Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 10:48:23 12/23/01
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On December 23, 2001 at 13:17:20, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote: >Many of the basketball players will suck in soccer no matter >how hard they try and viceversa. I would guess the majority would be very good soccer players. >Same when we compare skills in music, math, chess, experimental sciences, >abstract sciences, literature and some other arts. If you excel in one of those >does not mean that you excel in any other. You might be above average, though. I recall a friend of mine in a discussion on the "greatest athlete ever", and we got to talking about the golfer Tiger Woods, who is obviously a very dominating player right now. My friend made the point that he isn't the greatest athlete ever, because the vast majority of people never even try golf, and an even smaller percentage never attempt to become a serious golf player. My friend played baseball in college, so he was a decent athlete. He recalled that in highschool he would sometimes go and play tennis with the varsity tennis team, and he said that he was able to play about even with the #1 player on the team, and he didn't even play tennis. His point was that he was simply a decent athlete and that there was a relatively small percentage of people that played tennis, so he was able to simply rely on his raw athletic ability. Imagine what an extemely agile NFL running back would be able to do on the tennis court, or a world class soccer player on the tennis court. I'd bet that with a little work, a world class soccer player would be a top ten tennis player in the world. I would assume that the same would go for chess. In reality, a very small percentage of people actually play chess, and an even smaller percentage play it seriously, and an even smaller percentage are able to spend significant amounts of time to become a serious comptetitive player. With proper teaching and work ethic, I think anyone who is a top person in their field (science, math, art, music, etc.) would be able to become a very good chess player. Maybe not top 100 in the world, but definetly a solid master level player. This is all based on the desire to do so, since it would require significant effort on the part of this person, but I believe that a person who excels in one field can excel in another. All they need is someone to relate the material to them ina way that they can understand (possibly in a similar way that made sense to them when learning their original field of success). But as always, that's just what I think and I can't prove it one way or another. >Regards, >Miguel
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