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The story
A single line in a school’s advertisement — “there’s no such thing as innate ability differences” — has sparked a debate on 5ch. It appears to be meant as an encouraging message for students facing entrance exams or job hunting, but posters weren’t taking it at face value, and opinions split over just how much genetics shapes intelligence and athletic ability. Citing findings that identical twins raised in different environments ended up with similar academic performance, and pointing to the idea that Shohei Ohtani wouldn’t have found the same success had he chosen a different path, the “environment matters more” camp and the “genetics matters more” camp both dug in, with plenty of sarcasm flying at the cult of effort along the way.
What people said
I get that you believe that.
Now explain your reasoning.
Sounds like something an old-school Showa-era tyrant boss would say.
Guess that makes NEETs (people Not in Education, Employment, or Training) the winners.
Already getting up in years and still a NEET, lol
Guess this is a case of refusing to admit that ability differences are, in fact, ability differences.
But openly affirming that risks veering into eugenics territory, so that's frowned upon.
A slogan like 'you can achieve anything through effort' is considered the healthier message, even if it's a bit of a white lie.
That said, gaps start forming from age zero depending on the family you're born into.
The brain's part of the body too, isn't it?
Are you just saying it's some power handed down by God?
That's right… no matter how much effort you put in,
you'll never draw better than me, even though I've put in zero effort.
Then again, I'll never be able to play an instrument, ever.
You surely have the latent potential to make up for that gap.
Believe that you do, and study like your life depends on it.
You'll be amazed to discover just how much power you can pull out of yourself when you do.
Wrong.
It's all genetic superiority and inferiority.
Genetic superiority or inferiority mostly falls within the same range for most people,
but things like home environment vary a lot more, so environment ends up having the bigger impact on outcomes.
What matters is genetics.
Intelligence is said to be 80% genetic,
and physical ability 40%.
It's about whether you can pick the talent you're actually suited for.
If Ohtani had chosen to become a manga artist,
he wouldn't have succeeded no matter the environment.
Sure, academic ability isn't assessed the moment you're born, but still…
subjects like math apparently show a fairly strong correlation,
though the takeaway is still that environment is the bigger factor.
one rich, one poor —
they're said to have ended up with the same results.
Who's still spouting that kind of nicey-nice nonsense these days?
The real question is whether you can still put in the effort knowing that.
You'd need to compare people born with severe intellectual disabilities against everyone else instead.
Same as with sports.
'If Ohtani had chosen to be a manga artist, he wouldn't have succeeded in baseball' — that's literally you proving the importance of environment yourself.
It's not environment —
it's talent genes.
Can't you understand that?
No, that part comes down mostly to what you're born with.
That's not a counterargument — you're just repeating the same claim again.
Can't you see that your own logic is falling apart?
Out of all of them, only Ohtani and Kikuchi made it big.
You're explaining the causality of an entire population using extreme outliers.
After you're born,
differences do start forming depending on your environment though.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The phrase “ability isn’t innate, it comes down to effort” is commonly used in school settings as a stock line to encourage students, not as a scientific claim. That said, in the field of behavioral genetics, twin studies have built up evidence that some individual differences in intelligence and athletic ability can be explained by genetic factors, with the relative contribution of genes versus environment varying a great deal depending on the type of ability. The twin studies and heritability figures cited in the thread only loosely echo that body of research and shouldn’t be taken as settled academic figures. Some posts also raised the point that saying “there’s no such thing as innate ability differences” risks being insensitive to people born with congenital disabilities — highlighting a gap between educational slogans and how those directly affected might receive them. The thread reached no clear conclusion.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “A school ad drops some real talk!! “There’s no such thing as innate ability differences”.”
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