Mastery Takes Time

You've probably heard about the "10 000 hours to mastery" concept popularized by Malcolm Gladwell. This myth has been debunked multiple times. The flashy rule is based on a study focused on violin students at a music academy in Berlin. By the age of 20 most students had put in the golden 10 000 hours. Even the person conducting the study, K. Anders Ericsson, explicitly said that the number of 10 000 is totally arbitrary. It’s simply a catchy and easy-to-remember number but it is not based on anything substantial.

Even though this specific number might not be true it is widely accepted that copious amounts of practice is THE way to mastery. Sometimes it is possible to forget that. Recently I took up playing chess. It is a game of logic and puzzle-solving. Since I have a background in scientific subjects, which are mostly puzzle-solving, I was rather confident in my abilities. The small thing I forgot is that I have been doing maths and physics for quite a few years in a row, I know most of the rules, the different loopholes to exploit and the problems that can be encountered.

I completely neglected the component of pattern recognition which is a huge part of chess and also sciences for that matter. You can have near-perfect problem-solving skills yet when encountering a hyper-specific position on the chess board you can easily get outplayed by an experienced player. Furthermore, every chess game becomes pretty much unique after 10 moves. Statistically speaking there are even more possible variations of chess games than there are atoms in the observable universe. That's more than 10 with 82 zeros after it. So it helps if you spend some time studying the most common outcomes.

Finding out that I am bad at something is difficult. Even though I dislike the feeling of frustration that is caused by my lack of capabilities I do realise its usefulness. It's growth. I am acknowledging my flaws in order to address them further.

This Week's Suggestions:

🎬 I tried using AI. It scared me. :

This video puts into great perspective the recent surge of artificial intelligence. Tom Scott, the producer of the video, compares it to the sudden appearance of the internet and streaming at the start of the millennia. He does a great job of explaining difficult concepts in a simple manner. The video itself is rather existentially enticing – is this only the start of AI or are we nearing its maximal capacity? Only time will tell.

🎶 "hate will never win" by xxxtentacion:

This is a very mellow song that I recently rediscovered. My relationship with xxxtentacion's music is very periodic. I used to listen to it a lot about five years ago, then I went through a time in which I listened exclusively to electronic music. In the past 2 years, I have started rediscovering my old musical preferences and it is a lot of fun!

That's all for today! Till next week!