I don't mean to say that talent doesn't matter: things such as intelligence matter more than Adams gives them credit for
I think the relative contribution of intelligence vs. practice varies substantially depending on the nature of the particular task. A key problem is to identify tasks as intelligence-dominated (the smart guy always wins) vs. practice-dominated (the experienced guy always wins).
As a first observation about this problem, notice that clearly definable or objective tasks (chess, pool, basketball) tend to be practice-dominated, whereas more ambiguous tasks (leadership, writing, rationality) tend to be intelligence-dominated.
I think the relative contribution of intelligence vs. practice varies substantially depending on the nature of the particular task.
This is true. Intelligence research has shown that intelligence is more useful for more complex tasks, see e.g. Gottfredson 2002.
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