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  3. Life is unfair, as even the Bible acknowledges. We can’t all hit a baseball like DiMaggio or sing like the Beatles. But how much

Life is unfair, as even the Bible acknowledges. We can’t all hit a baseball like DiMaggio or sing like the Beatles. But how much

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问题     Life is unfair, as even the Bible acknowledges. We can’t all hit a baseball like DiMaggio or sing like the Beatles. But how much do we understand about those who can? Not enough, says Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success.【F1】We attribute the Beatles’ fabulous success to their amazing musical talents,whereas Gladwell has a different explanation—asadetenninant of success, talent is overrated, compared with, among other things, luck.
    Outliers opens with a typically Gladwellian puzzle: why are so many professional hockey players born early in the year?【F2】It turns out that Canadian Youth Leagues group players by age, based on a calendar year, so a player born in January will be the oldest on his team, enjoying a big difference in size and maturity.The early birds get more playing time and coaching, advantages that become self-reinforcing, spelling the difference between a National Hockey League career and a job as a high-school coach. Life is unfair.
    【F3】Similarly, Gladwell calculates that the best year for a software genius to be bom was 1955—just old enough for the start of the personal-computer revolution in the mid-1970s. That is the year when Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were born. Obviously, not everyone born that year became a billionaire; Gates and Jobs had distinctive talents, but they also had unique opportunities growing up. Almost invariably, Gladwell says, geniuses are made, not born, and it was their families, schools and societies that made them.
    【F4】As evidence Gladwell brings to bear his own history, as the son of a Jamaican woman of limited means who won a scholarship to study at the University of London.  Her marriage to an Englishman there began the family’s ascent into the educated elite. He maintains that his mother was the beneficiary of her own mother’s initiative and a favorable environment. And so are we all.
    The reader should feel free to cite counterexamples—Shakespeare, the son of a provincial trader in hides and grain? Einstein, dreaming away in an obscure patent office?—you won’t discomfort Gladwell.【F5】He always builds an argument out of absorbing anecdotes and eye-opening statistics, then happily moves on to his next point, leaving the reader with a faint hint of buyer’s remorse about the almost too-perfect package of ideas. No other writer today can pull this sort of thing off so well. If I hadn’t just read Gladwell’s book, I’d be jealous of his talent, instead of his luck.
【F1】
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答案我们常把甲壳虫乐队的骄人成就归因于他们惊人的音乐天赋，然而，格拉德威尔却有着他独特的见解——天赋确实是取得成功的一个决定性因素，但是跟其他因素如运气相比，天赋的作用被过分夸大了。
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