The Missing Element in Nature vs. Nurture debate: Creativity

Reframing the Nature vs. Nurture debate

When you get stuck on a problem or question for too long, it’s often helpful to reframe the problem. Sometimes the path forward lies in simply restating the problem.

We’ve been stuck on the nature vs. nurture debate for decades. The question at hand is: “Is it nature or nature that leads to success?”

In this essay, I argue that the question is not only misleading, but also leaves out an important third element from the debate, namely creativity.

(A note on terminology: Nature refers to your genes and nurture is a catch-all for knowledge gained through experiences, environment, reading, living etc. You might see me substitute nature for genes and substitute nurture for knowledge.)

It’s time to reframe this question. But before that, it will be helpful to understand some of the flaws in the current nature vs nurture framework:

1. The debate lacks domain specificity: It’s impossible to come to any reasonable hypothesis on the nature vs nurture argument without taking the domain of work into account. The weightage of nature vs nurture differs dramatically across athletic, knowledge work, and other domains. And even within athletics, it differs based on the sport, as I will discuss later.

2. It’s not either or: It’s misleading to frame the question as nature or nurture as it presupposes one or the other. But success depends on both factors. So, it’s a question of how much of it is nature and how much is it nurture.

3. It hasn’t considered other factors outside of nature and nurture: The most important element of success might not in fact be nature or nurture. It could be creativity, something we still don’t understand entirely. While it seems like creativity is dependent on both nature and nurture, it’s also an important third element capable of stand-alone value and worthy of being included in the debate.

4. The role of desire: Sometimes the difference between someone who produces exceptional work and one who doesn’t can simply be the element of desire. One person desired to be highly successful, whereas the other didn’t. The nature vs. nurture debate doesn’t take into account the role of desire.

Accounting for the flaws in the current framework, I would reframe the question as: What is the weightage of nature and nurture, and creativity, and desire in success in a specific domain?

Nature is the only fixed variable in this question as your genes are handed to you at birth. Nurture and creativity are moving variables subject to change. So, if we can pinpoint the role of the fixed variable, we know the rest of it is nurture, creativity, and desire.

Hence, we can further simplify the question to: What is the role of nature / genes in success in a specific domain?

I’m going to look at 4 different domains: 1) Athletics 2) Knowledge work 3) Physical skills work 4) Artistic fields. Within each domain, I’ll briefly look into specific sports, types of work, art etc. I acknowledge that there may be other domains I don’t discuss. And I of course cannot be comprehensive with my examples, but hopefully the ones I provide will be a helpful guide into seeing this debate from a different perspective.

Note that I will focus on domains and activities within domains where there is a big distribution between the average and the best, and where the tasks are not repetitive in nature. For, if there is no concept of being the best in your field, this discussion on success is far less relevant. In other words, I’ll be focused on high leverage activities where the returns are not necessarily correlated with the hours clocked in. (This point will become clear when you read the section on Success in Physical skill domains.)

The Role of Genes in Athletic Domains

Sport is a domain where your physical attributes such as height, weight, muscular built, and body fat can play a big role in success. A swimmer with long arms, a baseball player with perfect eyesight, a runner with narrower hips, a football player with a muscular built, a basketball player taller than 6’5 are at an advantage compared to their peers who are not blessed with these attributes. Of course, different sports require superiority in different physical attributes, but the point is that physical features are important for winning in athletics.

Given that genes play an outsized role in shaping one’s physical features, genes play a critical role in success in athletic domains. However, my statement warrants further investigation.

There are 4 questions I’m going to discuss:

1. What is the role of genes when entering the professional competition pool?

2. What is the role of genes within the professional competition pool?

3. Do genes play a role at all in certain sports?

4. What is the role of creativity in athletics?

Role of genes when entering the competition pool - Genes act as a gating mechanism

Athletics is a competitive battlefield, with winner-takes-all outcomes. A tiny advantage can confer massive returns. If one does not have the genetic advantage needed for success in their sport, they’re often forced out of even participating in the competition pool. For example, if you want to compete in the NBA, and measure below 5’9” in height, the odds are heavily against you¹. Similarly, it’s very difficult to enter the NFL if you’re scrawny. And if you want to be a professional runner with a genetically wider hip and weak leg muscles, you’re facing an uphill battle. It’s no coincidence that year after year, the world’s fastest runners are from Kenya. Genetically, their bodies have narrow hips and very strong muscles that are an enormous boost in running.

This is not to say that one can merely rest on their blessed good genes and not train. Training is critical and a person with good genes but poor training won’t get anywhere.

This is also not to say that there are no exceptions to breaking the barriers set by your genes. There have been NBA players who are 5’9” or below, although the number seems to be sitting at only 25 such players. And you can surely strengthen your leg muscles for running. You can also out-train many people with superior genetics. But if you’re trying to compete at the pro level, presumably everyone is working extremely hard, so having superior genes is not just a small advantage, it’s a massive advantage in a domain where everyone is vying for one prize with only one winner.

As such, in sports, genes act as a gating mechanism when one is entering the competition pool.

What is the role of genes within the pro level?

In the first part, we established that one’s superior physical attributes shaped by genes play a critical role in entering the professional athletic leagues. But once you are already an NBA or NFL or pro tennis player, do the same genes continue to confer an unfair advantage or does training matter more? If top physical features are a pre-requisite to entering the pro-competitive arena, then presumably everyone in the pool possesses them, to slightly varying degrees. For example, if near perfect eyesight is an unofficial pre-requisite for being a baseball player, then everyone at the pro level possesses it. And if everyone is physically superior with minor deviations, then no one has a large enough genetic edge. In this case, success would become highly dependent on training, nurture, and desire.

Slight superiority in genes might be helpful, but not enough to win in the pro pool. With the playing field being level on any genetic physical advantage, the highest lever to pull on is training. In fact, a slight weakness in physical attributes might make one work harder to compensate for it, resulting in them surpassing others. There are countless stories of athletes like Michael Jordan and Mike Tyson out-training everyone else in their sport, despite having some weaker physical attributes compared to their peers. While better physical features are likely only an asset, it seems like the difference in success within the competition pool can be largely attributed to nurture.

Do genes play a role at all in certain sports?

There are certain sports where I’m unsure whether physical attributes play a critical role when entering the pro competition pool. Cricket, table tennis, golf are ones that come to mind, although I believe that in golf it’s a disadvantage to be too short (under 5’9”) or too tall (over 6’2”).

Similarly, games like chess, bridge, and poker likely don’t require much physical prowess. I’m not entirely dismissing the role of physical prowess in these sports. I just wonder whether they play an outsized role when one is trying to play at the pro level. Or is success largely attributed to training even when entering the competition pool? However, even if some of these sports do not require physical prowess, there is a strong brain component, some of which could be influenced by genes. I discuss the role of genes in shaping our brains in the section on knowledge work.

(If you know more here, please leave a comment.)

What is the role of creativity in athletics?

Creativity plays a large, often overlooked role, especially in sports which involve interaction with others. Each time a tennis player hits a shot, or a soccer player kicks the ball, or a baseball player takes a swing, they are deploying creativity as to how to play their move, how their opponents would react, how their teammates would react, and how they can ultimately win. These sports are not robotic where you are doing the same thing over and over again. Every second in the game is unique and it takes a lot of creativity to solve each puzzle in your game.

Anyone who watches highlights of the best game moments will instantly recognize the role of creativity in those moments.

What about more “linear” sports like running and swimming which involve more repetitive movements? I suspect creativity plays less of a role here, but its role is not negligent. Any time you make a decision around your training, your energy deployment, or your food, you are deploying creativity.

It’s misleading to only refer to artistic endeavors as creative activities. In reality, most decisions made by humans involve an element of creativity. And athletics is no different. It’s a highly creative discipline in which the creativity gets honed through practice and training.

Athletics is such an intense competitive field for the top 0.01% with winner-takes-all dynamics that the margin for error is very little. You need to have superior physical features, world-class training, desire, and creativity in order to win.

Next, let’s look at the role of genes in knowledge work domains.

The Role of Genes in Knowledge Work Domains

Knowledge work is a catch-all for all disciplines that benefit primarily from better knowledge and creative ideas. Science, investing, business, marketing are all fields of knowledge work. As noted previously, my discussion around knowledge work applies only to fields that benefit from high levels of creativity and leverage on time. For example, my discussion does not apply to jobs where the tasks are mostly repetitive in nature (i.e. cashier)

Commonly, success in creative knowledge work domains is associated with high IQ and hard work. Many people assume that high IQ is the result of a superior brain that is genetically gifted to you – it’s something you are born with. We deem such high IQ folks to be lucky. It is quite possible that IQ is partly genetic but the role of IQ in knowledge work success appears to be more nuanced.

IQ doesn’t explain success

IQ alone does not explain success in knowledge work. If that were the case, why didn’t people who had the same IQ as Newton come up with the theory of gravitation or another such remarkable explanation? It’s because they didn’t have the same knowledge as Newton. So, part of Newton’s differentiation came from understanding and producing the right knowledge. However, merely understanding the right knowledge doesn’t explain the entire picture either. There are plenty of people who understand a lot of physics and math but didn’t come up with unique theories themselves. Producing novel ideas and explanations require another factor, and that is creativity, which played a big role in Newton’s success.

If one were to pithily boil down success in knowledge work to a formula, it could look like:

Exceptional knowledge work = 80% (Creative problem solving + Knowledge) + 10% IQ + 10% social skills / other factors

I don’t know what the right weightage of each of the factors should be, but the reason for the high weightage of creative problem solving and knowledge is that as explained above, without them, you cannot differentiate yourself in this domain. They are essential.

Conversely not having a high IQ perhaps does not preclude you from creative problem solving. Or could it?

Could IQ act as a gating mechanism to creativity?

This brings me to my next set of questions: What if IQ acts as a gating mechanism to creative problem solving? What if having genetically gifted memory and processing speed make it easier for you to absorb and produce the right knowledge and come up with creative ideas? What if the 10% role of IQ plays a role in shaping the 80%? Or put differently, could having a low IQ make it harder for you to problem solve creatively, similar to how a short height precludes you from competing in the NBA?

To better answer this question, I think we should dig deeper into what IQ tests really measure.

IQ tests are a measure of our brain’s memory, processing speed, and the ability to do well on such tests. They aren’t measuring our ability to be creative or produce explanations. They’re testing for how we perform on prescriptive questions.

If IQ is a measure of memory and processing speed, then IQ acting as a gating mechanism to creativity depends on the discipline within knowledge work. It seems to be the case that a lot of scientists like Einstein, Feynman and Newton had high IQs which probably aided them in their work. Mathematicians too have high IQs. Perhaps, because of the complexity of information involved, these fields benefit from the ability to recall and process information fast when coming up with explanations. However, there are other fields like marketing and business that may not need one to have the sharpest memory when being creative. For example, if you work for a media company producing ad campaigns, maybe IQ doesn’t matter so much and it’s your ideas that matter most. 

The ability to recall and process information quickly certainly seems useful, but its utility is domain and situation dependent.

Is creative problem solving genetic then?

I’ve conjectured that success in knowledge work is mostly a result of creative problem solving, with some input from IQ, depending on the domain. In that case, the looming question is: Is creative problem solving a genetic gift? Where does it come from?

The simple answer is that we know very little about creativity and the brain. Research on these areas is still sparse as the brain is very complicated. However, I have some fun conjectures that could help answer the posed question.

The brain can be seen as having a hardware and a software component. The hardware of the brain controls memory and processing speed. IQ tests are a measure of the brain’s hardware. And it’s possible that IQ / brain hardware is genetically determined. So, you are born with a certain hardware / IQ which could be further honed through practice. In fact, if you take the IQ test several times, your score goes up, showing that it can be improved with practice.

The software of the brain is what produces knowledge, explanations, and creativity. Some people call it the mind. It’s not clear that the software is shaped through genetics. There are many examples of exceptional creative problem solving by people whose ancestors didn’t do any such exceptional work. It’s more likely the case that the software is universal to every human, barring brain disorders. Every human is capable of producing good explanations and being creative. And every human is creative on a daily basis, even when they’re problem solving seemingly basic questions such as what they should eat for dinner. They’re usually exercising some level of creativity to problem solve. And given that the software is most instrumental in producing exceptional knowledge work, it’s comforting and positive news to know that every human is capable of it.

Summary Conclusion: Role of Genes in Knowledge Work Domains

Success in knowledge work cannot be entirely explained by IQ. If IQ was the biggest determinant, then how do we explain why people with the same IQ as Newton or other such scientists didn’t make remarkable discoveries in their fields? The bigger contributing factors to success are producing the right knowledge and creative problem solving. However, an open question remains: Could IQ act as a gating mechanism to problem solving creatively?

It’s worth noting that I see IQ as a measure of the brain’s memory and processing speed, which I call the brain’s hardware. The brain’s software is what uses creativity to produce knowledge and good explanations. While the hardware might be genetically determined, it seems to be the case that the software is universal to all humans. However, coming back to the open question: Could having a high IQ make it easier for one to creatively problem solve? In other words, does better hardware make it easier to hone our brain software? Perhaps the answer to these questions depends on the domain of knowledge work.

It is quite possible that IQ acts as a gating mechanism in highly scientific and technical disciplines, which benefit from better memory and processing speed. That is, if you want to be successful in such disciplines, you might need high IQ and produce the right knowledge. But, my conjecture is that IQ / hardware of our brain plays a much less role than people assume. IQ is overrated whereas knowledge and creativity are underrated. No amount of IQ will bring you success if you don’t produce good creative explanations.

The Role of Genes in Artistic Domains

By artistic domains, I mean art, music, dance etc. On the surface, it seems to me like genes shouldn’t matter much. Success is about hard work, practice, polishing your skills through training, and creativity of course. There are plenty of painters and musicians, for example, who didn’t have previous generations of artistic talent running in their families. And many of them state how anyone can become a better artist or musician through practice.

I think that is largely true, but I also wonder: Could there perhaps be musical genes or art genes that predispose you to artistic fields?

I ask this question because success in artistic domains seems more akin to success in athletic domains. It’s not pure knowledge work being done by the software in our brains, it’s a lot of skill training which may or may not be aided by “artistic genes.”

My conjecture is that it is possible there exist artistic genes, but perhaps they don’t play such a dominant role as genes in athletics do. If that’s the case, most of success in artistic domains can be attributed to training and creativity.

(If you have any conjectures here, I’d love to hear.)

The Role of Genes in Physical Skill Domains

I would bucket jobs such as electrical, plumbing, construction, truck driving, farming and other such blue-collar jobs under physical skill domains. I recognize that this is a broad category and could be further sub-divided, however for the purpose of simplicity, we’ll lump them together.

My conjecture is that genes don’t matter much in this domain, and most of success is determined by nurture, creativity, and desire.

IQ matters to the extent that it has a sorting mechanism. My guess is that if you have a high IQ you won’t select into these domains or won’t stick for very long. So, while it may be controversial to say so, my thought is that most people selecting into these domains don’t have exceptionally high IQs. Other than IQ, to the extent that IQ is genetically determined, I think genes matter little in these jobs.

While your physical strength does matter and some of it could be genetically determined, you don’t need to have the physical prowess of an athlete to perform exceptionally in this domain. You can build up the necessary physical strength through training.   

Many of these domains have apprenticeships and skill-based training is an important aspect of doing well. However, could nurture play an outsized role in success? Isn’t there a cap on how much nurture can contribute to success? For example, if you have 2 truck drivers, and one has done 10,000 hours on the road, whereas the 2^nd has done only 5,000 hours on the road during the same time period, is the 1^st one a vastly better driver? I don’t think so. And given the repetitive nature of some of these tasks, more practice beyond a certain time doesn’t necessarily result in better performance.

It’s worth noting that most of these jobs are low leverage, and there is not a big distribution between the average and the best. These are domains where it’s even hard to answer the question: What does it mean to be the best truck driver or the best farmer or the best plumber? Even if there was a concept of the best truck driver in the world, I don’t think he’d be significantly better than the average. However, even if he was, how would he be rewarded for it?

As a result, in physical skill domains nurture plays a “minimum effective” role to get you started. Unlike the high-leverage activities within knowledge work and athletics where nurture has an outsized impact, here it’s needed to get you proficient, but beyond that it may not necessarily contribute to exceptional success.

So, what can contribute to exceptional success? Creativity. A truck driver who deploys creativity to start his own business or perhaps create content teaching people about trucking skills, or decides to use his knowledge to invest in trucking businesses, can now begin to use leverage to his advantage, and attain outsized returns on his time. But then, he is no longer a truck driver, and has branched into being an entrepreneur.

To summarize, my guess is that genes play a negligible role except as a sorting mechanism, nurture plays a minimum effective role to get you proficient, and creativity plays an outsized role to give you a shot at earning high rewards and branch into work that is higher leverage.

(Note: I have barely any personal experience working in these domains, so if I’m wrong, please let me know.)

The Underappreciated role of Creativity

Creativity plays such an important role in all domains. Whether it’s hitting shots on the tennis court, or coming up with a new product idea for your business, or the next Beatle’s song, or the theory of relativity, or finding a novel way to do the electrical wiring in the house, none of these would be possible without creativity. Yet, it baffles me how this very important element does not feature in the nature vs. nurture debate. No amount of nature and nurture will enable one to do exceptional work in their field without the spark of creative ideas. The good news is that all humans are creative and capable of producing ideas. The bad news is that we understand very little about this phenomenon of creativity. The little we know is that it’s ignited with free time and lack of coercion.

The Role of desire

Similar to creativity, desire is an element that doesn’t get talked about much. It’s universal in anyone who did exceptional work - they wanted to do it! Like I said earlier, sometimes the difference in levels of exceptional work can be attributed to desire. It’s impossible to train hard for a sport, or write great essays, or solve the problem of gravity, or open your trucking business without a desire to do so. You have to care and desire to solve these problems. (link to my essay on caring) The reason I haven’t discussed desire separately under each domain is because it’s table stakes and a universal element for success. You have to want to perform well and solve problems in whatever it is you’re doing.

Revisiting the debate

I hope you can now see why the nature vs. nurture debate is flawed – the degree of nature and nurture is not only domain dependent but it also misses the very important role of creativity. Hopefully, my essay fuels makes you think differently about the nature vs. nurture debate and fuels more nuanced discussions around it. I’ll sign off with re-stating my reframing of the question:

What is the weightage of nature and nurture, and creativity and desire in success in athletic vs. knowledge work vs. artistic domains?

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1. Conversely, if you are over 7 feet in height, your chances of making it to the NBA increase a lot.