The brain is still a physical object, and its development is a mix of genetics and upbringing, just as height and musculature are. The difference is that chess playing abilities isn't so readily visible as bulging muscles are.
There are some people who have a substantial advantage when they start their training and others who could never be grandmasters with any amount of training.
Genetic differences are often overstated by comparing one extreme to another.
Instead, consider the personal limits of any given individual to be the best in strength/physique contests, chess competitions, programming contests, time to run a mile, or playing in the NFL.
The brain is still a physical object, and its development is a mix of genetics and upbringing, just as height and musculature are. The difference is that chess playing abilities isn't so readily visible as bulging muscles are.
Such limits are unknown until the given person puts many, many years of work into a particular goal (often at least five years.) That's because limits are not defined by where one starts, but where one plateaus for multiple years following some kind of improvement over the prior five, ten, fifteen years.
Genetics may help push somebody over a plateau they would otherwise have hit sooner (just as having a good coach, training regimen, knowing one's own body, etc, will help as well). But discovering that one is genetically superior (which, for somebody with a given gift, could simply mean that he or she is able to accomplish something one second faster than somebody else with the same training experience in the entire lives--something hard to duplicate) doesn't displace the years of work it took to reach a point where genetics start to be the limiting factor.
For every person a journalist might say has a gift, there are hundreds of other people with the same level of achievement nobody writes about. There are about 2,000 active NFL players. There are many grandmasters. There are many active runners, swimmers, etc who are comparable to the fastest people of 50 years ago, but are slower than the current world record holders. All of these people have to train hard to get to where they are.
For example: it's possible that somebody on Hacker News has the kind of muscle fibers that speed runners dream of. However, that person would never know they are athletically gifted because they never got to the point where this ability mattered; e.g., their cardiovascular system runs out of gas quickly and they never bothered to keep trying, to see how good they could actually be.
Recap: do genetics matter at differentiating the best from the best? Yes. Are people who are not the best in a particular arena missing those genes they need to be Gary Kasparov, Randy Moss, Wayne Gretzky? Very unlikely. It's more likely they are missing the 5, 10, 15 years of exerted effort at that particular mission.
The best in the world are better than those who have tried to do the same professionally for many years. However, there are hundreds of millions of people out there who could be close to the best, who have not even tried (often, for the sake of a career, family, education.) Genetics are really one of the least important differentiators when comparing a professional (anything) to somebody who is doing something else. Therefore, the genetic argument is very, very weak.
>Genetic differences are often overstated by comparing one extreme to another.
Upbringing differences are even more often overstated by comparing one extreme to another. In fact your entire comment was just that.
>Such limits are unknown until the given person puts many, many years of work into a particular goal (often at least five years.) That's because limits are not defined by where one starts, but where one plateaus for multiple years following some kind of improvement over the prior five, ten, fifteen years.
Genetics aren't some sort of magical limit that appear after pushing yourself hard at some pursuit for a decade. They're another variable, along with training, diet, etc. It's difficult to say what anybody's absolute limits are, but ball-park predictions are possible. And no microcephalic is ever going to be an excellent chess player, regardless of training.
In your example of sprinting, the best in the world was noticed and brought into the sport due to his talents. According to wikipedia, "Upon his entry to William Knibb Memorial High School, Bolt continued to focus on other sports, but his cricket coach noticed Bolt's speed on the pitch and urged him to try track and field events." And then, with less than a decade of serious training, he utterly demolished world records in three different events. Two other points that suggest a large genetic component in his success are that he had only recently started training for the 100 when he broke the world record, and that he was the fastest kid in his school while growing up, even before doing an track and field training.
>For example: it's possible that somebody on Hacker News has the kind of muscle fibers that speed runners dream of. However, that person would never know they are athletically gifted because they never got to the point where this ability mattered;
Muscle fibers are only the least of what goes into running talent. Paraplegics typically have a higher percentage of fast-twitch fibers than sprinters. That noted, the premise that someone on a relatively small site such as this might unknowingly have the same level of natural sprinting abilities as a freak of nature like Bolt is ridiculous. Only if one believed that all hereditary dormant was "dormant" until one trained for decades and that the bobcat's leaping power sprang from its upbringing would that be a sensible hypothesis.
There's a mountain of scientific data demonstrating natural differences in abilities between different people. In order to deny the existence of talent, you'd literally have to throw out the last fifty years of psychology, biology and related life sciences. Sadly, quite a few people are willing to do just that! The fact that there's an argument at all about nature and nurture both contributing greatly to life outcomes makes it clear that the influence of nature is severely underestimated. That Gladwell and others who lack any background in life sciences are getting so much play in the media on this topic only serve as further evidence. Here are some scientific findings on the subject of talent:
There are some people who have a substantial advantage when they start their training and others who could never be grandmasters with any amount of training. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3346580/What-makes-us-...
Blind ideology and little else could lead one to believe that genetic factors don't even exist.