Does this really contradict that 10000-hour rule? (Well, apart from the fact that 10000 hours may well be an arbitrary number, and not as magical as Gladwell made it out to be)
From what I remember from reading Outliers, the claim about the 10000 hours was formulated more precisely than is posed here: it only said that above a certain level of innate talent (IIRC the particular level wasn't made a big deal of), differences in talent were less significant than differences in practice hours.
That's a much weaker claim, but a more credible one: if you're already blessed with eg a high IQ, then it pays off to work hard on your homework, and you can overtake the super-brilliant slacker in your class. But if you didn't have a very high IQ to begin with, the rule doesn't promise you anything.
The data in the article just says there's a lot of other stuff that determines the variance in performance - probably that includes "talent". It doesn't try to find if such a "talent threshold" above which talent is less important exists.
From what I remember from reading Outliers, the claim about the 10000 hours was formulated more precisely than is posed here: it only said that above a certain level of innate talent (IIRC the particular level wasn't made a big deal of), differences in talent were less significant than differences in practice hours.
That's a much weaker claim, but a more credible one: if you're already blessed with eg a high IQ, then it pays off to work hard on your homework, and you can overtake the super-brilliant slacker in your class. But if you didn't have a very high IQ to begin with, the rule doesn't promise you anything.
The data in the article just says there's a lot of other stuff that determines the variance in performance - probably that includes "talent". It doesn't try to find if such a "talent threshold" above which talent is less important exists.