Why people work hard

From Guy White

David Brooks of the NY Times wrote:

The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practising their craft.

Two points on this:

1) When liberals write that something is a “bad predictor”, it means that it’s not perfect. Nothing is, of course, so anything that’s not PC could be called a bad predictor.

I am very weary of people using terms like “bad”. What does bad mean? In fact, IQ is the best of all the predictors.

2) There’s a reason people rigorously practice their craft - they usually realize that they are talented. I can practice being a sprinter for the rest of my life and I will never make the Olympic team.

Liberals like to say that blacks “seem” to be good at basketball because they practice and Jews/Orientals “seem” smart because they go to school. But why do some go to school and others play basketball?

According to Affirmative Action Hoax, up to grade 8, blacks actually study more than whites. I believe it from what I’ve seen. Blacks give up because they fall behind and eventually lose motivation, which is why Jews and Asians don’t play sports in the same numbers as blacks (or even Europeans).

Everyone knows what they are good at and that’s usually what they practice. Now, some people are just lazy and never realize their talents. Many more are just too scared to dedicate themselves to what they are really meant to do (or simply have other priorities, like children) and prefer a safe job for $40,000. But these types of people don’t work for a dozen years to develop a particular skill.

The people who do that almost always choose what they are good at. If they don’t, the rest of the world just laughs at them at Don Quixotes. Sooner or later, they will give up.

A low IQ student struggling to pass basic community college courses will eventually give up. It won’t even occur to him that get a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering.

But a student who can breeze through college, never doing homework, getting drunk and playing pool, while still getting getting A’s, will strongly consider grad school (or more likely, in the case of a student like that, law school). If education is easy and allows you to have a lot of free time to have fun, why not continue?

Liberals generally have a problem with basic logic.

If A and B coincide, it doesn’t necessarily mean that A caused B. There are 4 possibilities:

A caused B
B caused A
C caused both A and B
A and B are just a coincidence

What the liberals do is look at the four choices, pick the most politically correct one and run with it. But who says that the politically correct answer is also the factually correct one? Oh, the New York Times does. Of course. Stupid me.