by BinaryIgor on 10/16/25, 5:47 PM with 101 comments
by kaladin-jasnah on 10/16/25, 6:51 PM
However, my motivating factor was my interest in the subject, not my innate strength in it, and that has pushed me to study it and become strong enough that I can (hopefully, I'm still in college!) succeed in that space.
There are subjects where I could probably succeed if I tried harder and effusively sweated blood (probably pure math related). Pure math is one of those things I just suck at. But the difference is that I don't find it personally interesting, and so the burden of learning and building talent feels infinitely more overwhelming.
Sometimes I wonder if interest influences not just my motivation, but my capacity for learning and talent. Sometimes I also wonder if my "lack of innate talent" is that actually "I generally learn more slowly." But maybe learning more slowly helps me learn things more deeply as well. Who knows.
* As a side note, the quote I was told is "if you want to be known as a dog killer, you should kill dogs."
by j3s on 10/17/25, 2:16 AM
"lean into your strengths" is a great adage, but what if my interests are mainly "watching cartoons" and "playing video games" instead of "writing lengthy blog posts about talent"?
i dispute that there exists a singular path that everyone should strive to follow - after all, some people follow their interests and go bankrupt as a result. some people take medication to help cope with the realities of their own capabilities. that's life.
by dzink on 10/16/25, 8:26 PM
by Animats on 10/17/25, 4:16 AM
One unusual skill is the military "coup d'œil". This is the skill of looking at a battlefield and maps, and knowing what to do to win. Some commanders have this, and some don't. Bolger, in his "The Panzer Killers", comments on which WWII generals had it and who didn't. (Bolger is a modern US general who has commanded tank units in combat, so he has experience with this.) This seems to be a skill that does not come from training and experience - either you have it or you don't.
The US Army tries to understand this.[1] This writer claims it is a trainable skill, but the training required is long. You have to fight a lot of battles, real or simulated. Even then it may just be bringing out the ones who have the innate talent. There aren't that many good generals. Each generation has only a few greats - Giap, Patton, people like that.
[1] https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/Eng...
by woodruffw on 10/17/25, 12:54 AM
I don't think this ideas are incompatible, or even unintuitive: most people intuit that it's equally wrong to murder a gas station attendant and a professor of medical ethics, even if the latter is more prestigious and/or talented in some sense than the latter.
(This is a recurrent theme in Scott Alexander's writing: establish a dichotomy and run with it, even if it's facially incorrect.)
by babblingfish on 10/16/25, 6:43 PM
Haruki Murakami describes a similar discovery in his memoir "Novelist as a Vocation." He didn't set out knowing he had talent for writing, he discovered it through consistent practice. Only by writing his first novel did he realize he might have aptitude for it. Talent wasn't something he was born knowing about, but something he uncovered through action.
by alganet on 10/17/25, 1:07 AM
``` There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. While the one have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, the others want money; and so they write, for money. Their thinking is part of the business of writing. They may be recognized by the way in which they spin out their thoughts to the greatest possible length; then, too, by the very nature of their thoughts, which are only half-true, perverse, forced, vacillating; again, by the aversion they generally show to saying anything straight out, so that they may seem other than they are. Hence their writing is deficient in clearness and definiteness, and it is not long before they betray that their only object in writing at all is to cover paper. ```
``` As soon as the reader perceives this, let him throw the book away; for time is precious. The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say. ```
by JonChesterfield on 10/16/25, 10:13 PM
Erdos did _great_. I had no idea he spent decades working for longer than most people spend awake but I know the name. If he'd listened to the advice he was given, we'd have a lot less mathematics and he'd have been less content.
Some other people would have been a little less worried about him. Bad tradeoff.
by Exoristos on 10/16/25, 6:26 PM
by dh2022 on 10/16/25, 11:53 PM
But who wants to be that special breed?
by omeysalvi on 10/16/25, 8:30 PM
by trhway on 10/16/25, 7:20 PM
"Like all of Erdös's friends, Graham was concerned about his drug-taking. In 1979, Graham bet Erdös $500 that he couldn't stop taking amphetamines for a month. Erdös accepted the challenge, and went cold turkey for thirty days. After Graham paid up--and wrote the $500 off as a business expense--Erdös said, "You've showed me I'm not an addict. But I didn't get any work done. I'd get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I'd have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You've set mathematics back a month." He promptly resumed taking pills, and mathematics was the better for it."
by commandlinefan on 10/16/25, 8:24 PM
by djoldman on 10/17/25, 10:28 AM
In my experience, those who are truly interested in something and have an innate need to get things done by taking the initiative themselves almost always beat natural talent.
It just so happens that lots of people with those traits end up looking like people with natural talent.
by connectsnk on 10/17/25, 4:01 PM
The line that stuck with me was how you do something is how you do everything.
I follow an indian mystic named Sadhguru who had the same advice. He said if you do not know yet what to get involved in, then do everything with absolute involvement.
This I think was also the core message of the movie Soul from Pixar.
We all might earn different amounts of money in our lives but all of us have the same ability to create a meaningful life for ourselves.
by abhaynayar on 10/16/25, 11:42 PM
Free will does not exist, but I suppose it's handy for society at large to pretend that it does.
I don't know why, but I let myself believe for so long that I was the captain of my ship. Now that I embody the fact that everything's out of my control, I have become so much more relaxed and content with life. I do not compare myself with people that are better (or worse) off than me. They lucked into their lives as well.
I am very grateful for everything I have been given. Even the fact that I exist and get to experience this beautiful thing called consciousness. I do not complain much anymore. I work hard to give back. Not that I am rich. But I am strongly inclined to produce more and consume less, perhaps that is because I wish to show appreciation for the gift of the present that I have been given.
And my reaction isn't positive based on only good luck. I've had my fair share of bad luck, and I have been deeply disadvantaged in certain areas of life. But even for those areas, I do not blame myself. Since I believe that it was 100% the role of luck in shaping everything.
I know some people can react to the lack of free will in a negative way, but that has not been the case for me. Would be interesting to dive deeper into why. This realization has also not taken my agency, or my will to live and take action. I know that sounds contradictory, but it's true.
by noelwelsh on 10/16/25, 7:16 PM
* Don't work in power-law / winner-take-all industries, unless you are truly remarkable (and even then, you need a lot of luck). Entertainment is the most obvious example of such an industry.
* No shit talent exists. Just look at basketball players. Presumably nobody thinks Wemby is 7'5" because he just trained harder at growing tall than anyone else? Why would any other characteristic be different?
by SwtCyber on 10/17/25, 9:21 AM
by lunias on 10/17/25, 1:21 PM
Talent, Experience, Professionalism, Education, and Skill.
by pickdig on 10/17/25, 2:17 PM
doing math is way easier nowadays though i mean there's discord, stack exchange, various llms that help you, etc.
erdos & ramanujan have amazing mathematica intuition which is kinda the 'heart' of math imho. btw...
by dzonga on 10/17/25, 6:49 PM
for a lot of people its possible to become the best plumber in bemdiji. however close to impossible to become the #1 world's tennis player or golfer.
when we play on the internet we are competing globally instead of locally. choose wisely.
by iambateman on 10/16/25, 9:11 PM
Like...maybe. But I think it's pretty well understood that taking amphetamines is a net-negative for individuals and society.
by efficax on 10/16/25, 10:46 PM
by donperignon on 10/16/25, 11:09 PM
by lschueller on 10/16/25, 11:27 PM
by ChrisMarshallNY on 10/16/25, 9:53 PM
I think people get hung up on "keeping score." Things like GitHub Activity graphs, where people write scripts, to game theirs, or pumping out mountains of really bad code, in order to jack up their LoC scores.
And, of course, there's money. If you don't generate money for silly rich people, then what you do is worthless.
by auggierose on 10/17/25, 6:20 AM
by vivalahn on 10/17/25, 12:22 AM