"These days, I’m not so sure: I tend to think “natural talent” has much less to do with ability than things like practice and motivation."
Why are people so unrealistic as to pretend that talent is a "myth". I became an International Master in chess because of "practice and motivation", but I was motivated because I was winning most games almost from the beginning. Studying was enjoyable because I remembered what I studied. I show my kids chess openings, and they walk into the same trap the next week. Fine -- their talents are elsewhere. By contrast, I simply did not have the eye-hand coordination ("talent") to be good at baseball, and a lot of practice would only have raised me to mediocrity. Instead of pretending that talent is unimportant, let people, especially children, be exposed to lots of things, so that they can figure out where their talents lie.
Why are people so unrealistic as to pretend that talent is a "myth". I became an International Master in chess because of "practice and motivation", but I was motivated because I was winning most games almost from the beginning. Studying was enjoyable because I remembered what I studied. I show my kids chess openings, and they walk into the same trap the next week. Fine -- their talents are elsewhere. By contrast, I simply did not have the eye-hand coordination ("talent") to be good at baseball, and a lot of practice would only have raised me to mediocrity. Instead of pretending that talent is unimportant, let people, especially children, be exposed to lots of things, so that they can figure out where their talents lie.