Isn't that a bit too certain for something that's not settled at all? How else would you explain the Polgar sisters? I'm sure there are other examples, but this is the most famous one.
Few claims in the social sciences are more fully settled. I don't think you could find a researcher in the world at a major university making that claim that randomly selected children could be reliably turned into world-class mathematicians with enough training.
> How else would you explain the Polgar sisters?
Genetics is the obvious explanation. The father was clearly very intelligent.
Also to clarify: I agree that training and effort can have large effects, and that focusing on them is a good strategy. Over-believing in them is probably a good bias, even. But the idea that everyone is more or less the same except for effort is ridiculous.
As a TA, I've seen adults try to pass initial college calculus many times (and failing - you were allowed to try several times) with enormous effort. It's not a small multiplier
And this was still people selected from the small subset of the population choosing an engineering major. Human are much, much more different than you seem to think
There are many, many people (math majors, competitive programmers, chess players, etc) who devote incredible effort to becoming better, and simply cannot reach elite levels. And while in most cases elite players are also putting in a lot of effort, there are many cases where it is still relatively less than their peers who are trying harder but still lagging them.
Would you ever be tempted to make such a claim (that everyone is close to the same in ability and effort is the main determiner of success) about athletes? It's so obviously untrue that it's laughable. Why would you think that mental ability is magically distributed evenly?
NitpickLawyer|7 days ago
Isn't that a bit too certain for something that's not settled at all? How else would you explain the Polgar sisters? I'm sure there are other examples, but this is the most famous one.
jonahx|6 days ago
> How else would you explain the Polgar sisters?
Genetics is the obvious explanation. The father was clearly very intelligent.
Also to clarify: I agree that training and effort can have large effects, and that focusing on them is a good strategy. Over-believing in them is probably a good bias, even. But the idea that everyone is more or less the same except for effort is ridiculous.
jama211|7 days ago
Also I didn’t say innate ability doesn’t exist. But in my opinion is a small multiplier on top of effort. That’s why I said close to.
petters|7 days ago
And this was still people selected from the small subset of the population choosing an engineering major. Human are much, much more different than you seem to think
jonahx|7 days ago
Would you ever be tempted to make such a claim (that everyone is close to the same in ability and effort is the main determiner of success) about athletes? It's so obviously untrue that it's laughable. Why would you think that mental ability is magically distributed evenly?
tovlier|7 days ago
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