from Hacker News

Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

by frasermarlow on 2/19/24, 12:39 AM with 49 comments

by sinuhe69 on 2/19/24, 2:28 PM
“To study ability, they matched a subset of their data on inventors with records of their math scores back when they were third graders.4 To study the role that circumstances play, the research team matched the inventor dataset with tax record data that allowed them to study the socio-economic situation they grew up in.”
That is when the credibility of the study is lost on me. Maths scores and creativity/innovation are not necessarily related. To invent, you not only have to pay attention (also curiosity and a keen sense of observation), you also have to work diligently, systematically AND, more often than not, diffusely. I would argue that these combinations are rare and may be the stuff that makes an inventor. Do economic circumstances play an important role? I think they might contribute, but I doubt that their contribution is significant. So many great inventions have come from people with very modest economic backgrounds (Edison, Faraday, Nikola Tesla, Alfred Nobel, to name but a few).
by poulsbohemian on 2/19/24, 7:19 PM
Not only is talent everywhere, but opportunity is everywhere too - it just takes different forms and the resources necessary to capture that opportunity are not evenly distributed. I live in small town America. We have a ton of opportunity here, but there's no question that the labor, capital, and similar resources needed to unlock that opportunity is far more challenging to gather here than it would be in large coastal cities. Similarly, there are talented people here - for example, we have colleges and a nearby national lab - but keeping those people here and putting them to work is not easy.
by inglor_cz on 2/19/24, 7:12 PM
There are some intriguing observations which indicate that talent is, indeed, a lot more common than thought, but needs specific conditions to thrive.
1. "The Martians" - a group of Jewish Hungarian scientists from the early 20th century, who were about the most prominent in their fields and significantly advanced global scientific knowledge, even though Hungary wasn't a particularly rich or big nation at that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)
2. The painters of Renaissance Florence - within approximately 200 years, one (albeit rich) city in Italy produced an enormous volume of high-quality art.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florentine_painting
3. The Bell Labs around 1950-1960 - an enormous concentration of tech talent that produced much of the foundations of current IT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs
Notably, none of those groups/centers are productive today. The mojo can be lost again.
by philiphodgen on 2/19/24, 4:48 AM
Opportunity is everywhere. Talent is not.
by mikhael28 on 2/19/24, 5:47 PM
What does talent even mean anymore?
What did it ever mean?
Trying to quantify it through tests is such a… bullshit proposition. If you had Steve Jobs take a math test in third grade, I don’t think he would have done very well. Or maybe he would have - I don’t know. Some people only discover math later in life, some people can do trivial math in elementary school very well but completely fail once they get into geometry and logical proofs.
The point of the article is common sense - if everyone in the world had the time to develop like Steve Jobs and work through their bs, then we would likely have more successful adults in the Central African Republic. It just goes to show you how powerful environment is - and why everyone wants to move to America. A good reminder to be thankful to live in this country.
by afpx on 2/19/24, 12:35 PM
About 1.5 billion people were raised out of extreme poverty over about 30 years arguably because of capitalism. Similarly, large global middle classes have built up over that time. It feels like we should keep doing what we've been doing?