https://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/talent
It's an oldie from 2015, but I still think about it whenever people talk about being talented at something.
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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There is merit in practice, but natural talent is very real. One person could spend years practicing something that someone else picks up and surpasses that person in a year.
Im a low low ELO player but enjoy chess. I teached a kid how to play on a summer event, and the kid, probably around 10 years old, never did the same error twice and easily beat me on the third day (around 5 games a day vs me and who knows how many against the other event leaders)
Really humbling, but I think I helped kindle a new hobby for the kid
Kids are just really good at learning quickly. That's all it is, really. Chess is all about study and learning, so kids are very adept at getting good quickly. Obviously there are some who are prodigies, but that's pretty exceptionally rare.
Adult learners also can get good quickly, but it requires a lot of meta-cognitive thinking (thinking about how you think, or "learning to learn"), time, and discipline. The guy that runs my local chess club is probably in his 60s, and he told me that he was sitting around ~1100 for a long time until recently he started studying, where he rapidly jumped up to ~1600 after, as he put it, "things clicked".
It's never too late to rapidly improve your own abilities, which is what I really love about the game, because I find it teaches you to apply that mindset to all aspects of life.
Nothing wrong with playing Electric Light Orchestra.
What’s your favorite song to play?
You did good. Fostering and developing the younger generation.
I compete in video games (smash bros ult) and there is a lot of humbling experiences when you are unable to beat a child that is 10 years younger than you every week for 2 straight years.
Natural talent shouldn't be possible. DNA doesn't hold enough information to make someone a pianist. Patience, coordination, and a learning environment, however...
You're right, DNA wouldn't make someone a pianist. But natural talent is considered a set of abilities people are born with that enables them to achieve success. It could provide the person with the right kind of hands, dexterity, hearing, and aptitude for learning piano to be a better pianist than someone without those things. That is what could be considered "natural talent."
I'm nitpicking on the semantics here, sure. I'd rather call that a "better put-together human".
No doubt, but imo "natural talent" is way less common than just people who have put in the work, at least for musicians in my experience. For every person i know that just started rippin shit from when they were 3 years old there's like 20 more folks who have just put in the hours. I also think some people who seem to have that natural talent it's more like they just were immersed in that environment from birth. Music is a lot like a language; you can always learn a new language as an adult but people that grow up speaking it because of their environment will make it look effortless.
In addition, a lot of the “natural talent” might be coming from early childhood practice when children's brains are the most malleable - eg if a kid is drawing since they are 6, it is much more likely they'll be noticed and cultivated. Which makes them more likely to appear talented when they are 11 / 15 etc, when they might be noticed and cultivated in turn etc. Early advantages pile up.
Not to say that some things gene related are not advantageous - you are not likely to become a basketball player if you are short, even if you put in enormous amounts of practice.
Yep exactly what I was trying to get at