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Does skill at piano sight reading generalize to other skills? My experience is that a greater working memory obviously helps with every mental task. I constant
by 6ren 15y ago
Does skill at piano sight reading generalize to other skills?
My experience is that a greater working memory obviously helps with every mental task. I constantly run into the limits of my working memory; problems too complex to grasp.
If I immerse myself in the problem for a while (e.g. 3 days), it often becomes clear. I think that some aspects transfer into long-term memory, until what remains fits into short-term memory. Another deeper effect is when I see a new way of looking at the problem that makes it simpler; a way to divide it into parts, or layers, or aspects that can be dealt with independently.
It's frustrating to have limited working memory, but I console myself with the fundamental truth that everyone has limited working memory. A far more important ability is being able to handle problems that exceed one's working memory - with a few steps, you easily exceed the working memory of anyone.
Another benefit is that this division into parts/layers/aspects is a theory of the problem, which can be transfered to others. By finding a simpler, better way to think about this problem, you can save everyone time and effort (including super-geniuses, because it frees up their working memory). Even wrap it up in a product and sell it, which saves even more. And even if a super-genius could effortlessly grasp it in working memory, he/she would have no interest in finding a simplifying theory of something already trivial, would feel no value in it if they did see it, and couldn't believe there's be any value in bringing a "solution to a non-problem" to others. It takes someone like me. And of course, the real super-geniuses end up working at their limits, same as me.
Of course, it would always be nice to have just a little bit more working memory. One reason to get enough sleep, food, exercise.
- Retric 15y agoI don't think genius works that way. I am may not be a 'genius' but I am close enough to get the occasional taste of it. First off you have more working memory, and you also think faster, but that enables you to think deeper. Which let's you find short cuts sooner, and those shortcuts let you think about it even deeper. What's shocking is just how fast this can be. EX: As a sophomore in collage I took an AI course and the teacher was introducing the idea of using heuristics optimize searching for the ideal path. He basically said find the best node, explore paths from there then resort the node list. And I was thinking how useful that could be but also that you don't really need to completely sort the list just keep buckets of nodes and only sort the best bucket. And then I started running with that idea thinking of various was of optimizing it for multiple CPU's etc. So the teacher and a few minutes into the lecture the teacher asked "does everyone understand why you need to resort the list" and I was said something like "Sure, but I don't think you need to resort the list just find the new best node(s)". Which started a discussion that just confused most of the students. Thinking back I can see how that was not really the right thing to say at the time. But, I can only imagine someone that's profoundly gifted and has that type of thinking happen not just from time to time but most of the time. Speech literally becomes to slow to have a meaningful conversation with most people. And you start refining your ideas in the middle of a sentience as you consider varies new concepts. PS: As to the value of practice it's IMO a question of how important that last 5-10% is. Get to the top 70% in your field and you can can be a vary well paid doctor, accountant, engineer etc, but being a physicist is judged on a different scale. A pianist or football player that's 5% worse than the best in their field is probably better of looking for something else to do.