the Polgar experiment actually disproves the hard work theory

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.

That his methods are not widely used are because things worked quite differently in the 80's of Hungary, then in the U.S. (assuming by the flag of your name).
You can't make arguments with an american mindset, here.

László was not considered a succesful scientist, nor was he a superstar, getting press and fame. Not at all.
He was shunned, and most people considered him a monster for raising his daughters this way. He was never popular to the extent you may imagine.
It was only when the girls turned into women people were accepting what he had done.

This reasoning also just tells of how you know absolutely nothing of him or this whole thing.
Please, do take your time to read interviews, and other scientists' remarks about his work in that period.
He was often called Frankenstein, and people criticised him over and over, saying he thinks of himself as God, and is depraving the joys of childhood from his daughters.
Some went as far as to call him a nazi, and compared his experiment as if it was a trial before some grand revolution of education, to teach the coming generations as he sees fit working with the government.

You absolutely have no idea about all of this, please do stop it before you further embarass yourself.

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.

I'm not attempting to impress you, but you must admit:
it's pretty pointless trying to argue about something where all one side does is demanding proof and evidence from the arguing opponent while presenting no knowledge of the subject anyway.

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.

That's just downright insulting, and sexist itself.
Judit had no mission. She didn't needed to prove anything, and certainly didn't play the way she did to say women are able to do it - what utter nonsense!

Please do send this comment of yours to her twitter. I'm actually curious how mad she gets!

Yes, you are completely right.

It doesn't matter what his theories are.
It doesn't matter what his contemporaries or experts now think of him.
It doesn't even matter how little you know.

Because this is how an argument goes. This is how one argues.
Knows nothing about the field, knows nothing about the subject, knows nothing about the particular case nor its host and creater, knows nothing about the different point of views or critics, but goes on and on and on about how a particular scientist in a particular case was dead wrong and shouldn't be trusted.

And now, let me show myself out before I rip my fucking face off.
Good night, mate.

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.

Not to mention Stockton and Bird. Both with genetic issues I suppose. What a waste.

"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."

Well, I mean, I think there is some equivocation going on, at least. Whenever you call something superhuman you make it a lot harder to figure out what we're really talking about. We don't really have access to what they worked on, how hard they worked -- hell for all we know, Magnus's pre-chess activities could have prepared him for chess. How much of the "talent" is chess specific, how much of it is just determination (because determination can be innate to some extent)... I mean there are plenty of sources of equivocation, here.

It seems pretty unlikely that Magnus is "just like us" or something... on the other hand, that doesn't mean we suddenly know any decent amount about what talent is, it just means, it seems like Magnus has a lot of talent. Well, if we have nothing else, that's something to go by, but it is what it is -- something completely wrong could seem like it was right to us, so one just has to accept the limitations of going by our instincts, and our unbelievable love of attaching the adjective "superhuman" to things that are at a much higher level than us.

apart from the fact that the problem arises, in the first place, because of the superhuman issue, things like, you've never been tested, to mention a few

I have to agree with some (many?) other people here. Without a definition of what "talent" means, it sounds to me you're just replacing the end result (what they become in the end) to means "talent". For all we know, that "talent" could just come by as a results of a lot of dedication and hard work, something that can be trained and taught, and not anything intrinsic in their genes or DNA. (Note that for the purpose of the argument here, there are only 2 sides: either it's via practice and training, something innate like genes and DNA. Here I assume by "talent", you mean something by nature, i.e. the latter).

So again, how do you know Stephen Curry isn't that way because of the extra training he has? Remember that up until 2 years ago, he wasn't so good (although his DNA has always been the same). He was good, but just about as good as any other NBA player. Perhaps in the last 2 years, he got extra training? A very good coach that understands his strengths and weaknesses? He got a good psychologist? In any case, we know it's something external, something in the environment, and not something he's always had within his DNA. That will also explain why most other NBA players are not as good as he is. Maybe they don't have a good suitable personal coach? Or some good personal psychologist who can unblock that mental block in each and everyone of us?

If we keep using the end result to mean something intrinsic by nature, then the ramification can be wild. Think about industrial output. Taking a whole people into consideration, nowadays we know an average German will be vastly more efficient and productive than an average Chinese or African (the difference in output will easily be comparable to, if not more than, the difference between Curry and the rest of the NBA field). Using your logic, should we say the German race has a better "talent" for work than Chinese or people from Africa? Which is exactly what "Mein Kampf" tried to argue, isn't it?