
Late Bloomers: Why Do We Equate Genius with Precocity? (2008) - kawera
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/20/late-bloomers-malcolm-gladwell
======
iliketosleep
I believe this really depends on the field you're looking at. In pursuits
where extraordinary levels of raw ability is absolutely paramount, precocity
will be there 9/10 (or more). The best example is the quintessential chess
genius. It's hard to find a chess champion who wasn't a precocious talent.
It's the same with concert pianists.

In other fields, some raw ability (but not necessarily an obvious precocious
talent) is still necessary but other factors are also paramount. In the field
of literature, richness of experience and maturity can take an author to a
higher level. In various fields of scientific research, decades of accumulated
knowledge/experience can be pivotal to success.

My point is that in some fields, it makes complete sense to equate genius with
precocity, but in others it makes little sense.

~~~
InclinedPlane
> _" The best example is the quintessential chess genius. It's hard to find a
> chess champion who wasn't a precocious talent."_

Hold on a second there. Becoming a chess champion is effectively a full time
job, and it takes a tremendous amount of work to acquire the skill to do so.
Who, as an adult, is going to pursue that as a career if they haven't been
playing chess tournaments since childhood? I would argue that there really
isn't a path to becoming a chess champion except via being a precocious
talent. Without that hope the family and the individual isn't going to pursue
it as an option. Nobody is out there earning degrees in professional chess and
then going into office work or silicon valley or what-have-you, it's just an
extremely specialized field.

~~~
grenoire
I agree, the causation is likely due to the fact that kids who are good at
playing chess early on keep playing chess, which by default gives them years
of additional training and experience more. As opposed to someone who has only
started at 18, they are going to have a hard time competing not due to their
intelligence or genius-factor, but lack of training.

------
daviswithanS
I recently had the pleasure of reading the book Outliers, also by Malcolm
Gladwell. In this book, one of his techniques is to present the typical
"genius" or "rags-to-riches" type story and pick it apart, showing that
success comes more frequently from environment and having the opportunity to
work hard than from some innate genius. Here he uses the same technique. He
presents the popular conception of Ben Fountain's story - a man quits his job
and becomes a successful author through talent and motivation. Then,
throughout the rest of the article, he adds nuance and exposes some of the
overlooked details - that man was supported financially by his wife, had free
time throughout the day to work, developed his talent excruciatingly slowly
and took almost twenty years to catch his first break. While the focus of this
article was more to discuss what it means to be or become a genius, I find it
refreshing to think that these kinds of success stories often have hidden
details that allow them to feel more realistic and attainable.

On a more personal level, I really appreciated this article. I recently made
the decision to study music at a conservatory rather than go into programming
as I had originally planned. Programming has always been something I've been
naturally good at (I used to think of myself as a very technical, STEMmy kind
of person - I laugh at that now), whereas performing music is a passion I've
only recently rekindled. As a result, I've had a few doubts about my ability
to become a good musician or whether I've made the right choice. This article,
however, reassures me that being born with innate talent is not the only path
to becoming a good musician (although it sure would have been nice).

~~~
Retric
Just understand these stories are still focused on the winners. You can be a
top 1% musician and still need a day job.

~~~
maceurt
You can be the most skilled musician in the world, and still not have a job.
Luck and politics matters a lot in music, and the margins between the best
musician and everyone else is such a small percent that the king makers
(record labels, opera houses, etc.) can afford to not have the most skilled
musician if they see fit.

~~~
puranjay
A lot in music depends on the kind of music you want to make. Certain music
genres are able to support a much larger section of musicians, regardless of
their innate talent. A top 10% violinist doesn't have as many opportunities as
a top 10% EDM producer.

Music is also strange that you can be a top 1% musician (in terms of sales and
popularity) without having the skills of a top 1% musician. As long as you can
write pop hits (which doesn't require the strongest technical skills, that is.

~~~
weliketocode
Agreed on all your points except for that it is strange.

I'd say in most fields, expertise is second to sales & politics ability for
generating revenues & popularity.

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eksemplar
I think our educational system is flawed as well. I know a lot of talented
people who would be able to do great things in science and research if there
was a way for them to enter academia after they’ve become full fledged adults.

Often it’s people who matured late or spend their youths trying to figure out
what they wanted, and now they can’t really enter into academia because the
institutions were build to educate the same way we educate children.

I know there are masters programs, but a lot of those, and a lot of people who
take the time to re-educated, are solely focused on getting more valuable for
business, not for research.

It’s a shame, because I think we lose a lot of potential by almost entirely
focusing our higher learning systems on young people.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It is flawed, flawed to the point of being broken. What education should be:
teaching children to become mature adults and functional members of a
cooperative society, teaching coping skills for adulthood, cultivating and
encouraging a sense of curiosity and interest in reading, learning, etc. What
education tends to be: a brutal factory that is not unlike prison that
babysits children until they are legally (but not emotionally or
intellectually) adults while burning out every ounce of curiosity in science
and learning in all but a precious few individuals.

There are tons of ways the system can be improved. One little thing I'll point
out is that in school the expectation is perfection and deviation from
"perfection" (orthodoxy, memorization, etc.) is punished. If you "fail" a
midterm or a big project but end the course with a high degree of mastery of
the material you are punished with a lower grade. If you excel in certain
subjects but only passably good in some others then you are again punished.
Which is exactly the opposite of the way real life works. If you are a
superstar (perhaps literally) in even just one area (science, music, art,
writing, comedy, machine tools, what-have-you) whereas in other areas you
merely have a basic level of competency, well in that case you can become
hugely, wildly successful. And yet the educational system would lead you to
believe that you would have a dim future in that case and you should stop
focusing on what you are best at and most passionate about to improve your
"grades" on everything else.

~~~
trukterious
_> educational system [...] stop focusing on what you are best at and most
passionate about to improve your "grades"_

Yes. Precocious boys follow a sequence of obsessions. The way to foster
achievement, then, is to find out what a child loves and help him to do more
of it. Ultimately this may involve finding a master who can act as mentor.
It's not going to happen in conformity factories dominated by ideologies (and
often policed by bullies).

~~~
watwut
That is not true. Kids who develop abilities or inclinations at an earlier age
than is usual or expected don't necessary follow obsessions. Their brains
often simply develop a bit faster then brains of other kids, hence sooner
abilities and inclinations.

It does not mean they will end up more skilled in adulthood nor that they are
necessary obsessed types.

Conversely, obsessed personality types are not always that much better then
others if their obsession is not channeled in an effective way. The obsession
is not necessary combined with larger talent or effective learning methods.

~~~
trukterious
Well I'm not talking about obsession in the sense of a mental disorder -- but
in the sense of that one thing X that a particular person happens to be in
love with at the moment (could be piano, could be tennis, could be computer
programming or could be something socially disapproved of like pokemon or
skateboarding or whatever). The obsession creates a _depth_ of knowledge. Even
when you try to make such people do other stuff, they'll still be daydreaming
about X. So better to work with it.

~~~
watwut
Obsession creates time spent by topical activity. If does not create depth of
knowledge unless channeled right. Kid won't go far in piano or tennis or math
unless having good teacher no matter how obssesed. All those fields are too
competitive for that.

> Even when you try to make such people do other stuff, they'll still be
> daydreaming about X. So better to work with it.

That is point where it is approaching mental problem. Most kids, evenovanej
those with strong hobbies are fully able to learn other things too.

Also, the competition winning programmers among my peers had wide knowledge in
non coding areas. Then again, our environment and camps encouraged that sort
of thing.

------
chrissam
Because geniuses are often precocious.

Here's a critical review from Steven Pinker that criticizes the kind of
reasoning Gladwell uses in this article:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.htm...](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html)

~~~
neumann
Thank you, that was a great example of a critical review. I need to find my
Igon Values.

~~~
jacobush
"Readers have much to learn from Gladwell the journalist and essayist. But
when it comes to Gladwell the social scientist, they should watch out for
those igon values."

I didn't know Steven Pinker was tactful!

------
motohagiography
More interested in why we need to believe in genius in the first place.

I find it can be a kind of secular sainthood that has a mythology around it
that serves as a post-hoc justification of certain social outcomes. Few
understand the contributions of minds like Feynman, Davinci, Einstein, but we
hold them up as symbols of a kind of mystery cult around science, which should
make people at least a bit curious.

There are a lot of prolific artists who aren't included in the genius canon,
and it's an almost exclusively masculine archetype, which means it either
tells us something about who we are, or it's the noisy artifact of a crude
model. My bet is on the latter.

While the particular acumen for appreciating and operating on abstractions is
probably pareto distributed (like everything), what it represents is much more
interesting.

When you believe in genius, you likely believe it is meaningful that there are
people you will never compare to, who have advantages you are physically
incapable of obtaining, who were chosen to receive a gift while you were not,
that there are people whose nature or perceived potential means they should be
held to different standards, or that someones success can be less legitimate
because of a perceived intellectual advantage. Not saying any of those
statements are true, but they are definitely the effects of how people relate
themselves to the belief in genius.

Without those beliefs, we've got some much harder questions to answer.
Personally, I think precosity can be cultivated and refined into something
great, but genius itself is an artifact reflected from others beliefs, and not
an intrinsic quality.

~~~
Isamu
>Without those beliefs, we've got some much harder questions to answer.
Personally, I think precosity can be cultivated and refined into something
great

Very much so, and sometimes ascribing genius is just shorthand for "I don't
plan to try".

More insidious is "talent", also held to be an intrinsic quality. But it turns
out that "talent" is a trap for those who are talented.

Talent is a trap: I came across this when watching a digital painting video,
the host was relating how some of the people in art school were obviously
talented and some were just slugging it out like he was. He noticed over time
that the talented ones were more likely to give up at some point, and the
sloggers were more likely to keep going and become successful making art a
profession.

The problem is that the talented are characterized by things seeming to come
easily, but it's not an infinite ability and sooner or later they come up
against some technique or assignment that is a problem and that will take real
patience and work to get through. That comes as a real shock that can shake
your confidence in your "talent", which was an illusion anyway.

The sloggers have the advantage of always having to work hard to make
progress, so everything is a struggle and the only surprises are when
something goes easily. Those kind of expectations set you up better for
success in a profession, which is just hard work in the end.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
My two biggest counter examples when people say that geniuses are not born are
John von Neuman and Srinivasa Ramanujan. These two were surrounded by other
people who were regarded as geniuses in their own right, and yet these people
viewed von Neuman and Ramanujan as being on a completely different level.

~~~
adventured
Warren Buffett is an interesting example of specialized genius. He has a
gifted memory and based on what has been described about him in several books,
from birth he was of a certain emotional tilt that would serve him very well
in consistently not making investment decisions based on emotion across
decades. Buffett is an investment/financial genius, whose quite abnormal birth
traits were a prerequisite to his extreme success in the investment world.

I favor the notion that genius potential is a combination of specific narrow
traits, such that if you swap any of them out, you're very likely to lose the
genius outcome (rather than the pop caricature that genius is mentally broad;
ie if someone says: he/she is a genius! - the only proper response is: in what
narrow regard?). The popular successful genius outcome then further requires a
number of external environmental factors, such as luck (where you were born,
who your parents were, who you went to school with, who your friends were,
what time in history you were born, all the way down to the tiniest of
minutia).

~~~
moate
Like the saying goes "better lucky than good." Being born a white man in
America at the time he was to a politically connected, financially stable
family were all things that benefited him greatly and which he had 0 control
over.

The older I get, the more of a fatalist I become. The whole universe is just
luck and entropy, and anyone telling you otherwise is probably just trying to
sell you something.

------
Blackthorn
Media plays such a huge part in this. How often do we see young people saving
the world versus old people? I like the Marvel movies because the protagonists
are mostly reasonably aged.

I try to remind myself at times that Gaston Glock didn't design his first gun
until age 52.

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whitepoplar
Because it's a lot easier for someone to convince himself that "genius" is a
born trait, lest he look in the mirror and ask himself why he's not working
harder to achieve something.

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wwweston
Precocity means early identification of potential in a given field.

Early identification of that potential means individuals and institutions
around the individual start to dedicate resources towards their development.

Having resources dedicated to that development means such individuals can
specialize and focus without having to spend as much (or, perhaps, anything)
in terms of time/resources on normal life-supporting activities.

Early identification also means investment of attention which accrues in
_reputation_ (and probably compounds in much the same way early financial
investment does), which means less time spent having to convince people to
give you opportunities.

Basically: there's a path-dependent element to success / prestige. Precocity
is not the only route but it helps so much that of course it's often
correlated with recognized genius.

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hodgesrm
What a great story. The most intriguing person was Sharon, Ben Fountain's
wife. She seems like an outstanding human being.

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amelius
I'm not sure if this is true. For example, Nobel prizes are usually assigned
at quite an old age, and this leads people to think the opposite. Also people
usually associate the word "professor" with an old guy. The picture of
Einstein that people have in their minds is not of his younger years. Etc.
etc.

~~~
TheTrotters
But the relevant research is usually done when these people are much younger.
Einstein has made his major contributions to physics by the time he was 36.
Fame and prestige are lagging indicators.

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occamschainsaw
This podcast by Gladwell also expands on his article:
[http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/07-hallelujah](http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/07-hallelujah)

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rawoke083600
Well I can't be one(Genius) - I had to google "precocity"

~~~
commandlinefan
I figured it came from "precocious" but I was like, "is that actually a word?"

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dang
Discussed in 2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8229385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8229385)

~~~
teddyh
Isn’t that what the “past” link is for at the top of the page?

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k__
You learn the best when you're young and if you aren't distracted by social
stuff you have more time?

