Posted by i7l 2 days ago
So what is being said? A huge amount of elite success is in the hardware, i.e. the body &/or brain. These go through rather large changes between ages 10 an 18. Puberty. This shakes up the ordering among those who showed enough promise to have already committed to becoming elite.
What am I missing here? Seems like this research is nothing more than "Kids change through puberty, the nature and sizes of the changes are a bit of a lottery for each kid." Much like the the genetic factors are also a lottery so you can't reliably predict who is going to be great from the results of their parents. (But if your parents are both 5ft, the NBA seems an unlikely destination for you).
Hakeem Olajuwon - didn't start basketball until 15 or 16.
Kurt Warner - undrafted, returned to NFL at 28.
Francis Ngannou - started MMA at 26.
There aren't too many pro-ballers shorter than 5'10" (177cm), and definitely no dominant ones.
If we're defining "general purpose sport" as a sport in which people of all shapes and sizes are able to achieve greatness, then I would say soccer or golf fit that definition better.
Men's soccer in the 2010s was dominated by 2 of the best players in history: Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. There's a 7 inch height difference between the two. Ronaldo is powerful and muscled, Messi is lithe and graceful. Both played in approximately the same position on the field, in the same era. Both were brilliant.
Think of 5 relevant attributes of your body for playing something well.
Guesstimate where they were on the population bell curve when you were 10.
Guesstimate if these would have been on a different spot on the population bell curve for that attribute when you were an adult. Would you have guessed it when you wee 10? Would others have guessed it about you at that age?
Puberty changes you in unpredictable ways. Do we need a study to know that?
Everyone committing to tennis before they are 10 are elite, you wouldn't do it otherwise. Who is the best player of that elite set changes given the great puberty shake up.
I had an LLM first pick five figure skaters, and in the follow up query tell me which had wild success before age 12, and only two of the five fit that category, but each started learning at 6 years old or earlier. The other three seem like child prodigies in retrospect to me.
Actual child prodigies like tiger woods or Justin Bieber who were genuinely insanely brilliant at a young age at non academic things went on to be wildly successful.
I remember an interview from current #1 chess grandmaster Magnus Carsen about why John Nunn never became World Champion because he is too intelligent:
> SPIEGEL: Mr Carlsen, what is your IQ?
> Carlsen: I have no idea. I wouldn’t want to know it anyway. It might turn out to be a nasty surprise.
> SPIEGEL: Why? You are 19 years old and ranked the number one chess player in the world. You must be incredibly clever.
> Carlsen: And that’s precisely what would be terrible. Of course it is important for a chess player to be able to concentrate well, but being too intelligent can also be a burden. It can get in your way. I am convinced that the reason the Englishman John Nunn never became world champion is that he is too intelligent for that.
> SPIEGEL: How that?
> Carlsen: At the age of 15, Nunn started studying mathematics in Oxford; he was the youngest student in the last 500 years, and at 23 he did a PhD in algebraic topology. He has so incredibly much in his head. Simply too much. His enormous powers of understanding and his constant thirst for knowledge distracted him from chess.
> SPIEGEL: Things are different in your case?
> Carlsen: Right. I am a totally normal guy. My father is considerably more intelligent than I am.
There's the graphic: "Top 1% cognition aged 12 and top 5% salary mid-30s" which is supposed to be the most dramatic one. So apparently we suddenly just take at face value the criticism "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich"?