Dr. Persson's (2012a) target article addresses a number of key points that will greatly impact the study of giftedness, gifted education, and talent development in the "flat" world of the 21st century and beyond. Research in these areas needs to continually reflect upon changes in the social world outside its narrow purview to validate its inferences--more saliently as these inferences become exported and imported across culturally diverse peoples. Despite the article's flattering portrayal of North American scholars' conception of giftedness as being "well known and overwhelmingly published," many U. S. scholars of giftedness continue to wrestle with the demand for practical applications from a field which encompasses multiple (and sometimes conflicting) constituent conceptions, lexicons and agendas. This response mainly focuses on the target article's discussion of the implications of different epistemological stances toward a science of giftedness research. The authors first endeavour to show the value of pursuing universal theories in giftedness research while also recognising that the application of these theories may be incompatible with local cultural values as argued by Dr. Persson (2012a). They reconcile the target article's suggestions for enhanced cross-cultural research validity with their thoughts on how increased cross-cultural communication can facilitate rather than reduce the validity of optimal truths about giftedness. They point out that "although the ultimate goal of giftedness research may be to move toward universal truths about the nature of human potential and performance, the applications of theories in the practical domain of education will need to be responsive to local culturally-determined beliefs and values." (Contains 1 figure.)