Talent and Skill? Talent vs Skill?

[MikeC]

Talent is critical to excelling in any endeavor. It separates those who maybe could from those who can from those who can do the very best possible.

That’s not to downplay the importance of one’s having the dogged will, time and determination to labor through a process to ultimately achieve a given goal. Not at all.

But add innate talent to the above and something special can be born.

Your buddy might have a distinguished career in IT, but his talent for designing and building at least one bass is very, very apparent. A luthier is is born. Kudos to him.

[Whying_Dutchman]

@MikeC

but his talent for designing and building at least one bass is very, very apparent.

Also, he has the tools

But yeah, he is very talented. Looking forward to his next project.
There is another guy on zzzzeee Zzzermmman forum that is making a semi-hollow. Very curious what that will be in the end … first pictures look promising!

[Barney]

@MikeC

Talent is critical to excelling in any endeavor.

Talent is just applied practice in a particular field.

It’s not a unicorn, just lots of hard work that people don’t see.

[MikeC]

@Barney

Talent is just applied practice in a particular field.

I understand that that’s a take, but I respectfully disagree.

I subscribe to the Merriam-Webster definition of talent:

a special often athletic, creative, or artistic aptitude (ability)

Certain people who have changed culture and shaped the world have possessed a natural aptitude for one or more given activity or endeavor or capability. Mozart, Einstein, Da Vinci, Picasso are but a few notable examples of people who have possessed undeniably unique talents that have exceeded others’ in their respective fields.

That’s not to suggest that these and other talented individuals have not put in hard work. But it’s undeniable that some people have an easier, much more natural experience deciphering, understanding, teaching, performing, creating things than the average human being. By my reckoning, that aptitude is innate talent.

[Barney]

@MikeC

@Barney

Talent is just applied practice in a particular field.

I understand that that’s a take, but I respectfully disagree.

I subscribe to the Merriam-Webster definition of talent:

a special often athletic, creative, or artistic aptitude (ability)

Certain people who have changed culture and shaped the world have possessed a natural aptitude for one or more given activity or endeavor or capability. Mozart, Einstein, Da Vinci, Picasso are but a few notable examples of people who have possessed undeniably unique talents that have exceeded others’ in their respective fields.

That’s not to suggest that these and other talented individuals have not put in hard work. But it’s undeniable that some people have an easier, much more natural experience deciphering, understanding, teaching, performing, creating things than the average human being. By my reckoning, that aptitude is innate talent.

I think the problem with throwing the word ‘talent’ around is that it implies as you are doing that the act of high end luthiery (woodworking) requires some special aptitude. I really don’t think woodworking is that at all.

The reason I’m more competent than say some people on this forum when it comes to working with my hands. Is simply, the tens of thousands of hours I’ve spent over the past 20 years using hand tools every day.

I’m not a talented carpenter but I am competent.

Using the word talent has this hidden subtext, that it’s only achievable by a very small subset of society who were lucky to be born that way; and for almost all jobs, hobbies that’s not the case. Hard work will get you much further in life than raw ‘talent’.

There are 9 billion people in the world; so only a tiny fraction of those are the Einstein’s. Most of us are by the nature of things, average. But that’s good news. It means that with hard work a lot of us can achieve our reasonable goals if we want to.

Like learning to play bass for example.

Beginner Bass Mistakes (5 Tips to Suck Less)

[Al1885]

@Barney

The reason I’m more competent than say some people on this forum when it comes to working with my hands. Is simply, the tens of thousands of hours I’ve spent over the past 20 years using hand tools every day.

I’m not a talented carpenter but I am competent.

In my line of work I call that skills. You need many skills to successfully compose a dish. You need talent to incorporate your skills to creat a new dish. Incompetent people have neither.

[MikeC]

I understand your position. However, mine is that talent conceivably exists in all human, beings, i.e., it is not limited to the obviously exceptional Einsteins of the world.

Whether it’s apparent or not, not all humans are created equal. One person can spend thousands of hours attempting to master a skill or acquire certain knowledge, only to fail. On the other hand, another individual could spend a fraction of that amount of time to achieve not only proficiency in the same endeavor but total mastery. This is not a hypothetical example: This scenario has played out throughout history.

Some people are seemingly natural writers, painters, musicians, scientists, athletes, etc. Things related to their activity seem to come to them far easier/more naturally than to others. Child prodigies are high-profile examples, but certainly not the only ones.

I’m not trying to convince you or anyone else. I’m merely stating the fact that natural talent exists and has existed throughout the history of mankind.

[MikeC]

@Al1885

@Barney

The reason I’m more competent than say some people on this forum when it comes to working with my hands. Is simply, the tens of thousands of hours I’ve spent over the past 20 years using hand tools every day.

I’m not a talented carpenter but I am competent.

In my line of work I call that skills. You need many skills to successfully compose a dish. You need talent to incorporate your skills to creat a new dish. Incompetent people have neither.

This^^*

Amen, @Al1885

[Barney]

@MikeC

Some people are seemingly natural writers, painters, musicians, scientists, athletes, etc. Things related to their activity seem to come to them far easier/more naturally than to others.

Sure, I agree with that; but part of that then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

A kid likes playing a sport. They spend all their free time playing / practicing that sport. By the time he/she is a teenager they’ve got thousands of hours under their belt at that sport.

My point is that society uses the word ‘talent’ for many endeavors but my gut feeling is that most of it is good old fashioned hard work.

And I’m a huge fan of hard work.

[Billn]

@Barney

My point is that society uses the word ‘talent’ for many endeavors but my gut feeling is that most of it is good old fashioned hard work.

And I’m a huge fan of hard work.

Strongly agree. Most everything is highly trainable/learnable.

[MikeC]

@Barney

I’m a huge fan of hard work.

I am, too. But I’m not referring to things that are “trainable” or “learnable.” I’m referring to things with which a person has a natural aptitude and facility. Very different things.

Still, there are countless examples of young children who have innately been able to hear a piece of music once, and then they play it note-perfectly. And these children had never taken a single lesson to learn the given instrument, oftentimes a piano involving the proficient mastery of both hands in unison.

On a more practical and everyday happening, college and human resource counselors routinely give people aptitude tests to discover their individual natural tendencies and, yes, potential talent(s).

This in no way negates the need for work to develop those discovered aptitudes, but it helps eliminate the random trial and error that would occur with the test and subsequent life attention direction.

It’s not uncommon for people to work a job, spend untold years doing it, get good at it…and hate the whole experience. Conversely, someone working at an activity one has an aptitude (a key term in Merriam-Webster’s definition of “talent”) for can yield unfathomably great results from happy, talented humans.

[Barney]

@MikeC

I am, too. But I’m not referring to things that are “trainable” or “learnable.” I’m referring to things with which a person has a natural aptitude and facility. Very different things.

But what isn’t trainable? Almost everything we do is learnt.

My feelings on this are that we as a society often use the world talented about a subject we know nothing about i.e he is a very talented musician.

When what we probably mean is he is a very skilled musician.

[MikeC]

In bass terms, an example of a skill is being able to chug, or to play triplets, or to slap, etc. These techniques are certainly trainable/learnable. The same is true of any number of other bass skills.

The same, too, can be said for learning the alphabet, spelling, sentence structure, grammar, composition, etc. Each is a skill taught to the young, to prepare them for higher communication in life.

Jumping to a genre I’m familiar with, jazz players are definitely skilled musicians, in many cases, consummately so. But jazz music is comprised of not only skillfully played notes but from original melodic lines composed on the fly: improvisation.

Many jazzbos study and learn the skills to master their fretboards/keyboards/horns. I was in college with some great ones. Were they skilled? Absolutely. But were some undeniably better at interpretation/improvisation than others? Without a shadow of a doubt.

Those guys practiced their ever-loving balls off. I know because i could hear them through the walls of the campus practice hall.

But I also heard other players practice equally as much, but they never got particularly much better over time.

Why was that? They for damn sure worked hard and they loved the genre. They poured their hearts, souls and skills into their playing. But it never came across as inspired or, frankly, impressive. I don’t know, but i imagine @Gio can attest to this phenomenon.

I’m not dissing those guys or anyone else. It’s just a fact that some folks “have it” and it shows.

All to say, merely working extremely long and hard to completely master the alphabet, spelling, et al, does not a Shakespeare make. Nor a Coltrane. Nor a Michelangelo.

I firmly believe that each person has some degree of aptitude for something, whether discovered, or not. And that aptitude is talent. YMMV

[Whying_Dutchman]

@Al1885

Jaco was more talented and with that he changed the world of bass.

He also knew how to operate a butterknife

[John_E]

@Al1885

You need talent to incorporate your skills to creat a new dish. Incompetent people have neither.

I dunno, is it talent or a deep interest that drives someone to consider thinking about something so deeply. Interesting topic. One could say that a lot of ‘talent’ is just a pile of skills. Weather a person has aptitude (talent?) for a certain thing doesn’t mean they must have it to be talented. I wasn’t born with an inane talent to design/build factories or new food equipment, I learned how while @Barney was learning how to be a good woodworker.

I tend to think talent (although a thing) is much more rare and less of a thing than people perceive it is.
Take musicians.
Is there talent musicians, or an inate, driving desire to repeat things over and over until burned into memory and mylem? almost spectrumy-like?

[John_E]

@MikeC

umping to a genre I’m familiar with, jazz players are definitely skilled musicians, in many cases, consummately so. But jazz music is comprised of not only skillfully played notes but from original melodic lines composed on the fly: improvisation.

The Talent Code is a great book to get a different perspective on this. It focuses partly on ‘hotbeds’ and why so many people from, say, New Orleans, are very very skilled musicians? Genes? Or something else?

[howard]

@John_E

I tend to think talent (although a thing) is much more rare and less of a thing than people perceive it is.
Take musicians.
Is there talent musicians, or an inate, driving desire to repeat things over and over until burned into memory and mylem? almost spectrumy-like?

I agree.

I think talent/virtuosity exists but is only a part, and not necessarily a required part, to be effective at a calling.

To a great extent, effective performance can be grown with putting in the work to grow in skill much more readily than developing latent talent, and without the work put in, latent talent will only get you so far.

And in the end neither are the end all be all. Jaco could sure play, but he also couldn’t hold a job because he was, for lack of a better term, an asshole. Jamerson was a barely functioning alcoholic with an unplayable instrument. Did these things hold them back? I bet they might have a different answer than you or I, were it possible to ask them, but I would say - yep this must have made things way harder for them.

[MikeC]

@John_E

deep interest that drives someone to consider thinking about something so deeply

I don’t think of a person’s drive as a deep interest. It is a propensity. It isn’t necessarily a conscious thing; it just exists in people. Uncovering a person’s propensity is what aptitude tests are designed to uncover.

[howard]

@MikeC

I don’t think of a person’s drive as a deep interest. It is a propensity.

It can be developed, just like any other trait. Yes, in the end, people need to pick up the ball and run with it, but there’s ways you can help them to get to where they see that. At that point they either do it or they don’t.

[MikeC]

None of this speaks to these players’ innate aptitude, their talent. Both Jaco and Jamerson had addiction issues that adversely affected their lives, leading to early deaths. Regardless, their respective talent shined through for all the world to see.

But whatever. I’m out.