Talent is innate

In this round I will respond to all that my opponent just said. First, sorry about confusing the sports leagues for various American sports. Please forgive me, I'm not really a sporty person. My opponent seems to continue to narrow down who he calls "talented" more and more. Mozart has been completely neglected by my opponent. Sports stars, my opponent has said, don't help either case, because apparently genetic advantages (such as being tall) don't "really qualify" as talent in sports where genetic advantages matter. After all, "a genetic advantage is not equivalent to talent. " I don't accept the premise that genetic advantages don't qualify as talent. That's what we call a tautology. My opponent is attempting to turn this debate into a truism, because if genetic advantages (such as being tall) don't "really qualify" as talent, then neither does any effect of those genetic advantages (like winning reaching competitions) including skills and aptitudes, and thus by our agreed definitions talent cannot be innate. The problem is that the premise has only been asserted by my opponent without any supporting evidence. Indeed, our definitions of what qualifies as talent seem to contradict this new restriction - reaching is an aptitude. In any event, redefining the debate in a tautological way (a form of squirreling) is entirely unfair. Then just to show how confused my opponent is, he brings up two new sports stars to help his case (Messi and Phelps). I'll deal with them later. First, let me turn back to chess and Polgar. Were any of Polgar's parents talented at chess? As I've told you, her father was an international chess master from Hungary. Is it "usual" to be an international chess master? No. Therefore her father was unusually talented at chess. And despite her dedication, the differences between the male and female brain are great enough to put 30 places between the greatest female player of all time (by a considerable margin) and the best male player of the day. And since some kids have become chess grandmasters at the age of eleven (and they probably weren't playing chess before the age of one), the big "it takes 10 years to become an expert" figure for chess is simply fallacious. By the way, chess is not just a memory game. It also involves position analysis, creativity, staring down opponents and so on. What if Polgar never played? Well, then her mind would still be optimised for playing chess. She would still beat other people who never played chess. I've made it very clear she would not be considered talented by international standards, but her talent would lie in her ability to win games against her equals routinely. Not every talented soccer player has gone to the World Cup. Some are just talented because they can score a goal against their friends. Being better than one's peers (more aptitude and skill than usual) amounts to talent. I agree that "If a person is supposed to be fast but has never learned to run then they will be very slow", however, they might well be very talented. As I showed last round with my as-yet-unrefuted blinking analysis, just because someone doesn't use all their talents to their full potential doesn't mean those talents don't exist. Without practice, the talents could not be used, but everyone can practice. Without innate ability, the talents would (usually) not exist - and not everybody has innate ability. Coming back to Polgar, I'd say the same thing. If she had never practiced, she would not use her incredible female chess mind (although she COULD do so if she ever played, which would mean she is still talented). If she did not have such an incredible mind, however, her practice would not have made her nearly as talented as she is today. As I explained last round, one of those pales in comparison to the other. To win the men's 100M final at the Olympics next year, one athlete will need both. The reason why my opponent can't rebut my prediction is because we all know it's true. I'm not saying some are destined to succeed and others to fail. That would be supposing that everyone who is talented at something actually does that thing. It would also be supposing that genetics is everything. It isn't. Think of it like horse racing. Some horses are brought up on much better pastures and have far better jockeys. But at the end of the day, the number one determinant of the horses' speed is their breeding. That's not to say that one breed wins every single race. It is to say, however, that some breeds are strongly advantaged over other breeds. The same is true of humans. You and I were not born identical, and some of our traits make us more predisposed towards doing well at one activity or another. Therefore my prediction is a pretty safe bet. What about Messi? Well, given that his team couldn't even beat New Zealand (yay! ) in the last World Cup, and didn't get through the group stage, I'd have my doubts that their captain really is the best player in the world as my opponent claims. But even if I was to grant that, a hormone deficiency has very little bearing on ones ability to play soccer. Soccer involves multiple aptitudes, such as running fast, having good endurance, and being co-ordinated enough to accurately pass a ball. These things aren't mostly hormone dependant. They're mostly dependant on your genetic make-up. On Phelps, he wasn't the only swimmer with an intense practice regime. I wonder why my opponent thinks he succeeded when hundreds of people around the globe, who also practice swimming intensely, have not even made an Olympic final? It's because the hundreds of other swimmers don't have a body like Michael Phelps. I'm not advocating telling kids they are going to fail or succeed at any given enterprise, and indeed I think genetics isn't thoroughly understood enough to jump to those kinds of conclusions. It should be noted that these kinds of assessments are already made, usually by subjective instead of objective measures, in school reports. That, however, is irrelevant to the debate. It's another question entirely whether we should actually tell kids what they're good at, to whether what kids are good at is innate or not. My opponent asks who was ever successful without practice. Ghengis Khan didn't get to practice conquering the known world before he did it. My little brother won a debate tournament with me once without ever having debated before. Several great early New Zealand statesmen, such as William Hobson, had absolutely no prior training or experience in governance, and yet they are some of the most revered figures in our history. I aced a test once that I had not studied for. Every time somebody does something for the first time in their life and you say to yourself "what a natural" or "I can't believe (s)he's never done that before! " (or "that's probably just beginner's luck"), then you have an example of a successful person without practice. Unless you believe in reincarnation, people who live to great ages have a talent for staying alive, but have never practiced. There are literally thousands of examples. There are literally no examples of a person being successful without any innate ability. Practice can only amplify the talent you are born with. I look forward to the final round.