Judging a book by it's cover

[u/abjectapplicationII]

The aphorism "Never judge a book by it's cover" may at first glance seem limited in application but that is a result of our own interpretation and how we think it should be applied.

People are often analogized to books as they are both layered, simplistic or obscure in style, vacuous or knowledgeable, can be imprinted on and will eventually lose relevance.

If we were to place a book concerning mathematical proofs in a factory, the book could be labelled as useless and irrelevant. The knowledge it carries simply doesn't prove it's utility within it's current environment. This knowledge/information is analogous to one's skills and abilities - someone talented linguistically would not excel in an environment solely demanding spatial reasoning (vice versa). Sometimes, certain qualities are ascribed to an individual and are thought of as inherent but the fact is these 'objective' labels don't instantiate an object's qualities moreso than they represent certain qualities alongside the influence their environment has on these qualities.

Labels can sometimes be thought of as invariant yet we would find that they would change depending on the environment and circumstances surrounding that which is labelled. Something equally as concerning is our desire to easily stratify ourselves according to these 'labels' - presuming that potential is something which can be measured in predetermined environments, that these environments should be equally as conducive to the Expression of potential and the resulting measurement's accuracy and that our initial measurement is gospel.

Nurture plays just as critical a role as nature, to ignore this would be to lie to oneself. Our environment either inhibits or elicits our potential - what was once inept suddenly becomes dexterous, what was once stodgy suddenly becomes vivid and luminous. In the end, labels are a tool ~ a short hand for what naturally varies.

We are not labels, we are ever changing processes!

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[u/OfAnOldRepublic]

What does any of this have to do with giftedness?

[u/ewing666]

why use an idiom when 1000 garbled words will do

[u/Reasonable_South8331]

Judging is the key word. If you’re ignoring patterns of behavior and physical presentation in people, you’re ignoring a data point. Less data yields less optimal choices