Matus1976

I highly recommend "Infinity" with Matthew Broderick playing Richard Feynman. The story focuses on Feynmans relationship with his first wife Arlene, who was probably the love of his life. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116635/

Oh and this one too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EY69_NrsH0

I particularly enjoy this sappy bit from Moulin Rouge http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnaCUPr3q6s

Great, just what we need, another Knook! (SP??) =P Just keep your socialized medicine across the border. As for your Harley assaulter, well you shouldnt have joked about his bike being made by a bowling ball company. Harley riders are nuts, tattooing the brand logo of a shitty company. Hey how about that refund for the tarriff they instituted on 700cc bikes to help 'get back on their feet' I don't see them shelling out thousands of dollars to everyone who bought an import bike during that time. Good luck on your move, if I ever make it out to the peoples state we can start up an objectivist biker club, though discussions of innate talent shall be off limits...

I was a big Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2 player, but EA has dropped the programming ball big time as every other patch would kill the game and require a complete un-install / re-install taking an hour when you factor in having re-download full patches, and would sometimes would not fix it either. I tried the 2142 demo and said if this damn thing errors out I'm not buying any more of the EA Battlefied games. It errored out so I stopped playing it I am a big Starcraft player as well, I love that game. Why hasnt Blizzard made an update to this fantastic game? Give us a higher res, twice the troops and online play and another story line and the thing would be a top seller even without updating the engine. I played City of Heroes for a while, which seemed to have some Objectivist influence in it. Among other things, the centerpiece of the capital city was a 100' Atlas statue, very cool!

Ivan thanks for your comments. I just want to add that nothing I said in this essay contradicts "better to have loved and lsot than never to have loved at all" one of the paragraphs was specifically on the fact that when love is based on proper and healthy things, your feelings do not depend on the feelings being requited (or even if your love has passed on) As long as they are that person you admired and cherished and their characther did not fundamentally change they always remains omeone you admire and cherish. It's a hell of a lot nicer when it is requited, thats for sure, but no healthy relationship should be dependant upon the other person returning the same feelings. I also want to say that what I am talking about in this essay are not 'manifestations' of love, in many forums and groups I posted it people would respond with things like "love is the little things that make you smile" etc etc The purpose of this essay was to examination of the nature of the emotional response that is love. Regardless of your values or the ways you prefer love to be expressed, love is still (again, in a healthy brain) a physiological response to the recognition of your deepest values. That is the nature of the emotion, just as happiness is the response to seeing your values furthered and sadness to seeing them lost, love is (ideally) the response to your highest values seen in another person. We can all have different values and thus love becomes based on different things for us, if you value unhealthy things then you will love unhealthily and probably be in an unhealthy relationship. These euphemisms about love do not negate the point of the essay, they are just examples of the multiple ways love is manifested and expressed, but the nature and core of the emotion remains a response to your deepest values.

I think you mis interpret what is meant by this statement. You don't 'pay' anything in any sense you are talking about, but as a consequence of having values you must feel sorrow at losing them and joy at gaining them, consider the Buddhist path to 'nirvana' (being free from desires) is a path which absolves ones self of values. Sorrow is the price you pay for having a value and losing it. If you have no values you feel no sorrow. Recognizing values and having an instrinsic appreciation for them will necessarily lead you to liking someone who embraces those values, and loving someone who embraces them wholly. In that sense, Love is the 'price' (as in internal consequence) you 'pay' for having values at all and seeing them manifested in another person.

And I would add that it is incredibly difficult to predict climate 1 day, 1 week 1 year or 100 years in advance...

It's interesting to see the diversity of reading topics, and as someone noted, everyone is reading something. There is so much good information out there I can never find enough time. Currently I am reading 1) Kaizer Aluminum's guide to Aluminum casting. I cast my own aluminum parts and have been experiencing problems in pours lately, doing some research to try to figure out what I am doing wrong 2) The Teaching Centers "History of Freedom in the World". I listen to a lot of audio books and lectures, I recommend everyone integrate these more into their daily routines, I probably read 20 or so extra books per year that I otherwise would not. The Teaching Centers lecture series are often really stimulating and really well done. I just finished "Great Battles of the Ancient World" before this, and am eager to get into the "History of the Roman Empire" Next. Often you can get these lecture series at your local library 3) The Gecko's Foot - Interesting book about the aspects of the laws of physics that nature has exploited that we have yet to, mainly things in the scales just below the limits of our manufacturing capabilities but regularly availble to the molecular machinery of biology. The Gecko's foot, for instance, consists of rows of pads with thousands of hairs, and each hair seperates into thousands of smaller hairs, forming a foot pad engineered at the nano level and exploiting the intra molecular van der walls force. Gecko's can stick to perfectly smooth surfaces, can stick to surfaces underwater or in a vacuum, and remain stuck to surfaces after they die. The effect is incredibly strong and a glove made exploiting the same principle would allow an adult male to hang his entire body weight from one finger tip. The book includes many examples like these and the current technological efforts to get products based on them to the market. 4) The Good Man of NanKing - this is an absolutely fascinating book about John Rabe, a Nazi stationed in the Nationalists capital of NanKing in China during the Japanese invasion of mainland China. Rabe negatioted a safety zone with the Japanese Government and nearly single handledly fought off every japanese soldier's incursion into the safety zone, literally pulling soldiers off of chinese civilians while they were raping, beating, or molesting them. There were a few American missionaries and doctors that halped patrol the grounds, Rabe and his fellows are estimated to have saved the lives of about 250,000 chinese through their actions. Rabe organized the effort and essentially became the de facto mayor of NanKing. It has been estimated that over the few weeks of the invasion and occupation of Nanking that Japanese forces slaughtered about 400,000 Chinese Civilians (note - more than both US Atomic bombs combined) they used civilians as target practice, bayonet practice, beheading competitions, you name it. The brutality was overwhelming. Rabe filmed many of the attacks and snuck footage back to germany and petitioned Hitler to end the alliance with Japan. He showed the flims at halls until he was ordered to stop by the SS and threatened. After the war Rabe returned to Germany and was absolved of his Nazi affiliation by the Allies preceeding over Germany, partly for his efforts in Nanking. Even so the stigma of his Nazi membership remained and he couldnt find work and he and his family were on the brink of starvation until survivors of Nanking heard about his plight and sent tons of relief packages and food to him and his family. He was a hero among the survivors on Nanking and many many people named their children after him.

Obviously I disagree that "Love is need" From my essay - "To the people that express your deepest values. Love is the emotional price we pay for having values. The great thing about that kind of love, the kind of love that is based on respect and admiration, is that it is not required that it be requited. And if you think about it, should any ideal form of love require that to sustain it? If sex is the physical expression of love, then love can be sustained without it, even when your respective values drive you apart, the love is not diminished because that respect and admiration for the person remains. It does not require physical expression as sustenance, although that is an incredibly great addition" I have loved someone for some time with no physical expression of our affection for one another. If your love requires physical expression as sustenance, I would argue that it is an unhealthy one.

They tried, but gave in too early Venezuelan strike falters http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2701873.stm MSK, no further defenses offered for Chavez actions?

To emphasize the point both Shane and I were making regarding lazyness and lack of productivity, I came across this article today. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/re...ous/007871.html Nearly Half of our Lives Spent with TV, Radio, Internet, Newspapers, According to Census Bureau Publication "According to projections from a communications industry forecast (Table 1110), people will spend 65 days in front of the TV, 41 days listening to radio and a little over a week on the Internet in 2007. Adults will spend about a week reading a daily newspaper and teens and adults will spend another week listening to recorded music"

I completely understand Shane’s frustration in this conversation, I feel like my position is getting perpetually mis-represented. For starters, MSK’s quoted links on “aptitude”, well that is a very poor definition of “Aptitude” on that Wikipedia link, dictionary.com has the word including both acquired and innate abilities. From my understanding and usage aptitude (as in an aptitude test) never bothers to separate the two. So to further that point, identifying and defining what different types of aptitude (e.g. verbal, numerical, spatial, etc) someone has doesn’t prove that they are overwhelmingly innate any more than identifying the different types of muscles a body build has proves that he was born with bulging muscles. But identifying the various areas people have aptitude (ability, rather innate or developed) in does emphasize something important to keep in mind, someone could have a strong aptitude in one or a few areas that have been developed by something they have done over and over again, whether a child playing with blocks, staring out the window, or continually following lines in the floor with his finger, and that areas of aptitude that were developed from that will play well into other seemingly un related areas, making the child appear remarkable advanced compared to other children who did not engage in such activity. This is something that is probably often mistaken for ‘innate’ talent. As for an organization which measures your aptitudes and then uses that to help people choose a career, I hardly doubt using personality profiles, hand writing analysis, or astrology to do so would be any less successful as long as those people being tested *believe* the test is useful and accurate. You would need to do a double blind study where some people are randomly assigned to the area they are tested to have ‘aptitude’ in and others are intentionally not assigned to those areas, then they are tracked and compared over a long time frame. Knowing some of the complexities of human psychology and how easily we are able to fool ourselves I hardly think this qualifies as scientific evidence. MSK wrote You can do it by comparing the logical consequences of the two. If innate differences are significant, only certain people could becomes experts and greats in particular certain fields, and most people who tried would fail miserably, even with the proper kind of practice and training. If they are not significant, than virtually anyone could with the right kind of training and practice become and expert at virtually anything. The fact that the latter case is true, as again, is obvious from the numerous articles and papers I have cited, proves that if innate differences play any role at all it is very limited. SJW said, after Dragonfly cited some incredible feats of memory Indeed, if you examine this question in scientific detail you will learn how these amazing feats are accomplished. Peoples minds don’t record these tunes like an MP3 player and play them back, they compare it to known patterns they have integrated and then remember only the specific differences. The following are from the Scientific American Issue “The Expert Mind” The article then goes on to explain how this type of memory works, called chunking, is it basically a form of memorizing which uses compression algorithms that relate to the vast amount of stored knowledge at the experts disposal. Instead of memorizing every single chess position, a grand master might say “fianchetteoed bhishop in the casteled kingside” together with “blockaded kings Indian style pawn chain” and thereby by cram an entire chess board in play into his memory by memorizing the pattern as it relates to all the moves and organizations he has memorized throughout his thousands of house of study and practice. It is an amazing feat, but it is not magical nor attributed to a fundamentally different method or capability of memorization. The article goes on, but I think the point is made. The same method is used for all experts and geniuses in every field yet tested. So no, amazing feats of memory do not discount the primarily developed ability position, since everyone who tries can develop these skills, but it must require entering lots of information into the long term memory which must be done by many hours of particular study. Brant said: I too agree with you here Brant. If you stop and think about how much time you could actually devote to effortful study compared with how much time you actually do, it becomes painfully obvious why you (I speak of you in a self evaluation manner, not you per se) are not an expert or genius at something. Most people go home from work, relax, watch some TV, maybe read a magazine, chat with their significant other, have dinner, go to bed. The plethora of idle minds in the world are the greatest untapped resource ever to have existed. I try to spend more and more of my time in effortful study of some kind, but it is as difficult sometimes as physical endurance training and I know I am probably operating at only 20% of my capacity, and I am interested in too many things to focus on only one. I think most people hover around 10%, Doctors and professional athelets probably more like 30 – 40%, while experts and geniuses, like Einstein probably reach 80% or more. The truly rare great genusies of history, the Tesla’s, Mozarts, Da Vinicni’s, Newtons, etc. pretty much abandoned all normal aspects of life, marriage, relationships, etc, and made their lives centered around their effortful study and productivity, probably achieved 90-95% of their potential capacity. Victor said: I think we are working toward a mutual understanding but have been deviating lately (like MSK’s response to SJW’s agreement with Brants comments) But that agreement is not what you profess in this statement. I acknowledge that physiological differences exist, but they are NOT significant in what makes some people better than others at something, effortful study is the primary cause of that. Physiological differences exist and contribute to differences, but the effect is very minimal, most notable only at early ages, and practically irrelevant at later ages. The fact that scientific studies have shown that virtually anyone can become good at virtually anything proves that point. Talent also commonly just means ability, so I don’t think it’s a good word to use to represent only innate differences that give someone an advantage. A talent is a manifested ability, if I say “I am talented” it usually means I can do something well, irregardless of *why* I can do it well. But the fact that some people have greater hand eye coordination, and that you call that talent, does not prove innate talent exists or if it does is a significant contributor to that. You seem to be implying that my position ends up implying that all people must be equally talented, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I am sure that for much of your young life you were moving your hand around and looking at it with your eyes, developing that hand eye coordination. You may have had a particular hobby or interest (like tracing cracks in the floor with your finger) that you don’t even remember now that fine tuned you for hand eye coordination and aptitudes related to drawing. It’s really way too over simplistic too look at a person that is good at something and automatically attribute that to ‘innate talent’ considering it glosses over the whole of their lives actions, interests, hobbies, and developed skills. Angie said: Of course brains are different. We are different people, with different interests, and different abilities. But pointing to studies that show brains are different does not prove why they are different and it is not rationally to jump to the conclusion that they are different because they were born that way. We would need to see clear MRI’s for very young children to have an idea of that, but as you said, brains are still developing for many years afterwards, so that wouldn’t provide very much conclusive evidence either. Aside from locking children in an stimulation free black box and then doing MRI’s after the brains stops developing, we can never isolate all the differences that have come from actions and interests from innate differences. So, was Einstein a brilliant genius *because* these regions were 15 percent wider, or were they 15% wider *because* he was a genius, that is, did they grow and develop differently because he spent much of his waking life studying physics and mathematics? It’s easy to confuse cause and effect in the instances, but if you have ever read about Einstein’s life you would know how incredibly unfair and insulting it would be to say “Well that’s great Al, good job on that relativity thing and all, but really you’re just lucky because you were born with the visual and special area of your brain 15% wider” We know very well that the human body is physiologically very plastic, as I emphasized with the story about the best rock climber in the world today, who as a growing child literally played in trees with her pet monkey, and thus directed her physiological structure so that her arms and fingers are longer and stronger proportionally that most people on the planet. She can do 2 finger pull-ups. Why do we gloss so easily over the developmental plasticity of the body and ignore any possible developmental plasticity of the brain? The evidence that so far has been presented to downplay the developed abilities side of the equation is very limited. They seem to be one of the following 1) an example of an individual who has accomplished something incredible - this is not applicable because nothing about our position contradicts the ability to accomplish great and amazing things 2) an example of an individual who has done this at a very young age - these examples constitute something of interest, but they can also be explained by the fact that every one of these people spent immense amounts of time and practice refining their abilities, even at that very young age. The Indian boy genius had performed thousands or medical diagnoses on people in his neighborhood from referencing all of the medical books he had read. Note this would be highly illegal in this country and indeed most westernized ones. 3) Personal anecdotes of people trying something and ‘not getting it’ no matter how hard they try, while others ‘get it’ effortlessly - this can just as easily be attributed the complex and inter-related developed aptitudes people have that might superficially seem unrelated but manifest themselves in other unrelated endeavors to the bemusement of other people who have not undertaken a complex psychological historical study of the individual exhibiting talent. 4) People have physical differences and thus their brains must have physical differences (obvious) however those differences are probably present and variable to the same degree as the differences we see in other traits (height, skin tone, finger prints, etc) and thus probably make up for many of the resulting differences in abilities - This is an incorrect generalization to make, that human mind variability exists to the same degree that other physical traits do. Many physical attributes are much more similar, yet their similarity is not extended casual to inferences about the brain. How much do brains differ? And does it significantly contribute to genius or expertise? As Angie said comparisons of brains of the young are very few, and even so the brain still develops and changes for some time afterward. The simple observable fact that virtually anyone can become good or great at anything they choose to focus their life on *proves* the limited influence that innate differences have. 5) The brains of really smart people are shown to be physiologically different than other ‘normal’ people - This to me is a very obvious logical conclusion to the fact that our brains are physical entities and change, just as our muscles do, according to our input, stimuli, thought processes, etc. Pointing to different structures in a genius brain and attributing that to an innate difference they are born with is as fallacious as pointing to a body builders bulging muscles and insisting they were born with them. Brains, just like muscles, grow and change with use, and atrophy with lack of use. Did I miss any?

Victor Said: Yes but you are making an observation here, that some people have more of a talent for drawing. That is obvious, but why do they have more talent? Drawing requires good hand eye coordination, playing games and playing with toys helps develop those things, even at a very young age. Maybe good artists are more inclined to be curious about physics objects and movements at an early age, thus developing good hand eye coordination. But maybe they just liked playing with things, taking things apart, building things, etc, as I did to as young of an age as I can remember. I loved putting puzzles together. Artists need eto have a good ability to visualize and work toward an over arching complete image of their drawing. An active imagination certainly helps in visualization, a child plopped in front of a TV and raised there as a baby sitter perhaps won’t be as good at visualization and will develop a shortened attention span. The point is the differences are obvious, but what causes the differences in ability? How do you trace it to something you are born with and eradicate all of the environmental and chosen factors? Ellen said: No, I do not know the extent of differences found between the same organs of different individuals, obviously there are differences, but the point is that people almost always point to differences in height and skin color and say “Look, see, there ought to be a similar extent of differences in the human mind” but are not basing that on any rational fact whatsoever. I could just as easily say “Look at all the differences in shades of hair colors! There must be a similar extent of differences in the numbers of fingers people have!” You cant point to one biological differential scale and assume it automatically applies to all biological differential scales. Yes there are extreme physical differences in height, but there are not similar extreme physical differences in stomach size to body size ratios, or brain to body weight ratios, or blood flow to brain rations, etc, is there? I don’t know, but I am guessing there isn’t. Since you are so adament that the difference is significant, can you cite some empirical evidence for that? I notice in a later post you state my assement is 'in error' And the further point is, no one is pointing at the fact that we all have the same numbers of fingers and toes and asserting that since that is the case all of our brains must be equally identical. That is just as rational as using height or skin color to judge such a thing. Looking at one biological difference and extrapolating it onto a completely different thing is not rational, and my point is that we are far more alike taken as a whole than we are dissimiliar. I realize we are missing a great deal of knowledge about the relative similarities between brains, which is why I point to the only thing we can point to in an attempt to understand to what extent their might be differences, and that is the relative ability of people to learn and perfect skills and what it takes for them to do that. Since we cant hack open a brain and figure these things out, we are forced to look at what brains can do, and all the scientific evidence and large scale studies I have repeatedly mentioned point to the same conclusion over and over again. That expertise is made through a concerted effort of a particular kind over a very long length of time, and that the earlier people start developing a skill the more their body is physiologically conducive to that, and that the greatest of the great humans far from being lackadaisical casual geniuses spent their whole entire lives learning, developing, and challenging themselves and their own ideas. If the observation is that virtually anyone can become really good or great at virtually anything they set their mind to and put the appropriate amount of intelligent effort into it than the conclusion must be that innate differences in Brains do not play a significant role in expertise or greatness. I strongly disagree, I think laziness is the single biggest limiter. But I have also explicitly stated and tried to emphasize strongly that we have no moral obligation to achieve, such an attitude is no different that a secular version of original sin and means you don’t deserve your life unless you do something with it. Life has intrinsic value and doesn’t need to focused on achieving something (like bettering the lives of our brothers) in order to be worthwhile. That is a disgusting and dangerous mentality and I completely disagree with it. But that doesn’t mean that the vast majority of people aren’t sitting around doing hardly anything productive except the barest minimum of things required to live their happily comfortable lives. We all operate at 10% or less of our capacity. But hey, its your life, you get to live it for your own sake and do with it what you please. The only thing I strongly argue against is thinking that you can be good or great at something because you weren’t ‘born’ with that innate talent and thus use it to justify your own inaction. People need to be honest with themselves, if they are not a great achiever its because they choose not to put the demanding effort into it to become one, not because they are physically or physiologically incapable of it. I think that is still debatable as well, and new evidence may lean more to one way or the other, but I am making a judgment call about it now with the evidence currently available. But many of these questions would be very difficult to test and probably unethical if they were tested. Yes it is fair to point out our differences of course, but these kind of identifying patterns are so useful precisely because they had no functional importance and thus could change without appreciably effecting the organism. Finger prints, for instance, play absolutely no evolutionary role whatsoever. Body size and shape does depending on climate, as with skin color, different climates see different body types as advantageous. But in all climates and environments a sharp mind which learns well and remembers things well is advantageous. I believe the shortest adult person ever was around 2’ tall, while the tallest was around 8’, but I was just throwing out a number for the purpose of the discussion. I disagree of course, but in reality Rand is not the final arbiter on this question, the evidence is. As it is to me it seems like she made a very wise and prescient judgment call about the results of evolution and natural selection on the human body and how it pertains to the differences in our manifested abilities. Haha, well to me it has been grueling, and I think the kind of practice that is required to get perpetually better at something is inherently grueling, physically and mentally. But the reason why you are doing it, what is motivating you, is very important. If someone, a parent or society, is forcing you to in some way, you aren’t going to put up with that kind of demanding practice for very long. I wanted to emphasize this point because people had made comments about churning out geniuses like sausages. Its not gonna happen, just look at the forced skilled slave labor of the Nazis in WWII. Jews were asked to design precise and complex machinery to build V2’s. They always worked in a way to screw the rockets up that was extremely difficult to detect before hand. You must, I think, fundamentally find some joy or major purpose in your doing it. I have found that the grueling aspect of it becomes part of what you enjoy, because you know it means you are getting better at it. It is a mental shift in attention from subjective focusing on the difficulties of the actions you are undertaking at that moment to focusing on your goals, purpose, and desires. In my experience anyway. I think professional athletes would probably report something similar, as well as aspiring chess grand masters or professional musicians. It’s not fun doing the same thing a hundred times, but it is fun when you find out how well you can do it afterward ;) My apologies to Brant for misinterpreting his comments.

Hello all, sorry for the delay in my response, I had an extremely busy holiday break and some dates with a beautiful intelligent Brazilian girl =) so this discussion was demoted in priority. Anyway... Victor said: some people, given their physical structure, are better and more apt at playing sports Of course, but it is also very important to note that some alleged physical advantages are not all that advantageous. As the short basketball player example clearly shows, height isn’t everything in basketball. In fact one of the best basketball players in my high school was only 5’ tall. As the biological laws of scaling show, strength to weight ratios increase as size decreases (because the volume, and thus mass of an object increases with the cube of a linear dimension) thus smaller people are stronger compared to their own body weight, and thus can jump higher, turn faster, and change directions quicker. But the further point that this claim attempts to make, is that since there are physical differences in body structures and those physical differences can manifest certain advantages and disadvantages, that the same must be true, and the *extent* must be true in regards to the brain. No one has submitted any evidence suggesting as much. How much difference is there from one stomach to the next? I see a lot of people pointing at physical difference like height, but never physical similarities, like the numbers of fingers that people have. We are far more alike than not alike, so pointing to physical differences undermines the very argument you are trying to make. Victor, I agree with your basic premise, yes people are different, and some people can have some physiological differences in their brain, at birth, that make them possibly better at one thing or another. I think we strongly disagree on the extent to which this is relevant and the extent of those differences. Yes some people are light skinned and others are dark skinned, but we all have skin. Some are tall and some are short, yet almost all of us have ten fingers. The problem comes from trying to isolate and identify the extent to which ‘natural’ talents play a role in our lives. The evidence I have submitted, numerous large scale studies, show unequivocally that in the grand scheme of things, in relation to the greatest achievers of human history and modern experts and leaders in any given field, come from demanding lifelong practice and refining of skills, not from some in born genetic dictionary that gives them leaps and bounds ahead of others. The biggest limiter to greatness and achievement is lazyness, not the brain equivalent of being 4 feet tall. Additionally, if one were to consider someone’s current state of ability, at say drawing, music, being a doctor, etc, at any given point in time it is partly due to innate talent and partly due to the result of practice and study, right? To me, the role that innate ability plays at birth and at extremely young ages is very high, but the older one gets the more one’s current ability must be attributed to practice and effort, and not to innate ability. Yes we may see very young children that are amazingly good at something, but to remain amazingly good and *better* than everyone else at it they MUST practice and develop their skills. To Angie’s points, how exactly can we isolate the effect of practice and effort from innate ability? You must eliminate all practice and refinement from the equation, and the only possible way one could do this is to look at the very young. If you take an adult, and give them a new skill to learn, how well the learn it will depend on things like what they have learned that is similar, what their attitude toward learning is, what methods they have adopted over the course of their life to learn things, etc. If we were to graph the resultant ability of someone as caused by their innate talent vs the result of effort and other things they have learned that end up relating in some manner to this, then to me the graph would be very high on the side of innate talent as the age approaches zero, but drops exponentially rapidly as we get to, say, 4 or 5 years old where it drops to say 5-10% of the total, and then it declines linearly. The contribution of effort, practice, and skills developed that end up being related starts at 0 and climbs rapidly until even at a very young age it is responsible for more than 90% of developed ability, at which point it continues asymptotically as age increases approaching 100%. I think SJW’s post, 369, “The most interesting and useful point here is the one I made: that actualizing your potential can be tricky and take a lot of conscious effort, that you might feel like you've hit a brick wall because of your natural endowments when really the brick wall is your premises. That is not to argue against the fact that one can ignore one's own nature and truly beat your head against the wall, trying to achieve something you never will, but I don't think that is the typical case. Most people give up too soon and for the wrong reasons rather than try too hard. Most people who feel like they can't do something would probably be able to do it quite well if they were shown or discovered the right method.” is well stated. I would add to Paul’s follow up question “where does Talent fit in here” The answer that it fits in at a very young age, but as you get older, it plays a rapidly less important role, especially when it is compared to every thing else you do and how you become adept at doing those things. As a simple example, a kid who runs around and plays alot is going to appear to have more ‘natural talent’ at any sport that involves running and changing direction quickly. But he will also appear to have more ‘natural talent’ at anything that requires coordination and balance. Brant said: “Better to just nurture your nature.” I think this is terrible advice. What this means is to search for whatever you have some ‘innate’ talent at, and then develop it. Why? Because you will be better than average people at it. Is that every a psychologically good reason to develop a skill? MERELY because you think you will be better at it then other people? An attitude like this also implicitly attributes a much greater proportion of ability to innate talent than it does to hard work and effort. What you should do is completely disregard ‘natural’ talent and just look for and develop things you *enjoy* doing intrinsically. After reading through the discussion that has taken place since I last contributed, I agree with Shane’s insistence on distinguishing innate ‘talent’ from innate ‘capacity’ although I do not think capacity is the best word for what I am thinking. I should not have been using ‘innate talent’ because to me a ‘talent’ is a manifested ability. You can not have a natural talent, you can not be born with the ability to play an instrument, etc, but that is not what is meant by most people’s use of the idea. But you can be born predisposition toward being better at someone, due to the innate physiological differences among human brains. HOWEVER, the extent to which these things matter is relevant only at very young ages, after that, practice and devoted effort takes precedence. And the extent to which the innate capacity of human brains differ (what most of the ‘pro talent’ groups seem to mean) is much more limited (as evidence by the numerous large scale studies I have cited which show that the most important factor in expertise is a particular kind of demanding practice) than the extent to which random external physical attributes differ. You may see people who are 200% taller than other people, but their brains are not 200% more dense, nor do they have a 200% grater brain to body weigh ratio. You do not see people with 200% more fingers or 200% more lungs than other people. Of all the physical attributes humans possess, only the most superficial ones vary to any significant degree. Yet these superficial ones are the ones most obvious to us, and so we naturally extend this context of differentiation onto all aspects of the body, even though as I have stated it very obviously doesn’t apply. Ellen wrote: without scare quotes and in which she clearly did mean "innate capacity or predisposition." It is not “clear” from the AS quote on Francisco that is what she meant, it is just as easy to read and interpret that passage to mean that Francisco was amazingly adept at learning things and accomplishing things, none of these require him to have a special innate ability that far exceeds mere mortal men. Given the content of Rand’s previous comments on the subject, your interpretation of what she meant is clearly not rationally consistent with her explicit statement of her position. So either she was irrational and contradicted herself, or you are mis-interpreting a statement that is partly vague. I am inclined to consider the latter more likely given the circumstances. Had she said “Francisco was born better at everything than everyone else” it would be a different story, but she didn’t say anything like that. “as if” is not the same thing as “is” There are five components here 1) Innate capacity (a genetic predisposition giving one a potential advantage) 2) Starting early 3) A particular method of exacting practice and continual self challenging 4) Continually and perpetually practice 5) Motivation or Joy at what one is doing Only with all four of these components is it likely that you will be the best in the world, better than any human who has ever existed. Without that innate capacity, you may not be the best in the world, but you can be pretty damn good at it, especially if you start at a very young age. But even without that innate capacity and starting at a very young age, you can *still* be very good at something, though perhaps not the best in the whole of the world, nevertheless the numerous studies I have cited show without any doubt that it is the latter 3 that play the most important role. Someone with an innate capacity and who starts early, but never continues to practice and never strives with that particular kind of practice will never amount to anything. And the older you get, the longer you live, the less the first two are relevant. A person who has all four, but not the fifth, that is intrinsically enjoying and desiring to do what they want to do, will always be limited in what they will accomplish compared to someone who does have that. Forcing someone into a field they might have a genetic advantage at will not guarantee them the independent joy they get from that task and as such will always limit their potential. I think this last point is an important one to remember when we are talking about churning out brilliant mathematicians or brilliant anything’s with the right nurturing. It’s probably safe to say that a good majority of the population contain element 1) which will relate to some field or another, and it is equally safe to say that the vast majority of the population do not engage in 3) and 4) to any significant degree. Matus

Sorry Everyone, with the Christmas time I have just been waay too busy to formulate a good response and collect my thoughts on the subject, although I think some interesting productive discussion can be had. I hope to in the next day or two. Merry Capitalistmas, Newtonmass, happy holidays, Merry Christmas, etc to all...

Ah, an opening for productive conversation! Victor, please retain this mentality until tomorrow until I can have a chance to make a more detailed response. Matus

Funny that you use your admission of being a rotten person as an attack on me (for milking that fact?) The simple fact that you can't admit that you are wrong on the subject of innate talent--speaks volumes. In the face of ample evidence that you argue away and just blatently ignore to protect the "sanctity" of a misunderstood idea of innate talent speaks much more of your mentality. Am I an enemy of Objectivism? Have you stopped beating your wife? Matus

I did not address the comments yet as I did not think it was worthwhile continuing any discussion if you were under the impression I was lying, and as such that I am a lier (thus making absolutely everything I say suspect). I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not in any way shape or form envious of this child, or any genuis or intellect, that it was just a bad joke easily mis interpreted online. I'll have to try to respond to the points raised tomorrow. Matus

Victor, you do not respect Kat's property enough to leave a thread she killed dead. How charming and mature. Nice red herring too, completely obfiscating the fact of your vicious personal attack against me being a completely egregious mis interpretation of a simple joke. That fact that you were so ready to jump on that incorrect interpretation speaks much more about the nature of your mentality than mine. If you wish to continue to discuss my opinions of Lennon petition Kat to re-open the thread, if not, respect her, as I did, and drop it. Matus

Thanks Michael, I noticed that right away I think it's all fixed now.

The "But seriously..." was applied to the sentence above and not to your referencing that you were kidding about this child's intelligence. But what I see here is that it WAS applied to the sentence above in particular that I quoted. Not that your joke was for him but for US on OL I was making fun of an extreme objectivist position. I made a statement, ""For starters, the kid isn’t all that bright, “Today, I am very much happy to have an opportunity to serve the poor community”" and then CONTRADICTED IT with "But seriously" IMPLYING directly that the previous statement was NOT SERIOUS. What else could that mean? "But Seriously" means everything else that follows IS SERIOUS. Should I have wrote, "For starters, the kid isn’t all that bright, “Today, I am very much happy to have an opportunity to serve the poor community” But seriously. <-- period here? That makes no sense and is completely grammatically incorrect "For starters, the kid isn’t all that bright, “Today, I am very much happy to have an opportunity to serve the poor community” ha ha, just kidding. BUT SERIOUSLY... etc. [NEW SENTANCE] Fine please re write the above sentance and include a negation of theme of a sentance in that very same sentance, and do it off the top of your head and casually in a few seconds, which is all the thought I devoted to this joke anyway. yes, you devilishly clever armchair pyschologists have found me out!!! I Actually ENVY genuis indian 12 year old doctor boy! Cmon. This is rediculous, do you REALLY think I dislike this boy and ENVY him in a way that would make me attack him? You dont know squat about me as I am new to this forum but people familiar with me from RoR and SOLOHQ know I think no such thing. In truth you simply misintereted a dumb joke, which was probably conveyed in a manner lacking of clarity by me in the first place (not unheard of on the internet), ah but that must not be the answer, it must be that I am secretly some talent killing egalitatiran? Yes, that is why I posted in late november on my blog a thanks to all the great inventors and creators of the world "Damascus Blades and Inventors changing the world" In my July post on the "Abdication of Volition" I wrote specifically - In my March 17 post on the television show "American Inventor" I wrote And finally inNovember 2005 I posted Do you think that the person who said and thought these things is ENVIOUS and seeks to attack and diride all the greatest contributors to the world? Why am I going through all this trouble and boring everyone with these links? You give me a hard time because you think I was mocking you objectivsts on OL with my Jokes, while you sit here and accuse ME OF LYING. If you think I am lying, absolutely no further discussion is possible or worthwhile between us. Michael

Its a joke, and the fact that you respond to my comments with out actually reading my post, like where I said pretty much sums up your debating intentiosn. I SAID BUT SERIOUSLY! HELLO!!! WHAT DOES 'BUT SERIOUSLY' MEAN TO PEOPLE! Lighten up. ITS A JOKE!

Just to clarify, that was just a joke, ya know, objectivists don't care about the poor, etc, so if he cared about the poor, he isnt very smart? That was why the very next two words were "But seriously" (implying the previous ones were not serious.) Obviously the kid is very intelligent by any standard of measure, as I said at the end of my post. I'll respond more later, but I wanted to clarify the above was just a joke! When one says they want to 'help the poor' they usually mean holding their hands or handing out food, which is all well and good, but as we all know it would be much better if they directed their effort toward eradicating the things that cause poverty or coming up with cures for illnesses or new inventions that make lives easier, like the LifeStraw http://www.lifestraw.com/en/low/low.asp, or in general electricity, materials, etc. The problem is this idea that innate talent plays a dominate role in these things is not only scientifically innacurate, as the numerous studies on genuis and expertise show, but also undermines people's inclinations to try to do something about these things through their own hard work and mind. Because they think that no matter how hard they try, if they didnt have that 'innate talent' they couldnt have done it anyway. Michael

Ellen said: Nobody ever denied that, and to suggest as much is a disingenuous over simplification of my position. I first said that it is irrational to presume that the exact same degree of genetic variation exists within brains as does for bodies, the latter being directly subjected to environmental evolutionary pressures. The evidence suggests that just like most spleens, stomachs, and hearts are very similar to one another, so are brains. Just because we can see a 400% difference in height (shortest person was what, 24" tall?, tallest was over 8' tall?) or skin color doesn’t mean we will see the same extent of difference in ‘innate learning capacity’ amongst the average population (excluding mental deformities) The vast majority of us are born with 10 fingers, some get 12, but how many have 20? Furthermore, the numerous large studies which show that expertise ONLY ever comes from a great deal of hard work and practice, and not just any kind of practice but a particular demanding focused practice which always seeks to exceed previous limitations (studies I have posted numerous times in this thread) show that if ‘innate talent’ plays a role in mental capacity, it is far overshadowed by how much time and effort someone puts into something anyway. I am still waiting for someone to explain how the russian father 'made' two chess grand masters out of his daughters, were they both born with that chess grandmaster gene? - Michael