There's a very interesting opinion piece in the Sunday Review of the New York Times.

Research in recent decades has shown that a big part of the answer is simply practice � and a lot of it. ... Those findings have been enthusiastically championed, perhaps because of their meritocratic appeal: what seems to separate the great from the merely good is hard work, not intellectual ability.

Research has shown that intellectual ability matters for success in many fields � and not just up to a point.

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It's nice to read something like this piece in a publication with a readership as wide as that of the Times.