this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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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.

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[–] Schal330@lemmy.world 54 points 1 day ago (10 children)

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.

[–] Droechai@lemm.ee 48 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

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

[–] expr@programming.dev 0 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

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.

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