Originally Posted by BaseballDad
This is more like what people sometimes call "denial" around here. You see patterns of reasoning like, "I know the objective measures indicate a certain very high level, but is it really possible that the kid I know so well is like that?" Or "It's true that I've never actually met another kid as talented as this one, but I have read about them. And surely DS doesn't match up with those." I myself feel inclined to these kinds of rationalizations, and they seem distinct from the statistical pessimism that aculady's interpretation seems to explain. Do others see a pattern here as well?

All the time!