[HN Gopher] Secrets of The Great Families
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Secrets of The Great Families
Author : jger15
Score : 43 points
Date : 2021-11-09 20:44 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (astralcodexten.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (astralcodexten.substack.com)
| sxp wrote:
| > ...as Wired puts it, Elite Soccer Players Are Smarter Than You
| Are - "and the sharpest of them score more often than dimmer
| teammates." Since Harald Bohr was a soccer player, this sort of
| checks out.
|
| The extreme intelligence of elite sports players never ceases to
| impress me. While many of them got where they are due to pure
| physical attributes, the top ones in any sport seem to genius
| level IQs comparable to chess grandmaster. E.g, Lebron James
| demonstrating his extreme memory:
| https://www.sbnation.com/nba/2020/2/21/21147213/lebron-james...
| paulpauper wrote:
| it should not be that surprising. being good at a team sport
| means you have to process the action of many people at once
| motohagiography wrote:
| The "hero license" concept he concludes with seems pretty close
| to "90% of success is just showing up," and stories about how
| much a good attitude has an effect on performance. However,
| family, education and class can all create the hero license
| condition. While I don't think he linked it, there is some
| anecdotal data (and now that I looked it up, research!
| https://jumpmath.org/us/research/) from teaching kids math using
| an analogous hero license can have outsize results.
|
| I'd even take it a step further and suggest the hero license
| comes from a teacher who can act as a real coach invested in your
| success as opposed to someone just transmitting received
| knowledge. The greatness of the family members in the article
| suggests the means to transmit that license were present in each
| case.
| paulpauper wrote:
| "90% of success is just showing up,"
|
| You have to show up and be competent. Showing up is necessary
| but insufficienct.
| yobbo wrote:
| One viewpoint is that for each opportunity, 90% of competent
| candidates don't show up. Showing up gets you ahead of 90% of
| competitors.
| [deleted]
| quadcore wrote:
| Something to consider is that, as a survival mechanism, a child
| copy his parents behaviours. It mimicries his environment in
| order to survive. We all do a lot similar than our parents and
| familly. Those habits are also very hard to unlearn. This is well
| documented specifically in the psychology field.
| drewcoo wrote:
| That is known as privilege.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| A good example of why the concept of privilege is so useless.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| It can be. Some people grow up in abusive households and
| replicate that behavior.
|
| I get your point though, someone who grows up exposed to the
| inner-workings of business has a head start compared to
| someone without such exposure.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| A head start in running a business. Maybe they would rather
| be a musician and are disadvantaged compared to kids from
| musician families.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Privilege is a good thing.
|
| We should try to give everyone privilege.
| molbioguy wrote:
| Privilege is too broad and doesn't really apply to the parent
| comment. Bad habits are also passed on and/or learned by
| children. There are advantageous behaviors that can be
| learned and will increase the chances for success.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I think scott is kinda stretching the argument thin. They are
| accomplished in the sense of being notable enough to have
| Wikipedia pages about them, but being an astronomer, a historian,
| or being a chair of some royal society is a far cry from
| codifying the theory of evolution. It's like saying someone is an
| engineer is a major accomplishment when his dad founded a fortune
| 100 tech company. Yes, an engineer is a good profession, but far
| from being the CEO of google or something like that. The son
| being an engineer is noteworthy only because his dad is
| CEO/founder of a huge company.
| rkk3 wrote:
| Agreed, I don't think his premise of "families keep producing
| such talent, generation after generation" is solid.
|
| On a side note, I was also surprised the Bernoulli Family
| wasn't mentioned.
| sandstrom wrote:
| With IQ being ~80% hereditary, this isn't too surprising.
|
| EDIT: Had somehow missed half the article, which goes into detail
| on this. I'd still guess IQ is a big part of it though.
| LambdaTrain wrote:
| The genetic impact of a talented ancestor diminishes rapidly
| after generations (say multiply 80% several times it quickly
| turns small) if no other factors comes into play.
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