What is talent?

[Paul Mawdsley]

Wow, you guys managed to go a whole twenty four hours without saying anything on this thread. I'm suprised. Unfortunately you guys are making a liar out of me because I said it had 600 posts. Then again this is post number 600.

In any case, would somebody from either side like to state their position?

Jeff,

I threw the words "talent," "neural," and "plasticity" onto the Yahoo search engine and found my way to two blogs on this subject. These seem to frame the arguments quite well without having to sift through 600 posts, many of which were shaped by not listening and complaints about not listening.

The not talent side: Frontal Cortex– Talent & Practice

The talent side: Small Grey Matters– Is expertise under genetic control?

I hope this helps.

Paul

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

... I think this site is 100X more honest than Solo...

Shayne,

Thank you.

Michael

[sjw]

Thank you.

Mathematically speaking, it's not much of a compliment, since the honesty there is, oh, about 0. ;)

Actually the two sites are incommensurate. In my opinion, there it tends to be a cultish loyalty-driven mob with a few individuals sprinkled here and there (some of whom I definitely like so don't take this as totally sweeping). So while I can speak of Solo as a collective (approximately) and judge them accordingly since that's how they usually act, here it does not apply. As far as I can discern, here it's just a bunch of varying individuals. Some more honest than others.

Here, I think, is why: Perigo values loyalty above truth-seeking. Loyalty to his person is one of his priorities. Inexplicably (since he is allegedly an Objectivist), "loyalty" to his person has snuck into his list of virtues. I don't remember Rand mentioning anything like that being a virtue, I for one certainly don't practice it except to the truth. Standing by one's friends through thick and thin is good of course, but not when it comes to debate about ideas--this concept properly applies to different forms of support. In the realm of ideas, loyalty to friends is an absolute vice, it's proof of intellectual corruption.

I've seen personal loyalty here on a small scale, but that's incidental, it's not coming from the site owner. Not that I read all the posts here. I hope my comment applies generally. Anyway, I think it explains a lot of the viciousness you see there, they travel in loyal packs and like Mallory's beast, unreasoningly come to each other's aid when attacking some victim. In fact that's what made me a target there: they were piling on some new victim that Valliant had drug in, and I tried to look at the issue from both perspectives, then I was the new victim.

Of course, the opposite kind of danger is to tolerate anything and never come to any firm conclusions or "harsh" judgements. The purpose of looking from both perspectives ends up being to muddy the waters and defer judgement indefinitely in order for all people to be viewed as "having value in his perspective" and not hurt anyone's feelings. This is just as bad as coming to snap conclusions, and I see that in a few OL members. I also have seen small packs of tolerationists pile on me a little bit--in this very thread. So that's a form of the same kind of "group loyalty" disease that infects Solo--albeit in a more ironic but mild form (being told to go packing to Solo wasn't mild though--that was a nasty, offensive, and ill-considered insult).

To your credit Michael, when I defended myself from this pack behavior (again, mild when compared to Solo), you came to my defense. Thank you.

We had perhaps better consider the universal good and discuss thoroughly what is meant by it, although such an inquiry is made an uphill one by the fact that the Forms have been introduced by friends of our own. Yet it would perhaps be thought to be better, indeed to be our duty, for the sake of maintaining the truth even to destroy what touches us closely, especially as we are philosophers; for, while both are dear, piety requires us to honour truth above our friends. --Aristotle

[Ellen Stuttle]

Standing by one's friends through thick and thin is good of course, but not when it comes to debate about ideas--this concept properly applies to different forms of support. In the realm of ideas, loyalty to friends is an absolute vice, it's proof of intellectual corruption.

I think you'd enjoy scenes from Larry's and my marriage. We're about to go out to a late dinner, and I expect we'll have at least three arguments in the next couple hours, if the evening is par for the course. I sometimes think that people overhearing us in a restaurant might mistakenly believe that we don't get along. In fact we do get along wonderfully well -- and we're in deep sympatico on "basic" views of existence -- but we argue and argue over specifics.

Ellen

___

[Paul Mawdsley]

Sometimes we believe two statements are contradictory and later discover they are not, by expanding our knowledge to include a frame of reference in which a seeming incompatibility dissolves.

[...]

The practice of living consciously entails an openness to evidence that might suggest an error in one's thinking— and a willingness to correct such an error. It is the opposite to self-defensive mental rigidity. Defensiveness is unconsciousness protecting itself.

(Nathaniel Branden, The Art of Living Consciously, 1997.)

[CNA]

Sometimes we believe two statements are contradictory and later discover they are not, by expanding our knowledge to include a frame of reference in which a seeming incompatibility dissolves.

[...]

The practice of living consciously entails an openness to evidence that might suggest an error in one's thinking— and a willingness to correct such an error. It is the opposite to self-defensive mental rigidity. Defensiveness is unconsciousness protecting itself.

(Nathaniel Branden, The Art of Living Consciously, 1997.)

Paul,

That is an absolutely wonderful passage. Thank you very much for posting it !!

Angie

[sjw]

Sometimes we believe two statements are contradictory and later discover they are not, by expanding our knowledge to include a frame of reference in which a seeming incompatibility dissolves.

[...]

The practice of living consciously entails an openness to evidence that might suggest an error in one's thinking— and a willingness to correct such an error. It is the opposite to self-defensive mental rigidity. Defensiveness is unconsciousness protecting itself.

(Nathaniel Branden, The Art of Living Consciously, 1997.)

That is an apt quote for what you indulge in. You are quite rigid in your tolerationist attitudes, nothing I've said so far has been able to awaken you from your passive slumber: you are quite unconscious. What's interesting is the deep irony involved. It might be interesting for you to start a thread on this. I predict that you'll do as you've done in this thread: evade every contradiction, and keep repeating your tolerationist commandments.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Sometimes we believe two statements are contradictory and later discover they are not, by expanding our knowledge to include a frame of reference in which a seeming incompatibility dissolves.

[...]

The practice of living consciously entails an openness to evidence that might suggest an error in one's thinking— and a willingness to correct such an error. It is the opposite to self-defensive mental rigidity. Defensiveness is unconsciousness protecting itself.

(Nathaniel Branden, The Art of Living Consciously, 1997.)

That is an apt quote for what you indulge in. You are quite rigid in your tolerationist attitudes, nothing I've said so far has been able to awaken you from your passive slumber: you are quite unconscious. What's interesting is the deep irony involved. It might be interesting for you to start a thread on this. I predict that you'll do as you've done in this thread: evade every contradiction, and keep repeating your tolerationist commandments.

I'm glad I don't have your opinion of me. You are trying so hard to push my buttons. You really enjoy going toe to toe with someone like you were with Victor. You can only press my buttons if what you say hits the mark or, at least, comes close. Your distorted superficial caricature of me, that you paint with sweeping generalizations, is so far off the mark it only makes me laugh.

On the other hand, I have made no sweeping generalizations of your character. I've merely pointed at your behaviour toward others and said: why don't you take a look at this? You treat people poorly. That's one thing I do have low tolerance for. You might have something of value to say but it gets lost in your "style." Clearly, your style and mine don't mix well. I understand you tend to bring noise with you wherever you go. Now we have to contend with your noise here. There goes the neighbourhood!

Paul

[sjw]

I have made no sweeping generalizations of your character. ... You treat people poorly. ... There goes the neighbourhood!

Enough said? Look in the mirror Paul. Or if you have, get some glasses.

[Mikee]

Paul,

Thanks for your links in post #601. I read "Talent and Practice" first and enjoyed it. It parallels my experience. Nothing comes easy, but after focus and practice you eventually forget that you had any trouble with whatever it was you were practicing. The "Small Grey Matters" article says "Hold on! Things aren't quite that simple." Which I'm inclined to agree with. I've recently read Matt Ridley's book "The Agile Gene", "How Nature Turns on Nurture". He makes the point repeatedly and with examples how environmental conditions can cause the same gene to express itself differently. I recommend Matt Ridley highly. I've read one other of his books "Genome" which I've mentioned in the book section, I think.

Your Nathaniel Branden quote is a gem.

Best Regards,

Mike Erickson

[Victor Pross]

I have made no sweeping generalizations of your character. ... You treat people poorly. ... There goes the neighbourhood!

Enough said? Look in the mirror Paul. Or if you have, get some glasses.

Shayne, the modern Cyrano of scribes and drollness.

[Paul Mawdsley]

I have made no sweeping generalizations of your character. ... You treat people poorly. ... There goes the neighbourhood!

Enough said? Look in the mirror Paul. Or if you have, get some glasses.

Touche! :pirate:

[Danneskjold]

In the words of Crash Davis,

Hopeless. This is utterly fucking hopeless.

On a side note, you guys'll get a kick out of this. I was doing a google search to make sure that I didn't miss anything on the front of that quote, and I typed in "Crash Davis utterly fucking hopeless" into the google search bar. The second link is to this site when I used that quote in the United Nations thread. Just something kinda funny to lighten the mood.

[Mikee]

Shayne,

I find myself mulling over this remark of yours re: Paul's NB quote:

"That is an apt quote for what you indulge in. You are quite rigid in your tolerationist attitudes, nothing I've said so far has been able to awaken you from your passive slumber: you are quite unconscious."

This is possibly the most aggregious insult that it's possible to give someone on a website engaged in philosophical discourse. What is your purpose in posting it? Or is it purely gratuitous?

What Paul is engaged in is called "synthesis".

[sjw]

This is possibly the most aggregious insult that it's possible to give someone on a website engaged in philosophical discourse. What is your purpose in posting it? Or is it purely gratuitous?

I can see how on a casual read it might appear that I just jumped on him for no reason. Since Paul has been popping in to insult me this entire thread and has never owned up to it, and given that I had just criticized this behavior of his in my post, I assumed this quote of his, given without comment, was just another of his insults and responded in kind. But who knows, there's a small chance he was just reading NB and felt like sharing for no particular reason. I doubt it because he wasn't surprised when he received my insult, he just seemed to rationalize why his was appropriate.

What Paul is engaged in is called "synthesis".

I don't know what you mean by this.

[Danneskjold]

I think what he means is that Paul looks at both sides of an issue and creates an answer based on both.

My view on the Nathaniel Branden quote is that we must pay attention to and address other people's ideas in order, not to convince them, but to reaffirm our own in our own minds. If we cannot reaffirm it with our own logic we research. If our research offers us no information that can reaffirm our beliefs, then it would be illogical to stick with them when one side clearly appears to be more logical.

Edited January 9, 2007 by Jeff Kremer

[Paul Mawdsley]

I think what he means is that Paul looks at both sides of an issue and creates an answer based on both.

My view on the Nathaniel Branden quote is that we must pay attention to and address other people's ideas in order, not to convince them, but to reaffirm our own in our own minds. If we cannot reaffirm it with our own logic we research. If our research offers us no information that can reaffirm our beliefs, then it would be illogical to stick with them when one side clearly appears to be more logical.

The idea of synthesis comes from a dynamic causal process called dialectic. See here.

[sjw]

I think what he means is that Paul looks at both sides of an issue and creates an answer based on both.

Yes, I think Paul does aim for that, and I think it's a bad approach. But I wholeheartedly endorse the NB quote, I think it's talking about the virtue of pride in the Objectivist sense.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Yes, I think Paul does aim for that, and I think it's a bad approach.

Bad epistemologically or bad ethically? Why is it bad?

[sjw]

Yes, I think Paul does aim for that, and I think it's a bad approach.

Bad epistemologically or bad ethically? Why is it bad?

New thread maybe? You seem to have a class of objections you'd like to wage against my approach. What would be the proper heading? "Intellectual Tolerance"? This sort of stuff doesn't really belong here...

[Mikee]

Shayne,

"Since Paul has been popping in to insult me this entire thread and has never owned up to it, and given that I had just criticized this behavior of his in my post, I assumed this quote of his, given without comment, was just another of his insults and responded in kind."

Given that Pauls' NB quote fits perfectly with his previous post containing the two links regarding different views of the nature vs nuture argument, and that post itself followed a 24 hour gap where there were no posts on this thread I doubt that there was any intentional insult towards you or anyone contained in the NB quote.

You do take some getting used to. I suggest a cease fire and a wait and see attitude.

What Paul is engaged in is called "synthesis".

"I don't know what you mean by this."

Suppose there are two explanations of the same thing, both of which are incomplete. Taking elements from both of the first two explanations and creating a third more complete explanation would be synthesis.

[dan_edge]

Pross steals from various people's posts on this SOLO Passion Thread in an attempt to gain credibility here.

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Victor Pross, Post #52 of This Thread

"For me, talent can be said to be a “raw material” that can be honed when one consciously decides to become a craftsman of these materials."

Jennifer Iannolo, Post on Solo Passion 'Talent' Thread

"For me the analogy is that of raw materials being honed when one consciously decides to become a craftsman of said materials."

Victor Pross, Post #52 of This Thread

"There is no question that we are born with certain innate abilities, and I've come to understand that Rand was particularly referring to conscious thought with her tabula rasa proclamation. Of course, it's what we choose to do with those abilities that determine our course."

Jennifer Iannolo, Post on Solo Passion 'Talent' Thread

"To me there is no question that we are born with certain innate abilities, and I've come to understand that Rand was specifically referring to conscious thought with her tabula rasa statement. Of course, it's what we choose to do with those abilities that determines our course."

Victor Pross, Post #52 of This Thread

"Knowledge begins with sense experience--but there's nothing to say that different capacities can't be innate."

Penelope, Post on Solo Passion 'Talent' Thread

"Knowledge begins with sense experience. But now talent, there's nothing to say that different capacities can't be innate"

Victor Pross, Post #52 of This Thread

"...I understand that there is both a cognitive and a physical aspect to music that form sensitivity to pitch, meter, and rhythm. Such a person can take these sensitivities and utilize them to improvise or imitate musical ideas. The sensitivities themselves are the raw talent, the “raw material.” Their utilization is essentially mental capacity. Of course the application of training serves to improve both."

Adam Buker, Post on Solo Passion 'Talent' Thread

"In music there is both a cognitive and a physical aspect to music that form a sensitivity to pitch, meter, and rhythm. Such a person like myself can take these senitivities and utilize them to improvise or imitate musical ideas (this is true of trained and untrained musicians alike). The sensitivities themselves are the raw talent. Their utilization is essentially mental capacity. The application of training serves to improve both."

---------

This is morbidly humorous because, later in that same post, Pross recounts a story of "a friend of [his]" who had a talent for music. That "friend" was Adam Buker, who Pross had just plagiarized. The story itself is also mostly cut-and-pasted:

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Victor Pross, Post #52 of This Thread

"There is a friend of mine whose mom has told him that since infancy, whenever music was being played, he would pay attention--very keenly. When he was around two years old, his family took him to a wedding of a relative where the wedding march was played. The next day he was playing the wedding march on a little toy keyboard. It was amazing. Ability wasn't the right word to use, but from the beginning he exhibited great sensitivity to music."

Adam Buker, Post on Solo Passion 'Talent' Thread

"My mom has told me that since infancy, whenever music was being played, no matter what I was doing, I would pay attention. When I was around two years old, my family took me to a wedding of a relative (it was the first wedding I had ever been to). The next day mom hear me playing the wedding march on a little toy keyboard someone bought me as a present. Ability wasn't the right word to use, but my mom and dad have made clear to me that from the beginning I exhibited great sensitivity to music."

---------

--Dan Edge

(Note from MSK: Thank you, Dan. Duly edited.)

[dan_edge]

Here's a new one -- Murray Rothbard:

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Victor Pross, Post #127 of This Thread

"The egalitarian world would necessarily be a world of horror fiction – a world of faceless and identical creatures--devoid of all individuality, variety, uniqueness or special creativity. The horror we feel at these stories is the appreciation that men are not uniform, that the species is uniquely characterized by a high degree of variety, diversity, differentiation--in short, inequality...The great fact of individual difference and variability (that is, inequality) is manifest from the long record of human experience. An egalitarian society seeks to realize its goals by totalitarian methods of coercion.

Murray Rothbard, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature

"The egalitarian world would necessarily be a world of horror fiction – a world of faceless and identical creatures, devoid of all individuality, variety, or special creativity...The horror we all instinctively feel at these stories is the intuitive recognition that men are not uniform, that the species, mankind, is uniquely characterized by a high degree of variety, diversity, differentiation; in short, inequality. An egalitarian society can only hope to achieve its goals by totalitarian methods of coercion...The great fact of individual difference and variability (that is, inequality) is evident from the long record of human experience..."

Victor Pross, Post #127 of This Thread

"...fantasies at the root of the Marxian utopia of communism. Freed from the imaginary confines of specialization and the division of labor—this being heart of any production above the most primitive level and hence of any civilized society--the idea is that each person in the communist utopia would fully develop all of his powers in every direction. Engels wrote in his Anti-Dühring: “communism would give each individual the opportunity to develop and exercise all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions." And Lenin: "abolition of the division of labor among people...the education, schooling, and training of people with an all-around development and an all-around training, people able to do everything. Communism is marching and must march toward this goal, and will reach it."

Murray Rothbard, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature

"...fantasies are at the root of the Marxian utopia of communism. Freed from the supposed confines of specialization and the division of labor (the heart of any production above the most primitive level and hence of any civilized society), each person in the communist utopia would fully develop all of his powers in every direction.17 As Engels wrote in his Anti-Dühring, communism would give "each individual the opportunity to develop and exercise all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions."18 And Lenin looked forward in 1920 to the "abolition of the division of labor among people...the education, schooling, and training of people with an all-around development and an all-around training, people able to do everything. Communism is marching and must march toward this goal, and will reach it.""

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I'm sure there's more, but I'm done for the day.

--Dan Edge

(Note from MSK: Thank you, Dan. Duly edited.)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dan,

Thank you for uncovering the plagiary. OL extends its apologies to all of the original authors you mentioned on this thread.

As Kat and I will be traveling soon, we will only be able to edit these on our return. At that time we will provide our standard statements.

Michael

[Matus1976]

Nobody here is disputing the blind and deaf people have disadvantages over those able to see and hear, but an ‘innate’ talent would be, say for example, being born with ‘perfect pitch’ And if tone deafness was such a strong reality, how is it that languages heavily dependant on tones have no tone deaf people? Have you ever tried to speak Vietnamese? I have spent the last few months learning it and it is a language heavily dependant on tones, the same word uttered at a different pitch means something entirely different. The same word with a high, rising tone, means something different than the same word with a high, then falling tone. The same word spoken at a mid tone means something different than another word spoken at a low tone. If someone was tone deaf and lived in Vietnam or China, they would not be able to communicate or speak. Do you think there are a significant number of people in these nations that are capable of hearing, but can not speak or understand their own spoken language? Perhaps they had more difficulty at first learning it, but the simple fact is that tone deafness is virtually non-existent in these places.

....

So is perfect pitch something everyone has, but we unlearn it? Is it something a rare few are gifted with at birth? Is it something anyone can develop if they have a normal healthy mind and undertake the right excursive at the right time? Or can anyone, with enough practice, learn to recognize pitches without reference?

Michael F Dickey

I realize this is an old thread, but it is still an interesting topic. I just came across this in a recent issue of Scientific American Mind which empirically answers the perfect pitch question about innate talent vs practice.

"In an experiment published in 2006 my colleagues and I gave a test for perfect pitch to two l arge groups of music conservatory students - Mandarin speakers at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and speakers of English or of another nontone language at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. - and found that the prevalence of perfect pitch was indeed far higher among the Mandarin speakers. ... But because the Central Conservatory students were all Chinese, the results could mean that genes that spur the development of perfect pitch are just more prevalent among Chinese people.

To decide which explanation was correct, ,y colleagues and I gave a test for perfect pitch to University of Southern California music conservatory students, including English speakers and three groups of East Asian students divided by how well they spoke their native tone language. Among the English speakers, the prevalence of perfect pitch was just 8 percent among those who had begun music training at or before age five and 1 percent among those who had begun training between ages six and nine. The statistics were similar among the East Asian students who were not at all fluent in their native tone language. In contrast the students who were very fluent tone language speakers performed extraordinarily well on our test: 92 percent of those who had begun musical training at or before age five had perfect pitch as did 67 percent of those who started music lessons between ages six and nine. Those students who spoke a tone language moderately well fell between the two extremes."

Perfect Pitch: Language Wins Out over Genetics - Diana Deutsch et al

www.acoustics.org/press/157th/deutsch.html