth can't make us feel better?
I am also aware that by saying that someone is "talented" I can express a disrespect towards ammount of work people are putting in their work. Hence I often (example, I did that on one or two ocassion on this forum) ask artists how much time they are spending daily to reach that level of skills. Depending on the answer I recieve, I can judge if it is mostly talent, or mostly hard work. Funny thing is that artist hardly ever are giving my any specific answers, so most of the time I can't really tell.
That is what would see, talent. As a matter of fact, he'd been playing the piano every day in every possible spare moment, practically as a full time job. It was all that work that gave him the musical skill and knowledge that some would read as his talent, making it easier for him.
It might be easier for some people to pick things up, but in the end I'd argue it is the work that they put in that is important, both in terms of their skill and improving their ability to learn. Maybe that is my answer to your original question, rather than the direction I went in!
Edit - I am speaking from personal experience only, I do not know anyone who is good at something but hasn't worked at it.
For example take the top 100 tennis players. What makes the difference from those in the top 10 to those in the bottom 10? I'm sure they all work extremely hard at their game. But I think that if you ranked them in order of how much they practice, you would likely get a completely different list to the actual top 100. It's natural talent (plus hard work) that's required to become the very best player.
Sprinting is another example - the top sprinters all have a lot more of the fast-twitch type muscles than most other people. And training can't really do much to improve the proportion of fast-twitch muscles. So unless you are born with this natural talent, you are never going to be a 100m gold medallist. Of course if you are born with it, then you still need to put in a huge amount of hard work to get that good.
My final example would be intelligence. People's IQ test results don't really change much once they reach adulthood. There's a certain amount you can do to keep your brain challenged and ready, but you aren't going to go from 120 IQ to a 190 IQ just through working harder.
You can levelup and allocate skillpoints in that skill, but the person with Talent will always have a +2 or higher bonus. Meaning that with some levelling, you can become his equal in that skill, unless he trained along with you, in which case he'll still have a higher total.
What I've always found interesting is that people reward and are amazed by Talent far more than hard work, while the former is simply a question of getting a lucky diceroll at birth and the latter is...well, hard work.
I can relate to you in some areas, even thought I have never really been to art school or anything like that. I do, however, know many people who's skills seems unavaliable to me, in spite they [people] being often younger than me. My self-steem also suffered because of this. There is one difference between us, thought. I haven't given up yet, since giving up would make me only feel worse, so there is no really point quiting doing what I like to do.
People who suffer from low self-steem should seek mental strength before anything else. How? I have no idea, thought quiting won't make anything right.
Indeed, considering I am generally a pessimist (I call myself a "realist" but others disagree), I would definitely say that I believe humans all have the same or near-same potentials. Although there are obviously some special geniuses and polymaths out there who are the obvious exceptions to the rule.
But then, I am also an idealist so maybe I am being a little too idealistic here. I'd like to think that people are at least equal in what they can achieve (mostly) but varying factors can limit or strengthen them.
As you said, it is mostly opinion and, considering it's over the internet with limited sources, mostly conjecture too. I do certainly see what you are saying though, especially on a physical level. I don't think I'd ever be as fast as Usain Bolt, no matter how hard I trained :P
It's definitely better than the example I was thinking of which is rather "adult" in nature. Something to do with a "flagpole" representing talent and "ability to use said flagpole" representing hard work
Long Answer, I think you need to have at least some talent at something to be great at it, but through experience you can learn so much more. Being really talented at something you might get a headstart compared to others, but it doesn't mean you'll always be the best.
If going for an, apparently, non-reachable goal would teach me patience, self-discipline and most important of all, to endure, then I think it would be worth a try.
I understand and respect you quitting, thought. If you have found something new, which makes you happy, then it's all good. My previous response was just because you have sounded very depressing.
I agree with majority of what you just said, and I DO know what long-distance relationships requires in order to be maintained. I was in one once, after all. I just hope your will be more fruitful in the end. Have a good day.