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Comment by sp3000 | Hacker News Reader

Why can't we just admit that some people are born with certain genetic traits that allow them to excel in certain fields? Practice would accentuate those gifts and is vitally important, but let's not pretend everyone is capable of everything if they just practiced more.

Hell, even the ability to commit to extended periods of practice requires certain genetic ability. Most people are not born with the ability to hyperfocus like Bill Gates and work for 24 hours straight like he was able to do during the early days of Microsoft.

We accept ADHD has genetic components, and so the ability to focus for extended periods of time (which is what practice entails) is inherently easier for certain people.

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Because the ramifications of that simple and obvious fact are probably too painful for most people (and for society as well).

But, in defense of this reality rejection, you never know until you try. If you follow the nonsense kindergarten line of "You can be anything you want to be if you just try hard enough and dream!" you likely are going to be better off than if you give up early because others are better than you are.

But yes... far too many people wind up in areas they don't belong, and they struggle, meanwhile they have real gifts in other areas that remain unused.

The ability to sync your natural talents with your efforts are probably one of the unspoken keys to success.

Optimistic: its often repeated that everyone has some real gifts. Just not true. The vast majority of people are average. That's the meaning of the work 'average' - most people are like that.

An average person has one real chance: work their butt off at something they actually like doing (so they don't get discouraged so fast) and get better than average. So I call it good advice to follow your dream. Beats following someone else's dream anyway.

Hahahah.

Good points... but it's not optimism. It's kindness.

See, I feel everyone is special in their own unique way...

(ok, maybe some people really aren't special in any way, but we can't shoot them, so lets just pretend they have a special gift if its alright)

> let's not pretend everyone is capable of everything if they just practiced more

From the article:

Her next step is to find out what factors contribute to being an expert on an instrument, playing field, in the classroom or at work. She hopes to investigate such factors as basic abilities, age when starting to learn the skill, confidence, positive or negative feedback, self-motivation and the ability to take risks.

A great practice musician could freeze up in front of an audience, she said. Yet someone less skilled but with more confidence could shine.

> Why can't we just admit that some people are born with certain genetic traits that allow them to excel in certain fields?

Because throughout all of world history there are many examples of people taking that logic too far in order to consider certain races, certain sexes, and people from certain lands as inherently mentally inferior, and in the worst case, exterminating them in the form of a proposed "solution" to the "problem".

People strongly hesitate around this sort of talk for a reason.

This is the problem. Intellectual ability should never correlate to the inherent worth of an individual. You can be an idiot and still have the same right to happiness and everything else that comes along with being a human being. But this doesn't mean we should not accept certain realities based on how people might interpret science. Science just is. What we need to fix is how people act towards one another.

It's scientific fact that intelligence as measured by any manner of g-factor psychometry has heritability correlates of between 0.4 and 0.5. Furthermore, studies such as the Minnesota transracial adoption study show clearly that these correlates apply within racial groups, having fully negated socioeconomic and parenting factors. We have willfully ignored reality per the ideological dictates of progressivism for the last fifty years.

Feelings and ideology trumping reality may work for a while, but it can't last forever when faced with competition from groups and nations that harbor no such illusions, such as the Chinese, who are investing in their genetic research labs to investigate the genetic origins of intelligence so as to benefit their own population generations hence. We, on the other hand, are too frightened to even talk about such investigations. Much to the detriment of our own future.

About that ADHD part... I have ADHD but I don't have problems focusing for extended periods of time as long as the task is mentally engaging.

I have problems starting and switching tasks. In fact, my inability to switch contexts delays the task stoppage, allowing me to focus longer!

Many ADHD patients don't have problems attaining focus, but actually only directing it.

Not related to your point and probably supports it (I'm a good programmer because I hyperfocus, what some people call being in the zone). I just wanted to point it out.

Because it still doesn't explain what is driving the aptitude. It's sort of like how multiverse theories of the universe attribute the values of various constants to random chance. It may be the case, but it's only interesting as theory insofar as it generates experiments, and we're just not there yet with our understanding of genetics and neuropsychology (but I suspect we will end up there).

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