> In basketball, it is quite easy to prove that some people are simply unable to ever be a great basketball player; there has never been an NBA player shorter than 5'3, only 25 shorter than 6'0, and only 10 under 5'10. Are you really telling me NO ONE shorter than 5'3 ever decided the trade offs were worth it?
Anecdotal, I'm 6'1. At a middle school age, I was _hounded_ into playing basketball (until they realised I had no talent whatsoever, or any inkling that I wanted to attempt to improve that). There's definitely a selection bias in who gets started playing basketball in the first place.
Back on topic,
> some people simply don't have the genetic attributes needed to be great.
I think this is a massive stretch. I think it's fair to say that some people don't have the attributes to be in the top 0.01% of the their game (in baskebtall, there's a few hundred(?) players in the NBA - that's the equivalent of the John Carmack/Peter Norvig types that have come up here), but is there any proof whatsoever of any form that says that an "average-to-poor" engineer can't become a "great" engineer - (in basketball terms, going from the person who can't dribble to the person who absolutely dominates your after-work league consistently)
> Anecdotal, I'm 6'1. At a middle school age, I was _hounded_ into playing basketball (until they realised I had no talent whatsoever, or any inkling that I wanted to attempt to improve that). There's definitely a selection bias in who gets started playing basketball in the first place.
This has had a bigger impact than you'd imagine :-) For example quite a few tall football players have been nudged when they were kids to play basketball. But luckily some more open minded coaches let them play and found out that they were actually good. The best example is Jan Koller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Koller
2.02 (6'8), so definitely towering above most other people :-)
But the things is, genes do matter at a certain level. I really think you can't be an NBA player if you're 1.50 (I think that would be about 4'8). No matter how fast or resilient you are. You'll just be outmuscled, dunking will probably be almost physically impossible.
And the only example that has been given is that someone who is legally considered disabled cannot compete in the top 0.01% of professional sports. I had a bit of a search, and Jahmani Swanson [0] is 4'5, and would absolutely wreck pretty much every single non-NBA basketball player you would ever meet in your life (I am aware that the team are an exhibitionist team, and not an NBA team). I'm sure there are hundreds of other examples of people who won't be able to compete at the top 0.01% of the activity in question, but are unquestionably "great".
We can argue semantics about how great is great, but you can pretty much guarantee that he's in the top 1% of basketball players worldwide. That's pretty great.
If you are saying he would be top 1% in the general population, sure, but I don't think you can define that as great. If you are saying top 1% of people who actually play basketball regularly, I think you are wrong... he isn't going to be better than any one who plays highschool level or better, and will be average at best on an adult rec-league team.
I would certainly not call someone who is only top 1% in of the general population great... 1% of the world's population is 70 million people... there are an estimated 27 million or so software developers, so more than half of the top 1% of software developers in the world don't even write software. I would hardly call them great.
Anecdotal, I'm 6'1. At a middle school age, I was _hounded_ into playing basketball (until they realised I had no talent whatsoever, or any inkling that I wanted to attempt to improve that). There's definitely a selection bias in who gets started playing basketball in the first place.
Back on topic,
> some people simply don't have the genetic attributes needed to be great.
I think this is a massive stretch. I think it's fair to say that some people don't have the attributes to be in the top 0.01% of the their game (in baskebtall, there's a few hundred(?) players in the NBA - that's the equivalent of the John Carmack/Peter Norvig types that have come up here), but is there any proof whatsoever of any form that says that an "average-to-poor" engineer can't become a "great" engineer - (in basketball terms, going from the person who can't dribble to the person who absolutely dominates your after-work league consistently)