The Chess Mind

First, to clearly set up the position he is critiquing, here, from his book, is a quotation from Richard Ivry of the University of California at Berkeley:

The study of eminent performers across many careers leads to the startling conclusion: Elite performance results from intense, demanding practice, and those who excel are more willing than their peers to engage creatively in this regimen for countless hours. It is their drive that produces talent. If young Michael Jordan's interests had been taken up with physics at a young age, I have little doubt that he would have succeeded admirably in that field. A Nobel Prize might have been the alternative to his six championship trophies. (The Ethical Brain (New York & Washington D.C.: Dana Press, 2005), p. 59.

About the view that practice is the key, which stems largely from the work of Anders Ericsson, Gazzinaga says this:

While these studies are impressive, they have a basic flaw...a confusion of correlation with causation. According to Ericsson's reports, children who practiced the piano more throughout life wound up better at it; but it might well have been the case that hte children practiced more because they were better at it in the first place--therefore they found it more reinforcing to practice. This "self-selection" of groups makes it difficult to understand these issues in a causative context. It is likely the case that innate capacities and practice work in some kind of combination. (Ibid., p. 60.)

Gazzaniga then refers to a 2000 study by Siamak Baharloo et al showing that the development of absolute or "perfect" pitch has both a developmental (training starting at an early age) and a genetic basis. He concludes:

Ivry's bold conclusion, then, seems hard to believe. While it is clear that everyone who is an expert has to practice a lot, other factors seem to me to be in play. Surely Isaac Stern, one of the foremost violinists of the past century, has something that Bob Wills, the fiddler for the country-western swing band The Texas Playboys, doesn't have. And Larry Bird, as great an athlete as he is, is no Michael Jordan. Stern and Wills and Bird and Jordan likely put in a comparable amount of practice over their careers, yet something separates Stern from Wills, and Jordan from Bird. (Ibid., p. 61.)

Some might find this depressing, but I don't. That some people have special gifts strikes me as something worth celebrating. Despite our common humanity, we aren't all fundamentally interchangeable, and that's a very good thing. And here's an application: hard, smart work will take us a long way, but we should ideally apply our labors to fields we enjoy and to which our strengths seem well-suited. That will give us the best chance of a useful, successful and happy career (and ditto for our avocational life). Chances are, we won't be Kasparov or Einstein, Andres Segovia or Carl Lewis. But who said we would be, and why is it a problem if we're not? Speaking for myself, my job is to apply the gifts I do have, not those I don't!