[dcist]

Some people are indeed much better. Anyone who played sports as a kid understands this. Huge differences are immediately apparent in small children. But generally, I agree that, for most life tasks, the differences between people are not enormous. Humanity could do a much better job eliminating poverty. In the future, we may view enormous disparities in wealth as evil as we do racism today.

[lwhi]

Better at sports .. but I bet there's a fairly even distribution between people who have money and don't.

> In the future, we may view enormous disparities in wealth as evil as we do racism today.

A lot of people already do.

[WendyTheWillow]

And a lot of people would be very wrong. There’s a floor to survivability, below which you can’t keep yourself alive, but there is no ceiling. If everyone is above the floor, there’s no reason for concern about those looking for the ceiling.

In the future we’ll pull people up to the floor, but that doesn’t require attaching a ceiling. The will never be a successful society that substantially punishes achievement above a certain point.

[ajkjk]

Yeah seriously, it's pretty much standard at this point.

[georgeecollins]

I don’t think the OP was saying that most people are the same, he was saying that most people have talent. In your sports analogy think about the kid who might be good at wrestling but terrible at track. And vice versa. The worry is that more affluent people sub-consciously see themselves as “better” in a universal way. That is not too different then European aristocracies used to see themselves.

[10xDev]

I don't believe there is a special part of your brain that allows you to be good at say chess, but leaves you with no potential in football (soccer). Of course some people are naturally faster than others or have a higher endurance peak but anything that involves working with your mind comes down to working memory (incredibly important), long term memory and spatial reasoning. That's why you will often see people talented at one thing change careers and still be successful. A good example is a Norwegian grandmaster who was also a national team football player: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simen_Agdestein

[cogman10]

> Some people are indeed much better. Anyone who played sports as a kid understands this.

Anyone with a little bit of nutritional knowledge knows that having a nutritious diet is a major part of athletic competitiveness. Poverty limits or eliminates the ability of a parent to provide nutritious meals.

There's certainly going to be a level of natural talent that exists, but everyone who comes from poverty are playing with major handicaps.

Poverty makes small children.

[DanHulton]

And the time of the year you're born, too! Holy shiiit this fucked me up as a kid.

I always thought I was just "bad at sports," but I was born in August, so I was playing against a lot of kids who had up to like 11 months of development on me. That's _huge_ when you're a little kid.

A lot of those kids were "indeed much better." Because they were nearly a full year older!

[sneed_chucker]

Lots of top athletes come from either poor countries or from poverty within non-poor countries.

NFL teams are full of players who grew up in poverty and ate fast food and processed junk during the formative years of their lives.

[bluedino]

Genetics probably play the biggest role when it comes to natural abilities. Height, strength, explosiveness, body proportions, endurance.

[gosub100]

the parents bear responsibility too, they are the ones responsible for feeding their kids. Poverty gets in the way, but poor parental choices and neglect share the blame. (I know personal responsibility is too passé these days, so sorry to bring up the topic).

[iamthepieman]

My limited anecdata does not support this. The kids who are the best on my children's sport teams are the ones who play club sports in addition to the regular season, who go to sport camps and are on multiple teams. It's clear why they are better. They spend all their time not in class, playing or practicing.

Financially, we are at least peers to all these families that spend so much time on sports but we don't prioritize it the same way so my kids are mid level players.

Obviously genetic differences do account for some variability especially at the extremes. A 190cm sophomore is going to have an easier time on the basketball court than a 165cm kid.

[bee_rider]

I don’t think it is obvious how much is talent, and how much is sort of… path dependent or something. We enjoy doing things we’re good at in general, so we do them more, and get more practice as a result.

Huge differences among small children could be something as arbitrary as “this kid is just under a year older, and as a result 10% more mature,” or “this kid has played a similar sport.”

[aurareturn]

>Some people are indeed much better.

At what? I consider myself a quick thinker and generally high IQ. But my sister has a way of connecting with children that I will never be able to replicate.

So who is "much better"? And at what?

[mewpmewp2]

You just said it yourself, you are much better at abstract thinking, while your sister is much better at connecting with children.

[bbor]

High IQ. I don’t believe in IQ but the commenters above are discussing inherent talents that our society chooses to reward.

Ps, I personally don’t find “I’m smarter than you but at least you can do X” to be a super comforting thing. I’m sure that comment makes sense in your context with your sister, but I definitely bristle whenever I read it. Smacks of prideful engineers & scientists trying to appear nice while still affirming their base insecurities about being superior to others.

But maybe all that’s just pedantic