Girl with flowers drawing - Page 3

On June 21 2013 06:01 Demonhunter04 wrote:


There is intelligence and personality and there are things like good genetics (only really an issue in sports), but there is no such thing as talent. Other effects cause this illusion, namely transference of skills, confirmation bias, etc. People don't remember all those times when someone was unremarkable at first but became good with practice, which is what really happens. A humorous example of this memory bias is that you can make people believe you're clairvoyant if you make opposing predictions - people remember all the times your predictions come true, but without recording it somewhere, they'll usually forget the predictions that don't. Saying "you must not have children" implies that you believe your personal perceptions (which is only a sliver of what you actually experienced, let alone everyone else) are indicative of reality. Science has shown us otherwise, time and time again.

My own experiences as a child led me to believe that talent is a real phenomenon, but it really isn't. This has been studied by psychologists and neuroscientists extensively. There is always some other explanation - Losira, for example, played the piano as a child, which contributed heavily to his skill with keyboards.



Physical dimensions, health, and neurological development certainly do make a difference, but the reason people plateau is typically because people stop doing attentive practice beyond a point. Once they become "good enough" for their purposes, they often stop improving because they're doing it semiconsciously. This is an adaptation which frees up our attention when we do tasks we're used to, but has to be worked around if you want to keep improving.