I have long since discovered the “Secret of talent” and made it public (more than once).

And, here, the secret of mediocrity, continued to “scratch” in the brain.

The other day I received a personal message from one of my very sharp and unflattering critics (or criticcess), for which I feel deeply grateful to the author, because this message again forced me to critically analyze my arguments and considerations and prompted me to some new thoughts.

With the author’s permission, I am quoting this letter in its entirety.

“Speculative hypnability!

Esprit, you are passionate about the word “hypnability” (suggestibility) and use this concept, sometimes wthout any need and task, all the time. Of course, referring to it with deep respect as a kind of magic key that unlocks any of the most difficult problems. Your main argument, repeated with an enviable tediousness worthy of a better use (if your tediousness is even possible), is that:

We all learn by imitation.

Walking is imitating adults.

To speak is to imitate adults.

Thinking is also imitating them. That is, in your opinion, the whole process of ANY LEARNING boils down to imitation, and hypnabilic beings, which we all are according to your “theory”, amenable to suggestion, precisely learn to imitate, what they are taught.

Parents, friends, school, institute, colleagues. books, etc.

And you have developed a whole neurophysiological “theory” that, supposedly, with this imitation, certain neural circuits arise in our brains that mimic the knowledge and skills taught to us.

Let’s say your homegrown “theory” is correct.

Then, in your own reasoning, there is an acute contradiction with reality and with your own theses. We are talking about one WELL-KNOWN “fact of life”:

Why do good, excellent, and finally brilliant students FOR the MOST PART NOT BECOME equally brilliant, excellent, or just good scientists and creators, but remain very mediocre AVERAGE people for the rest of their lives???

(Academic titles and the steps they manage to climb don’t matter, because there are more parental “necessary skills”, luck, connections, fraud, cunning, and everything else, except for the real manifestation of real talent!)

After all, according to YOUR “BRILLIANT” theory, it is precisely these same hypnotic-imitative circuits that arise in the brain easily, quickly and firmly, which they demonstrate repeatedly on all kinds of exams and tests!

If everything is so good, then using your own style of reasoning, WHY IS EVERYTHING SO BAD in the future???

Hence the simple and obvious conclusion: As usual, your theories have been sucked out of your own finger and are worth exactly the same amount in terms of confidence!

Your/your well-wisher/nice.”

Such an interesting letter…

Well, what should I say to that?

The comrade is right, apparently.

I started thinking about where and what are my mistakes?

Or maybe it’s still of my critics?

The first thing that came to mind was my long-standing observation: Talented scholars and students, precisely because of this ease of accepting and assimilating new information, do not develop “hardening”, immunity to the BLOWS of DIFFICULT tasks!

They become mentally “pampered” and this gradually becomes a part of their CHARACTER, or rather, a WEAKNESS OF CHARACTER. If everything comes easily, without requiring real effort, THEN WHY STRAIN IN VAIN, when everything is caught easily and even effortlessly??? There is a kind of mental rejection of everything that is DIFFICULT or requires significant effort. Such young “geniuses” get used to lightness, and their immune mechanism of fighting “for mental survival” atrophies.

It’s like an experience of keeping a living being with a normally developed immune system in a certain sterile area for a long time. I think (I’m not a microbiologist or an immunologist!) that they will have at least partially urerated immune activity.

The second reason.

They get used to solving LEARNING TASKS adapted to the level of schoolboys or student thinking. Something that is located in a conditional educational conceptual space. They quickly grasped the algorithms (CAPABLE, AFTER ALL!) according to which these conditional tasks were compiled, and it was precisely SUCH NEURAL circuits that emerged and strengthened in their brains.
CHAINS OF LEARNING TASKS! ADAPTED, OFTEN EMASCULATED FROM REALITY,

And, what are the REALITIES?

But in real life, when we encounter a REAL problem, we not only can formulate it clearly, there’s nothing to dream about YET, but we don’t even know where its beginning is, where its tail is, where the CAUSE is, and where the EFFECT is, and we often confuse them for a LONG TIME, mistaking the effect for the cause and vice versa! This is exactly WHAT distinguishes real tasks from the most difficult “school” ones: COMPLETE UNCERTAINTY, vague uncertainty, even in which class of phenomena to classify it? Which NEVER happens with ACADEMIC ONES. Where everything is a priori chewed and even half-digested!

Combined with the first factor, one failure, two failures, and…

What fails ceases to attract. They give up trying altogether!

The third reason.

The most hypothetical, the most vague, and likely the most important.

It concerns the long-formulated Law of LATENT or DELAYED INDUCTION.

Its meaning is simple:
There are two aspects to any talented expression of human thought: Explicit, that is, conveyed in plain text or otherwise, and a hidden CREATIVE charge that is not directly related to the content of this work.

So, talented students are trained to perceive ONLY the EXPLICIT FIRST part of the message and are completely deaf to its hidden part.

How can this be visualized neurophysiologically?

SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT chains.

Talented students immediately, quickly and without interference, develop a neural chain of perception of the obvious and THAT’s IT. Like a kind of railway line, quickly built by a modern track-laying machine, WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST HINT of any possible BRANCHING options. They ARE BLOCKED. In principle, there are some kind of dominant dogmas and neither any disordered, “disorganized” offshoots. That is, a mindset that tends to create DOGMAS easily and quickly, but without the slightest “liberties.” They are tightly blocked in synapses by gamma-aminobutyric acid. It turns out that capable students, according to the natural structure of their brain, are talents for creating dogmatic networks!

Their consciousness is NOT FLEXIBLE, but it is the FLEXIBILITY of thinking that often characterizes a truly talented scientist or just a creative person!

That’s how I responded to my opponent’s letter. I haven’t received an answer yet, and I hope I won’t, because my opponent usually falls silent for a long time when he can’t come up with something sarcastically ironic about me, apparently plunging into the search for my next “fancy hypnotic fantasies.”

Long good health to him/her and a pleasant, equally long search…!

Faciant meliora potentes.

4 V 2025