6 ms·

I wish I could do anything as well as Oliver Sacks writes.

by robotnoises 12y ago

alandarev 12y ago
Then master yourself, you are not 81 with a terminal cancer here.
- sireat 12y ago
  Unless you are under the age of 25(and preferably under 15) you have little hope of mastering anything. Once you get over 40 you realize that your best hope is to work with what you have (that and your children). You are not going to learn a new skill sufficiently well to be called master in it. Sorry, if you start medical school at 40 you are not going to be performing brain surgery at 50. If you did no writing from 18 until 40 you are not going to suddenly master writing. Counterexamples welcome. Whenever, I find someone who did something exceptional at a later life, I find someone who actually laid a solid foundation in his/her teen years. "I want more life father"
  - joshuapants 12y ago
    I would love to know how you arrived at this conclusion.
  - sixQuarks 12y ago
    There are always exceptions to the rule. But for a majority of ordinary people, I agree with you. However, thinking this way can be a huge limiting factor.
  - chernevik 12y ago
    For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else. -- Winston Churchill
  - phtrivier 12y ago
    I suppose the definition of "mastering" can accomodate any opinion on the topic. Would this conatain any (most likerly rare) couter-example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_bloomer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_bloomer ?
  - Loque 12y ago
    I guess it depends on the definition of mastering, and moreover, whether you compare your ability with others. I would also like to believe that there are some things mature adults have more to bring to the table when mastering something, such as a language, story telling, musical instrument... above all, regardless of whether you truely master something or not, you need to believe that you can - and whilst your comment may be true, it may also take away someones opportunity to believe they can. A good wakeup call nonetheless.
  - sergiosgc 12y ago
    Counterexamples: - Vincent Van Gogh: Never painted anything until he was 27 - Dave McClure: Angel investor, who did not invest in anything until he was 40 - Fauja Singh: Marathonist, who though marathons were 26km until he was 89(!) - Joseph Conrad: Successful writer at 39, he learned English in his twenties. - Stallone: If you discount soft porn star roles, he started acting in his mid twenties (ok, I concede this one, Stallone is not the ultimate actor :-P ) Naturally, these are anecdotal. But you should reconsider your hypothesis, and test for sample deviation. Naturally, most people will stick to what they are good at. Only a fraction will go out of their comfort zone. You must account for this bias. If your hypothesis is that most people won't master anything new later in life, you are probably correct. If your hypothesis is that, out of those people who try to master something new later in life, most won't succeed, I believe you are wrong. You are falling prey to a wrong sample selection. Out of those people who have put out the time, around me I see very good success rates. For a decent experiment, check out Ben Larcombe's table tennis expert in a year experiment: http://www.experttabletennis.com/expert-in-a-year/ http://www.experttabletennis.com/expert-in-a-year/ While he did actually fail his goal, a look at his end of year videos makes me label him as having mastered the art of table tennis as much as a random child would do under training (i.e. age played no role in the result).
    - sireat 12y ago
      My apologies for not being factual enough and sounding too cynical without providing more detail. Appreciate the responses with actual counterexamples: - Van Gogh: was drawing as a child and continued to draw upon starting to paint. This is the solid foundation that I mentioned my OP. This is even closer than a shogi 9-dan becoming a chess master at 30. - Dave McClure: hit lottery(even if you argue it was skill, it has nothing to do with my hypothesis) with Paypal, after that he has bought a lot (500+) of lottery tickets. Nothing wrong with that but I do not see mastery (ala Buffett) VC is a field where it is hard to measure mastery. I suppose one could take 10 year risk adjusted returns as some measure. Again, you can start doing anything at any age, but do not expect any great results. - Fauja Singh: "As a young man, Fauja was an avid amateur runner, but he gave it up at the time of the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition." His records ar 90+ are fantastic for a 90 year old and probably 70-80 year olds but no more than that. - Joseph Conrad , writers in general are a tricky to evaluate as most of us have had "some" writing in teenage years. Surely, Conrad wrote in Polish and French in his teen years. One of my favorite writers Raymond Chandler did not really become a writer until age of 44, so does he disprove my hypothesis? If you look at his bio, he must have written/dictated quite a bit as an oil executive sober or not. Even more importantly he was a reporter for the Daily Express and the Bristol Western Gazette newspapers in his 20s. - Stallone: nothing unusual in his career, he might have started acting a few years later than most aspiring Hollywood hopefuls. His success with Rocky does not really dis/prove his mastery of acting. He is decent at his craft. - Ben Larcombe's table tennis experiment: his subject was his friend 24 year old Sam Priestley. Again this falls within my 25 year old rule. Besides that the experiment failed! Actually I agree with most of the conclusions that Ben Larcombe reached: http://www.experttabletennis.com/possible-master-table-tennis-12-months/ http://www.experttabletennis.com/possible-master-table-tenni... However again, age is a harsh mistress and past 40 the decline in your learning ability becomes noticable. We all need our delusions and the "I can do anything if only I set my mind to it" is quite a common one.
  - davidwihl 12y ago
    That's incredibly cynical. I took up private piloting at age 37, went on to multiple certifications including Single Pilot Multi-engine jet, about as high as you can go. I'm 50 now and continue to learn and study new things every day (including taking three Harvard Extension courses at this time). I certainly hope to master many more skills in the years I have left, while "raging against the dying of the light."
    - dpark 12y ago
      It's exceedingly cynical. Most people don't master anything after 40, but most people don't master anything before 40, either. The difference is that younger people can look forward to an imagined life with huge accomplishments and older people have to look back and admit they they didn't achieve the things they imagined. There's nothing stopping someone over 40 from achieving huge things, any more than there is something stopping someone 20 from doing the same. It's true that most people who accomplish big things do so when they are young, but that seems to mostly be a reflection on the fact that people who are driven to do big things have generally the same drive when they are young. People who don't have that drive when younger don't typically discover it at middle age.
      - joshuapants 12y ago
        Another consideration is time, stamina, and commitments. A person fresh out of college doesn't necessarily have anything holding them back from devoting time and resources to learn and master something. A person who's even younger will have more time and possibly more family support/coercion (how many violin prodigies do you think picked up the violin entirely of their own volition?) Someone in their 40s may have a time-consuming job and a family to support, which precludes ditching the time-consuming job in favor of putting in long hours to master something. Maybe they can only spare an hour or two a week, and maybe they're so exhausted from work that every now and then they can't even do that. Older adults may be more risk-averse, but that doesn't mean they're incapable of mastering something, just that they're less likely to choose to do so.
        12y ago
  - Squarel 12y ago
    I did no college or further education, and spent my teens largely drunk, and my early twenties on drugs and in generally dodgy situations. I am about to finish my MSc and move onto my PhD, I just turned 35

I wish I could do anything as well as Oliver Sacks writes.

alandarev 12y ago

Then master yourself, you are not 81 with a terminal cancer here.

sireat 12y ago
Unless you are under the age of 25(and preferably under 15) you have little hope of mastering anything. Once you get over 40 you realize that your best hope is to work with what you have (that and your children). You are not going to learn a new skill sufficiently well to be called master in it. Sorry, if you start medical school at 40 you are not going to be performing brain surgery at 50. If you did no writing from 18 until 40 you are not going to suddenly master writing. Counterexamples welcome. Whenever, I find someone who did something exceptional at a later life, I find someone who actually laid a solid foundation in his/her teen years. "I want more life father"
- joshuapants 12y ago
  I would love to know how you arrived at this conclusion.
- sixQuarks 12y ago
  There are always exceptions to the rule. But for a majority of ordinary people, I agree with you. However, thinking this way can be a huge limiting factor.
- chernevik 12y ago
  For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else. -- Winston Churchill
- phtrivier 12y ago
  I suppose the definition of "mastering" can accomodate any opinion on the topic. Would this conatain any (most likerly rare) couter-example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_bloomer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_bloomer ?
- Loque 12y ago
  I guess it depends on the definition of mastering, and moreover, whether you compare your ability with others. I would also like to believe that there are some things mature adults have more to bring to the table when mastering something, such as a language, story telling, musical instrument... above all, regardless of whether you truely master something or not, you need to believe that you can - and whilst your comment may be true, it may also take away someones opportunity to believe they can. A good wakeup call nonetheless.
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  Counterexamples: - Vincent Van Gogh: Never painted anything until he was 27 - Dave McClure: Angel investor, who did not invest in anything until he was 40 - Fauja Singh: Marathonist, who though marathons were 26km until he was 89(!) - Joseph Conrad: Successful writer at 39, he learned English in his twenties. - Stallone: If you discount soft porn star roles, he started acting in his mid twenties (ok, I concede this one, Stallone is not the ultimate actor :-P ) Naturally, these are anecdotal. But you should reconsider your hypothesis, and test for sample deviation. Naturally, most people will stick to what they are good at. Only a fraction will go out of their comfort zone. You must account for this bias. If your hypothesis is that most people won't master anything new later in life, you are probably correct. If your hypothesis is that, out of those people who try to master something new later in life, most won't succeed, I believe you are wrong. You are falling prey to a wrong sample selection. Out of those people who have put out the time, around me I see very good success rates. For a decent experiment, check out Ben Larcombe's table tennis expert in a year experiment: http://www.experttabletennis.com/expert-in-a-year/ http://www.experttabletennis.com/expert-in-a-year/ While he did actually fail his goal, a look at his end of year videos makes me label him as having mastered the art of table tennis as much as a random child would do under training (i.e. age played no role in the result).
  - sireat 12y ago
    My apologies for not being factual enough and sounding too cynical without providing more detail. Appreciate the responses with actual counterexamples: - Van Gogh: was drawing as a child and continued to draw upon starting to paint. This is the solid foundation that I mentioned my OP. This is even closer than a shogi 9-dan becoming a chess master at 30. - Dave McClure: hit lottery(even if you argue it was skill, it has nothing to do with my hypothesis) with Paypal, after that he has bought a lot (500+) of lottery tickets. Nothing wrong with that but I do not see mastery (ala Buffett) VC is a field where it is hard to measure mastery. I suppose one could take 10 year risk adjusted returns as some measure. Again, you can start doing anything at any age, but do not expect any great results. - Fauja Singh: "As a young man, Fauja was an avid amateur runner, but he gave it up at the time of the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition." His records ar 90+ are fantastic for a 90 year old and probably 70-80 year olds but no more than that. - Joseph Conrad , writers in general are a tricky to evaluate as most of us have had "some" writing in teenage years. Surely, Conrad wrote in Polish and French in his teen years. One of my favorite writers Raymond Chandler did not really become a writer until age of 44, so does he disprove my hypothesis? If you look at his bio, he must have written/dictated quite a bit as an oil executive sober or not. Even more importantly he was a reporter for the Daily Express and the Bristol Western Gazette newspapers in his 20s. - Stallone: nothing unusual in his career, he might have started acting a few years later than most aspiring Hollywood hopefuls. His success with Rocky does not really dis/prove his mastery of acting. He is decent at his craft. - Ben Larcombe's table tennis experiment: his subject was his friend 24 year old Sam Priestley. Again this falls within my 25 year old rule. Besides that the experiment failed! Actually I agree with most of the conclusions that Ben Larcombe reached: http://www.experttabletennis.com/possible-master-table-tennis-12-months/ http://www.experttabletennis.com/possible-master-table-tenni... However again, age is a harsh mistress and past 40 the decline in your learning ability becomes noticable. We all need our delusions and the "I can do anything if only I set my mind to it" is quite a common one.
- davidwihl 12y ago
  That's incredibly cynical. I took up private piloting at age 37, went on to multiple certifications including Single Pilot Multi-engine jet, about as high as you can go. I'm 50 now and continue to learn and study new things every day (including taking three Harvard Extension courses at this time). I certainly hope to master many more skills in the years I have left, while "raging against the dying of the light."
  - dpark 12y ago
    It's exceedingly cynical. Most people don't master anything after 40, but most people don't master anything before 40, either. The difference is that younger people can look forward to an imagined life with huge accomplishments and older people have to look back and admit they they didn't achieve the things they imagined. There's nothing stopping someone over 40 from achieving huge things, any more than there is something stopping someone 20 from doing the same. It's true that most people who accomplish big things do so when they are young, but that seems to mostly be a reflection on the fact that people who are driven to do big things have generally the same drive when they are young. People who don't have that drive when younger don't typically discover it at middle age.
    - joshuapants 12y ago
      Another consideration is time, stamina, and commitments. A person fresh out of college doesn't necessarily have anything holding them back from devoting time and resources to learn and master something. A person who's even younger will have more time and possibly more family support/coercion (how many violin prodigies do you think picked up the violin entirely of their own volition?) Someone in their 40s may have a time-consuming job and a family to support, which precludes ditching the time-consuming job in favor of putting in long hours to master something. Maybe they can only spare an hour or two a week, and maybe they're so exhausted from work that every now and then they can't even do that. Older adults may be more risk-averse, but that doesn't mean they're incapable of mastering something, just that they're less likely to choose to do so.
      - 12y ago
- Squarel 12y ago
  I did no college or further education, and spent my teens largely drunk, and my early twenties on drugs and in generally dodgy situations. I am about to finish my MSc and move onto my PhD, I just turned 35