16 ms·

The Expert Mind [pdf] (2006)

185 points by JustinSkycak 2y ago

neom 2y ago
People who are good at something have done it in may different ways for a very long time, perfecting the optimal way. Shocking. Edit: this appears to be from 2006, so maybe that was a marginally more novel idea then?
- kelsey98765431 2y ago
  The 'shocking' part was that the main advantage comes in seconds, suggesting a specialized region of the brain that had a fuller development. This is however no longer controversial as cognitive functions have emerged as perfectly reasonable stand ins for many cases thought to need a full generalized intelligence.
north_african 2y ago
What's the point of mastery anyways? If you are a master software engineer, what does that guarantee? is investing in mastery the best use of your time?
- stonethrowaway 2y ago
  [flagged]
- ramenbytes 2y ago
  I don't know if I'm using the word the same way, but I understand the benefit of mastery to be that you automate and abstract away things and can get to a point where you're just firing off mental routines instead of having to consciously focus on the specific task. This means that in a multi-faceted task I can focus primarily on the elements I haven't mastered, since the things I have mastered come easily and automatically. As a consequence, anything that relies in part on the mastered skill gets easier.
  - JustinSkycak 2y ago
    Totally agree. The key idea here is automaticity, the ability to execute low-level skills without having to devote conscious effort towards them. Automaticity frees up limited working memory to execute multiple lower-level skills in parallel and perform higher-level reasoning about the lower-level skills. For instance, think about all the skills that a basketball player has to execute in parallel: they have to run around, dribble the basketball, and think about strategic plays, all at the same time. If they had to consciously think about the mechanics of running and dribbling, they would not be able to do both at the same time, and they would not have enough brainspace to think about strategy. (This comment is basically the intro to a detailed article I wrote on the topic with plenty of scientific citations: https://www.justinmath.com/cognitive-science-of-learning-developing-automaticity/ https://www.justinmath.com/cognitive-science-of-learning-dev...)
    - ramenbytes 2y ago
      That is a much better way of putting it, thank you. (edit) One thing neither of us directly mentioned in our comments, but which I feel is important is this bit from your article intro: > Insufficient automaticity, particularly in basic skills, inflates the cognitive load of tasks, making it exceedingly difficult for students to learn A real-world example for myself was when I was learning a small lick on guitar with an uncomfortable-to-me rhythm. I initially just played it slowly so I could get everything right, trying to speed it up every now and again to check progress. I progressed, but slowly. What ended up demolishing the challenge is the separation of the rhythm element(s) from everything else involved in the lick, and practicing those individually. By themselves they were easy to knock out (matter of minutes), and after those few minutes when I revisited the entire integrated lick I could suddenly knock it out of the park.
      - JustinSkycak 2y ago
        Great example. Yeah, I fully agree that in general, the fastest way acquire a complex skill is to focus your practice on the particular components that are giving you the most trouble. That's the main theme behind deliberate practice: find the bottlenecks and concentrate your practice time on them.
- revskill 2y ago
  Solve real world problem in a formal way, not ad-hoc.
- convolvatron 2y ago
  as opposed to rewatching Seinfeld? Competency is its own reward. Does it make me more effective the job market? certainly not.
  - north_african 2y ago
    Any research/advice/tips on how a software engineer makes himself more effective in the job market?
    - convolvatron 2y ago
      you're not there to make software. you're there to pad out someones headcount and not make any trouble. associate yourself with an enterprise that becomes successful independent of your contribution, and leverage that to get similar roles elsewhere.
- cyberax 2y ago
  Try to master new fields that are just beyond your current comfort area. Make sure you actually practice them, and keep memorizing stuff.
- eleveriven 2y ago
  In a rapidly changing world also
- namaria 2y ago
  Why wouldn't you want to master something you do for a living? Who would want to permanently struggle?
  - north_african 2y ago
    There's a big area between mastery and struggling plus the cost of mastery is time investment with no obvious financial reward for example!
    - namaria 2y ago
      So what you're saying is you're fine with being mediocre, as long as your compensation sits at a local optimum?
      - north_african 2y ago
        Yeah pretty much!
        namaria 2y ago
        Sounds boring but whatever floats your goat...
modin 2y ago
I played Kasparov in 2017, in a setting similar to Capablanca in the ingress of the article. Whilst I managed 50+ moves, he was sometimes struggling in a way I wouldn't have expected for a GM. It so happened that our chess board was turned "upside down" by the organisers (we didn't notice until it was time to start; white was on row 7,8 instead of 1,2), and I have always wondered how much that mattered.
- adonovan 2y ago
  I’m surprised neither of you noticed immediately. I would have thought it as jarring as a mistuned musical instrument.
  - modin 2y ago
    We did notice immediately, but we had the first board to play following a grand speaker introduction, and we just went with it instead of resetting the board with all eyes on us and making the hosts look bad. Speaking for myself at least, I can't believe he didn't notice immediately too. It made my noting down of the moves quite hard. > I would have thought it as jarring as a mistuned musical instrument. This was exactly my thought, how much it mattered to him at his level.
    - ckcheng 2y ago
      > I can't believe he didn't notice immediately too. Is it possible that maybe Kasparov noticed and just like you, he went with it instead of making the hosts look bad?
      - YZF 2y ago
        This would be my guess. It's hard to imagine Kasparov didn't notice. There are variants of chess where the pieces are organized differently and obviously as the game progresses beyond the opening you can get into all sorts of positions. I'm sure Kasparov can calculate from any given arrangement of the pieces. The difference would be that moves that he would play automatically because of preparation now have to be thought through deeper. I'm impressed parent survived that many moves. Must be a good chess player even with the simultaneous game setting.
HL33tibCe7 2y ago
> The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born. What is more, the demonstrated ability to turn a child quickly into an expert—in chess, music and a host of other subjects—sets a clear challenge before the schools. Can educators find ways to encourage students to engage in the kind of effortful study that will improve their reading and math skills? This is an interesting point. I think our schools (in most of the West) are proficient in producing generalists. Especially our state schools. I think there is potential for improvement in producing specialists. As one example, go to the top universities in Europe, and look at classes in STEM fields. You will find a preponderance of Romanian students, far overindexing their relatively small 19 million population, which is especially surprising considering their relative poverty to other European countries. I would suggest that their specialist schools are the key to this surprising success. One thing about specialist schools is that selection is necessary. So the public of most Western nations will never accept it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- f1shy 2y ago
  > our schools (in most of the West) are proficient in producing generalists. From a german perspective, I would say exactly the opposite. In my experience, the poorer the country the more you find “jacks of all trades” and less mega-super-experts. Of course, statistically speaking…
- beardyw 2y ago
  > I think there is potential for improvement in producing specialists. Let us not forget that these are human beings. I doubt I will hear an adult say "I was produced as a ....".
  - dartos 2y ago
    No, but you would hear a school say “we produce the highest performing doctors in the country” or whatever
- 2y ago
vik0 2y ago
I find it extremely depressing that people here wish for more experts (i.e. specialists). The greatest minds that have thus far graced this planet were not specialists, they exceeded in a wide pool of areas. They were, as the saying doesn't go - jack of all trades and masters of dozens
- lxm 2y ago
  > The greatest minds that have thus far graced this planet were not specialists, they exceeded in a wide pool of areas For each polymath there's also Michael Jordan and golfing.
  - vik0 2y ago
    I never thought someone would compare polymaths (let's call it, intellectual or mental power) to people with great athletic ability (let's call it, physical power) Although thinking about it a bit more right now, I don't see why someone shouldn't be able to be great at a wide range of physical activities to be considered a polymath - as opposed to both physical and mental activities, or solely just intellectual activities If someone excels in a great deal of, say, a number of sports (which I admit, would be nigh impossible in the current age with all the professional sports leagues and their exclusiveness), one could probably argue that that person is a genius
- monktastic1 2y ago
  Most of us cannot be those "greatest minds that have thus far graced this planet." For many of us, it's more fulfilling to be good at one thing than mediocre at dozens.
  - wslh 2y ago
    I think the core point of being "mediocre at dozens" is that you could connect dots that the experts can't, so at the macro level you can have advantages while the averages turns to specialization.
    - 2y ago
cyberax 2y ago
One thing that is becoming more and more clear, is that memorization is absolutely a required part of becoming an expert. But it's not fun, it's boring, and it takes up a lot of your time. You can't really train your memory with a nice Youtube video, and it's incompatible with the "learn while playing" concept. So schools in the US tend to sideline it by handwaving that "they teach how to think" instead. And I think we're now seeing the result, with the ever-declining test results. The NAEP scores in the US peaked in 2014 and have been declining ever since: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ushistory/results/scores/ https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ushistory/results/scores/ It's also interesting that there's no similar decline in China, where rote memorization is unavoidable because of the writing system.
- shostack 2y ago
  I'm not sure how you can link these test results to lack of memorization when so many other factors are likely at play from the worsening parental support many children face with school due to economic decline, to the pittance teachers are paid, to the war on education some states seem to be playing (curiously they are all heavy red states).
  - cyberax 2y ago
    The scores are falling in the Blue states a-flush with cash. E.g. Washington: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile/overview/WA?sfj=NP&chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=WA&st=MN&year=2022R3&cti=PgTab_OT https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile/over... The Red states are actually staying fairly steady. I don't think that the lack of memorization is the main reason, but it definitely is one of the reasons. Mobile phones and tablets in education are also not helping, and their spread is well-correlated with the start of the decline.
    - quataran 2y ago
      [dead]
    - godelski 2y ago
      I'm not exactly sure what you're arguing here. It more seems like you're pointing to California in 4th grade. Which I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable using California as the prime example given how diverse it is in culture and demographics. Too much noise introduced through aggregation. When looking at the other grades and varying by subjects it very much looks like the data is noisy. I'm sure there's meaningful analysis to be drawn from here but I'm certain there's no obvious one.
bookofjoe 2y ago
"In the mind of a beginner there are many possibilities; in the mind of an expert there are very few." — Unattributed
- eleveriven 2y ago
  We need to balance expertise with a beginner's mindset
- namaria 2y ago
  "A made up saying can make anything seem plausible to those unwilling to reflect upon it" - Unattributed
  - bookofjoe 2y ago
    "All sayings are made up." - Unattributed
sweeter 2y ago
I do find it baffling the mythos that surrounds "talent" and "meritocracy" in the West. I subscribe to the idea that so-called "geniuses" are made and not born that way. Obviously there are factors into this, like success early on, and a variety of factors that may influence your predisposition to doing a certain thing well. But, at the same time, I know for a fact that far too many people put way too much weight on "talent" and often tell themselves that they can't do something. Someone may see you do something (like drawing or playing music) and say "wow, you are talented, I could never do that" but what you didn't see was how awful they were when they started and the thousands of hours they put into studying light and practicing constructing form from abstract shapes. I think that this is a dangerous lie. You, in fact, could get good at drawing... and you could overcome any blocks to that if you put in the effort and work. You just don't want to or are not following through. Some people will naturally be better, sure, but that is no excuse to say you are incapable of doing something. I almost find that notion insulting.
- codazoda 2y ago
  > far too many people put way too much weight on "talent" and often tell themselves that they can't do something I consider myself a “maker” and a serial hobbyist. I see this in others who seem to be afraid to make things for fear of failing. I love to document and share my own process and that sometimes feels like showing off. Maybe I should share more about my failures. I’ve recently come to the realization that what I really want is to inspire others to explore their creativity, learn new skills, and gain the confidence to make their own projects. A genius, I am not, and I’m talented in only a few narrow areas, but I love to explore many.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sandspar 2y ago
Article brings up the Polgar sisters. Their father wasn't specifically a chess fanatic; he was more interested in the power of education as a whole. Here's their (rather charming) daily schedule: 4 hours of specialist study (for us, chess) 1 hour of a foreign language. Esperanto in the first year, English in the second, and another chosen at will in the third. At the stage of beginning, that is, intensive language instruction, it is necessary to increase the study hours to 3 – in place of the specialist study – for 3 months. In summer, study trips to other countries. 1 hour of general study (native language, natural science and social studies) 1 hour of computing 1 hour of moral, psychological, and pedagogical studies (humour lessons as well, with 20 minutes every hour for joke-telling) 1 hour of gymnastics, freely chosen, which can be accomplished individually or outside of school. The division of study hours can, of course, be treated elastically.

185 points by JustinSkycak 2y ago

neom 2y ago

People who are good at something have done it in may different ways for a very long time, perfecting the optimal way. Shocking. Edit: this appears to be from 2006, so maybe that was a marginally more novel idea then?

kelsey98765431 2y ago
The 'shocking' part was that the main advantage comes in seconds, suggesting a specialized region of the brain that had a fuller development. This is however no longer controversial as cognitive functions have emerged as perfectly reasonable stand ins for many cases thought to need a full generalized intelligence.

north_african 2y ago

What's the point of mastery anyways? If you are a master software engineer, what does that guarantee? is investing in mastery the best use of your time?

stonethrowaway 2y ago
[flagged]
ramenbytes 2y ago
I don't know if I'm using the word the same way, but I understand the benefit of mastery to be that you automate and abstract away things and can get to a point where you're just firing off mental routines instead of having to consciously focus on the specific task. This means that in a multi-faceted task I can focus primarily on the elements I haven't mastered, since the things I have mastered come easily and automatically. As a consequence, anything that relies in part on the mastered skill gets easier.
- JustinSkycak 2y ago
  Totally agree. The key idea here is automaticity, the ability to execute low-level skills without having to devote conscious effort towards them. Automaticity frees up limited working memory to execute multiple lower-level skills in parallel and perform higher-level reasoning about the lower-level skills. For instance, think about all the skills that a basketball player has to execute in parallel: they have to run around, dribble the basketball, and think about strategic plays, all at the same time. If they had to consciously think about the mechanics of running and dribbling, they would not be able to do both at the same time, and they would not have enough brainspace to think about strategy. (This comment is basically the intro to a detailed article I wrote on the topic with plenty of scientific citations: https://www.justinmath.com/cognitive-science-of-learning-developing-automaticity/ https://www.justinmath.com/cognitive-science-of-learning-dev...)
  - ramenbytes 2y ago
    That is a much better way of putting it, thank you. (edit) One thing neither of us directly mentioned in our comments, but which I feel is important is this bit from your article intro: > Insufficient automaticity, particularly in basic skills, inflates the cognitive load of tasks, making it exceedingly difficult for students to learn A real-world example for myself was when I was learning a small lick on guitar with an uncomfortable-to-me rhythm. I initially just played it slowly so I could get everything right, trying to speed it up every now and again to check progress. I progressed, but slowly. What ended up demolishing the challenge is the separation of the rhythm element(s) from everything else involved in the lick, and practicing those individually. By themselves they were easy to knock out (matter of minutes), and after those few minutes when I revisited the entire integrated lick I could suddenly knock it out of the park.
    - JustinSkycak 2y ago
      Great example. Yeah, I fully agree that in general, the fastest way acquire a complex skill is to focus your practice on the particular components that are giving you the most trouble. That's the main theme behind deliberate practice: find the bottlenecks and concentrate your practice time on them.
revskill 2y ago
Solve real world problem in a formal way, not ad-hoc.
convolvatron 2y ago
as opposed to rewatching Seinfeld? Competency is its own reward. Does it make me more effective the job market? certainly not.
- north_african 2y ago
  Any research/advice/tips on how a software engineer makes himself more effective in the job market?
  - convolvatron 2y ago
    you're not there to make software. you're there to pad out someones headcount and not make any trouble. associate yourself with an enterprise that becomes successful independent of your contribution, and leverage that to get similar roles elsewhere.
cyberax 2y ago
Try to master new fields that are just beyond your current comfort area. Make sure you actually practice them, and keep memorizing stuff.
eleveriven 2y ago
In a rapidly changing world also
namaria 2y ago
Why wouldn't you want to master something you do for a living? Who would want to permanently struggle?
- north_african 2y ago
  There's a big area between mastery and struggling plus the cost of mastery is time investment with no obvious financial reward for example!
  - namaria 2y ago
    So what you're saying is you're fine with being mediocre, as long as your compensation sits at a local optimum?
    - north_african 2y ago
      Yeah pretty much!
      - namaria 2y ago
        Sounds boring but whatever floats your goat...

modin 2y ago

I played Kasparov in 2017, in a setting similar to Capablanca in the ingress of the article. Whilst I managed 50+ moves, he was sometimes struggling in a way I wouldn't have expected for a GM. It so happened that our chess board was turned "upside down" by the organisers (we didn't notice until it was time to start; white was on row 7,8 instead of 1,2), and I have always wondered how much that mattered.

adonovan 2y ago
I’m surprised neither of you noticed immediately. I would have thought it as jarring as a mistuned musical instrument.
- modin 2y ago
  We did notice immediately, but we had the first board to play following a grand speaker introduction, and we just went with it instead of resetting the board with all eyes on us and making the hosts look bad. Speaking for myself at least, I can't believe he didn't notice immediately too. It made my noting down of the moves quite hard. > I would have thought it as jarring as a mistuned musical instrument. This was exactly my thought, how much it mattered to him at his level.
  - ckcheng 2y ago
    > I can't believe he didn't notice immediately too. Is it possible that maybe Kasparov noticed and just like you, he went with it instead of making the hosts look bad?
    - YZF 2y ago
      This would be my guess. It's hard to imagine Kasparov didn't notice. There are variants of chess where the pieces are organized differently and obviously as the game progresses beyond the opening you can get into all sorts of positions. I'm sure Kasparov can calculate from any given arrangement of the pieces. The difference would be that moves that he would play automatically because of preparation now have to be thought through deeper. I'm impressed parent survived that many moves. Must be a good chess player even with the simultaneous game setting.

HL33tibCe7 2y ago

> The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born. What is more, the demonstrated ability to turn a child quickly into an expert—in chess, music and a host of other subjects—sets a clear challenge before the schools. Can educators find ways to encourage students to engage in the kind of effortful study that will improve their reading and math skills? This is an interesting point. I think our schools (in most of the West) are proficient in producing generalists. Especially our state schools. I think there is potential for improvement in producing specialists. As one example, go to the top universities in Europe, and look at classes in STEM fields. You will find a preponderance of Romanian students, far overindexing their relatively small 19 million population, which is especially surprising considering their relative poverty to other European countries. I would suggest that their specialist schools are the key to this surprising success. One thing about specialist schools is that selection is necessary. So the public of most Western nations will never accept it.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
f1shy 2y ago
> our schools (in most of the West) are proficient in producing generalists. From a german perspective, I would say exactly the opposite. In my experience, the poorer the country the more you find “jacks of all trades” and less mega-super-experts. Of course, statistically speaking…
beardyw 2y ago
> I think there is potential for improvement in producing specialists. Let us not forget that these are human beings. I doubt I will hear an adult say "I was produced as a ....".
- dartos 2y ago
  No, but you would hear a school say “we produce the highest performing doctors in the country” or whatever
2y ago

vik0 2y ago

I find it extremely depressing that people here wish for more experts (i.e. specialists). The greatest minds that have thus far graced this planet were not specialists, they exceeded in a wide pool of areas. They were, as the saying doesn't go - jack of all trades and masters of dozens

lxm 2y ago
> The greatest minds that have thus far graced this planet were not specialists, they exceeded in a wide pool of areas For each polymath there's also Michael Jordan and golfing.
- vik0 2y ago
  I never thought someone would compare polymaths (let's call it, intellectual or mental power) to people with great athletic ability (let's call it, physical power) Although thinking about it a bit more right now, I don't see why someone shouldn't be able to be great at a wide range of physical activities to be considered a polymath - as opposed to both physical and mental activities, or solely just intellectual activities If someone excels in a great deal of, say, a number of sports (which I admit, would be nigh impossible in the current age with all the professional sports leagues and their exclusiveness), one could probably argue that that person is a genius
monktastic1 2y ago
Most of us cannot be those "greatest minds that have thus far graced this planet." For many of us, it's more fulfilling to be good at one thing than mediocre at dozens.
- wslh 2y ago
  I think the core point of being "mediocre at dozens" is that you could connect dots that the experts can't, so at the macro level you can have advantages while the averages turns to specialization.
  - 2y ago

cyberax 2y ago

One thing that is becoming more and more clear, is that memorization is absolutely a required part of becoming an expert. But it's not fun, it's boring, and it takes up a lot of your time. You can't really train your memory with a nice Youtube video, and it's incompatible with the "learn while playing" concept. So schools in the US tend to sideline it by handwaving that "they teach how to think" instead. And I think we're now seeing the result, with the ever-declining test results. The NAEP scores in the US peaked in 2014 and have been declining ever since: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ushistory/results/scores/ https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ushistory/results/scores/ It's also interesting that there's no similar decline in China, where rote memorization is unavoidable because of the writing system.

shostack 2y ago
I'm not sure how you can link these test results to lack of memorization when so many other factors are likely at play from the worsening parental support many children face with school due to economic decline, to the pittance teachers are paid, to the war on education some states seem to be playing (curiously they are all heavy red states).
- cyberax 2y ago
  The scores are falling in the Blue states a-flush with cash. E.g. Washington: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile/overview/WA?sfj=NP&chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=WA&st=MN&year=2022R3&cti=PgTab_OT https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile/over... The Red states are actually staying fairly steady. I don't think that the lack of memorization is the main reason, but it definitely is one of the reasons. Mobile phones and tablets in education are also not helping, and their spread is well-correlated with the start of the decline.
  - quataran 2y ago
    [dead]
  - godelski 2y ago
    I'm not exactly sure what you're arguing here. It more seems like you're pointing to California in 4th grade. Which I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable using California as the prime example given how diverse it is in culture and demographics. Too much noise introduced through aggregation. When looking at the other grades and varying by subjects it very much looks like the data is noisy. I'm sure there's meaningful analysis to be drawn from here but I'm certain there's no obvious one.

bookofjoe 2y ago

"In the mind of a beginner there are many possibilities; in the mind of an expert there are very few." — Unattributed

eleveriven 2y ago
We need to balance expertise with a beginner's mindset
namaria 2y ago
"A made up saying can make anything seem plausible to those unwilling to reflect upon it" - Unattributed
- bookofjoe 2y ago
  "All sayings are made up." - Unattributed

sweeter 2y ago

I do find it baffling the mythos that surrounds "talent" and "meritocracy" in the West. I subscribe to the idea that so-called "geniuses" are made and not born that way. Obviously there are factors into this, like success early on, and a variety of factors that may influence your predisposition to doing a certain thing well. But, at the same time, I know for a fact that far too many people put way too much weight on "talent" and often tell themselves that they can't do something. Someone may see you do something (like drawing or playing music) and say "wow, you are talented, I could never do that" but what you didn't see was how awful they were when they started and the thousands of hours they put into studying light and practicing constructing form from abstract shapes. I think that this is a dangerous lie. You, in fact, could get good at drawing... and you could overcome any blocks to that if you put in the effort and work. You just don't want to or are not following through. Some people will naturally be better, sure, but that is no excuse to say you are incapable of doing something. I almost find that notion insulting.

codazoda 2y ago
> far too many people put way too much weight on "talent" and often tell themselves that they can't do something I consider myself a “maker” and a serial hobbyist. I see this in others who seem to be afraid to make things for fear of failing. I love to document and share my own process and that sometimes feels like showing off. Maybe I should share more about my failures. I’ve recently come to the realization that what I really want is to inspire others to explore their creativity, learn new skills, and gain the confidence to make their own projects. A genius, I am not, and I’m talented in only a few narrow areas, but I love to explore many.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

sandspar 2y ago

Article brings up the Polgar sisters. Their father wasn't specifically a chess fanatic; he was more interested in the power of education as a whole. Here's their (rather charming) daily schedule: 4 hours of specialist study (for us, chess) 1 hour of a foreign language. Esperanto in the first year, English in the second, and another chosen at will in the third. At the stage of beginning, that is, intensive language instruction, it is necessary to increase the study hours to 3 – in place of the specialist study – for 3 months. In summer, study trips to other countries. 1 hour of general study (native language, natural science and social studies) 1 hour of computing 1 hour of moral, psychological, and pedagogical studies (humour lessons as well, with 20 minutes every hour for joke-telling) 1 hour of gymnastics, freely chosen, which can be accomplished individually or outside of school. The division of study hours can, of course, be treated elastically.