The Expert Mind

Vicissidude writes "Teachers in sports, music, and other fields tend to believe that talent matters and that they know it when they see it. In fact, they appear to be confusing ability with precocity. There is usually no way to tell, from a recital alone, whether a young violinist's extraordinary performance stems from innate ability or from years of Suzuki-style training. The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born. In fact, it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field. Even child prodigies, such as Gauss in mathematics, Mozart in music, and Bobby Fischer in chess, must have made an equivalent effort, perhaps by starting earlier and working harder than others. It is no coincidence that the incidence of chess prodigies multiplied after László Polgár published a book on chess education. The number of musical prodigies underwent a similar increase after Mozart's father did the equivalent two centuries earlier."

Comments

conform, obey, or not be with us

[jimmydevice]

There has been a big change in the state of "employment" in the past 10 years. Previously, you went to work, 8-9 AM and and left at 5-6 PM, after that, you didn't belong to the company. You could party, short coke, smoke dope, drink till you got ill, but as long as it didn't affect your standing or performance at work, they didn't care. I'm, not saying that drug use is good or acceptable, but it was YOUR time. Now you are being evaluated for life-style choices such as over consumption of (food), tobacco, hazardous activities and god knows what else. When this happens, we lose freedom, to snort coke, but also to jump out of a plane, or climb a rock wall. Employees have just become assets on the bottom line, to be evaluated much like a piece of machinery.
JimD.