Comment by Arisaka1

>It's the same with genetics. Getting lucky with looks is fine but working for the same goal (eg surgery) is somehow bad and people often hide it.

We also tend to hide how hard we work to make our success look natural, but we reveal how hard we work on the extremes of success. For example, if I work hard and take a score of 17 out of 20 in a test people will say "I barely read last evening, phew", but if you're consistently scoring 19-20/20 people may even approach you to learn your studying methods and for tips, because they assume there are important takeaways that they can adopt.

It's my pet peeve with how society recognizes that someone is talented, which is blatantly flawed because all you can do is see what they're capable of doing. Someone may be talented yet unable (or unwilling?) to tap into their talent, but since we recognize talent by the output you can't really tell the existence of talent unless it's at the extremes of success, like the 8 year old who can solve mathematics that are a grade or more above the current grade.

I see talent like a genetic predisposition that can be appropriately cultivated to attain success. It's not much different than my height, because I didn't choose it, yet I can guess that there are men out there who hate the fact that I have their desirable height yet I never hit the gym, cultivate my social skills, or take advantage the fact that I look younger than I am. I am willing to bet everything that I met at least one person who thought of all of these things the first moments they looked at me.

But at least genetic predispositions like height are visible to the naked eye and no one can dispute the differences. When it comes to differences in the brain it's where we ignorantly proclaim that things are obscure therefore they can violate the very facts of observable nature.

In sort, not only I fully agree with you, but I also agree with the obvious double standards in society around it. If I take ADHD medication and that helps with my focus to improve my performance in school or work then I deserve that success as much as someone who naturally had no problems with ADHD. Why is this different for looks (like hair transplants, etc.) is beyond me.