What is Talent?
There are many possibilities.
First option, Talent is how good you are at something It is innate, and skill based. For example, I play soccer. My talent lies in my reflexes and my motor control. This is the most widely perceived view.
Secondly, Talent could be how enthusiastic I am, how pasisonate I am about playing soccer. I don't play very often, but when I do, I use all of my concentration and analyze every possible move, dribble, constantly mark players etc. I am concentrated and interested and therefore gain the most out of it.
Thirdly, Talent could be our motivation, how often we practice playing soccer, passing the ball, etc. This suggests effort as the underlying reason for talent.
I personally am a supporter of the third option. Why is it that our talents lie where we are interested? For example, "if I am talented at soccer, then I also like to play soccer." Rather than, "I am talented at soccer, but I don't enjoy playing it, and instead like to play Table Tennis which I am not very good at"
Do our talents clash with our interests? Are we interested in the things in which we are talented or is there a lot of latent talent that we have which is gone to waste naturally since we either never identify our talents or don't enjoy them.
Despite my personal favourite being the meritocratic view of achievement being related to effort, I think most people generally give excuses such as "He worked so much harder," or, "He is more talented"
Either of these excuses are given. When we have worked hard at something we care about and fail, we generally give the excuse, "Oh they worked harder", because this allows us to boost our own ego and telling oursleves that we are capable of attaining the same achievement. If we work hard at something we don't care about we easily say "They are more talented" because this allows us to preserve our ego again, by saying that we put in an effort and are capable of putting an effort into other things. It is a win-win situation whichever way we go.
This all relates to the fact that people preserve ego wherever they go. In a game, if one is losing, one blames the environment such as "my team is not capable" or "They ganked me" etc. But when one is winning, they attribute all the success to themselves. Once again, it is a win-win situation.
Therefore, we should not attribute talent to skill and luck, but rather we should attribute it to ourselves and how we deal with situations. Because ego is definitely not good, and we should try to eliminate it. (The digression didn't work)
I don't believe talent = effort.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that the more effort/time you put into something, the better you will be at it. I'm raising an example with photography. If a person has been in photography for 10 years, but you have only been in it for 1 year, more likely than not, of course he's going to be better than you. That's only because he put in more effort.
However, depending on your talent in photography, you can surpass his achievements in less than 10 years. So to me, talent is how fast you learn. In a graph, it's the slope/gradient of the equation.
You may have talent (you learn faster) in photography because you are a visual learner. However, what makes you a visual learner? I think this has to be related to your childhood years and how your environment affected you.
Many people like to think that talent is effort and time. That's just a reason used to console oneself to protect your confidence and ego.
And yeah, you raised a good point that people like to preserve their ego but blaming the others instead of themselves. I tend to do that too. But if I'm winning, I don't attribute success to myself. I attribute success to my team. That's because I'm a team player. If we lose, EVERYONE's at fault. If we win, EVERYONE's part of it.
Generally, talent does not clash with your interest. However, it may not have any correlation to your interest but that's simply because you haven't found that interest that you may be talented in!
Last thing I want to mention about this blogpost. When you say 'ego', I'm hoping you're referring to the 'Superego'. Why do you think superego is bad? If it's bad, why do we have it? I think that our superego and our id are there to balance one another and create an ego.
What is super ego, and you have been reading Freud?
ReplyDeleteI dont think there are two balancing forces but rather one "mesh" or underlying character which we don't understand very well. I think that our inhibitions are due to our beliefs and our morality. About your photography example, I don't think it happens very often and as experience being the most important thing.
If someone becomes much better, I don't think they are actually more skilled, but perhaps have developed other factors, such as advertising, etc.
You seem to be a big supporter of the "nurture" argument, why nurture over nature?
By the way, these blog posts are not my personal opinion I am just tryignt o raise several possibilities because I have no idea.
Of course you have no idea. If you had any idea, you'd be famous!
ReplyDeleteThere are so many heated discussions on nature v nurture. It's hard to say how much can be attributed to what but my personal opinion is that the ratio varies among people. Some people's natural abilities might be easily varied by the environment more than others and so on.
But personally, as you found out, I'm a bigger supporter of nurture. You could say that I'm saving my pride by saying this, and perhaps subconsciously I am, but it gives hope to people are are born weak or disadvantaged. I don't think I was ever born that talented at all. I'm pretty average, yet I want to achieve the best. I'm depending on nurture to give me the ability to do so.