[nerdponx]

I find this is true for the handful of multi-talented people I know in my personal life. They truly have innate talent/ability in at least one area. Sometimes they have a remarkable ability to learn new things quicker than most people, other times they have to work hard for everything else, but they always have their natural talent to fall back on, in times of duress or limited energy. I'd be interested to see some research in this area.

[rland]

I'm not sure.

I know a lot of seemingly "talented" people. How do they pick up a new instrument in 2-3 months? Or be able to balance on a skateboard after just a little while? Or get kills better than me with only 200 CS GO hours clocked?

The answer is always that they spent a lot of focused time earlier in life, or that they spend a lot of time that I wasn't aware of -- like I find out that they have 2500 hours in CS:S on another account... yeah that makes a lot more sense.

I don't believe innate talent exists. Other than that some people are mentally quicker, or have faster reflexes, or are physically more capable -- "general" things. But talent exists only from both hard work and time, which for many things can start at age 2 or 3.

[ImprobableTruth]

>I don't believe innate talent exists. Other than that some people are mentally quicker, or have faster reflexes, or are physically more capable -- "general" things

I don't understand how this distinction is supposed to work. If someone has exactly the 'general natural inclinations' that fit to a certain activity, it seems asinine to not call them talented in it. Sure, they won't be skilled in it unless they actually put in the work, but they'll comparatively have an easier time with it.

[ehnto]

They might be thinking of the tendency for people to assume talent in a particular task is something you are born with, not the general aptitudes for that task.

Like when one person says "A natural born musician" they are usually not just suggesting the person has general traits good for music. They often just believe the person was born with musical talent pre-programmed somehow.

[borroka]

"I don't believe innate talent exists" - This, in light of 100 years of (mathematized quantitative genetics) and thousands of years of empirical observation, is a profoundly wrong observation. There is variation in, broadly speaking, traits and (almost) all physiological and behavioral traits are heritable. Do you believe that taller parents tend to have taller offspring? I guess the answer is yes; then, it is not any different for other traits that are less-observable, for example control of motor functions.

There is a time, early in life, during which traits are more plastic, for a variety of reasons (for height, nutritional interventions are more likely to be successful early in life than during the teenage years), but you won't make a genetically slow phenotype into a top 1% 100-m specialist.

[jacobolus]

> truly have innate talent/ability in at least one area

How are you assessing that?

In the Picasso example it seems you are confusing "practiced extensively since early childhood with extraordinary external support and training and unusual personal motivation" with "innately talented" (whatever the latter is even supposed to mean). I would imagine that some of the people you know have some similar (probably less extreme) background.

[nerdponx]

Of course. My experience is that children generally take to activities they find easy, and avoid activities they find difficult.

[jacobolus]

What kids find easy or hard has substantially to do with past experience.

Watching my 2 small kids learn and grow, they can over the course of a few months go from not wanting to try something at all because it seems impossible or scary to performing competently, with the only thing in the middle being occasional short attempts (like 10 minutes at a time), spaced weeks apart. Then once they feel basic competence, they can continue to improve very rapidly, while having a better and better time.

Just before the pandemic we had gathered 4 3-year-olds together. Kid A was embarrassed at being a beginner riding a balance bike and refused to even try because kid B was already skilled at it (kid A is now also a pro 1 year later), neither of kids A and B wanted to try going across the monkey bars while kid C had no problem (because his dad had been encouraging him with candy placed further and further away along the monkey bars for a few months), kid C who didn't do much daily running compared to the others felt bad that he was much slower at running.

And the same can be seen for drawing, throwing a ball, reading, playing a musical instrument, speaking a second language, solving simple logic puzzles, building with construction toys ....

At this level, none of these differences are primarily due to "innate talent". There are multiple orders of magnitude difference in skill to gain in a very short time, with fast returns to small amount of spaced practice.