• Philosophy and Spirituality
    Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Threads of Note Socialize
  • P&S Moderators: JackARoe | Cheshire_Kat

Is there such thing as Natural Talent?

cire113

cire113

Bluelighter
Joined
Aug 17, 2004
Messages
1,730
Location
3rd Dimension
Do you believe natural talent exists?

or do people become masters at things through hard work, dedication, passion?

What do you think?


I really believe drive and passion is really what a lot of people think "natural talent" is...
 
No, I think there is natural talent. My friend sings so amazingly and she doesn't even practice or whatever.... And some people who practice and practice can't even sing nearly as good as her. No matter how hard some bad singers practice they will never be good singers.. I'm sorry but not everyone can do that. I can't even do that.
 
cire113 said:
Do you believe natural talent exists?

or do people become masters at things through hard work, dedication, passion?

What do you think?
Click to expand...
i think that natural talent and achievement through hard work, dedication and passion both exist. they're hardly mutually exclusive...

alasdair
 
"My father says that if I hit 2,500 ball each day, I'll hit 17,500 balls each week, and at the end of one year I'll have hit nearly 1,000,000 balls. He believes in math. Numbers, he says, don't lie. A child who hits 1,000,000 balls each year will be unbeatable."
-Andre Agassi


also has anyone heard of the 10,000 hour idea? that it apparently takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master something
 
^Yes.
"I really believe drive and passion is really what a lot of people think "natural talent" is..."

I agree in part, but these things don't just happen, or maybe they do just happen naturally, but this doesn't take away from what talent is. I have this little niece who just loves to play at the piano. She's a nice little kid, but gets bored with playing with kids her own age much quicker than anyone else in the group, and since I'm pretty much the only other musician in the family she always tries to kick me off the piano which is usually where I sit most comfortably at my uncles house during gatherings. It's pretty funny. There's a total fascination in her face when I show her chords or simple melodies that doesn't come from anywhere else she'd have experienced. It certainly doesn't come from her parents who aren't musical at all, and she's unique among her siblings in that regard. No idea what causes this behavior, but it's there. Drive is a byproduct of passion, but where does passion come from at first?

As for me, technique always came easily to me whereas other friends who picked up the guitar at the same time gave up frustrated. I can't recall if my behavior was similar to my niece's when I was her age. I do know that when I was a little older than she is now I had a childhood friend who had musical parents and I always loved hanging out at his house and we doodled around making goofy songs all the time and now he's married to a succubus and I cry myself to sleep at night but enough about me...

What I mean is I don't think you can force it. You can't just decide to have drive one day, sure you can work as hard as you want, but motivations matter in the outcomes when it comes to something like music or art.

"Natural talent" isn't usually prescribed to much outside of the artist's realm, but certainly some people are more talented at negotiating and talking than others. Mathematics is another area that some people just are plain gifted at, no matter how hard others work, they just won't get to where some people are. There are naturals in every field, and they usually rise to the top. I think it's treacherous to try and force yourself to be something you are not, for what it's worth.
 
natural talent and hard work together is pretty awesome. naturally talented people shouldn't be lazy because they have a gift.
 
To me, the existence of true natural talent -- an inborn or accidentally acquired advantage in some kind of endeavor -- is only threatening if talent is a phenomenon that clusters grossly unequally in the population, some people having many talents while many or most having none at all. I've never seen any serious scholarly studies on the epidemiology of raw talent, as defined in some quantifiable way. But my experience with people leads me to believe this isn't so, and that people who can be said to have truly no talents are hard to find. You'll find plenty of people whose talents were never given the chance to blossom into achievements, for myriad reasons. That's the sad part. The happy part is, there's a niche for pretty much everybody in society, and no fellow human being is a waste to invest in.
 
Yes--but with qualifications. For instance, I think I was born to be a good writer; I've loved doing it since I was in elementary school, and have been repeatedly complimented on it since. That said, there's plenty of room for improvement, and I know that I won't get better without relentless practice and daily writing--that is to say, discipline. I think it's that way with most skills; some people are, say, natural artists, mathematicians, or craftsmen, but it takes experience to really excel at them. True autodidacts are, IMO, extremely rare.
 
Discerning if a particular human talent is innate or the product of practice and intentional development isn't easy.

The opposite of a innate talent is an innate disability, like blindness. I'm certain that innate talents exist, they might not be as tangible as innate disabilities because we have a hard time conceiving of faculties that we don't personally possess. If someone has a useful faculty that most of the population doesn't have they might not even understand that their faculty requires explanation. They could also grow tired of trying to explain it.

Raw talents would no doubt benefit from the kind of honing all our "natural talents" get through living and experiencing. Most everybody has balance but riding a bicycle takes a bit of practice before it feels "natural".
 
real talent doesnt come from talents you want to show others but from what you are already good at.
 
Yes natural talent is real, but it is more tied to the knowledge of past lives successfully coming into this one.
 
I feel like just b/c you have a natural talent it doesnt mean you do not have to works at it. IE just because you can sing it doesnt mean you can write a good song. I dont consider myself a great singer but after years of honing my musicianship I feel I could write a song that conveyed the feeling I wanted. This takes more then an american idol voice and an i-iv-v Chordprog imo. It takes practice and feel, not saying mine has that. Heres a song I recorded on YT called dope spoon about my disgust with it at the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMAZRAQ133k
 
^ That's a good point. Just because someone has a talent doesn't mean they've developed it or are able to perform well against less talented people who've put in a lot of time and effort refining the skill.
 
Talent would be one's propensity to develop a particular skill quickly in a variety of environments. The large observed variety of outcomes for given measures of aptitude in relatively similar environments suggests that talent is useful as a concept.

ebola
 
I think natural talent exists. We're drawn to things we're good at even as kids. You can be really good at something even if you don't practice.
 
I've read somewhere that once you've practice a movement 300 times it becomes mechanical (i.e. you get good at it), things like riding a bike, passing a ball, that kind of thing.
Now, natural talent does exist, it's a matter of evolution. Black people are faster runners, their bodies are more capable and there's no beating nature. Asians have smaller frames, no matter how much weight they lift, if you put an anglosaxon next to them lifting the same amount, the white guy will get bigger faster and better.
 
I don't think so...I think any sort of talent is simply the result of what the individual was exposed to throughout his or her childhood. For instance, a "talented" writer is mostly someone who has read a LOT (I can testify for this, my teachers/friends/family like to think of me as some sort of literary genius, I don't know whether or not that's the case but what I do know is I spent a great deal of my childhood/early teenage years immersed in books :) ); a talented musician is someone who was exposed to music reccurently as an infant or child and has therefore developed a good ear or a good sense of rhythm, among others. Example - the pianist Glenn Gould's mother apparently played the piano for hours each day while he was in her womb, and theories tend to suggest this influences 'talent' a lot...But then again he was autistic so his case is a bit different lol
 
^Glenn Gould?!?

:D

He would of been playing the piano regardless I imagine, but his mother playing while carrying him must of influenced him in someway. lol nice one. Perhaps she hummed along with what she was playing...?

Of course natural talent exists, we each have abilities we develop or not with time. We are created equal in a sense but eventually find our own means of contribution and function. It seems dangerous to me to believe we all remain equal during our life times.
 
I don't believe that there are natural "talents" so to speak, but some people have gifts in certain mental and physical areas that make it seem like they've got a "natural talent." If you're born with disproportionately long legs, you might have a "natural talent" for running. Likewise, someone born with a brain that has a larger area dedicated to processing music would probably have a gift in at least recognizing patterns, if not composing music. Much else is based on what someone does as a kid. You can develop a talent without intending to, IMO. If you play a stringed instrument, you might have greater finger dexterity, and therefore, type better and tie knots better than other people.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top