THE PROBLEM OF TALENT

 “When I looked at the life stories of geniuses” during his student years, “I found the same thing….They all started at a very young age and studied intensively.”

---Laszlo Polgar

I got enganged in a discussion with a friend who seems to know, a little, at the very least, of everything. Chess being no exception. He had apparently read extensively about the Laszlo Polgar 'Experiment'. He doesn't play chess himself, but comes by the club where we do regularly. He has a vague grasp of what it must take to become a master at the game, but that was enough to get him wowed by the achievements of the Polgar sisters.

He is of the opinion, though, that we are all born with varied talents; probably the reason why Sofia wasn't as successful at chess as her sisters, Susan and Judith. This brings us back to the 'problem' Laszlo Polgar had set out to solve, or maybe understand, decades ago: Are we born with talents or do we acquire them as we develop, through nuture? I guess no one can honestly give this a straightforward answer. Are we born with a blank hard drive or do we have some apps/programs pre-installed?
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Children exposed to the same conditions turn out differently (at least marginally) ten out of ten times. This is true even for monozygote twins. Are certain people more suited to certain tasks from birth? Can we really say that they were exposed to exactly the same experience whenever we subject them to the same conditions? Do they end up assimilating exactly the same thing from the exact same experience?

I am of the opinion that an individual's eventual ability is influenced by talent (which is a difficult word to define) and environment. However, there is a third factor which most of us who have engaged in this debate usually fail to notice or mention. This factor, which in my own opinion, is as formidable as the other two, is CHOICE! We are not machines that can be easily predicted strictly based on input. Man's actions cannot truly be predicted.

Unfortunately, I have no conclusion on this matter, even if the considerations are strictly on my own thoughts and findings. This is the problem of 'talent'.