logically incorrect...statistically probable is not proof.
Nature vs Nurture: New study in favor of Nature
- Thread starter iusedtoberich
- Start date
logically incorrect...statistically probable is not proof.
no disagreement from me
I don't think that the genetic component is as obvious. I don't disagree with it but I think that humans on average perform way under their ability. A few humans perform at the current known limits and it is NOT because they are somehow genetically superior to the average IMO, but more because they train like fanatics.
Having a "sports gene" may give you a head start but it doesn't guarantee success. The guy with the fastest engine doesn't win all the races either. Obviously there can't be too much disparity but if the difference between me and the next guy is a certain gene that causes him to be energetic and I have to create my own motivation then I don't think that this means he will automatically always be better than me. Now if I am short and pudgy I probably won't be much competition to the tall and lean hurdlers.
Was Tiger born or made?
I say made. I don't think you can look at Earl Wood's family and find a history of golf or outstanding athletic ability. What you find is a guy who loved golf and decided he would make his son love it.
Take away all that and hand Tiger a golf club in his teens and I bet he doesn't become the superstar we know. He MIGHT have become a pro golfer anyway or he might have decided that he didn't really like golf. Or....if he really fell in love with it and decided to go nuts training then he might still have become a superstar. Although I doubt it because I think that those formative years meant he put in 10,000 hours BEFORE he was 12.
So when you enter your teenage years already knowing more about golf than 99% of the living humans who play golf....what comes after that?
Of course there is and that's why the level of play is much higher but the elite is still just as far away from the average
1
How do you know? How do you know that your ancestor wasn't the greatest hunter, whaler, discus thrower, warrior etc...
Just because you aren't a champion at anything doesn't mean someone in your line was not. I guess you simply didn't get the memo passed down from a hundred generations that Redbeard the Great was your great great great great great great great great great.......great grandfather. How disappointed he would be.
Prove it. Show me the stats from 50 years ago and the stats now. I think you are 100% wrong.
I think that in golf, pool whatever.....the amateur class is closer to the pro class NOW than in any time in the past.
It's as close to proof as we get until someone repeats. In diving it it generally understood that if you can do a dive once then you can do it again, and better.
That is a perfect example that shows how important it is to BELIEVE in yourself. An athlete's self image plays a huge role in a variety of aspects and that includes performance like in your example but it also includes learning. Everyone should believe in their ability to improve at minimum because anyone who puts too much stock into the limitations of genetics will fold at the first sight of adversity because to them they are wasting their time but the one who has the growth mindset and knows "I can do this" will keep on practicing when something doesnt come easy until they get it right. Desire or passion will also let someone press on through the plateaus.
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True , and the communist countries know this .
They weed them out early. :grin:
If we just consider pool, world champions have sick hand to eye coordination.
Johnny Archer can shoot free throws as good as pro bballers afaik.
Efren can toss coins like you wouldn't believe.
Manny Pacquiao plays at a B level. His two other brothers are B level pool players playing big money games in the south of the Phil. His siblings are somehow gifted with good hand to eye coordination.
In the case of baseball, sons of major leaguers are often drafted . They have the right genes and have history to their resume before they even hit the pro ball.
I think champions of all sports are for the most parts, freak of nature.
And they have HIGH level professional examples right in front of them. They have the best coaching one could want.
You always dodge this question but I will never stop asking. As a cue maker do you have an advantage through being gifted all of Kerry Zeiler's x-rays of cues. Did all that knowledge help you as a cue maker or not?
or were you simply born with the gift of talking to wood?
Yep that's why we don't want cloning because you could clone the best in everything and the rest of us poor bastards would become extinct
It's already has proven success threw sperm banks and surrogate mothers
It's really not hard to understand the only place man is created equal is in the bible
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Wait till human studs become a reality.
Wait, they already are.
Look at Michael Jackson's "kids".
Cue making and sport or playing the piano or guitar or violin are different animals.
You're being pointless.
But, I would also say artists are also different animals.
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Old Nine Baller
Banned
It's kind of weird how I agreed with the above highlighted statement and as soon as I did I started thinking of exceptions to the rule:smile:.
I suppose that'll always happen.
ONB
You're thinking of the Declaration of Independence. :wink:
Why not? You think it takes genetics to move a cue ball at the professional level but you don't think it takes genetics to shape wood at the professional level? Seems strange to me.
Did you not read Sean's White Boy Opus above? He wasn't BORN with the music gene according to his experience.
Yet he became a respected musician.
Again you dodged the question. So I will ask it AGAIN.
Was being mentored by Kerry Zeiler AND having INHERITED his extensive amount of x-rays of cues any help to you at all and if so how much?
If no help will you make them public for everyone?
If that happens then I know I will not be weeded out. Because I add value to human existence.
And as was pointed out to you, in the bible man is not created to be on an equal basis.
This may get long, may not. But I believe it will shed a little light on the subject.
I believe some are more naturally talented than others to play pool. But, that only gives them a head start on playing very well. It is not a limiting factor. What one has to do, is look at just what "natural talent" actually is. Why can some savants play music so well, or work with numbers beyond what "normal" people can do? Just what is "talent"? Therein lies the answers.
Each of us that has a working brain has wiring connections in that brain that enable us to do things. The wiring of the brain is a certain amount and wired a certain way in our formation in the womb. However, that wiring does not stay that way forever. It is constantly changing every day. That "wiring" is responsible for what we can and cannot accomplish. When someone has a stroke, some of that wiring is destroyed. That's why they can longer speak, or walk, or move their arms, or whatever. Yet, with intense training, most can regain some use of their limbs again.
They do that by repetition. Repetition forces the brain to re-wire itself, make more connections, and work properly again. This process is extremely fast in the young, and decreases with age, but never goes away completely.
Just like men and women's brains are wired differently, which gives them each different "natural" abilities, each of our brains are wired a little differently. The more "connections" one has, the more adept we are at doing something.
When you take a child and train him to play pool, he will learn much faster than an older person will learn. That is because the young rewire the brain much faster than the old. And, it will take far less repetitions to learn something than it will take the older person to learn to do the same thing. Because of that, an older person that had some activity to increase the wiring for hand-eye co-ordination early on will learn to play pool much faster than the older person that never had those activities.
The older person can still achieve the same level of performance, but it will take much more work to do so. At an older level, there is no "realistic" goal to make all that work worthwhile, so it is rare to find an older person actually take the time to train as necessary. So, because it is rare, most say it can't be done. It can be done if the desire is there. Stroke patients are a perfect example of having the desire to work hard enough to re-wire the brain.
Now, the part about becoming a pro player at a later age- yes, that is very possible to happen. However, it also is very unlikely to happen. No reason for anyone to work that hard for it.
One must also take into consideration one of the larger, often overlooked aspects of the game. The mental side of it. The mental side is what largely differentiates the upper levels of play. Just like one has to attain the "wiring" for repeatable fundamentals, one must also almost always rewire the brain for proper mental aspects of playing at a high level.
Because of this wiring of the brain, anyone trying to get better after a few years is best served by using proper fundamentals. Proper fundamentals require the least amount of wiring to be installed. Crooked strokes like Mike Davis for example, require that either one learned early on with faster wiring installation process, or one needs to allow for much longer time for wiring all components to make a stroke like that repeatable. It can be done, at any age. But, it will take much longer to learn than learning the "textbook" way will.That is because there are many more aspects to it, and it requires a much larger amount of wiring all connected correctly to achieve the desired outcome.
The more wiring we have for a given task, the quicker we will be able to "recall" just what to do. The more we know what to do, the more wiring we have. That is why it is so important to really pay attention to details. What does what. That detail orientation is making more wiring for what we want to recall. The less we use a certain wiring path, the more that wiring will diminish until eventually we can't recall what we once knew.
You often hear instructors say to not play competitively for a while after getting a lesson. The reasoning behind that is just what I stated above. In a pressure situation, our mind will revert to the easiest path for remembering what to do. That would be the path with the most wiring. That would be the old way of doing things. It requires repetition of a new way of doing something to create that new wiring path. The more we do it, the more wiring. The less we do the old way, the less wiring in that path. Eventually, the new path becomes the default path, and over time the old way can actually be diminished to the point that we can't remember what it even was. Proper fundamentals require the least amount of wiring to make a solid default path to remember. Hence, it is usually the method taught. When someone like Mike Davis goes to an instructor, he has such a solid wiring path already that works for HIM, that only minor tweaks would be added. Not a whole new way of playing the game. No need to create new wiring to accomplish the same purpose. It's when our present wiring doesn't work properly that new ways are added.
Starting to get off track here, so I will end it here for now.
I believe some are more naturally talented than others to play pool. But, that only gives them a head start on playing very well. It is not a limiting factor. What one has to do, is look at just what "natural talent" actually is. Why can some savants play music so well, or work with numbers beyond what "normal" people can do? Just what is "talent"? Therein lies the answers.
Each of us that has a working brain has wiring connections in that brain that enable us to do things. The wiring of the brain is a certain amount and wired a certain way in our formation in the womb. However, that wiring does not stay that way forever. It is constantly changing every day. That "wiring" is responsible for what we can and cannot accomplish. When someone has a stroke, some of that wiring is destroyed. That's why they can longer speak, or walk, or move their arms, or whatever. Yet, with intense training, most can regain some use of their limbs again.
They do that by repetition. Repetition forces the brain to re-wire itself, make more connections, and work properly again. This process is extremely fast in the young, and decreases with age, but never goes away completely.
Just like men and women's brains are wired differently, which gives them each different "natural" abilities, each of our brains are wired a little differently. The more "connections" one has, the more adept we are at doing something.
When you take a child and train him to play pool, he will learn much faster than an older person will learn. That is because the young rewire the brain much faster than the old. And, it will take far less repetitions to learn something than it will take the older person to learn to do the same thing. Because of that, an older person that had some activity to increase the wiring for hand-eye co-ordination early on will learn to play pool much faster than the older person that never had those activities.
The older person can still achieve the same level of performance, but it will take much more work to do so. At an older level, there is no "realistic" goal to make all that work worthwhile, so it is rare to find an older person actually take the time to train as necessary. So, because it is rare, most say it can't be done. It can be done if the desire is there. Stroke patients are a perfect example of having the desire to work hard enough to re-wire the brain.
Now, the part about becoming a pro player at a later age- yes, that is very possible to happen. However, it also is very unlikely to happen. No reason for anyone to work that hard for it.
One must also take into consideration one of the larger, often overlooked aspects of the game. The mental side of it. The mental side is what largely differentiates the upper levels of play. Just like one has to attain the "wiring" for repeatable fundamentals, one must also almost always rewire the brain for proper mental aspects of playing at a high level.
Because of this wiring of the brain, anyone trying to get better after a few years is best served by using proper fundamentals. Proper fundamentals require the least amount of wiring to be installed. Crooked strokes like Mike Davis for example, require that either one learned early on with faster wiring installation process, or one needs to allow for much longer time for wiring all components to make a stroke like that repeatable. It can be done, at any age. But, it will take much longer to learn than learning the "textbook" way will.That is because there are many more aspects to it, and it requires a much larger amount of wiring all connected correctly to achieve the desired outcome.
The more wiring we have for a given task, the quicker we will be able to "recall" just what to do. The more we know what to do, the more wiring we have. That is why it is so important to really pay attention to details. What does what. That detail orientation is making more wiring for what we want to recall. The less we use a certain wiring path, the more that wiring will diminish until eventually we can't recall what we once knew.
You often hear instructors say to not play competitively for a while after getting a lesson. The reasoning behind that is just what I stated above. In a pressure situation, our mind will revert to the easiest path for remembering what to do. That would be the path with the most wiring. That would be the old way of doing things. It requires repetition of a new way of doing something to create that new wiring path. The more we do it, the more wiring. The less we do the old way, the less wiring in that path. Eventually, the new path becomes the default path, and over time the old way can actually be diminished to the point that we can't remember what it even was. Proper fundamentals require the least amount of wiring to make a solid default path to remember. Hence, it is usually the method taught. When someone like Mike Davis goes to an instructor, he has such a solid wiring path already that works for HIM, that only minor tweaks would be added. Not a whole new way of playing the game. No need to create new wiring to accomplish the same purpose. It's when our present wiring doesn't work properly that new ways are added.
Starting to get off track here, so I will end it here for now.
Old Nine Baller
Banned
BJ, I knew this "Dan Plan" sounded eerily familiar !..There was an APA 3 pool player, who went on a similar crusade, a while back !..He didn't even have to become a pro..All he had to do, was get good enough to beat a decent shortstop (whose name I believe, was 'Louser')..The guy also tried to cram all his "pro lessons" and practice into only 4-5 months, but he was SUPER dedicated !
Of course he fell WOEFULLY short !..Only cost him 10K to find out he did not have even one ounce, of the elusive "pool playing gene" in his body !.. I wish I could remember his name ?..I can see his 'stroke', like it was yesterday !
SJD
PS..It would have cost him a lot more than 10K, but he hedged his bet at the last minute !..The name will come to me eventually ! :sorry:
Was it a "samurai stroke"?
ONB