February 22, 2011
You Are Not Talented at Cards
Mullanimal said in a thread
Quitting shouldn't be look at as a temptation. It should be looked at as a logical decision. Failing at things you are not good at is ok, it gives us a chance to find something we are good at. The word ‘failing’ has a lot of negative baggage, as does ‘quitting’.
This is standard. The majority of people think failure sucks, but at the same time, quitting is a great option. It's the right, rational, sensible thing to do if you're not gifted at something. They go on to something else to try to find their hidden talent. They look all their lives for that one thing, like a romantic searching for their one true love in the world. Except, they almost never find it. So they accept that they're just a normal person and kind of feel bummed but eventually learn to get over it.
That's the conventional thinking.
Here's an excerpt from Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code that breaks down that thinking:
" Since Darwin, the traditional way of thinking about talent has gone something like this: genes (nature) and environment (nurture) combine to make us who we are. In this view genes are the cosmic cards we are dealt, and the environment is the game in which they are played. Every once in a while fate produces a perfect combination of genes and environment, resulting in high levels of talent and/or genius.
Nature/nurture has been a terrifically popular model because it's clear and dramatic, and it speaks to a wide variety of phenomena in the natural world. But when it comes to explaining human talent, it has a slight problem: it's vague to the point of meaninglessness.
...
What's the best strategy for writing instructions to build a machine that can learn immensely complicated tasks?
One obvious design strategy would be for the genes to prewire for the skill. The genes would provide detailed step-by-step instructions to build the precise circuits needed to perform the desired skill: to play music, or juggle, or do calculus. When the right stimulus came along, all the prebuilt wiring would connect up and start firing away, and the talent would appear: Babe Ruth starts whacking homers, Beethoven starts composing symphonies. This design strategy would seem to make sense (after all, what could be more straightforward?), but in fact it has two big problems.
First, it's expensive, biologically speaking. Building those elaborate circuits takes resources and time, which have to come at the expense of some other design feature. Second, it's a gamble with fate. Prewiring to create a genius software programmer doesn't help if it's 1850; and prewiring for a genius blacksmith would be useless today. In the space of a generation, or a few hundred miles, certain higher skills flip from being crucial to being trivial and vice versa.
To put it simply, prewiring a million-wire circuit for a complex higher skill is a stupid and expensive bet for genes to make. Our genes, however, having survived the gauntlet of the past few million years, aren't in the business of making stupid and expensive bets.
Now let's consider a different design strategy. Instead of prewiring for specific skills, what if the genes dealt with the skill issue by building millions of tiny broadband installers and distributing them throughout the circuits of the brain? The broadband installers wouldn't be particularly complicated--in fact, they'd all be identical, wrapping wires with insulation to make the circuits work faster and smoother. They would work according to a single rule: whatever circuits are fired most, and most urgently, are the ones where the installers will go. Skill circuits that are fired often will received more broadband; skills that are fired less often with less urgency will receive less broadband.
Such broadband installers would be useful if they were preset to work most vigorously during youth when we're adapting to our environment. They'd be efficient if they worked outside our consciousness without cluttering up our limited window of consciousness; after all, from a natural selection point of view, it doesn't matter if we feel ourselves gaining the crucial skill, only that we gain it, similar to the workings of say our immune system.
From our limited vantage point, the increased skill would feel exactly like a gift as if we were expressing some natural born quality."
Since we're talking about talent and cards, this guy's really talented!
7 Comments:
DntWryUllWin posted on February 22, 2011 at 22:45 PM
Great read.
watch3r posted on February 23, 2011 at 09:23 AM
How would you rate The Talent Code alongside presumably similar books like Outliers, Talent is Overrated & Bounce?
nawhead posted on February 23, 2011 at 09:49 AM
I rate it best of all 4 of those books. it's pretty much perfect. Outliers 2nd. Bounce 3rd. Talent Is Overrated last.
BaseMetal posted on March 08, 2011 at 05:56 AM
Maybe the book is very good but this extract about evolution appears to be complete baloney and is then used to imply proof of a point. I am not an expert in genetics but this approach to evolution or arguments appears mad.
"One obvious design strategy would be for the genes to prewire for the skill"
I don't think anybody in their right mind would think that early brain programming for future complex tasks in advance would be good design path or even possible in any way.
This extract seems to start with a terrible plan and then move on to say that a 2nd approach is better than this and hence the correct or good path.
" Now let's consider a different design strategy. Instead of prewiring for specific skills, what if the genes dealt with the skill issue by building millions of tiny broadband installers and distributing them throughout the circuits of the brain? The broadband installers wouldn't be particularly complicated--in fact, they'd all be identical, wrapping wires with insulation to make the circuits work faster and smoother."
This is almost as sensless as the earlier statement. Almost but not quite, so I have to agree the second is better but still it has no bearing on reality. This being slightly better than some earlier mad statement is not a proof that "the traditional way of thinking about talent" is wrong.
The rest of the book may be very useful but none of the section you quoted makes sense to me.
nawhead posted on March 10, 2011 at 03:34 AM
it's obviously not a academic book on evolution, it's a popular science book. you're right, it's quite a bunch of baloney if you're expecting a rigorous argument. but i take it as more a thought experiment in trying to look at talent in some rational light rather than the default line of "i am talented because i was chosen by destiny."
. nobody's ever propsed a scientific model of what this means.
the default view of talent is not based on anything at all other than belief in magical randomness, God, destiny,
anything, at least anything based on what crude empirical evidence we have today, even if it's in its infancy, is better than that.
is your argument simply that the straw man he proposes for the traditional talent myth not solid enough? well, yes, it is pretty flimsy, because the idea itself can't very well be proposed as a scientific theory! that's the problem! it's just this mushy, meaningless belief in some unknown process. it's like heaven. or unicorns. or ghosts. it belongs in the realm of fantasy.
and i think we have to excuse Coyle, he's a journalist, not a scientist or a debate geek. he could go into the finer points of what he's actually trying to do, but then i'm sure he'd lose most of the audience in trying to be so rigorous. i think just beginning this discussion is more important at this point.
BaseMetal posted on March 10, 2011 at 22:54 PM
Maybe there is a lot more to it and I haven't really got enough context butI just think the whole extract doesn't provide any incite.
At the top he seems to criticise the "trad view" of talent, nature and nurture, as being vague almost useless. He then brings in a very dubious extreme, clearly unbelieveable section to say how evolution obviously does not work this way. Then brings in a closer view of brain development where small blocks form networks using some sort of feedback - using an analogy of broadband - I am happy with this although I don't think it is well explained. Then postulates that with these blocks it is better if they are more adaptive in youth - fine but no proof. But another part of it that I don't understand is that this sounds to me like a model of nature and nurture, the thing he said was vague and quite useless. I don't see any incite in this section just some vague babble.
nawhead posted on March 13, 2011 at 17:34 PM
the "broadband installers" is myelin. you're right, this section is weak out of context without evidence for the alternative theory. it's really my fault since i purposely cut that part out for conciseness.
kiddie version: http://www.superkids.com/aweb/pages/features/early1/early1.shtml
more from the book: http://books.google.com/books?id=gIHSN-ht0xQC&lpg=PA68&ots=KXgXGJQphn&dq=talent%20code%20the%20traditional%20way%20of%20thinking%20about%20talent%20has%20gone&pg=PA40#v=onepage&q&f=false
Log in or sign up to leave a comment!