the Polgar experiment actually disproves the hard work theory

Laszlo and his wife were not enough to create three champions by their own. After the girls became much better than their father, Alex Chernin was hired as their trainer- and I think a few others were tried before him.

I know Laszlo from an open tournament in Gyongyos back in 1985- he was escorting the 9 y.o. Judit which was participating in the "B" tournament, and picking a lot of scalps in the evening blitz encounters. Zsuzsa was playing in a GM tournament in Baden-Baden, already top class player. I was surprised when Lazslo told me with confidence that Judit will become the strongest of the 3 sisters. Well, he was right.

Again, I stand by my point.

African kids or not - he was unable to transfer the results of his system of training to any other kid except for those with related DNA (his own).  He was clearly smart enough and articulate enough to be able to convey his points and ideas to other parents, yet nobody (and I mean NOBODY) has been able to even remotely achieve a Judit Polgar (nobody has even been able to achieve a quarter of a Judit Polgar player using his methods. I'm no Polgar, but it's pretty clear that no matter how hard I try and train my daughter in chess at age 5, she ain't ever approaching even 1/100th of Judit's ability at age 5.)

Most scientists would say that if you can't replicate your results outside of your own very unique situation, you need to start looking at other reasons why your unique situation worked out. And there are a lot of reasons pointing at genetic gifts in the Polgar girls' case, as there was good documentation of their prodigious chess abilities even at an age where kids can barely benefit from high level coaching. (4-5 year olds are NOT particular disciplined students!)

Nothing beats hard work!

I totally disagree.

If it were all about Laszlo, he should have been churning out top-level youth chess players one after another, or helping parents churn out really strong super young chess players as early as age 5-6, even if they weren't quite as good as Judit. 

It's pretty clear this NEVER happened. And Laszlo was articulate enough and passionate enough to try and spread his methods around. And you can't tell me parents didn't listen to him - I'm sure many tried - and failed (like I did.) You don't need to go all-out to realize it's just not working - it's pretty clear it ain't happening pretty early on. 

The FAR more likely explanation - the genetic gifts for chess (specifically) were strong in the Polgar sisters. Much like how Serena and Venus dominate tennis, the Polgars share similar genetic gifts and given the right environment and stimuli (training), they can become world-class players.

And while the Polgar sisters did need higher-level training to become world champion-caliber, keep in mind that they were super strong way before that. Everyone knows the story of how Laszlo and his adult friends couldn't solve some tactical problem, so they went and woke up Judit (or one of her sisters) who was SIX years old, who groggily looked at the problem, solved it nearly instantly and went back to sleep. These girls were crushing it even before they got the training - the training just allowed them to really hit those world-beating levels, but it's a total lie to say they were like 'merely above average chess players' without the training. They were BORN as chess monsters, playing blindfold without any special blindfold training at like age 6.

That's a strawman argument. 

Sure, I haven't read Laszlo's works in depth, but the issues we're discussing (specifically, Polgar's ability as being more nature vs nuture) do not require me to ben an expert in Laszlo's work to discuss it. 

In fact, most of Laszlo's work is probably outdated and outcredited by the more recent neuroscientific advances in language, which despite not being a personal expert, I know a lot more about than any scientist did in Laszlo's time when he wrote his stuff. 

If you want to disagree, go ahead and point out the areas in my arguments which are problematic - that's how discussions go.

Played some chess at the early age of 12 by reproducing some games on paper, in class, blindfold chess I guess, never done my homework, hated math, went to a club at the age of 14.

Again, as an overall response to your post:

How many Judit Polgar's has Laszlo been able to create outside of girls who had the same DNA? 

ZERO.

How many players of even similar class have been created, credit with mainly using Laszlo's methods?

I'm not absolutely sure, but I think the number is close to ZERO. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong and show me if otherwise. 

Again, I'm not saying training/nurture isn't important - it's absolutely important for any genius in any field. But without the world-class talent to match, fuggetaboutit.

I just get tired of hearing Laszlo Polgar's name repeatedly brought up as an example of how 'nurture' can really create something special in kids. He has a great story, and even I would love to believe it, but as a main rule in science - if NOBODY ELSE can reproduce your results, you should be highly, highly skeptical that your methods and your story are as effective as you say they are, and you should start immediately looking for a different explanation. 

I have no clue what this has to do with anything. The Polgar sisters were the three strongest female chess players Hungary has ever seen. There has been nothing like them, male or female, in all of chess history. So they didn't become world champions. They also didn't play at 2900 level. They were still extraordinarily successful. The fact that they didn't beat Kasparov doesn't say anything about whether Laszlo Polgar's experiment was successful or repeatable.

Obviously, good genes, good circumstances, and great training from birth created three of the best players in the world, one of which broke into the top 10 in the world, and one of them has the highest rating any female has ever achieved. 

I don't draw that conclusion at all. I'm not saying intense training isn't helpful - it is, but I'm saying it won't make you a world champion without the talent.

I could surround my 5-year old daughter with chessboards, chess puzzles, etc. (she constantly comes and looks at chess with me on my computer) and she'll NEVER become even remotely what Judit could do at her age. 

My own conclusion is my opinion on it, but I'd argue that the stories about Judit and her sisters have been misrepresented by Lazslo. Using Occam's razor, it's FAR more plausible and expected that Judit and her sisters were so strong because they shared special chess gifts in terms of DNA, and it was just sheer luck that Laszlo had 3 daughters that happened to overlap with his desire to examine parenting in chess.

With the genetic explanation, it's not only plausible but EXPECTED that you should not have other players of Judit's strength, even if Laszlo spreads his methods around, because people don't have the DNA-talent to achieve it.

And the argument that "well, parent's didn't go 'all-out' with Laszlo's methods" is also false. It's absolutely not an all-or-none effect, meaning that even if they didn't go all-out, he got plenty of press and attention that parents and academicians and scientists were looking at his stuff pretty seriously and considering it pretty seriously. Yet there was no chain of strong (even if not world-class strong) chess playing Polgar-method players from Laslzo, and no Laszlo-styled school of chess achieving outsized results by his early exposure methods.

What has been shown, is that yes, early exposure and good training helps people achieve their genetic potential and express their talent.  

It does NOT support Polgar's attemption assertions that it was mainly because of heavy early exposure (and not talent/DNA) that enabled his daughters to become world champion level.

Einstein was not bad at math.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/02/11/was-albert-einstein-really-a-bad-student-who-failed-math/

"It wasn't a feminist action, and shouldn't be considered as such."

Well, people care more about gender than every other feature of a human being combined (ooooh, it's a girrrrlll!), so they think, girl, oh, that must mean feminism. You know, even though half the world are girls and sometimes girls do things without the point being that they're girls.

Yeah.

Well yeah it could be argued that this was a really unethical thing to do for Mr. Polgar. If the daughters didn't become brilliant chess players, he'd probably be looked at as a totally horrible human being. But even given that the daughters did become brilliant chess players... do the ends justify the means that suddenly?

I'm not embarrassing myself. If you're attempting to impress me with your vast understanding of Laszlo Polgar, more power to you.

Doesn't change the essence of any of my prior arguments one bit. Just because other scientists viewed him as suspect doesn't change things at all. 

The essence of my argument is still the same:

Until anyone can show me evidence outside his very own daughters that his methods can be even partially reproducible in terms of achieving extraordinarily excellence in typical people (people without outsized natural talents), you should seriously doubt the reasoning he gives that his daughters were so strong because of his methods and early exposure and you should accept the far simpler explanation that the Polgar sisters were uniquely gifted (DNA) in terms of chess ability, which explains why there is a stunning lack of strong chess results from Laszlo's methods outside of his own daughters.

http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/einstein/section1.rhtml

einstein

I've got all the evidence I need - 

ZERO reproducibility.

That's the single most important outcome of Laszlo's theories and methods. And to date, not a single educator or psychologist has been able to create world-class talent in average ability kids in any field simply by creating an ideal environment for accelerating their learning in those fields. (There are plenty of schools that create 'strong' players or practitioners in chess, music, etc, but none create world-class players reliably de novo.)

I'm not demanding any proof or evidence from you, I'm just making my own point, right or wrong, but I'd go so far as to say that it really doesn't matter what his theories are, or what other scientists think of him, or how little I know of the details of his research - the lack of reproducibility is a critical aspect that potentially negates all his childrearing theories.

I agree with all of the above.

I am SPECULATING here, but I would venture this proposition with fair certainty now that I'm a parent of a 5-year old myself and thus more familiar with the reality of raising a kid. 

I'd speculate that it's highly likely that the kids chose chess for themselves due to their innate abilities, and that Laszlo's real credit for it is mainly is having offered it as an option (one of several) to them in the first place.

From Wikipedia:

Polgár and his wife considered various possible subjects in which to drill their children, “including mathematics and foreign languages,” but they settled on chess. “We could do the same thing with any subject, if you start early, spend lots of time and give great love to that one subject,” Klara later explained. “But we chose chess. Chess is very objective and easy to measure.”^[3] Susan described chess as having been her own choice: “Yes, he could have put us in any field, but it was I who chose chess as a four-year-old….I liked the chessmen; they were toys for me.”^[6]

I speculate this because as a parent of my 5 year old, I'm acutely aware if she's very interested in any one thing, and even more aware if she's particularly good at something naturally. It's very clear from watching her classmates in kindergarten that some are athletic talents, some are artistics talents, etc. (My girl seems remarkably average for now, no problem with that!) 

But you'd better believe that if I gave my daughter the choice of 5 potential things to explore, and her talent latched on to one of them (like chess), I'd be quickly finding her teachers and other avenues for her to grow that talent, even if she's not going to become world champion.

I can say for a fact that if my daughter was doing stuff that Judit was doing at age 5-6, it would be EASY to surround her with chess, chess masters, and chess tournaments. In fact, it would be the most obvious thing in the world to do given the amazingly obvious proclivity she'd be showing for it. 

LOL. You're getting all worked up for nothing.

If you want to 'win' as the Laszlo expert, ok, you win. I'm ok with that. 

I'm just saying you do NOT need to be a "Laszlo expert" to make the points I'm making about nature vs nurture in looking at the Polgar sisters. In fact, it is almost certainly better to be more knowledgable in validated modern neuroscience than to be an 'expert' in Laszlo's (questionable) ideas about why Judit and his daughters are world-class chess players.

This guy is running for President of the United States. He had some experiences with the Polgar family and decided for some reason to talk about them.

He describes a couple of events where he had the chance to have sex with Susan Polgar when she was 17 years old. He was in his 40s. It's really a strange thing to post, but especially considering he's running for President. It's really weird.

????

I don't think my line of thinking is dangerous at all.

I am simply stating my opinion that talent plays a huge part in the Polgar's sisters' success, and may actually be THE main factor for their success, despite what Laszlo claims.

This does not in any way denigrate the critical value of hard work. After all, for the 99.99999% of us who lack amazing world-beating gifts at anything, and have talent that falls nearly smack in the middle of the huge bell curve, hard work will probably be the SINGULAR factor that impacts how well we perform at something. More than genetics by a longshot (since we're statistically most like to be joe-average in genetics.)

I don't think you need ot have a clear description of talent to acknowledge or see it in the most gifted players. Magnus Carlsen clearly had gobs of talent in chess. Steph Curry obvious has gobs of talent in shooting 3s and other offensive basketball skills. Do I know what specific factors make that talent? No. But can I say unequivocally, without a doub that they have 'superhuman' gifts of talent for their respective fields? Hell yes.