chapotraphouse

Yeah maybe. I once read Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, and as lib brained as it is at times it was also quite good about being anti-eugenics and anti-ontological factors for creating peak performance in sports/competition.

Its general thesis is that genetics play almost no role in our success in competition because we're still very very far away from perfection in any sports. It argues mainly that practice with the intent of improvement is the primary driver of improvement. Focused practice. It uses a lot of non-physical sports to demonstrate some of these things, in particular chess, where it discusses that most of the prodigies in chess have been people who were trained in chess from an extremely young age. But using the same training techniques they could demonstrate other people could achieve near identical results with the same methods.

Its main point discussion point is that the method of training is what produces results, and that different methods of training demonstrate better results than others. That sounds obvious on the surface but its about pointing out simply doing drills aimlessly isn't efficient and doesn't crack the barrier when you think you're peaking at something, very specific methods are needed to crack through the ceilings in performance people reach.

I think this is similar here. Now I'm tempted to re-read it because it's been a number of years and I kinda liked it originally, maybe my take would be different now. I think it was a significant influence on me though in that it really solidified my belief that I could reach top level in anything if I really worked at it.

nope, artists, very good artists, can very often have aphantasia.