Obama affirms teh gay.

[boost]

"natural talent" is pretty much always used as a phrase relative to the subject's peers. Not every player in the NBA is said to have "natural talent", yet all have the genetic make up to compete at the highest levels of the sport. So is it genetics, or not?

[WillburForce]

What if we just take off the natural and say talented?

[Lukie]

"natural talent" is pretty much always used as a phrase relative to the subject's peers. Not every player in the NBA is said to have "natural talent", yet all have the genetic make up to compete at the highest levels of the sport. So is it genetics, or not?

What are we defining as natural talent? If it is things like reaction time and hand eye coordination, yes, there is a genetic component to that too. The whole idea of being born to do something specific is probably not the best way to look at it but using the earlier example of a 'gifted racecar driver', he would probably be pretty damn good at other activities/sports that involve reaction time, hand eye coordination, measuring distances, and controlling his body in space.

Also every NBA player has natural talent lol... however you want to define it. Having courtside seats to an NBA game is one of the cooler experiences and even crappy teams (think tank-mode Cavs) have absolutely tremendous athletes. The game just plays so much higher, faster, and more physical than it looks on TV. It's not even close.

There are a thousands of guys in the gym right now who will never be like Mike. No, in order to be like Mike, you need to start out being 6'6" with 11 inch hands, have the natural power to be able to dunk from the free throw line, elite coordination/reaction/all that natural talent stuff, a legit HOF teammate and GOAT coach, then pour in all the hard work and blood, sweat, and tears and then you have MJ. It's not that all that grueling hard work didn't help MJ. Of course it did. It's just that there are soooo many people who work extremely hard that don't make it to the highest levels of professional sports because they simply aren't good enough. MJ could have worked only half as hard as he did and still been a pretty damn good NBA player, and I don't want to hear about the story about him getting cut from a team when he was 13 freaking years old.

I am still waiting for the reasoning as to why you see a plethora of white linemen in the NFL but not a single white cornerback.

[jackvance]

"natural talent" is pretty much always used as a phrase relative to the subject's peers. Not every player in the NBA is said to have "natural talent", yet all have the genetic make up to compete at the highest levels of the sport. So is it genetics, or not?

This is one of the main points I have been trying to make. How you compare to your peers at a formative age, is crucial. That is what makes your skill spiral out of control and makes it seem like you have innate talent etc.

And the second point I have been trying to portray is that what Willbut is saying, is perfectly normal. In fact, studies show that we as people intuitively think we can discern natural talent in other people, but as it turns out, we can't. We only see results, we don't look at all the work that went into it, or the underlying social and psychological reasons that made a person push himself to excellence, and we mistake this for him being a natural. A guy like Zidane will look like a total natural talent, and this myth is permeated.

I have a great example of all of this, also about how much comparable skills matter, but it's a bit much too type up atm maybe I'll post it later. But another very impoortant thing to know that I remember, is that studies show that we have only about 4 hours of real creative analytical thought per day. And those are most important to improve, because you only improve when you're practicing at the top of your ability! (you don't get particularly better at walking, although you do it every day, is the common example here)

Most of these studies in excellence so far have been done with top instrument players, like violin, piano. To see how this concept translates into reality for these people, they were asked to record their day. And it checked out, what these people do is practice the creative parts first, they compose after they get up when they're still fresh, and lateron they mostly practice the mechanical parts of performing some song.

And the biggest detractor from your time period of peak performances, is social stress. Problems with your girlfriend for example, or in your circle of friends or family, can be enough to wear you out mentally and not able to perform well. While we know this intuitively, it's all very good to keep in mind imo, and to know this has been demonstrated by scientific studies.