[LAU] OT: talent and craftsmanship [was: Re: OT: Dub Fx]

[Charles Henry]

> 1) most of us don't know what are talents are
> 2) "genius is 90% perspiration, 10% inspiration"
> 3) some recent estimates are that it takes about 10,000 hours (*) of
> just about anything to master it. this is said to be independent of
> "talent".

Could be entirely true.  There's insights from cognitive neuroscience
that suggests expertise involves a change in representation in the
expert's field.  It could be that you can only learn at a certain
rate.  It may mean thousands or so hours or it may mean just to live
or work in the right environment.

I grew up around a machine shop, the family business.  My grandfather
was supposedly quite the mechanical genius, and Pop's a doctor of
aerospace.  Naturally, I got used to using the tools and machines, and
I worked in the machine shop as a teenager.  It sucked... oh, man...
it sucked.... but out of college, with no engineering job, I went back
to it and worked for two years.  I even managed to make an artificial
mechanical flower that opens up under thermal stresses.  Now, you can
see that I got the talent, but you couldn't have expected me to learn
a thing about it if I grew up in a different environment.  So, there's
got to be an element of opportunity that's involved.