[HN Gopher] Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest...
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Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of
human performance
Author : colincooke
Score : 80 points
Date : 2026-01-22 18:01 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| KittenInABox wrote:
| This sort of tracks for me. The smartest people I know as adults
| mostly fucked around a lot and had wide interests that all
| culminated in them doing a great thing greatly. The smartest
| people I know as kids spent hours grinding on something and
| crashed out in college and are mostly average well-to-dos now.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| How many of the children in first group didn't you meet?
| nkmnz wrote:
| The selection bias might not be relevant if the message is
| not
|
| "slack around as kid, it will make you great later!"
|
| but
|
| "prodigy youth doesn't guarantee greatness later, as well as
| non-prodigy youth doesn't prevent you from becoming grat
| later".
| bitwize wrote:
| I'm reminded of a meme on Facebook my wife showed me that was a
| two-dimensional graph of SAT score vs. GPA. The corner with the
| highest SAT scores but the lowest GPAs was shaded in and
| labelled "These are the people I want to hang out with."
| sointeresting wrote:
| Graduated with a 1.7 GPA and a 32 on the ACT. My parents were
| a little dismayed.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I'm not sure we should romanticize ADHD, which is what you
| call that region. If those people could be high SAT _and_
| high GPA they would prefer it. Signed, someone in that
| region.
| esseph wrote:
| Who said anything about ADHD?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| That's who lives in that region, almost exclusively.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| Sure isn't.
|
| I annihilated the SATs. My grades were only good in high
| school because I was just "gifted" enough to get As
| without studying. I do not have and never had ADHD. I
| also never learned how to study.
|
| I almost failed out of college. I didn't know how to
| study. I didn't have the habits. I sure had a lot of fun
| in high school and college though.
| nradov wrote:
| Nah. There are plenty of intelligent students who don't
| have ADHD but are either lazy or rebellious enough to not
| care about conventional measures of academic success.
| tayo42 wrote:
| What does the reverse imply? High GPA, low SAT?
| irishcoffee wrote:
| Probably the stupid-and-diligent bit.
|
| > In 1933, while overseeing the writing of Truppenfuhrung,
| the manual for leading combined arms formations,
| Hammerstein-Equord made one of the most historically
| prescient observations on leadership. During the writing
| effort, he offered his personal view of officers,
| classifying them in a way only he could:
|
| > "I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever,
| diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two
| characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent
| -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are
| stupid and lazy -- they make up 90% of every army and are
| suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and
| lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties,
| because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the
| composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must
| beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not
| be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always
| cause only mischief."
|
| https://news.clearancejobs.com/2019/10/08/the-four-
| classes-o...
| incognito124 wrote:
| Hardly a recent discovery. This is basically the entire foreword
| of David Epstein's book called Range: Why Generalists Triumph in
| a Specialized World
| pixl97 wrote:
| The strength of analogy is one of the more powerful tools
| humans have. You take findings/experience from a totally
| different field and use it to escape the local maxima that
| other field is caught in.
|
| It's a relatively common theme in sciences that someone comes
| out of nowhere and solves a long standing problem in a field
| because they don't have the specialized set of biases that
| keeps everyone else trapped.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| IMHO, it's MUCH more common in sciences though, that someone
| that is expert-level in one field comes into another and
| thinks they CAN solve a long standing problem in that field
| quite easily, and then repeatedly falls into all the pitfalls
| / traps that others in that field learned long ago to avoid
| (aka Dunning-Kruger). You know, "chemistry is just applied
| physics", "biology is applied chemistry", etc.. Sure, it's
| true in one sense, but... No one calculates the wave function
| of an elephant, for example.
|
| One of the benefits of generalism / learning multiple fields
| (IMHO, again) is that you realizes that special abilities /
| skills don't necessarily translate well from one field to
| another. For example, learning to play the violin is very
| different from, say, playing billiards, yet becoming good at
| either one involves learning subtle manipulations of
| basically similarly-shaped pieces of wood. By involvement in
| multiple fields, you learn to be careful NOT to bring your
| "everything is a nail" mentality with you from one field to
| the next.
| pessimizer wrote:
| A summary, since the paper isn't open access:
| https://scientificinquirer.com/2025/12/21/the-counterintuiti...
| mathfailure wrote:
| This source is shit: it doesn't grant open access.
| truted2 wrote:
| > For example, world top-10 youth chess players and later world
| top-10 adult chess players are nearly 90% different individuals
| across time. Top secondary students and later top university
| students are also nearly 90% different people. Likewise,
| international-level youth athletes and later international-level
| adult athletes are nearly 90% different individuals.
|
| Motivation if you feel like you're young and failing
| Mgtyalx wrote:
| The problem being: access to a prestiges career or opportunity
| is generally predicated on climbing the academics achievement
| ladder at an increasingly early age. This leaves the more
| esoteric people out in the cold. If your not a true prodigy
| whose achievements outshine the highly credentialed you will
| struggle to get on.
| nradov wrote:
| In the tech industry, some of the people with the most
| prestigious careers are literally college dropouts. There are
| many paths to success, not all are linear.
| soperj wrote:
| from sports i know (hockey), generally the next generational
| player is identified when they're like 12-13 years old (earlier
| for Gretzky). You look at the top scorers from the Brick
| Tournament(9-10 year old kids play in that tournament) from 10
| years ago (https://www.eliteprospects.com/league/brick-
| invitational/201...), 3 of the top 5 scorers were drafted in
| the first round, and the top goalie was Team Canada's goalie at
| the world juniors.
|
| edit: went back a few more years, lots of NHLers in the top 5
| in scoring in the tournament, but some years are more miss than
| hit.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| Gretzky is well-known for saying he thinks kids should play
| multiple sports and avoid hockey in the summer, like he did
| (IIRC) - he mentioned soccer, etc.
| boogieknite wrote:
| in contrast: the sport i know best, hoops, a common pattern
| for generational players is for them to be late bloomers
| because they grow up short, developing skills and competitive
| toughness, then get lucky and grow a half-foot late in
| puberty
| soperj wrote:
| who is that? Not Lebron, definitely not Jokic, SGA was 4
| star recruit?
| scns wrote:
| Denis Rodman started very late.
| everly wrote:
| David Robinson was an example of this.
| lostmsu wrote:
| That could simply be explained by early high achievers being
| worked hard by their parents or something else while people with
| innate abilities making progress slower (because most people are
| not overworked). For the first group they sizzle either because
| the pressure is removed as they grow up or because they hit their
| ceiling.
| nick__m wrote:
| My experience is almost the inverse of what you describe, I
| never had to work at all until university, I was a top
| performer until "physique 1: mecanique newtonienne" it was the
| first time (and the last) I failed at something academic.
|
| That was quite a shock to realize that I had to do the
| exercises and the homeworks if I wanted to pass. And since I
| was not use to efforts, I was no longer the top performer in
| classss where you have to do the exercises to really understand
| the matter.
|
| I was recognized as extremely clever by teachers and other
| students but let me assure you that over long enough,
| discipline (witch I don't really have) and consistent efforts
| beats cleverness.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Not sure how your experience contradicts my point exactly.
| You're not saying you are in the highest ranks at all, so
| your experience is irrelevant. If you are, you fit the
| natural talent with no pressure description.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Couldn't this be explained by Berkson's Paradox [0]?
|
| [0] https://xcancel.com/AlexGDimakis/status/2002848594953732521
| efavdb wrote:
| Here's the wikipedia on that one
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox
| lordnacho wrote:
| It seems the criticism is indeed Berkson's Paradox, but the
| example is different to the canonical example of Berkson's
| paradox.
|
| In the canonical example, you have uncorrelated attributes, eg
| skill and attractiveness in actors, forming a round scatter
| plot with no correlation. Selecting a subpopulation of top
| actors who are either skilled or attractive, you get a negative
| correlation. You can visualize this as chopping the top-right
| of the round scatter plot off: the chopped off piece is
| oriented in roughly a line of negative correlation.
|
| In this example, if you look in the linked paper inside the
| post by Dimakis, there is a positively correlated scatter plot:
| You can tell the shape is correlated positively between youth
| and adult performance. But in this case, if you condition on
| the extremes of performance, you end up selecting a cloud of
| points that has flat to slight negative correlation.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Correlated attributes can still lead to the paradox, so long
| as the error measured parallel to the cutoff line (the
| "fuzziness" of the correlation) is greater than the slope of
| the cutoff line. Here are a couple cartoons to demonstrate.
| Denote each datapoint with I or E, depending on whether it's
| included or excluded in the region x + y > z.
|
| Uncorrelated attributes: y | [?]
| | [?][?] IIIIIII | E[?][?]IIIIIIII
| | EEEE[?][?]IIIIIII | EEEEEE[?][?]IIIII
| | EEEEEEEE[?][?]III | EEEEEEEEE[?][?]
| | EEEEEEE [?][?] | [?]
| +-------------------x
|
| Looking at just the Included points shows clear (spurious)
| negative correlation.
|
| Correlated attributes: y | [?]
| | [?][?] IIII | [?][?]IIIIII |
| E[?][?]IIIII | EEEE[?]III |
| EEEEEE[?][?] | EEEE [?][?] |
| E [?][?] | [?]
| +-----------------x
|
| The Included points still have a negative spurious
| correlation, though it's smaller than for the uncorrelated
| cartoon.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| Berkson's Paradox seems to rely on the selection criteria being
| _a combination of_ the two traits in question -- in the example
| I keep reading about, only "famous" actors are selected, and
| actors can be famous if they are _either_ highly talented _or_
| highly attractive. But in TFA, surely the "high performance"
| selection filter applies only to the adult performance level?
|
| To put it another way: If selection was restricted to people
| who performed highly in _either_ their youth or in adulthood
| (or both), Berkson 's Paradox explains the result. If selection
| was restricted to people who performed highly in their youth,
| or if selection was restricted to people who performed highly
| in adulthood, Berkson's doesn't explain it.
| arjie wrote:
| Seems very Taleb's Ugly Surgeon / Berkson's Paradox to me. It's
| like how software engineers who are at Google are worse if
| they're better competitive programmers.
|
| e.g. https://viz.roshangeorge.dev/taleb-surgeon/
| atriarch wrote:
| Exponential growth is the path of longsuffering, and one doesn't
| always make it. It sucks and looks and feels bad for all
| involved. This is why advice such as, "Ignore the naysayers." is
| clutch. And other advice once one starts to rocket shoot like
| "Stay in your lane." is the absolute worst advice of all time.
| (IYKYK - Rest in peace Scott Adams)
|
| Another thought - Einstein had reviewed thousands of patents when
| he worked on the train - that's a hell of data set for an LM to
| start with.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| So consider these quotes:
|
| _Early exceptional performers and later exceptional performers
| within a domain are rarely the same individuals but are largely
| discrete populations over time..._ and _Most top achievers (Nobel
| laureates and world-class musicians, athletes, and chess players)
| demonstrated lower performance than many peers during their early
| years._ Together.
|
| A simple explanation: _high_ performance requires quite a bit of
| specific preparation. But "exceptional" performance is mostly
| random relative to the larger population of high performers in
| terms of the underlying training-to-skills-to-achievement
| "equation". Especially, being at the top tends to get someone
| more resources than those nearly at the top who don't have
| visible/certified achievements.
|
| I'd that billing your work "the study of the very best" really
| gives you strong marketing spin and that makes people tempted to
| find simplistic markers rather than looking at the often random
| processes involved in visible success. IE, I haven't touched on
| reversion to mean
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean).
| hockey wrote:
| Lower early life performance we with lots of multidisciplinary
| experience, later life hyperfocus on a specific discipline until
| world-class levels are reached.
|
| Sounds like they're describing ADHD.
|
| (Side note after the important ADHD joke: there's an old sport
| textbook called "Periodization" that mentions focusing on breadth
| rather than depth of sports experience in early life is a better
| path to olympic-level performance than just going hard in a
| single sport from a young age.)
| Aurornis wrote:
| It's amazing how far the pop-culture definition of ADHD has
| strayed from the medical definition. "Hyperfocus ... until
| world class performance" is in no way consistent with the
| medical definition of ADHD. I'm well aware that "hyperfocus" is
| a prominent part of the Reddit and TikTok-ification of ADHD
| diagnostics, but being able to focus intensely on your job
| until you perform it at world class levels is decisively _not_
| indicative of ADHD. Hyperfocus is not part of official ADHD
| diagnostic criteria and the only pseudo-studies that have
| examined it have taken place as self-reported questionnaires
| with small sample sizes in the era since it became a popular
| topic on social media, unfortunately.
|
| ADHD is not correlated with high career performance, sadly, and
| represents a real obstacle for those struggling with it. The
| current social media trend of equating ADHD to a superpower
| which propels people to focus intensely and excel is really
| unfortunate.
| eudamoniac wrote:
| This is somewhat related to the application of strength to
| various sports and physical endeavors. Most sports utilize
| strength to a large degree, but it's usually in a narrow
| application, e.g. a golf swing, a sprinter's run, a rock
| climber's grip. The naive algorithm to improve at these sports is
| to practice them, and the slightly less naive method is to train
| for strength in that narrow application, for example you often
| see rock climbers training by doing rock climbing specific grip
| exercises.
|
| Unintuitively, strength is a general adaptation that applies to
| all specific movements. A muscle is either strengthened across a
| range of motion, or it isn't; a muscle cannot be strong swinging
| a club while not strong lifting a weight, nor can it be strong
| holding a rock while weak holding a bar. It is optimal for most
| sports to train for general strength via barbells, and then to
| practice that strength via the sport. The rock climber should do
| heavy deadlifts and chinups to train his grip (and everything
| else), not special rock grip exercises, for the latter are
| difficult to progress in small increments and are inefficient in
| a time sense. A man who can do chinups with 150 pounds hanging
| from his waist, and who can hold a 550 pound barbell, will not
| have a problem hanging onto the bouldering wall; he need only
| practice his technique.
|
| To the article's point, you should get "strong" in everything
| until you decide to practice that strength in one thing.
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