Posted by i7l 2 days ago
I think there's been like a handful LLWS winners who have done anything in the MLB and even fewer who have reached the top of pros.
If the LLWS winners are a sample of N kids, then your statement is even more true for any random sample of N kids. Which is to say, LLWS may give you a big advantage, but not the truly massive advantage that would be required to make you a shoe-in.
I suspect the article is playing some games with statistics, and in any case I hope people don't come away from this article with the idea that "you can become a chess world champion even if you never touched chess as a child!"
“Child prodigies are more likely to become elite performers than they are to become non-elite performers”
Vs
“Child prodigies are more likely than non-child prodigies to become elite performers"
Which is it?
10% of prodigies becomes 10% of elite, whereas (whoknows)% of (general_population - prodigies) becomes 90% of elite.
How big is elite? How big is prodigies?
Well, for a start, I guess we can assume that size of elite == size of prodigies, because 10% == 10%.
But what is that size compared to general population?
If it's 1%, then 99% of muggles compete for slots in 0.9% of the population, so, hey, a prodigy is 11 times more likely to become an elite than a muggle.
If it's 0.1%, then a prodigy is 111 times more likely to become an elite than a muggle.
If it's 10% -- well, that's kind of stretching the definition of both prodigy and elite, isn't it?
tl;dr -- article is crap; research probably is, as well.
To be a top child player, you need talent, recognition of that talent, and investment of time and energy.
So, who's to say that the time and involvement didn't make them better as adults than they would have been?
ISTM that if you groom 10 children and even one of them outperforms a billion other potential players, you've done well, even if they had some latent talent to start with.
They claim to "prove" that catering to young talent is counterproductive, but this certainly doesn't prove it.
And part of their "proof" is that generalist sportsmen in youth do better as adults than specialist sportsmen in youth. This is beyond stupid -- to be a generalist youth sportsman typically means that the parents have invested significantly more time, energy, and money, and it's pretty obvious that effort in related fields usually pays off well, and most sports don't run all year, and it's useful in physical endeavors to make your body move in different ways.
It is trivially accurate for them to mention that the possibility of burnout is a real thing, but it is also risible to discount the positive benefits of sustained attention and effort.