Genius: The Modern View

Genius: The Modern View - Page 3

ktp

United States797 Posts

May 05 2009 00:55 GMT

#41

The fuel for genius is a tough or traumatic youth. Children that undergo adversity, like having a parent die, will have a ton more motivation to suceed compared to a someone that had a normal childhood. But the bottom line is dedication and pratice. A musician is no more a "genius" than a doctor. A musician spends years practicing, the doctor spends year in school. There still someone magicial about someone with talent though, someone that science will never able to pin point. I think thats whats so captivation about them and why we are drawn to them.

Shiverfish

Canada95 Posts

May 05 2009 03:04 GMT

#42

Another very important element in the composition of a genius is knowing how to practice. I would argue it takes a lot of natural talent in being able to extract the most improvement possible. Maximized practice time is very easily eclipsed by practising smarter. And I think for successful geniuses, knowing the best way to improve themselves comes instinctually and feels intuitively natural.

TheYango

United States47024 Posts

May 05 2009 05:32 GMT

#43

On May 05 2009 09:07 thez wrote:
BRILLIANT ! This describes the learning process that i experienced when i made my greatest leap in skill in Starcraft more clearly than anything else i have ever read.

This article explains the genius in correct practice, motivation, determination, placing information into patterns or chunks, and taking examples and breaking them down and reconstructing them. I think the possibilities are limitless with enough time. There is god given talent and there is practiced talent. They both lead to the same place. The difference between them is that god given talent is the talent that has been passed down to you in your genes from ancestors who developed those skills, and practiced talent is the talent that you accumulate from scratch. We all have a god given talent to accomplish practiced talent because we're human and have these capabilities.

While god-given talent allows one to learn more quickly to do things than someone who doesn't have talent, MOST of what is achievable can be achieved either way. One has to reach close to the limit of ability in order to reach where god-given talent makes a difference. Below that level, its not really apparent how natural ability could cap you. To use the Starcraft analogy, most people play at a fairly low level. Large amounts of practice can see visible improvement, and you can easily outstrip someone who might be more "talented" than you. However, you can't extrapolate this to all levels. Even though natural talent doesn't play that much into low-level Starcraft, you can't know how much this might affect the highest level of play. For all we know, natural talent (and luck, of course), might be the ONLY things separating the very top tier of progamers from one another.

This applies to other things as well. With hard work and practice, someone without talent could become a good musician and make a living off of it, and maybe become famous. But there's still a huge gap between being "good" or "famous" and being known in history.

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