So someone in Zhihu asked this question: Did the former 1% senior high school students rely on talent or hard work?
Many people have given such and such answers. Among them, the article named "edmond" user is very necessary to recommend to everyone.
He mentioned that what determines a person's real Excellence is neither talent nor hard work, but habit. "Learning habits and thinking habits are another form of class solidification".
I know many people's understanding of learning is like this:
In their view, sleeping in class and playing games every day and then turning over books before the exam are the last 90-odd talents, and the result of listening to the class carefully and burning the midnight oil is the highest 60-70 talents.
In their view, facing the same problem, one second of understanding means high talent, and one second of thinking means low talent.
In their view, talent is completely determined by genes, innate, insurmountable and permanently retained. No matter how hard people with low talent try, they can't make up the gap. Talent is the power of diligence.
In short, many people's views on learning are:
Achievement = talent × hard work;
Talent = achievement-hard work;
Hard work = achievement, talent, this simple formula.
This is a very superficial view of learning.
First of all, obviously, the point to be demonstrated in this paper is:
1. There is a talent gap, and this gap also has an effect on learning.
I didn't completely deny the importance of talent.
I didn't completely deny the importance of talent.
I didn't completely deny the importance of talent.
Say the important words three times!
2.
However, most people overestimate the importance of this pure talent. People's subconscious superficial cognition of learning phenomenon will lead us to attribute many hidden factors that actually come from acquired habits to talent.
I know that many people will cite a bunch of genius examples heard and said around them to refute, and then say "there is an IQ gap." Please note that what I am demonstrating here is not "the gap does not exist", but "the importance of this gap is overestimated, and most of the overestimated part comes from the contribution of habits".
3.
If we regard learning efficiency as a multivariate function with talent, effort, habits, methods, environment and many other factors as variables, then we only take the partial derivatives of talent and habits, and their comparison should be as shown in the following figure:
Of course, many abilities have both natural and habitual contributions, such as physical strength.
This is just a sketch.
The stronger the insight into the learning law and the deeper the cognition, the more you can find the source of habits with hidden functions, and the more you can leave the dividing line between talent and habits in cognition;
On the contrary, the shallower your cognition, the less you can explain it, and then generally attribute the factors you can't explain to "talent", and the more the dividing line goes to the right. This is nothing more than another kind of mysticism. Even under many answers to this question, some people think that "being able to work hard is also a gift." This absurd argument has become anti-intellectual.
Let's start arguing now.
-0 1-
In fact, many times, what we call "talents" should actually be called "fake talents". The factors that make "learning God" get better results with half the effort can be summarized into two categories: study habits and thinking habits.
Their functions are so extensive and subtle that they permeate every detail of learning, which is an illusion of "talent".
How important are study habits?
A person with poor study habits may lack discipline from an early age and have the experience of "giving up boring things and seeking entertainment", so the establishment of neural synapses makes him accustomed to getting pleasure from it and adapting to highly exciting things;
A person with good study habits may be better educated. He has adapted to boring piano, dance, calligraphy and painting since childhood, so he has less experience in chasing excitement, adapts to things with low excitement, and is more accustomed to persistence in boredom. And the good grades that followed positively stimulated this affinity and boring habit.
Therefore, it is also a boring chapter when brushing books. The former is easy to be distracted in a low-stimulus environment, and it took two hours to barely push through this hurdle in the mind that is always distracted; The latter is more inclined to concentrate and push it out within 20 minutes.
And the impression depth of the two people is very different; The former also receives information in the classroom, and the stimulation threshold is higher. In the low-stimulation information flow, it is easier to "slide" to the high-stimulation things in memory at any time, such as thinking about yesterday's game or dating the goddess; The latter, with a lower threshold, is easier to adapt to the low-stimulus information flow and thus enter the state.
Afterwards, many people will think that this is a gift and an IQ.
A person with poor study habits may live in a slow-paced educational environment in the early days and experience the pleasure of delaying learning and deserting more, so the establishment of neural synapses makes him accustomed to procrastination; People who are used to it may get huge returns after every immediate action, so the accumulation of this positive stimulus makes them develop the habit of not delaying.
So it's a little difficult to talk in class. The former prefers to wait until after class to digest, and then start deserting, while the latter prefers to solve the problem directly.
In this way, the former not only completely wastes time in class, but also doubles the time after class, which is less efficient, resulting in extremely terrible time loss (in fact, this is also the main reason for the inefficiency of university study); The latter can freely improve their proficiency after class in Ma Pingchuan, which will lead to three or four times the effective study time.
Afterwards, many people will think that this is a gift and an IQ.
A person with poor study habits may lack education that challenges difficulties in the early stage, so he is more used to giving up; People with good study habits get a sense of accomplishment in the difficult problems they have completed after persistence, so they are more accustomed to persistence.
So it is also a difficult problem in learning. The former may give up because of fear of difficulties and think it is unnecessary to study such a difficult problem. The latter will study hard, then kill the big BOSS, soar a wave of experience, and reach a higher and higher level in the snowballing challenge and sense of accomplishment.
Afterwards, many people will think that this is a gift and an IQ.
Learning itself is a process of accumulation. Many people mistakenly think that learning this action is just accumulating distance, which is all wet. Learning can also accumulate learning speed-in other words, learning itself has a slight acceleration.
The more you learn, the more you adapt to learning. The more you choose the latter in the difficult choice of "indulgence/learning", the stronger your synapse will be, and the less painful it will be to choose to keep learning next time. So I always think that those who say "hard work is also a gift" are either simplifying or making excuses for their laziness.
Of course, not to mention learning itself can also help you accumulate trial and error experience and improve your learning style.
-02-
The above argument can only prove that "acquired study habits make a great contribution to learning efficiency", but it can't explain that "people with high learning efficiency must have good study habits".
I know that many people will give XXX an example of going back to the dormitory to play games every day in class, and so on. So, the next thing I want to talk about is another factor-thinking habits. This factor is more important and more subtle.
How important is thinking habit?
When we accept a new experience or a new theory, our understanding of it often depends on its comparison and connection with the known experience or theory.
Many books on learning principles will talk about this, thus emphasizing the importance of systems, metaphors and so on, but many people don't really understand what this is all about.
For example, when we see a board supported by several wooden sticks, we will immediately judge that it is a "table", because everything we see the day after tomorrow with similar characteristics is classified as a "table", so this kind of article is associated with the word "table".
Even if we haven't seen the table in front of us, we can easily recognize its pattern because it is very similar to this kind of thing, and think that it will be classified as a "table" like everything in this kind.
To give another theoretical example, probability theory is about the law of large numbers. People who have heard that prices return to the law of value may understand it in seconds, and those who have heard that "the road is long and Xiu Yuan knows horsepower, and people will see people's hearts for a long time" may be easier to understand; Those who study physics and have heard that "a spent force can't cross the road" may understand the law of linear motion with uniform deceleration more easily; People who have done IQ tests can often understand the sand road calculation method of the third-order determinant in an instant.
For the cultivation of this kind of thinking habit, the cultivation of reading habit is a very important way in the acquired education.
According to the method in How to Read a Book, a book has two functions, one is to provide experience, and the other is to impart theory.
For example, novels are a series of highly organized experiences; A popular science magazine has a series of simple and popular theories besides experience.
A child who loves reading novels and news may have accumulated much more early experience than other peers by reading in this way, and can improve his experience at the earliest stage, while people always tend to sum up theories from existing experiences.
This process is like nuclear fission releasing neutrons-the larger the volume of matter, the greater the possibility of neutron impact. The more experienced a person is, the more likely he is to be inspired to sum up theories/connections from experience. In the face of new knowledge, it is easier to draw inferences.
A child who loves reading popular science magazines or simple theories is more likely to form the habit of accepting foreign theories and sorting out existing experiences. At the same time, the theoretical success cases sorted out by past experience are likely to stimulate their thinking on values and develop a strong thinking tendency.
If you carefully observe those people who study efficiently, you will probably find that they have the habit of reading more or less when they are young. No matter what kind of reading, there is the possibility of spiritual pleasure. And this sense of pleasure will become a valuable early positive incentive, which will make them fall in love with absorbing external experience/accepting external theories, or they can't help thinking and pondering when they start to see a difficult problem.
Subdivided, they may also fall in love with specific fields such as mathematics/physics/astronomy/history. The so-called interest is also acquired to a large extent. The role of interest in a person's study is self-evident.
Then, you may say that many geniuses are good at logical reasoning or mathematical calculation, which are transcendental things. How do you explain this?
Is IQ high or low because of different thinking habits? -Zhang Yingfeng's answer:
As an adult, Gauss said that he could calculate before he learned to speak. This shows that Gauss often came into contact with all kinds of numbers when he was a child, which inadvertently made him master elementary arithmetic at a very young age. To have such a father with a background in mathematics application is to beat his father, but Gauss's father has a shortcoming that he is short-sighted.
Through long-term and high-intensity mathematical calculation, Gauss is not only extremely capable of calculation, but also very good at inventing mathematical tools to simplify his own calculation process.
Just now, Gauss mastered arithmetic progression's fast calculation method at the age of 9, and he 18 invented the least square method, which greatly simplified the calculation process. Later, at the age of 54, Legendre also invented the least square method, which was published before Gauss and gained priority, but Gauss was already using this tool.
More than ten years. But not public!
It is estimated that if Gauss can publish his research results in time, the whole higher mathematics can advance for 50 years! But Gauss is a perfectionist who refuses to publish incomplete and flawed works. Many of his achievements come from inner visual insight, which is an intuitive conclusion. Although he used it for a long time and verified that there was no problem, there was no logical proof.
Gauss, on the other hand, runs too fast and doesn't want to stop at all, wasting precious time on trivial and rigorous proof. If advanced mathematics is really delayed for 50 years, it will be an immeasurable loss to the whole scientific community!
As I said before, mathematicians can think about mathematical problems without paper and pencil, which actually comes from their high-intensity mathematical calculation, and Gauss is the best in this field. Many people may be curious, how strong is Gaussian's computing power?
We take Gauss's geodetic work in Denmark in 18 18 as an example. The whole work lasted eight years. Gauss surveys during the day and calculates at night. He once estimated that there were more than1100,000 maps.
After the field measured data are summarized, Gauss is responsible for all the calculation work, and any two points are calculated by the least square method. Generally, it takes 2 ~ 3 days for people with moderate computing ability to complete the calculation. * * * There are more than 3,000 coordinate points, and the total calculation needs this person to calculate 10 years!
In other words, even things like logical reasoning and mathematical intuition can be exercised through acquired thinking training.
For example, solving a difficult problem/understanding a difficult concept requires at least seven levels of nested logic.
Therefore, a person with a high degree of logic training may have memorized the first three levels of logic, and the fourth and fifth levels of logic are familiar with the topics that have been done/read before, and the rest of the work is only to introduce the remaining two levels of logic;
However, a person who has not been highly trained in logic may only be familiar with the first two levels of logic, so to solve this problem, he may have to occupy a huge working memory space, experience numerous trial and error, and suffer a lot of unfamiliar pain in logic before he can support the logic tree to the fifth level. So it's normal that you can't solve it.
The phenomenon reflected is that many people can't solve the problem, and later they find that the reason is "unexpected".
Every time we do a topic, understand a concept and try to think, we are constantly familiar with the logical path under its content, and the neural link with it is constantly becoming smooth.
The familiarity with this logical path will migrate to the problems similar to the underlying logic that we will encounter in the future, thus giving inferences. In other words, the essence of the benefit of doing the problem is to be familiar with the logical paradigm, narrow the "possibility space" of reasoning, and make your logical habits more suitable for the path of practical problems.
But afterwards, many people will still think that this is a gift and an IQ.
Of course, you can really refute me with some examples, such as a god's thinking habit is not outstanding/a god actually reads very little/a god delays cancer/a god pursues excitement every day, etc.
However, every specific habit listed above is only one of the factors including habit, talent, effort, environment, experience, methods and so on. A person may only need to get five tenths, and a "genius" who gets seven or eight tenths will have two or three shortcomings. But in general, the most fundamental thing that determines learning efficiency is acquired habits.
The central limit theorem tells us that variables affected by a large number of independent factors will approximately obey Gaussian distribution, and so should students' grades (although these factors are not absolutely independent, they can also be approximately Gaussian distribution)-countless students are distributed in every student in this country according to their habits from childhood, a little experience accumulation, complex growth environment, different personal experiences, uneven talents and subjective initiative.
The former 1% students are outstanding in talent, habits, methods and efforts, or average and good. Those at the far right of this distribution usually reach at least the "excellent" level in all variables.
I know many people will retort that at the top, you can only fight for talent. In other words, it is the so-called "efforts to determine the lower limit, talent determines the upper limit."
But you have to understand that in the Gaussian distribution generated by countless variables, the closer they are, the more serious the short board effect is. In a superior position, habit, talent, effort, method, etc. Is indispensable. At this time, all the high-weight factors will basically become necessary conditions, and there is no difference in talent.
I once knew a provincial champion in the college entrance examination. She integrated top talents, strong planning ability, the best educational resources, hard talent training since childhood, love for specific subjects, accurate 6-hour sleep schedule every day and other excellent factors, and achieved top results.
Therefore, the so-called "talent determines the upper limit and strives to determine the lower limit" is also inaccurate. All factors * * * determine the upper and lower limits.
The only particularity of talent is unchangeable, but on the one hand, we are talking about "who has higher weight" rather than "who is more difficult to change". On the other hand, it is extremely difficult for most people to have diminishing marginal effects because of their different habits.
-03-
So, the role of IQ does not exist?
That's not true.
As mentioned above, we mainly have two learning methods. One is to gain new experience from external appearances, and the other is to sort out new laws and theories from existing experiences and theories, or the outside world helps you complete this process.
I remember seeing a picture introducing the DIKW system on Zhihu, but I can't find it. Does anyone remember? )
Our most common IQ test is usually like this:
In other words, these intelligence tests circulating on the Internet test your ability to generalize laws and theories from a given limited experience (so intelligence tests claim to be cross-cultural because they strip away the factors of existing experience), which corresponds to the second one.
This ability is really important, for example, there is a joke in mathematics:
Mathematicians can find similarities between theorems; A good mathematician can see the similarity between proofs; Excellent mathematicians can perceive the similarity between branches of mathematics;
Finally, advanced mathematicians can ignore the similarities between these similarities.
What is mainly involved here is the strength of inductive ability.
In addition, more professional tests can measure working memory, reaction speed and so on.
Therefore, the ability gap caused by IQ exists.
However, no matter how high your inductive ability is, it is not as good as the considerable experience and theoretical stock accumulated by children who love reading;
However, no matter how fast you react, you can't compare with the endurance of a strong-willed child who never walks away in class;
However, no matter how strong your working memory is, it can't compare with a well-educated child's good habit of easily concentrating for two hours;
I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that a schoolmaster in the north of Qing Dynasty is not even as diligent as an ordinary school scum in talent, understanding and learning. The biggest reason for the gap between these two people lies in the education they received from childhood and the habits brought by the environment.
This article is not to give you chicken soup. What I want to tell you is that study habits and thinking habits are another form of class solidification.
Countless habits, like a solid wall, are between piano painting and video games, between literary masterpieces of mathematical enlightenment and network mindless cartoons, between clever guidance and encouragement and rude cramming, between scientific words and deeds and excessive doting on domestic violence.
Between traveling around the world and doing a lot of reading and doing nothing, between loving reasoning programming and shopping since childhood, between consistently three good students and fooling around, between the bright lights of competition classes and the fun of hip-hop in ordinary classes, it is quietly established.
When you discover all this, what stands between ordinary people and learning tyrants and learning gods is an invisible and insurmountable barrier that cruelly separates the strong from the weak.
Many naturalists think that I am against natural determinism, that is, I am saying, "I just don't work hard, I can surpass them as long as I work hard."
Wrong.
How big is the gap between ordinary people and learning gods, and how difficult it is to break through this barrier. Breaking through this barrier is equivalent to "changing fate" in fantasy novel.
The function of habit is so hidden, it permeates every detail of your study life, controls most of your study behavior, and it is so hidden that people who are not good at thinking have to attribute it to the general concept of "talent". Many people scare their knees when they see genius, but they can't see the environment and educational factors behind genius. In fact, habits can be changed, but it takes a long time and exploration.
The myth of talent is a cowardly escape. It is more comfortable to stop thinking than to leave a little desire to change.
After all, the most painful thing is not "I can't", but "I could have".
I am quite disgusted with the prevailing "contempt chain" atmosphere: we don't talk about our love for the subject, nor about our persistence in learning. We just want to compare our grades, divide them by hard work quotient, and then use it to discharge one, two, three, four and work out A, B, C and D.
A person who studies hard and has average grades should be despised most; If the result is good, it is normal, ranking second; If this person can still play games every day when he gets good grades, he should be regarded as the supreme god.
What a morbid atmosphere this is.
Of course, there are other factors in learning efficiency, such as learning environment: the learning efficiency of evening self-study classes in key high schools in a sprint state is of course much better than that of college daily life with more than half a semester left before the final exam. In a good environment, many habitual defects can be made up. So it is very necessary to choose a good environment. This is also a big advantage that environment/birth can bring.