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I don't know if your analogies nor concepts are correct, because you aren't really constructing them in such a way that the details line up. You're giving speci

I don't know if your analogies nor concepts are correct, because you aren't really constructing them in such a way that the details line up. You're giving specious advice based on lazy thinking and half baked ideas, which is clear when you look at what parts of the details don't add up. If human capability is generally mutable (which it would need to be for growth to exist), then your explanation doesn't make sense. And human capability is very mutable. Concretely, why don't we take an example you brought up, which is professional football. Let's look at Tom Brady, regarded as the best quarterback of all time. He was 199th pick in the 2000 draft, and look at where he is now. Shouldn't he have quit when he was 199/254 in the draft? After all, he might have gone pro but he wasn't even in the top half nevermind the top quartile. Let's take another biological example, which is weight training. You actually have to train yourself to failure to get to the point where you tear your muscles enough that they'll regrow, and then you have to eat a ton to rebuild them properly, and then you have to repeat this over and over again consistently to reach peak fitness. What would you say to someone who said "if you're not cutting it at the gym, better quit early rather than later?" You would tell them the same thing Ronnie Coleman said, which is "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights." Considering the brain-body connection, do you really think that there isn't a correlate with intellectual activity? This is in no way controversial when considered in the field of physical fitness, but for some reason, "when the activity is intellectual, rather than physical, however, people tend to react more emotionally, or allow their ideology to overshadow some hard facts about human existence." And one of the hardest facts about human existence for people to swallow is that many times, you aren't unsuccessful in the field of your choice because you weren't born with the right raw material. You are unsuccessful because you didn't properly learn the game, butter up the right resource providers to support you, and continuously hone your technique to get to the top no matter what it took. If you did, it wouldn't be a matter of if but when. Now, football is a well defined game with well defined physical inputs and far less degrees of freedom than other fields. But academia is the final frontier of human knowledge. Is it really the case that you have found a cheat code and one true metric to determine whether a human will reach academic significance or not? Or is it just the case that you have found an explanation which is convenient, simple, and wrong, which you are afraid to let go of?

xyzzyz 4y ago
> After all, he might have gone pro but he wasn't even in the top half nevermind the top quartile. No, he was deep in the top percentile of players. By the time you even get to NFL draft, you're clearly one of the best ones. Even the last draftee will make millions of dollars. To make your analogy meaningful, instead of comparing top 250 players, compare top 10,000 ones. If you're not in top 10,000 football players, should you stop striving for career in professional football? Hell yeah. > Let's take another biological example, which is weight training. (...) What would you say to someone who said "if you're not cutting it at the gym, better quit early rather than later?" This is another false analogy. People who go to the gym do this for their own personal benefit, not to make a career out of it. These are completely different scenarios. I'm not telling people that they should quit learning stuff for their own personal benefit, only to quit dreaming about the research career if they are unlikely to succeed in it. > Is it really the case that you have found a cheat code and one true metric to determine whether a human will reach academic significance or not? You really are unable to resist strawmanning, aren't you? Can you quote exactly what made you think I claim that? Can you honestly engage in what I actually say?
- yowlingcat 4y ago
  Let's go back to the Tom Brady example [1]. The last pick in the draft isn't coming from someone who was already at the top of his game. It's coming from someone who before that point had a history of not being top of the pack both on his high school team and college team. Would you say he's in the top 10,000 football players when he has NEVER been a starter? ``` Brady began his football career as the backup quarterback on the Padres junior varsity team. At first, Brady was not good enough to start on the 0–8 JV team, which had not scored a touchdown all year.[25] Brady ascended to the starting position when the starting quarterback was injured. He became the varsity starter in his junior year and held the position until he graduated.[26] ``` ``` Brady played college football at the University of Michigan from 1995 to 1999.[41][42] After redshirting in 1995,[43] Brady spent the next two years as a backup quarterback, while teammate and future NFL quarterback Brian Griese led the 1997 Wolverines to an undefeated season, which was capped by a victory in the Rose Bowl and a share of the national championship.[44] When he initially enrolled at Michigan, Brady was seventh on the depth chart, and he had an intense struggle to get some playing time. At one point, Brady hired a sports psychologist to help him cope with frustration and anxiety; he even considered transferring to the University of California, Berkeley to play for the California Golden Bears.[45][46] ``` With Tom Brady, you have someone who objectively, quantitatively and qualitatively, was not top of the pack in high school or in college or at draft, the formative years where the wheat is physically supposed to separate from the chaff. And yet, he ended up developing into the best player of all time. More generally, I'd say that it's not a strawman when someone points out where you're not engaging with details and concrete examples someone else is bringing up. It just means that at best, you don't think it's worth your time to engage with the details, or at worst, you just don't think that rigorously. I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. It's yours to live and not mine. But my unsolicited advice is that you'd probably live a more fulfilling life if you did a better job at reading between the lines and absorbing the detail from those that disagreed with you, rather than defensively taking it as an affront towards your character. I've made clear at multiple points that I agree with a lot of what you said, but disagree with enough of how you get there to voice it over because I think it's based on risky assumptions. I've also cited really specific examples so that we're not arguing on rhetoric, but you refuse to return in kind. Why do you feel above needing to explain with evidence and substantiation, and detail? There is no need to feel shame at being wrong. None of us are perfect. Changing your mind isn't proof of being unintelligent; on the contrary, it's proof that you're awake, aware, learning and growing. The "smartest" and certainly the most successful people do this the most, not the least. At this point, I've said my piece. If you want to ignore evidence which is inconvenient to your conclusions, then be my guest, but ironically then, you'd be guilty of "when the activity is intellectual, rather than physical, however, people tend to react more emotionally, or allow their ideology to overshadow some hard facts about human existence." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brady https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brady

xyzzyz 4y ago

> After all, he might have gone pro but he wasn't even in the top half nevermind the top quartile. No, he was deep in the top percentile of players. By the time you even get to NFL draft, you're clearly one of the best ones. Even the last draftee will make millions of dollars. To make your analogy meaningful, instead of comparing top 250 players, compare top 10,000 ones. If you're not in top 10,000 football players, should you stop striving for career in professional football? Hell yeah. > Let's take another biological example, which is weight training. (...) What would you say to someone who said "if you're not cutting it at the gym, better quit early rather than later?" This is another false analogy. People who go to the gym do this for their own personal benefit, not to make a career out of it. These are completely different scenarios. I'm not telling people that they should quit learning stuff for their own personal benefit, only to quit dreaming about the research career if they are unlikely to succeed in it. > Is it really the case that you have found a cheat code and one true metric to determine whether a human will reach academic significance or not? You really are unable to resist strawmanning, aren't you? Can you quote exactly what made you think I claim that? Can you honestly engage in what I actually say?

yowlingcat 4y ago
Let's go back to the Tom Brady example [1]. The last pick in the draft isn't coming from someone who was already at the top of his game. It's coming from someone who before that point had a history of not being top of the pack both on his high school team and college team. Would you say he's in the top 10,000 football players when he has NEVER been a starter? ``` Brady began his football career as the backup quarterback on the Padres junior varsity team. At first, Brady was not good enough to start on the 0–8 JV team, which had not scored a touchdown all year.[25] Brady ascended to the starting position when the starting quarterback was injured. He became the varsity starter in his junior year and held the position until he graduated.[26] ``` ``` Brady played college football at the University of Michigan from 1995 to 1999.[41][42] After redshirting in 1995,[43] Brady spent the next two years as a backup quarterback, while teammate and future NFL quarterback Brian Griese led the 1997 Wolverines to an undefeated season, which was capped by a victory in the Rose Bowl and a share of the national championship.[44] When he initially enrolled at Michigan, Brady was seventh on the depth chart, and he had an intense struggle to get some playing time. At one point, Brady hired a sports psychologist to help him cope with frustration and anxiety; he even considered transferring to the University of California, Berkeley to play for the California Golden Bears.[45][46] ``` With Tom Brady, you have someone who objectively, quantitatively and qualitatively, was not top of the pack in high school or in college or at draft, the formative years where the wheat is physically supposed to separate from the chaff. And yet, he ended up developing into the best player of all time. More generally, I'd say that it's not a strawman when someone points out where you're not engaging with details and concrete examples someone else is bringing up. It just means that at best, you don't think it's worth your time to engage with the details, or at worst, you just don't think that rigorously. I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. It's yours to live and not mine. But my unsolicited advice is that you'd probably live a more fulfilling life if you did a better job at reading between the lines and absorbing the detail from those that disagreed with you, rather than defensively taking it as an affront towards your character. I've made clear at multiple points that I agree with a lot of what you said, but disagree with enough of how you get there to voice it over because I think it's based on risky assumptions. I've also cited really specific examples so that we're not arguing on rhetoric, but you refuse to return in kind. Why do you feel above needing to explain with evidence and substantiation, and detail? There is no need to feel shame at being wrong. None of us are perfect. Changing your mind isn't proof of being unintelligent; on the contrary, it's proof that you're awake, aware, learning and growing. The "smartest" and certainly the most successful people do this the most, not the least. At this point, I've said my piece. If you want to ignore evidence which is inconvenient to your conclusions, then be my guest, but ironically then, you'd be guilty of "when the activity is intellectual, rather than physical, however, people tend to react more emotionally, or allow their ideology to overshadow some hard facts about human existence." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brady https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brady