Don't these two sentences contradict each other? Taking 'orthogonal' to be loosely synonymous with 'uncorrelated', if they were so, then you would expect to see roughly the same number of untalented perfectionists as talented ones.

In my mind I had an explanation for that. I realize that I mainly hang out with people that I went to university with (since I moved to a new city to study) as well as collegues (which also have higher than average education).

And I figured that untalented perfectionists would have a hard time enjoying/coping with higher education and thus possibly quite underrepresented in my social circles.

Anecdotally, from what little I've spent thinking on this, my experience seem to match that (untalented perfectionists are generally not well educated).

That was my theory/reasoning at least.

Edit: In other words, it's easier to have good taste than it is to be good at designing/producing something.

The point of perfectionism is to be more talented. If you read too deeply into that and don't look at the whole picture, of course it's going to be annoying. But the root starts with a desire to be better because the feeling of stagnation is intolerable.

Spot on.

> Maybe you've been around perfectionists that worked against you rather than with you.

That would have been me :-)

> The point of perfectionism is to be more talented.

That's part of what I meant when I said "Resolution lies on either end, depending on how possible/practical it is to improve a given skill."

Another way to resolve the tension is to accept to have lower standards and go on with your life.

Both options can be valid, depending on the circumstances.

Edit: Also sometimes, no one can humanly become as talented as one would like, yet going at it over and over until you're satisfied is the right thing to do.

For myself, long run, that is going to increase tension for me internally. I can't force myself to be satisfied with myself if I am not. I'd rather believe in a world that lacks absolute standards in perpetuity and have to consider myself perpetually adaptive than believe I've either succumbed to some group think ideology of 'relaxing' because it's comfortable for people who are fine with me being substandard (and then I get stuck with the problem of - is this because they are using me for their own comparison?), or been indoctrinated into stupid thinking that is fine with lowering my standards because it judges me based on a particular context that may not be indicative of an overall trend of my life absolutely.

> "Resolution lies on either end, depending on how possible/practical it is to improve a given skill."

At the end of the day pragmatism must be valued. Competition between people is useful but if it turns into a downward spiral of stepping on one another arbitrarily without reason, logic, without any ends tied to the means - then there is no united sense of progress from which every person inside a group can orient direction in thinking, and unifying action into something beautiful. I'm a software developer and computer scientist, so, all the spaces between coding (thinking, interacting) need to be filled in and can't always be explicitly stated. People have to make assumptions, it's easier to just decide - do you like where you are? Do you like the people around you? Can you see value in all of this?

If you can't do that, that is when competition becomes destructive rather than productive. Being able to identify these things in real time, continual process of living life. I wish I could be weak sometimes just because it's easier, but my life hasn't allowed me to be. I make mistakes continuously and sometimes they are plain to see, not only to myself, but to everybody. The awareness of this - in perpetuity. This connects people to systems that are always attempting to correct behavior. So people who go over and over and over at it - it's the same thing. No judgment, being totally neutral is most simple. Functioning like a machine. It's easier to just call it aspergers or neurologically distinct. Can't know people's intentions and inferring them to be intentionally malicious can lead to disaster. The problem of wanting to avoid the truly worst things that could happen in life. Not just because bad things have happened, but because, hyper-awareness. We are always connected to things that say 'bad things happen to people' and not everything can be explained away.

Talent, necessity, etc. Survival instinct. Calling it talent seems to be a diminutive, it directs the focus towards something narcissistic, vain - easy to prejudice against. Some things are born from necessity. Process of continual refinement, it's a compulsion because it says "I need to survive".

I suspect there’s a triplet at play here, with either discipline or bravery as the other side. A demotivated perfectionist never rises to their own challenge. With a motivated one, get out of the way or get run over.