That's the sick truth of it....cancer is the one thing that could promote longevity.

Shall we talk about entropy then? It's clear you are out of your depth as you do not know how biological systems respond to aging. Eliminating all cancer still will not make people live longer. Cells die. That's a fact. As one gets older new cells stop replacing old cells and systems start to degenerate. You would have to stop cellular decay. That would require changing your DNA. That's not happening anytime soon.

Because serious cancer research isn't being done for a gimmicky prize.

That people miss the point of the article completely. This not a philosophical debate. You have a bunch of charter schools that emphasize teaching certain personality variables as their solution to improving education. The problem is, that approach misses the point. Improving education requires: “asking about the environment in which kids are placed, what kids are being asked to learn, how they’re being taught, what voice they have, if any, in the experience...” One needs to address the the systemic questions.

It's a snake oil pitch which isn't going to solve the problem. Not too mention it won't produce the workforce that businesses want. Business want creative problem solvers. The focus on "grit" does not promote creativity.

Strange, because I have. So your observation isn't as valid as you thought.

LMOL...

That's not what the authors are arguing. They are arguing either or. Grit or intelligence. Your example does not validate the authors premise. Actually it has little to do with grit. It's about focusing one's efforts. FYI without Hawking's intelligence he would have never have developed any of his theories, regardless of how much grit he might have had. More importantly it was his intelligence, his creativity that allowed him to develop some pretty amazing theories. Something grit does not provide.

Really?

"“We probably need to start rethinking our emphasis on intelligence,” he said. “This isn’t to say that we should throw intelligence out,” he cautioned, “but we need to pull back on thinking that this is the only game in town.”"

When the author comes up with an asinine statement like that, one should be vary afraid. FYI Poropat and Duckworth are focusing on a single trait, they're substituting "grit" for intelligence. So no, they are not trying refute any single trait theory, they are promoting one, i.e., have education focus on grit rather than intelligence.

Perhaps you should have read the article.

“Social psychologists for decades have identified a tendency to overestimate how important personality characteristics, motivation, individual values and the like tend to be relative to the importance of the structural characteristics of a situation,” http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.c...

Somebody doesn't read.

Wow a Putin apologist. Who knew he had so many fans...

The same is true of masturbation, but it doesn't stop you from doing it.

That Scientologists are nut jobs, which was obvious.

Wow a Scientology apologist

What fucking local ISP? Verizon or Time Warner. Those are the choices. The change would allow Google to compete. Google has asked for this re-classification. Read moron read.

This paid shill announcement brought to by Verizon.

Yo ass-hat Google is requesting the classification. They see it as a good thing.