Talent Does Not Exist
Unlock your musical potential by rejecting the myth of talent and embracing the power of effort. Learn why perseverance, not innate ability, is the key to musical excellence
Before I begin the discussion on this topic, I’d like to clarify that when I say talent, I’m not talking about skill. Skill obviously exists. When I say talent, I’m talking about the notion that some humans are predisposed to perform certain tasks at a higher skill level or learn certain skills faster or more completely than other humans who are not endowed with these mystical powers.
“I guess you’re just not cut out for it.”
Behold the dreaded sentence uttered by teachers to students the world over. Teachers say this sentence as if it somehow could provide comfort to the student unable to “get” a certain something, but it is in fact the worst kind of discouragement. This sentence forces the student to accept their inability as some immutable aspect of their being rather than a challenge to overcome. Related sentences include: “People are either good at math or English,” “People are either right brained or left brained,” and “People are good at either jazz or classical.”
The people who repeat these ideas are oblivious to fact that the distinctions between the supposed two categories are not only completely arbitrary, but also have clear crossovers. For instance, math is itself an art form, and art is inherently mathematical. Nevertheless, the popular opinion persists that individuals are cut-out for either one or the other, and that this “cut-outtedness” is based on an individual’s “talents.”
Indeed, this idea is assumed to be true nearly ubiquitously despite the fact that the idea of “talent” doesn’t yield any positive changes in anyone who has heard it. In my experience, this is mostly because individuals who hold these beliefs are too afraid that any investigation of these ideas will lead to truths that will be even worse than what they already believe (what could be worse than talent?), or they’ve never even considered the fact that their premises could be wrong because that’s the only thing they’ve heard their whole lives.
Whatever the reason may be, though, the bottom line of believing in talent is believing that you aren’t in control of your life. This line of thinking leads one to believe in determinism, or the belief that everything that happens is a result of preceding causes and, therefore, there is no free will.
On Determinism
Determinism is a popular philosophy among teachers of music. Many teachers tell their students that if they can’t get a certain concept, play in a certain way, perfect a certain technique, or otherwise achieve the next measure of competency at their instrument, that this is a pre-determined and unchangeable aspect of who they are, and they’d better resign themselves to their fate quickly because resistance is futile.
These teachers typically follow-up this idea with some advice that goes something like this: “Try not to think about the fact that you’re never going to be able to achieve your dreams, kiddo. At least you’re kind of good at what you’ve always wanted to do, right? And besides, we’ve got to stay positive despite nihilistic reality!”
To this, I say:
If someone ever tells you to gaslight yourself into not thinking, you can be sure that that person is trying to indoctrinate you into joining a cult—in this case, the cult of determinism.
If gaslighting is necessary in order to prevent someone from coming to harm after believing something, teachers might want to check the premises of those beliefs before they go spouting them off to unsuspecting students.
Is it reality that’s the nihilist, teacher? Or is it you?
Unfortunately, the reason teachers perpetuate these harmful ideas is because they genuinely believe these things. These same teachers are usually surprised to find that they’re miserable all the time, but when they believe stuff as cruel and callous as determinism, it’s not difficult to figure out.
The good news is that resistance isn’t futile, because this idea is wrong! Let’s get into it.
1. Refutation of Determinism
Let’s pretend for a moment that the immediate and obvious sensation of having to choose what to do on a moment to moment basis for the entirety of one’s life up until the present moment isn’t enough to refute the idea that there is no free will. Indeed, proponents of determinism love to point out that just because you feel a sensation of choosing to do something, doesn’t mean that you actually did.
Unfortunately for them, this means that determinism is unfalsifiable. If there is no way to verify that there is no free will using human senses, there is no way to prove it at all. Unfalsifiability, of course, is a logical fallacy, and provides us with a refutation of determinism.
***As a side note, many determinists like to point to an experiment that was done in the ‘80s which supposedly “proved” that there is no free will by having some volunteers attempt to press a button and note the point at which their decision became conscious. There were some discrepancies between the EEG recordings of the time the “readiness-potential” (a made-up and unfalsifiable term, mind you) and the time the volunteers recorded their decisions became conscious, and determinists of all stripes jumped on this as proof of their philosophy. This study was (as so many are) critically and fatally flawed. You can read someone else’s rebuttal to the determinists’ conclusions here.***
2. Refutation of Partial Determinism
Part A
Most people are hesitant to jump 100% on board with the deterministic philosophy, though. Instead, they will bifurcate reality into two parts: some percentage of things are genetic, immutable, or predetermined; and a complimentary percentage of things are not genetic, and are subject to your control. The things these people believe to be out of your control are usually the things “science” has determined to be “genetic.”
And fair enough. If science determined that something exceedingly nihilistic was true, then I suppose we would have to concede.
But did science really determine this?
Claims that talent is genetic usually rely on two types of studies: family studies, and twin studies. Let’s look at each of these a little closer…
Family studies rely on the fact that musical abilities tend to run in families to make their assertions that musical ability is genetic. If we think about this claim for more than one second, though, this phenomenon no longer seems noteworthy. Do the researchers mean to say that children who watch adults play music are more likely to become musicians? That children mimic the behaviors of adults around them? How remarkable. That is truly the scientific breakthrough of the century. Surely no one could have ever figured that out without the brilliant researchers doing family studies. In all seriousness, though, these studies hardly corroborate the claim that musical ability is at all genetic. There are too many confounding variables that can’t possibly be controlled for to back up this claim with any kind of credibility.
Twin studies, on the other hand, claim to control for differences in genes by excluding all familial relationships except for those of twins. Since identical twins have unusually high levels of genetic similitude (99%+), it is assumed that by comparing fraternal twins and identical twins, we can determine the heritability of certain traits. However, in order for these comparisons to be valid, we must assume that both sets of these twins experience equal environments. This assumption (called the equal environments assumption by twin researchers) has been proven to be false. Many studies demonstrate that identical twins experience much more similar environments than their fraternal twin counterparts.1 This enormous problem is hardly the only difficulty the twin study researchers must overcome in order for their conclusions to be valid, but it’s the only one we have time for here. If you want a more detailed analysis of the airtight arguments countering the conclusions and assumptions of classical twin studies, see this paper.
Part B
Even if we were to suppose that these studies were credible and that there is a genetic component to the acquisition of musical skill, there is still the insuperable problem of the arbitrariness of calling everything pertaining to the creation of music “musical talent.” How do we know that there aren’t specific genes that code for an inclination to playing the violin and not the piano? Or what if they’re talented for a certain kind of instrument that hasn’t been invented yet? What if that person is talented with audio engineering instead? Or even composing? What kind of compositions, then? Jazz? What kind of jazz? Small ensembles or large ensembles? How small exactly are we talking? Are there genes to code for talent in each of these already arbitrary distinctions between skills?
We can go the other way too, and instead of getting more specific, go more general. How do we know that there are genes that code for musical talent as opposed to a more general “artistic talent.” Or even more general than that, a “being-good-at-anything-at-all” gene. How are we to establish that the stoner-who-lives-in-his-mom’s-basement-and-plays-video-games-all-day types aren’t just the unlucky few who didn’t receive the “being-good-at-anything-at-all” gene? The objector will protest “Well, his mom is good at things, so he must have received it, he’s just being lazy!” Well, not necessarily. What about his dad? Or even better—and since we’re well into the world of making stuff up—why don’t we suppose that instead of not inheriting a “being-good-at-anything-at-all” gene, he does inherit the “is-a-dead-beat” gene. His mom isn’t a dead-beat, but what about his dad? His grandma? His great-uncle? I’m sure we can find a dead-beat somewhere up his family tree. Or maybe he just received the subtype of “being-good-at-anything-at-all” gene known as the “is-good-at-video-games” gene! Anything is possible in the clown world known as behavioral genetics.
The best part of all of this is that we get right back to determinism when we can’t specify which genes code for which behaviors and which behaviors are not completely arbitrary. When there is no specificity, anything and everything could be due to genetics. If everything is genetic, we have determinism. The people who believe in partial determinism can only stand on solid ground, therefore, if they are able to specify which genes code for which behaviors. Unfortunately for them, this has never been done, and, in all probability, cannot be done.2
Metaphysical Proof that Talent Does Not Exist
Now that we can safely do away with determinism as a philosophy, and genetics as scientific evidence for talent, here is a bonus line of reasoning that also disproves “Talent™.”
Many people are familiar with the fact that if you tell a child they’re talented they’ll get frustrated and give up, but if you praise a child for the effort they went to to learn a certain skill, the outcomes will be better.
This phenomenon was documented in the study “Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation and Performance.”3
What most people fail to realize about the implications of this study, however, is that the fact that children are so discomforted by the idea of talent is evidence that it isn’t true.
Firstly, let’s assume that existence is real, and that human interactions with reality are valid. Because of our experiences with reality, we know that we cannot have something and something else that directly contradicts it. In other words, A cannot be not-A. If reality is non-contradictory, human bodies—being part of reality—cannot feel things that are contradictory to reality. Human feelings, instincts, and emotions can, therefore, give us information about the nature of reality. This is not to say that human minds cannot think of something contradictory or apart from reality (we do this all the time), only that human instincts can’t be contrary to reality. This also isn’t to say that we can’t gaslight ourselves into believing things are good for us when they are, in fact, bad. The key here is to disentangle things our brains tell us from things our bodies tell us.
Secondly, let’s suppose that since human beings live (and don’t die immediately) within reality, that reality is life promoting, and humans function in ways to optimize the production of life. Because of this optimization, we can deduce that feelings humans consider positive are life-promoting, and feelings humans consider negative are life-demoting.
Thirdly, if reality is life-promoting and positive human emotions indicate life-promoting things, then positive emotions indicate things that are true about reality. Conversely, negative human emotions indicate things that are false about reality. Therefore, if we know that children get frustrated and give up when they’re told that their success was due to immutable factors, we can conclude that these negative feelings are telling us that this notion is false, and contrary to life and reality.
Similarly, when you get frustrated and want to give up when you’re told that your success depends wholly on certain, nebulous, polygenic predispositions that can’t be named, touched, isolated, experimented on, or defined; you can also be sure that this notion is false and is opposed to reality.
Some “What About—!”s For Good Measure
Q: What about people like Michael Phelps whose vast success at swimming is at least partially influenced by his huge size? Surely this counts as an innate ability to perform a certain task at a higher skill level due to genetic factors.
A: First of all, it’s not clear to me that Michael Phelps’s success is influenced by his huge size.4 Second of all, his bodily proportions don’t determine his behavior, which would actually be what counts as talent. Unless we’re re-defining talent as having to do with body proportions instead of behavior? This would mean that men in general are more talented than women, though, so unless we want to go the sexist route, we should probably stick to definitions of talent that only include behavior.
Q: What about the fact that God gives each human individual unique talents and abilities? Do you suppose, then, that God created everyone to be the same?
A: No. Talent not existing doesn’t necessitate fascination not existing. I’m merely suggesting that perhaps this fascination plays a more determining role (or perhaps even the entire role) in someone’s learning a certain skill than any innate giftedness.
Secondly, an aversion to sameness isn’t even purported to be a main reason why people believe in talent. It’s usually just a knee-jerk reaction someone brings up when their preconceived ideas are questioned.
Thirdly, with the way talent is currently understood, we would have to believe that God would endow you with extraordinary abilities to play a certain instrument, but then withhold certain other abilities that are innately necessary to becoming fully competent at that instrument. Believing this would mean that God is a cruel and tyrannical despot, hellbent on ruining the lives of human beings by taunting them with metaphorical carrots on fishing poles. Is God a sadist?
Fourthly, are we to suppose that God is a respecter of persons? That he endows some with certain abilities, and others with something else?
Fifthly, I’m going to need a reference for when God said that he endowed each human with immutable talents and abilities. Pics or it didn’t happen.
Conclusion
It’s infuriating to hear someone put a limit on your abilities to play your instrument. Despite your teacher’s best intentions, this notion is not comforting nor ever will be. The good news is that this notion is not true. Nothing in the scientific literature justifies this thinking, nor does reality support this idea.
A word of caution: just because determinism isn’t true doesn’t mean that everything is in your control. Other people’s actions are definitely not in your control. Narcissists intentionally blur the line between what is and is not in your control in order to abuse you, so the ability to distinguish between the two is vital to avoid being manipulated.
Also, just in case any of you who have gotten to this point in this hefty article are still believing that you’re happy and at peace thinking that your skills are predetermined and immutable: you’re gaslighting yourself. Stop it.
Your abilities are not immutable. They are subject to change based on conscious, purposeful experimentation on the part of the practicer. To those aims and ends, I wish you good luck, my friends.
https://thegeneillusion.blogspot.com/2020/04/levels-of-identity-confusion-and_21.html
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.1008
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.edu/dist/b/398/files/2019/04/1998-04530-003-1sagefw.pdf
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-makes-michael-phelps-so-good1/