Nurture Not Nature
The Expert Mind
The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born.
In this chess position white to move. The winning move was obvious even to a patzer like me, not because I have the ability to calculate quickly, but because it is part of the literature of the game. The position comes from a famous 1889 game between Emanuel Lasker (white) and Johann Bauer (black). It's a position, a classic, that is in every book on sacrificial attacks in one form or another. Any decent club player would immediately say to himself ah the two bishops sacrifice and choose Bh7+ that's taking the pawn in front of the king with the light-squared bishop. The sacrifice will lead to mate or force black to give up his queen.
A man walks along the inside of a circle of chess tables, glancing at each for two or three seconds before making his move. On the outer rim, dozens of amateurs sit pondering their replies until he completes the circuit. The year is 1909, the man is José Raúl Capablanca of Cuba, and the result is a whitewash: 28 wins in as many games. The exhibition was part of a tour in which Capablanca won 168 games in a row.
How did he play so well, so quickly? And how far ahead could he calculate under such constraints? "I see only one move ahead," Capablanca is said to have answered, "but it is always the correct one."He thus put in a nutshell what a century of psychological research has subsequently established: much of the chess master's advantage over the novice derives from the first few seconds of thought. This rapid, knowledge-guided perception, sometimes called apperception, can be seen in experts in other fields as well. Just as a master can recall all the moves in a game he has played, so can an accomplished musician often reconstruct the score to a sonata heard just once. And just as the chess master often finds the best move in a flash, an expert physician can sometimes make an accurate diagnosis within moments of laying eyes on a patient.
But how do the experts in these various subjects acquire their extraordinary skills? How much can be credited to innate talent and how much to intensive training? Psychologists have sought answers in studies of chess masters. The collected results of a century of such research have led to new theories explaining how the mind organizes and retrieves information. What is more, this research may have important implications for educators. Perhaps the same techniques used by chess players to hone their skills could be applied in the classroom to teach reading, writing and arithmetic.
The Drosophila of Cognitive Science
The history of human expertise begins with hunting, a skill that was crucial to the survival of our early ancestors. The mature hunter knows not only where the lion has been; he can also infer where it will go. Tracking skill increases, as repeated studies show, from childhood onward, rising in "a linear relationship, all the way out to the mid-30s, when it tops out," says John Bock, an anthropologist at California State University, Fullerton. It takes less time to train a brain surgeon.
Comments
Thank you for posting this on my birthday! Lately I've been getting into discussions with people about Nature vs Nurture. Seems that these days there are people thinking that there's a gene for everything (gay gene, fat gene, smart gene, etc); that people, in general, are favoring nature over nurture. I keep reminding people that nature made humans really good at learning from other humans and that the rest (or at least most of it) is nurture. Thanks.
Nurture of nature, expert or great minded. Great minds are born. However it is a lot easer to tear one down then to build.
The article seems to make a case for intuition and creativity just as they reject nature over nurture. By definition (having, involving, or displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training) an expert is trained. It seems to be that the authors have confirmed the definition of expert. Academia would love to take credit for the "great minds" but they are born not made. The educational system and society are more often at odds with the great minded it doesn't take a life time of training to see that.
Thankfully some great minds survive (all that training) to realize accomplishment. It is important to nurture nature. After coming to this sight for over a year I think that most of the surfers know that great minds find more resistance then nurture. The powers that be don't like great minds they are dangerous. Experts now that is a different Story, they are trained.
"It takes less time to train a brain surgeon."
how about a president?
A president, apparently no training required.
An interesting essay from the Heideggerian POV:
That segment alone made my subscription to SciAm well worth the money.
Sven, thanks for the link to that essay it's a nice compliment to the Sci Am and Ray I couldn't agree more I have an electronic subscription to Sci Am and love being able to download individual articles or the entire issue as a pdf document. I was going to post on this article before but didn't have a link.
President is all genetics.
http://www.zefrank.com/thewiki/FabulosoFriday2/Fabuloso_Chess Help me beat this guy!
It's hard to imagine how we even got to this position. It appears to be Bird's opening (Dutch variation) and not played very well by black as white is up a knight, and has more space, but black is ahead in moves: 12 against only 8 for white. Admittedly, white has a slight advantage...
1.Bxh7+ Kxh7
2.Qxh5+ Kg8
3.Bxg7 Kxg7
4.Qg4+ Kh7
5.Rf3 e5
6.Rh3+ Qh6
7.Rxh6+ Kxh6
8.Qd7 Bf6
9.fxe5 Bxe5
10.Rf1 d4 (10...Ra7?)
11.Qxb7 Rab8
12.Qxa6 dxe3
13.Qe2 f6
14.Rf5 Kg7
15.Qg4+ Kf7
16.Rh5 Rh8
17.dxe3 Rxh5
18.Qxh5+ Ke6
19.Qf3 Rd8
20.c4 f5
...after the two bishop and one rook sacrifice for the queen, two pawns and one bishop, it's pretty close. White still has to play near perfectly to win.
But anyway, there's a lot of misconceptions about chess and chess "talent". But in a broader sense, intelligence and the ability to learn is dependent on how one is educated. Different people learn and think in different ways.
"Why is it that students can graduate from MIT and Harvard, yet not know how to solve a simple third-grade problem in science: lighting a light bulb with a battery and wire? Beginning with this startling fact, this program systematically explores many of the assumptions that we hold about learning to show that education is based on a series of myths. Through the example of an experienced teacher, the program takes a hard look at why teaching fails, even when he uses all of the traditional tricks of the trade. The program shows how new research, used by teachers committed to finding solutions to problems, is reshaping what goes on in our nation’s schools." http://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html?pop=yes&vodid=278761&pid=76#
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