Group 1:  This pretty common group consists of very experienced players who have barely improved in the last XX years.  None of them EVER seek coaching.  None of them EVER practice.  They come to the club, then start playing matches - usually with a small subset of like-minded, similar level players.  These players never change their strokes, improve their footwork, practice serves, or even pay attention to why they might have won or lost a point, game, or match.  They just play.  Most of them actually play at a pretty good level - but it is essentially the same level they were playing a decade ago.  They also have a great time and enjoy TT immensely!

Talent or affinity doesn't really exist - at least not in a way that matters - unless you hone and improve your skills.

Application and motivation makes you a better player provided you see, are shown, know or understand how to improve. It doesn't come from the inside: it's an external influence. But... no amount of coaching and honing will help unless there is application and motivation. It's the true force that drives skills improvement.

There have been long and involved discussions about this and the conclusions I've come to are:

I tend to agree I'm just a bit less absolute about it. 

I think the vast majority of assessments of talent are backwards looking with the assessment made after the fact and the presence of talent inferred by the existence of observable skills.  What is really known/understood is the presence of those skills. That's it. 

If such a thing as talent exists, I think we'll find it to be mostly a small factor.  I think we may find it to be some fraction of a percent edge that maybe helps (and only helps) make the difference between a Number 1 or dominant player and someone who is elite, but who can't break the top 10.

I'm not sure what the modern concept is, but if "talent" exists I suspect that it is really a bundle of genetic potentials.  For instance, a person might have slightly more acute vision, a slightly faster reflexes, a more optimal skeletal structure or muscle fiber profile, etc.  And I think it may be very difficult to distinguish some of these things from early environmental influences starting as early as the womb that influence not only the physical person, but the person's brain and the they process information.  

Just my two cents.

I trained 2 kids one for 18months and one 8 months , the later has advanced way more, how you can explain that?, i beat aplyers that train more than i do and they do fitnnes work.

Talent is generally used to describe "innate" capabilities.  The definition you are offering fails to distinguish "talent" from acquired skills. And while I know people use the term that way casually, I think it tends to muddy the waters in a discussion like this. I'm OK with the notion that there may be innate aspects to our being that aren't genetic.   But I think your description that it needs to merely be something that sticks with us is far too broad.

Motivation, training style, background, other distractions and so on.  The factors are many and interact in complex ways. 

If you don't have detailed info about the person, their experience and motivations, how can you know if the attribute is "natural" or not?

Yes, some narrow attributes such as physical size and proportions can be clear benefits is certain narrow activities like running.  For instance certain body types are certainly not optimal for certain running events, gymnastics etc.  But I wouldn't extrapolate such things to the more complex area of a person's natural good eye, coordination etc. You set yourself up to be easily fooled if you do.

Since I don't know these kids and since a significant number of factors come into play, I can't answer that question. And neither can you. 

But for the sake of argument, here's my answer: No8 is far more motivated and applies himself much better than No18, hence the difference in results. If No8 applies and practises what you taught him, in matchplay - but No18 doesn't - he should advance much quicker.

bbkon wrote: i beat aplyers that train more than i do and they do fitnnes work.

Again I can't answer that because I don't know the first thing about the people involved. But to humour you, here's a possible answer: Winning matters more to you, than to them. Again, it's about application and what motivates you and them that makes up the difference.

 

Perhaps, one needs to have talent in identifying talent in others.

Is height a innate trait or an acquired trait?  After all, you often need enough food to get sufficiently tall.

The innate capabilities definition in the form you make it will not survive serious scrutiny.  After all, you argue that since we don't know the ideal way to get all genes to express themselves, it's quite possible that our traditional ways of training people leave many talents hidden. I find the notion fairly impractical even if not beyond reason. 

However, where I agree with you is that there are some traits/phenotypes that people would reasonably agree to be innate and some that most people would debate.  My response is that talent makes no sense apart from comparing two groups of people and figuring out what makes one set different from the other and seeing whether that feature is reasonably predictive for a third group of people with some individuals with traits in both groups.

Assessing talent is subjective, and requires informed opinions. This is why a television show like the X-Factor (or any other 'talent' contest) requires a host of judges to determine the winner. You can't just measure who the most talented singer is.

I think that what most people point to as talent is a combination of observing existing skills in the light of the observer's personal/cultural bias.  And it is frequently tautological.  High achievement and skill levels are take as direct evidence of talent and talent as a concept is justified by the presence of select individuals who have high achievement and skill levels. 

both kids were 9 a boy and a girl ,the girl liked basket better but  after 2 weeks could slowloop  5 shots in a row, she wasnt to dedicated  i never taught the usual drill to teach looping even she could loop no spin balls, the boy was dedicated to multiballs but no great adavance.

sometimes i feel bad cos mates who spend more time doing physical conditioning like jogging 4 km a day  and money spent on private lesson have lesser succes than me i just play ladder and EJ

Sure, but I wouldn't call that a test for talent. It might reveal motivation, different rates of physical maturity, background, etc.  And as a pragmatic measure, that's probably about the best that coaches and sports organizations can do.  But I think that such coaches and organizations should be cautioned against taking the results to the next step and suggesting that they've identified innate abilities or limitations.  They should be especially cautious when applying such notions to children.

The problem is in figuring out who can or can't.  And the reality is that we really don't know until they do.  And even if they "don't" it is often hard or impossible to say that they "couldn't." 

Didn't the Chinese coaches initially deny Deng Yaping a spot on the National Team because she was too short - even though she had already clearly shown the skills to compete at the highest levels.  She, of course, went on to prove that she was perhaps the best female player of all time. What would history show if they hadn't relented?  Preconceptions are dangerous things. 

This clearly demonstrates hard work will get you to a very high level but at that level there is something else that differentiates the champions from the rest - I would say "this" can be considered "talent".

As though his limited amount of time training in Sweden somehow defines the totality of training or the training history of the four players you mentioned. 

If you can tease out all the variables that could reasonably affect a result, then you might be able to identify something that you can call talent.  The problem is in teasing out all those variables.  Time after time when someone tries to point to something and call it "talent", I see them conveniently leaving out the consideration of lots of relevant variables. They over-simplify.

My personal and clearly subjective view is that things like motivation and access to key resources at important times of development are probably much greater factors in outcomes for individuals (assuming no obvious handicap) than is talent. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bobcook/2012/01/10/the-reality-behind-the-myth-of-the-coach-who-cut-michael-jordan-in-high-school/" rel="nofollow - http://www.forbes.com/sites/bobcook/2012/01/10/the-reality-behind-the-myth-of-the-coach-who-cut-michael-jordan-in-high-school/

Never said anything about there being no recourse.  The decision was quite obviously revisited.  The point was that errors of assessment can be easily made even at the highest levels by the most capable people and even in the face of tremendous supporting evidence. In this case the error was was based on some "understood" notion that a height below five feet was too significant of a handicap.  That was clearly not true. We should be careful not to overestimate what we think we know.

I agree with the first part, but I think even if talent is the wrong word, something to predict and assess how people should be selected is necessary and that if it is better than being random, then it ends up being a matter of "talent", even if talent is the wrong word.

I think that the second part has too many anecdotes built into it to be credible.  I attached the Michael Jordan article for that very reason.  The assessment against Deng Yaping has far less importance than you are trying to make out and is likely cited more often by people who take the fact that a relatively small mistake like that with little costs is a sign that a system is not infallible - which is not news to anyone who recognizes that infallibility is not the goal of such systems!

I'm only going by the reports I've read.  I don't know if they are credible or not.

...........................................................................................

BTW, from the horse's mouth. It wasn't just one decision.  It was a systematic denial that Deng Yaping apparently overcame through tremendous effort and will.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/08/22/talkasia.dengyaping/

"AR: You were winning all these competitions but not allowed to compete with the national team, because they said you were too short. What was that like for you, knowing that they were criticizing you for something that you could do nothing about?

In China, who knows how many players who would have turned out better than Ma Long or Zhang Jike have been overlooked? I bet the number is not small.

(For example, I heard that Ma Long needed connections to make the national team. Without those connections pulling their weight, he would not have made it. And he is arguably the best player in 

 history not to win the world championship (yet).)

Sandiway

The point I was going to make precisely.  You, me and sandiway are all on the same page.  It's not like the coaches had huge incentives to get it right. And in any case, she got the opportunity.  And she probably played a lot before anyone knew what her final height would be.

The Canadian Hockey story is the kind of stuff that Gladwell likes to cite without showing the whole story.

http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2012/1/4/2681038/out-liar-what-malcolm-gladwell-gets-wrong-about-the-relative-age" rel="nofollow - http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2012/1/4/2681038/out-liar-what-malcolm-gladwell-gets-wrong-about-the-relative-age

It's a long article but if you read it, you see there are two things - the supposed bias is greater in non-Canadian players in the NHL, and that the effects don't seem to prevent a better balance being arrived at later in the NHL at the higher levels.  In other words, the selection process is likely picking the best players to achieve the current goals, but other talented players find their way through at a signficant rate.

This is described in a book called "Outliers", if I recall correctly.

Deng Yaping isn't alone. Wang Hao (the RPB guy, not the chopper), had to overcome a similar situation as he too was dismissed as not "talented" enough. His "talent" was eventually recognised too. 

How did that happen? The same way it happened for Deng - they worked harder than anybody else. And then some.

Their "talents" didn't see them through and didn't make them world champions - their application, motivation and hard work did, IMHO.

Yes.  And if she had been overlooked she would surely have been described as not having enough talent  - and the proof of that conclusion would be her lack of success.  So much of what passes for a description of talent is really just a self-fulfilling narrative.

The point isn't to show that the system has flaws.  All systems do.  The point is to show that the fundamental ideas that coaches have can be seriously flawed.  And it is the outlier that helps us notice the flawed ideas.  But as you point out, systems can work fine while embracing flaws - depending on what you consider to be "fine."

What I find interesting about Deng Yaping is not only that she succeeded, but that she was dramatically successful - some arguing that she was the greatest ever or at least in that discussion.  I agree that other Chinese greats would have almost surely taken her place but it is unlikely that any one replacement would have achieved what Deng Yaping achieved.  And it may also be true that other champions have been overlooked and never heard from outside of China because they were too short or otherwise misidentified as not having the right attributes or talent. 

It certainly matters to the one being overlooked.  

I don't subscribe to your premise.  My point is that if there is such a thing as talent we don't know how to identify it as a separate thing and it isn't yet a useful concept.  What we actually do is identify skills and then backwards infer talent from those skills.  I think it is better to be more straightforward and just point out the skills, accomplishments and other attributes that correlate well with success.

But I'll put aside the premise and the impossibility of your proposition and answer your question anyway.  And the answer is simply that I don't know.  Nobody does.  But what I'm pretty sure of is that I'd be one hell of a lot better player than I am now and that many people would look at me as having been (in my fictitious prime) one of the more talented players in the U.S.  - and the coaches wouldn't have allowed me to play hardbat.  ;^)

Sure.  But survivor-ship bias works in their favor.  Errors can't be easily seen and won't be looked for so long as you have a sufficient number of successes.

Very true.  Not to mention random injury. 

It is also possible the the optimal training for me and my body could be different than for those two and that "subjecting" me to their training regime might actually work against me achieving my maximum potential.  It is complications like these that make it difficult for anyone to put their finger on what talent is.  Personally, I think "talent" is also often a shortcut that people use to wrap up all the things that we don't know about.

But that is all the system requires.  It doesn't mean that talent doesn't exist or that the coaches cannot recognize it.  If they were getting it wrong,  their opinions would be far more suspect.

In this entire thread, not one of those who argue for the separate existence of something called "talent" has rarely attempted, let alone managed, to eliminate the physiological and psychological factors which you identify.  For example, what effect does learning resilience as an infant have upon the course of our lives?  A resilient athlete is more likely to keep on coming back for more than one governed by fear.

BTW, Syed is also a former table tennis champion of England and one of the best players of Europe at his time.

I do not agree with that and I do largely subscribe to Syed's thesis.

That's the problem - when you largely subscribe to something, unless you have reviewed the broader literature, you don't know the degree to which opposing view points are being oversimplified and misrepresented.

See, I do not agree with that. So you have to be an all time great to know what talent is?! There are actually quite a few coaches in various sports who weren't great players but became great coaches and turned some talents into all time greats.

I did not say Syed was a coach or coached anybody who turned into an all time great. This was a general response to your thesis that you have to an all time great to know talent.

Right.  Nor does it mean that talent exists or that their notions of what talent is are accurate. It just means that such notions aren't doing enough damage to their goals to matter to them.

Besides, my concern isn't whether somebody's system is working for them or not. It is whether some of the notions put forth and popularized are having some other negative effect.  If it happens to improve someone's system, so much the better.

The argument from authority is not a strong argument. 

Sure.  But how is that relevant?  The issue/question was not initially framed so narrowly. 

I agree that the national team can work effectively from the standpoint of achieving its goals while completely ignoring the concept of talent by simply tracking those measurable and observable attributes that correlate with high success.  And that's my point.  Talent is actually a pretty useless concept from a practical point of view.

BTW, we have already had it all here... still, I would mention it again that one important inborn physical talent is the ability to spend countless hours of hard training without injury and to play many tough matches a day without noticeable drop in playing level. 

In any complex, highly specialized activity like table tennis, people can be successful for a variety of reasons.  Simplifying the talent required to perform well in such activities is a fool's errand - it's like asking why people are successful at sales - there are different styles of selling that may or may not be conducive to selling a particular kind of product to a kind of person.

But sometimes, there can be base talents that help that people just take for granted.  Or the network of traits required to make someone a good candidate for elite level table tennis is too complicated to measure at a young age.  This is very likely and often the case.

The much easier problem is whether there are things that correlate well with being modestly good.  Those things distinguish the good players from bad players, but they aren't considered talents even though they might be because the talent bar is often raised by opponents of the concept, who make it seem like they are average people (the deniers usually aren't).

There are often a set of traits that can be used to distinguish populations of people from another set.  Your issue is with whether these traits can be measured and used to predict behavior and if not, they should be used carefully.    Testing is a difficult subject but the bottom line is that it is easy to construct tests that predict whether a person can be a reasonably good table tennis player.  The harder question is to predict whether the person will turn out to be a very good table tennis player.  And it is also possible to do certain things that might take a week or a month and use those to predict whether a person has a high aptitude for table tennis or not.  Motivation etc. are not all separate from talent when it comes to producing someone able to function at a high level at something complicated - they are just one factor that plays a role in the measurement.  It's easy to show this for a complicated activity.

OK, I'd like to educate myself to your levels. Give me a few titles - just the broader literature on the matter will do - that will make me understand why Syed is so one-sided.

Baal wrote: For any attribute that humans have, there is a distribution within the population.  Some attributes may be especially useful for table tennis players.  Some table tennis players through genetic luck have a lot of the variable attributes that are good for the sport.  This can clearly account for some aspect of their performance, assuming everything else is optimal.

Summary: some people have better genetic make up than others. Tick.

From what I've read so far: LGL believes in talent.

But what has that to do with your discussion?  Are you suggesting that "talent" is a genetic factor; some people are born lucky, some aren't?  When you speak of genetic factors, I assume you mean muscle profile, skeletal structure, eyesight, body type, etc.  I can see how these factors play their part in the 40% figure.  I know from painful, personal experience that being a tall endomorph with predominantly slow twitch muscle fibre coupled with poor eyesight means that I may find it difficult to break into the ITTF top ten.

I also know that being born in England and raised in Australia, lacking in resilience, prone to massive self-doubt, and having attention deficit disorder are going to be major factors in the 60% area.  

When I put all of these things together, I'm left wondering what significance there is in attributing "talent" to anything.  Anyone watching me play may very well suggest, "What a talentless bastard!"  But talent or lack of it has nothing to do with it.  "Talent" is just a shorthand term for qualities that people haven't bothered to identify.

Actually we don't know whether he does or not at all. It was claimed by roundrobin that he does as a way of discrediting Mathew Syed's book, but that's all. We know what Syed wrote, but we have yet to hear from the horse's mouth what Liu's take on talent is. 

I don't expect an actual paper, article, lecture or interview by Liu on talent to surface, but it would be nice. If not for any other reason than to compare it to the competing views. 

I don't want to believe in whatever I want, I want to know Liu's ideas and views on this. Knowing what he said would help understand his concept of talent, which - contrary to your belief - actually isn't clearly communicated through the word itself as is pretty evident from this thread.

Please don't worry about my Mandarin, as it isn't the problem here. The problem here is that I don't have access to the literature or articles in Chinese where Liu explains in dept "the existence and importance of talent in table tennis" according to your claims. You imply they exist and that you have read them. Now help me further myself by listing them below so I too can get access to this wealth of information. Or is that information exclusive in any way? 

The danger with "talent" is when people give it some sort of mystical weight.  He/she has talent, they were born with it, we can never understand what it is but wow it's magical, etc etc.  That leads to the impression that those fortunate enough to be born with the sparkly woo will always outperform those who lack the woo.  This gives rise to two unhelpful attitudes - woo people don't have to work as hard to succeed, and I might as well give up because I don't have the woo.  (I'm not pointing the finger at anyone here, by the way.  I just see this in real life)

As much as sports are the focus here, I personally see this kind of attitude in education more.  The parts of Syed's Bounce which resonated with me the most were the sections on student attitudes to subjects like maths, where repetitive work and challenging effort are the big factors in success.  But students give up because they feel that they don't have the maths woo, or whatever, and their parents push this opinion too - "well, I was never good at maths either".  The concept of talent is the scapegoat for giving up.

RR's point about level does make sense to me to some degree - the higher up you go, you see the rarefied results of every factor possible - physical, mental, training, genetics, opportunity.  It becomes harder and harder to unpick the "talent" factor because we are in a region where small percentages in any category can have a big influence.  But I believe that if you dig around enough then you'd find something real, something tangible, which separates the "talented" from the rest.

"Talent" is just the word you use when something amazes you and you don't comprehend what's actually happening.  It's like magic.

Well, I am and I asked you for some specific information that you claim to have that can help me. 

Will you provide me with it?

LGL's opinion certainly carries weight.  How can it not?  But it will be biased, as any opinion will generally be, and will be based on his own experience and the situation he currently finds himself.

Consider China's situation.  LGL has a vast number of motivated, proficient juniors to cast his eye over.  It's the national sport and the system is in place to produce them.  He could probably pick any 10% of this pool at random while blindfolded and still produce world champions once he's put them through the rest of the meat grinder that is Chinese TT.  We might then point at this success and presume that LGL has amazing, mystical talent spotting abilities.  He keeps producing winners, after all.  So, LGL's belief in "talent", and belief in his ability to sense it, is part of the whole mechanism which keeps him in place and keeps the excellence moving.  He produces results, and that's all that really matters to China.  But does it prove the existence of talent?  It's weak, IMO.  He's seeing something and making some judgments, but I would say he is just seeing the culmination of all the time, effort, energy. practice and opportunity which went into each junior and then trying to make the best choice he can.  He's folding all of that real stuff up into a neat little package called "talent", and going from there.  I'm not sure we would even know if LGL was a terrible talent spotter.  He could pick the worst ones and still win everything.

Now, compare that with Bounce.  Syed's authority also carries some weight (not as much as LGL perhaps, but LGL's position is supported by the best TT system in the world let's not forget), but he also attempts to marry his personal stance on talent (which gives the book bias, of course) with real academic and scientific studies, with hard data and controls in place.  That, to me, is a better and more thorough attempt to produce a worthwhile and objective stance on the concept of talent when compared to LGL's personal opinion. 

As for people not wanting to learn anything new - you have to present evidence, and it has to be compelling and trustworthy.  LGL believing in talent is interesting, but doesn't carry enough weight to change my mind.  I need studies, data, numbers, or you need to discredit existing studies in a meaningful way.  I love learning new things!  I just need more than opinions.

You and NL don't seem to like Bounce due to bias, even though it sets out with a goal in mind and isn't shy about stating that at the outset.  Fair enough - Bounce is a book, and not a study in itself.  But can you discredit the studies it references, or cite meaningful contradicting studies?

RR still loves me!

LOL - but what is "it"?  

At the top end, "it" is just a more complex case of "it" at the bottom end.  It's easier just to give up any attempt at analysis and call it "talent".  And sometimes it's the only option, because the analysis is just too hard!  

The problem is when "talent" is considered the end game, like it's a definitive explanation.  For me, it's just the label on stuff we don't understand yet, and should be the spur to discover more about what's actually going on.  It's a useful label for the question, but unproductive when it becomes the answer in itself.

There are lots of meaningful contradictory studies from IQ testing to animal breeding to human behavioral genetics to identical twin studies.  I'm not so much amused by whether Bounce disagrees with them but the fact that Bounce didn't even seriously discuss or address them.

This isn't talent, these are physical advantages.  Yao Ming is tall - are you calling being tall a talent?  Why?  Why not call it "being tall".  See - you've already defeated the talent myth yourself by specifying the physical, quantifiable properties which add to Yao Ming's success.  Well done! Another myth busted.

Hmmm.  I'm not sure what to say about this.  I am genuinely struck dumb.  Perhaps I'll have to wait for Akiane to "share many details about the self-aware universes she was seeing".