Comments on: Talentless Hackery

By: chilly

chilly — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 20:08:06 +0000

Thanx for ‘outing’ yourself aeb-

And you’ve opened another aspect I was going to comment on before, but didn’t want to come off as pedantic:

When some afro-Americans talk about ‘reporations for slavery’ I scoff, but must admit when a black male in this country today is born – it is not onto a level playing field, statistic are definitely stacked against him. It’s an excuse for nothing, but it’s a fact.

And I stand by ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’ being a cliche of the Right ideology. The Left version is ‘scrape the shit off your own Tevas’-

But I agree, I’ve often admired MUS’s ‘font of creativity’ (..ahem) myself-

By: aeb

aeb — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:33:21 +0000

Correction – essentially leftist. You want rightists, come to abominable Austria. Especially ever since their wonderful Konrad Lorenz won the Nobel for discovering “ínstinct” (right before he joined the Nazi party). “Instinct” is popular here. It justifies people´s born positions, “scientifically proven” Karma.

See, MUS is mixin it up, a regular font of creativity. Assumptions don´t apply.

By: Chilly

Chilly — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:51:00 +0000

Then there’s the ‘John Holmes’ talent, but that’s just plain too big for some ladies-

By: ManUnderStress

ManUnderStress — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:09:15 +0000

Who needs functional synapses? That’s what I’m saying man, forget the limitations of science, if you think you can fly, if you truly believe…screw physics!

I understand the inclination point, and I think that is ultimately rooted in the talent medium of choice, and in music there may be those with that golden disposition, but that’s little more than a head start. Peart is great because he’s a driven mo-fo, who probably practiced every waking hour of the day and then some. Would others end up the same? I think the results would be surprising. That said, Lance Armstrong has inhuman lung capacity. Obvious tangible advantage. But that’s an extreme exception. And obviously there is intelligence involved, to some degree, someone with a 70 IQ wouldn’t be able to get there, but if you take the sample from a population of similar levels of intelligence I think a lot would.

Chi-li: You Can Dooooooo it.

By: chilly

chilly — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:29:29 +0000

I believe in the ideology behind what you’re saying (although it is essentially rightist: ‘up by your own bootstraps’ mentality) but will say: what about your own natural talents? Of course everyone has to work/discipline to get better, but take drumming for example, some on this earth could work at it every day and never get to the ‘Ringo’ level, other’s can start ‘Ringo’ and get ‘Peart’ relatively easily. There is such a thing as natural aptitude. But yes, if you work really hard and apply yourself, you can ‘fake it til you make it’ at most anything you want to.
Age is another issue. The synaptic pathways actually do atrophi (see I can still make up new words and spellings in my mid 30′s! [at-tro-fi]) and new ones may not burn as easily. But again this is a matter of mental exercise. Alzhiemers still isn’t completely understood, but general senility is worse in humans who weren’t in the habit of exercising their brains. Yeah, the main problem is in attitude: the old dog/new tricks cliche, people figure ‘I worked hard enough at this other stuff, I’m allowed to be lazy in this’ and their brain goes ‘OK, now we’re lazy, and soon I’ll barely be working’