How to classify if someone is talented at snooker, disregard of age?

[ace man]

There could be plenty of Mozart's in the world today. Tastes and audiences have changed. How could they possibly showcase their talents today? Where exactly and to whom? Who listens to classical music today? It is mostly uneducated journalists and sport commentators who like to brand some athletes with title of "Mozart" of snooker, basketball, tennis, football of whatever. It sounds good but is completely inaccurate.

While I agree that natural talent is important, is is only a part of the whole equation. Mental strength and stamina are far more important. And I don't think you can have a successful snooker player or any kind of sportsmen without him starting very young.

How good would Ronnie be if he started with the game of snooker seriously at age of 30 having never picked up a cue before?
How good would Roger Federer be if he picked up tennis seriously at age of 20?
Speculative, but my gut feeling is that neither of them would make it past club level of their respective sports regardless of their unquestionable talent.

[eaoin11]

I thought we were talking about talent in snooker, and how can we tell if someone has talent, to which I replied if a person is gifted he can improve very fast and reach a much higher level than a person without. I never said that a person should give up the game if he feels that he has no talent. I also agree that hard work, systematic training, and good coaching can help a person to reach a good standard, even if he may not be very talented. I was under the impression that we were only talking about people with talent--not the kind that were considered "slow" or "untalented."

We are, so it's relevant to question the meaning of the concept. The flip side of saying it's something you have or don't, is that you're saying some people don't. You can't have one without the other. I'm merely questioning the usefulness of the idea on a case by case basis. You can't measure, for any individual, how much of their ability was developed and how much of it is intrinsic.

Joe Davis may say he was not very gifted but if he could play so well with one eye being so much weaker than the other and was able to figure out so much on his own when there were so little information available back in those days he must be in fact quite talented. He was also playing at a top level in two disciplines, not just one. He was just being modest.

That's your speculation. I'd prefer to think that someone who did so much to raise the level and profile of the sport didn't make useless comments out of modesty. From what I've read it's likely that he was very well educated and developed his own ability with a more professional and analytical approach than most.

Will you tell a child in China and his parents who has just sold everything he has to try to groom his only child to become a professional snooker player that although his highest break is only 40 after playing for 3 years but with hard work, proper exposure, proper training and coaching he may still become another Ding so keep trying and don't give up?

This is why your posts are too long.

I do believe to a large extend talent is a gift. It is not to say a person without such a gift will never be good at it but when you put such a person (without a gift) next to one with a lot of gift, and put them under the same condition to teach them the same thing the difference will become very obvious very quickly, which was the point I was trying to make, in response to the original poster's question.

Yes, that's the understanding everyone has of intrinsic, or inborn talent. Nothing new there. But actually very difficult to demonstrate experimentally. To give them truly identical treatments you would need to control their lives from a very early stage. Alternatively you could use clones of the two people in sufficiently large numbers to statistically cover the variation in their life experiences outside of their identical training. And the end result? Another one of those headlines declaring that scientists have confirmed the BLEEDING OBVIOUS.

How come we never have another Mozart if talent is not a gift? If it can be taught and manufactured then how come after so many year we still cannot 'manufacture' another Mozart?

If genius is not born but made--how come no one can make another Mozart?

After reminding me in the same post that this thread was about talent in snooker... I know very little about classical music and would be very surprised if you do either.

[nrage]

If talent is not inborn but taught

Who are you responding to? ... because no-one seems to be saying what you have above... Edit: Sorry, a later post has cleared that up. I don't think anyone in this thread is actually disagreeing ;P

[poolqjunkie]

Eaoin,
Actually I never said if you are not talented than you just dont have it at all.
My question was if genius can be taught and trained and talent is not a gift as you have suggested, why we cannot manufacture another Mozart. It is not really a question relating to classical music but more about the theory you have stated. I was actually really interested to hear what you have to say but if you must talk in such a condescending manner than forget it. Have a good day.

[poolqjunkie]

Who are you responding to? ... because no-one seems to be saying what you have above... Edit: Sorry, a later post has cleared that up. I don't think anyone in this thread is actually disagreeing ;P

As a matter of fact I agree with you, I believe we all agree about the same thing but different people just look at this from different prespectives.

[nrage]

As a matter of fact I agree with you, I believe we all agree about the same thing but different people just look at this from different prespectives.

Yay, some agreement finally.

As is often the case in my experience, the argument is actually about the meaning of the terms used. You make a statement using the word X, I hear X, but my meaning of X differs from yours, so I disagree with the statement. However, replace X with a word which to me, means the same as X does to you, and I would agree. I have seen a huge number of arguments where this appears to be the case.

This may seem like a tangent, but this piece of philosophy is both interesting and relates to the idea that words mean different things to different people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language_argument

I particularly like the "beetle in a box" thought experiment/idea.

For example, when I say the apple is "red" you will probably agree, but in fact it's unlikely that we both have exactly the same concept of "red", it's probably similar, but likely very slightly different. Firstly because the receptors in our eyes are different, secondly once that information gets to the brain and you 'see' it, what do you actually see? How does that compare to what I see? We have no way of knowing if it's the same, we can attempt to describe it, but all the words we use will again have private meaning to us, and we cannot be sure they have the same meaning to someone else.

To come back to the original point. I think that if we all keep our minds open to the fact that we can't be 100% certain that we understand the real meaning of what others say, and then make more of an effort to truly understand it by asking for more detail, elaboration, or "another way" of saying it instead of leaping straight in and stating it is "wrong" then we'll all get along much better.

At the same time, when you (not "you" specifically, but using "one" here sounds odd) say something, before hitting "post" you should imagine someone else is saying this to you, and ask yourself how that would make you feel. If it would pi$$ you off, then don't post it, or re-phrase it in a less confrontational manner. Ultimately, if what you ("one") have to say contains something actually useful/interesting, then it doesn't need additional "emotive" content.. and if all it has is emotive content then it's essentially worthless in a discussion or debate as it adds.. well, nothing.

I think you (yes, you this time) understand this But I like to hear myself talk

[vmax4steve]

Human beings are strange creatures indeed, the only ones on the planet with the capability of abstract thought and a memory capacity that enables learning to an incredible degree. These autistic savants are a case apart from ordinary Janes' and Joes' though. Their brains are damaged to an extent where the emotional areas of the brain do not function like ours and all of their cognitive abilities can be focussed onto one particular thing, like music or maths. Kim Peake, who was the inspiration for the film Rain Man, can read a book two pages at a time (each eye reads a different page) at lightning speed and retains in memory everything he reads yet he cannot dress himself or tie his shoe laces. Both these things one would think only require memory and repetition yet it is obvious that they do not, motor skills are entirely separate from memory.
I would like to get into a little theory by Terence McKenna, who wrote a series of books on his experiments with hallucinagenic plants, that human intelligence evolved through prehistoric hominids ingesting such plants as part of their diet, which affected the brains of the unborn whose mothers/fathers/ grandparents partook of such plants. His theory might seem a little far fetched for some but it does explain why human intelligence seemed to evolve so rapidly, why human brains are so large, why human skulls are so thin and also why human births are so difficult compared to other mammals.
His books also touch on what he calls genetic memory, that memories of parents and even entire cultures can be passed down through the genes, it can be called instinct in low intelligence animals whose behaviour is somewhat limited compared to humans, apes, whales etc who teach their young the skills needed to survive over a period of years. He argues that if instinct is a genetic memory then it's possible that certain skills possessed by human parents might be passed on to their children/grandchildren in the form of instinct. Like in the case of Jimi Hendrix who had musicians in his lineage, was never taught the guitar but learned to play to a brilliant level because, and I quote, " I somehow just knew how to play."
Then there is the case of Frank Marino, Canadian guitarist, who took such large amounts of LSD as a fourteen year old that his mind began to trip out without the need for the drug and he began to descend into his genetic memory so deeply that he imagined himself to be a tree residing in a primeval forest. Sounds silly until you think that science has proved through research into DNA that all life on this planet evolved from just one single celled creature billions of years ago, and that the Shamans of the south american indigenous people regularly take hallucinagenic plants and become taken over by the spirits (memories maybe) of their ancestors and the animals of the forest in which they live.
There is a plant called Iboga, which is found in Africa where humans originated, which when taken in small doses can uncover the subconcious mind. This plant is considered by some to be the original Tree Of Life metaphor from the bible story. It is starting to be used now in some countries as a cure for addictions as it exposes the addict to their subconcious memories and shows them the reasons for their addiction so that not only can their physical yearnings be dealt with but also their underlying mental needs.
What I am proposing is that surely if genetic memory is a given, and I for one believe it to be, then it must be correct that a person who has a lot of sporting prowess in his/her lineage would be able to tap into that instinct for sport.

tell me he's not tapping into something primeval
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9TFygUZCFI

[liquidsymphony]

well i Can post a video of me playing snooker and you'll see someone that is not talented LOL. i promise i won't take LSD to try to change . is ROS a junkie ?
sorry ... just joking ...

[poolqjunkie]

Actually, I believe as you said we know so little about human brain that it is just not right to dismiss something we do not know. Very interesting stuff there.
I believe some genius are just simply gifted. They can become very good with very little or no training. Soem have parents who had no experience in the field.
On the other hand, I also believe some talent is partially a result of one's envirnoment in which one is brought up. It can be early exposure, education, or a number of things.
Moreover, some people are very good at something because his/her parents are. And even they have received little training he/she becomes good at it very quickly. So, it is probably largely genetic. But sometimes you can have two twins with one being very good at one thing and the other very bad at it. So, it is hard to just say it is all genetic.
And then we also have the case of savant, which is very hard to really comprehend.
I believe in keeping an open mind. As we clearly do not know much about how the human brain operates, why cant we just accept the fact that some people are just gifted without trying to analysis it with our limited knowledge and dismiss something we do not understand.
Anyway, to answer the original poster's question, my opinion is that if you meet someone who can play very well very quickly he is probably talented in the game. Not to say if you do not have it you cannot become a good player though. But things can become much easier for sure when you have a gift, in my opinion.

[eaoin11]

I’ve written essays shorter than this but my background is in biological science and more recently education so this is right up my alley. Some really big ideas have come out in this thread.

Eaoin,
Actually I never said if you are not talented than you just dont have it at all.
My question was if genius can be taught and trained and talent is not a gift as you have suggested, why we cannot manufacture another Mozart. It is not really a question relating to classical music but more about the theory you have stated. I was actually really interested to hear what you have to say but if you must talk in such a condescending manner than forget it. Have a good day.

PJ, I couldn't address all of your statements and questions because they require fairly long answers, partly because the scope of this topic is huge. VMAX has illustrated that well, linking to inheritance, genetics, possibly epigenetics and evolution. It's big picture stuff but all relevant IMO.

On your Mozart question, it has to be said that it is also a statement. You're saying that no one has ever manufactured another Mozart. If the meaning of that is not literal, i.e a replica of Mozart with his DNA and same life experiences which seems impossible, then I suppose you mean someone who produces music of equal brilliance or 'genius'. Are you sure this is the case? I think Aceman may be right on this. Experts in classical music might tell you there have been lots of awesome composers since then of equal or greater brilliance in their opinion. They've had enough time and the inspiration of those who preceded them. Also, you can't get away from the fact that it would always be a value judgement even if you could get a wide consensus on this, and you probably wouldn’t because experts wouldn’t agree on valid criteria for such a label.

I would also argue against the term 'manufactured' as there is a big difference between what is taught and what is learned.

Human beings are strange creatures indeed...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9TFygUZCFI

Recent developments in epigenetics (basically the machinery in cells that determine which genes are active, and which are not. A lot of our DNA is redundant) suggest new mechanisms for inheritance that might tie in with what you say. Inheritance and evolution is probably far more complex and sophisticated than the current model which is still mainly based on Darwin's natural selection.

Recently a study found that an excessive diet can lead to epigenetic changes, meaning that some genes become activated or deactivated and these changes make you more susceptible to obesity and a shorter life span. The really interesting finding is that these changes can then be passed on to offspring, making the next generation even more likely to become obese and have a shorter life span. Scientists suspect that such heritable acquired characteristics might also occur for other behaviours, so the possibilities are huge. It’s also interesting because it brings Lamarkism back to the table. Lamark was the first person to propose a theory of evolution, prior to Darwin but his proposed mechanism was through acquired characteristics. He suggested for example that disuse of a feature could lead to a reduction of it’s size in the following generation, as in the limbs of lizards and snakes. Larmark’s theory was discredited for years because there was no obvious mechanism for acquired traits to be inherited in this way.

I think one scientific reason for why you might hypothesize the inheritance of acquired behavioural traits is that the theory of evolution kind of predicts it. I say this because it would be an advantageous mechanism for changing and adapting to our environment more quickly than Darwin’s natural selection suggests is possible.

In the debate with PJ over nature and nurture, I think we agree that it’s not just one or the other, but we disagree on the relative strength of each in determining our potential. The findings on epigenetics support me in the sense that we can change our ‘nature’ within our lifetime, but may also support PJ’s idea of giftedness because those changes can be inherited. It’s really fascinating stuff that opens up huge possibilities, but it will take some time to learn the real extent of it. The obesity findings were made possible by data that is rarely available.

I have my reservations about the ‘theories’ on Jimi Hendrix and guys on drugs experiencing ‘genetic memories’. Before making such a claim for Jimi, you would have to go through and eliminate a whole lot of simpler, confirmable possibilities for him learning to play the guitar 'without being taught', before you could even start to convince the wider scientific community that he inherited memory or skills specific to guitar playing from his family at birth. If he had a lot of musicians in his lineage it is unlikely that he had no contact with musicians growing up, even if they never sat down and 'taught' him. People are very good at learning by watching others, and they can feel quite vividly what other people are feeling due to mirror neurons. When we perform some action, touch something or are touched, these neurons fire in the location involved. But they also fire in the very same parts of our body when we see other people perform the same action. This has a huge role in learning skills and being able to feel empathy. This mechanism is probably going to work better if you have highly proficient people around you to watch.

In science we often follow the convention of parsimony. This says that if you have two possible explanations and neither can be 100% proven, stick with the simpler explanation. It's not always right but if there's no solid evidence for the fancy theory, you don't take it over a simple one.

I've heard about the possible role of drugs in enhancing the synthesis of information and skills. That's not too far fetched at all. Watching my two kids starting to speak, I noticed that a lot of sudden bursts of new words and phrases seem to come soon after colds and viruses that have induced a fever. But I would say that snooker talent can be developed using other methods.

[vmax4steve]

I have my reservations about the ‘theories’ on Jimi Hendrix and guys on drugs experiencing ‘genetic memories’. Before making such a claim for Jimi, you would have to go through and eliminate a whole lot of simpler, confirmable possibilities for him learning to play the guitar 'without being taught', before you could even start to convince the wider scientific community that he inherited memory or skills specific to guitar playing from his family at birth. If he had a lot of musicians in his lineage it is unlikely that he had no contact with musicians growing up, even if they never sat down and 'taught' him. People are very good at learning by watching others, and they can feel quite vividly what other people are feeling due to mirror neurons. When we perform some action, touch something or are touched, these neurons fire in the location involved.[/QUOTE]

I am a huge Hendrix and Frank Marino fan and have everything they have ever recorded and read everything about them that I can get hold of. The thing with Hendrix is that he was brought up dirt poor in the black community of Seattle and basically had f*ck all. His mother was a bit of a floozy and a heavy drinker and left her family when Hendrix was quite young and he was raised by his dad, also a heavy drinker who used to alternatley love and then beat him. He pestered his dad for a guitar and his dad relented and got him one, an old beat up acoustic, which never left his side, he even used to sleep with it. His dad knowing he (Jimi) was a leftie, believed in that old christian bollocks about the left hand belonging to the devil and used to beat him if he caught him playing left handed, so Jimi in fact taught himself to play both right and left handed and could also play left handed with the guitar strung for a right hander and vice versa. He at no stage in his life had any contact with any other family members or aquaintences who could play the guitar, though he had musicians in his lineage, his dad in fact played the saxophone though.
Hendrix got to be a great guitar player very quickly through his own intuition of how the instrument actually worked, but honed his skills through many years of touring in backing bands before coming to england and forming The Experience in 1967. The possible theory of genetic memory is that Hendrix could have had an inherant musical ability that he applied to the guitar, it could just as easily have been the piano had he been so inclined and raised in a rich family like Mozart whose father was a pianist and composer also.

The case of Frank Marino though is spectacular, hospitalised in a sanitorium at age fourteen because of a recurring LSD trip, he found a guitar in the sanitorium and started to play it as a means of therapy. By the time he was eighteen he was already doing everything that Hendrix had done and as Hendrix was now dead, took up the mantle so to speak. Marino doesn't site his LSD experience as any sort of epiphany though, in fact he sank into his family's orthodox christian beliefs to get over his drug problems and refuses to this day to discuss the actual content of those recurring trips he used to have.

He did however relate them to an artist who then painted the covers for his albums Child Of The Novelty and Strange Universe



There is a theory related by Terence McKenna that if the human mind did indeed come into being through the ingestion of pyschoactive plants, then the hallucinations caused by the taking of these plants and the synsthezised active chemicals derived from them, could be a way of unlocking genetic memory within the strands of DNA contained in the cells of the brain. You say that most of our DNA is now seemingly redundant, but what if these drugs can unlock them as hallucinations that have to be deciphered like dreams.
We have all heard of people on LSD thinking they can fly, seeing monsters and dragons, in fact a friend of mind once related a story to me that he once went swimming with friends while tripping on mushrooms and imagined his friends to be water dragons and started to fight with them. He said he was terrified of this experience and never touched mushrooms again, but when I told him of this genetic memory theory and maybe he was dipping into the part of his DNA that was once reptile he saw it at once and no longer sees the experience he had as negative.

Now if the ability for the complexities for music or art can be passed down as genetic memory or instinct through lineage in families then sporting prowess would certainly be no different. It doesn't have to be the same sport, just a great abilty for hand/eye co-ordination or having great balance would be enough. Of course these could simply be physical traits but the fact that some people learn certain things at an accelerated rate could mean that they also have some predisposed instinct for it rather than learning it from scratch.

[FOXMULDER]

I played Mark Selby at Wille Thorne's club in Leicester when he was 13. He was about 4 foot tall (grown up a lot since!), his stance was laughable, he moved all over the place, he jabbed at the cueball instead of feathering it smoothly, he barely knew any safety shots - in short, his cue action, style, and technique were absolutely terrible.

Honestly, it was so bad you would think it was a kid off the street who had never played the game.

He beat me 3-0 in about 25 mins, potting every ball he went for.

Talent is intangible and indescribable.

[mchpddl1]

you must be kidding

[FOXMULDER]

you must be kidding

Not kidding. Willie Thorne's club had all the big junior players back in the day. Shaun Murphy was there every month, Selby, Ricky Walden, even Paul Hunter although he was older than the rest. Maguire used to come down occasionally too.

It was probably 97 or 98. I drew Selby in round 1. My friend warned me he was a good player (I'd never seen him before). But when I saw him play his first few shots I thought I would win easily! He looked rubbish. I was amazed that someone who looked so bad on the table could be such a good player.

[mchpddl1]

that's talent.