Age & Improvement

[Splatted]

A couple of years ago I asked my teacher if I was too old to become a professional double bassist. He said no, it wasn't actually that uncommon.

I was twenty.

Isn't the double bass weird in this respect (and others) in the orchestra? I remember reading before the varying ages needed to start an orchestra instrument at and it varied quite a bit based on how feasible playing one was at different ages. People normally start the clarinet at 8 or 9 if I recall correctly but people can start the violin many years earlier.

I can't remember exactly what was said but I don't think he was just talking about the double bass, and I think it's reading too much in to it to view the ages at which people normally start an instrument as evidence of what is necessary. Wind players generally start slightly later than violinists, but from what I've heard the positions are actually more competitive, so it seems pretty safe to say that the standard required isn't any less.

I guess what you're really implying is that the violin is harder than the clarinet, and so achieving that same professional standard requires an earlier start, but if that early start makes such a big difference why don't the clarinetists who started with younger squidgyer brains dominate their rivals? Their should be a clear stratification between the different levels of player and their starting ages, but there isn't.

In my opinion it's very likely that the difference in average starting age is significantly effected by social, cultural and practical factors. This is obviously just speculation, but there are many questions that come to mind: what caused them to take it up? Why on earth did they practice so hard? What age is it actually possible for a child to be able to play that? etc. For professional violinists "Because their parents made them" seems to be a pretty common answer to the first two questions, but what about the other instruments? What about the tuba? It doesn't seem at all stange that different instruments have different average starting ages that are entirely unrelated to what is required to become a professional.

P.s. My teacher never said anything about 1st desk, but we both no I'm not going to practice that hard anyway.

P.p.s. I didn't start playing at 20, the point of my anecdote was just that I was a bad player who was well past what many consider to be the critical period. I actually started double bass when I was 17 and had already been playing violin since I was 9 or 10.

[Boidhre]

A couple of years ago I asked my teacher if I was too old to become a professional double bassist. He said no, it wasn't actually that uncommon.

I was twenty.

Isn't the double bass weird in this respect (and others) in the orchestra? I remember reading before the varying ages needed to start an orchestra instrument at and it varied quite a bit based on how feasible playing one was at different ages. People normally start the clarinet at 8 or 9 if I recall correctly but people can start the violin many years earlier.

I can't remember exactly what was said but I don't think he was just talking about the double bass, and I think it's reading too much in to it to view the ages at which people normally start an instrument as evidence of what is necessary. Wind players generally start slightly later than violinists, but from what I've heard the positions are actually more competitive, so it seems pretty safe to say that the standard required isn't any less.

I guess what you're really implying is that the violin is harder than the clarinet, and so achieving that same professional standard requires an earlier start, but if that early start makes such a big difference why don't the clarinetists who started with younger squidgyer brains dominate their rivals? Their should be a clear stratification between the different levels of player and their starting ages, but there isn't.

In my opinion it's very likely that the difference in average starting age is significantly effected by social, cultural and practical factors. This is obviously just speculation, but there are many questions that come to mind: what caused them to take it up? Why on earth did they practice so hard? What age is it actually possible for a child to be able to play that? etc. For professional violinists "Because their parents made them" seems to be a pretty common answer to the first two questions, but what about the other instruments? What about the tuba? It doesn't seem at all stange that different instruments have different average starting ages that are entirely unrelated to what is required to become a professional.

P.s. My teacher never said anything about 1st desk, but we both no I'm not going to practice that hard anyway.

P.p.s. I didn't start playing at 20, the point of my anecdote was just that I was a bad player who was well past what many consider to be the critical period. I actually started double bass when I was 17 and had already been playing violin since I was 9 or 10.

No, I wasn't implying that the violin is harder to master*. I was more implying that if you start the violin at 12 you're going to be at a bigger disadvantage than someone starting the clarinet at 12 because you'll have lost more years of potential practice and training. Whether this can prevent a person finding a position in a professional orchestra is something that I don't know, but I can't see how it doesn't make life harder for them unless they spent their previous years learning a related instrument and have some transferable skills or knowledge.


*Master is a dangerous word here. For a professional absolute mastery is not as important as mastery of the pieces you need to be able to play. Instruments vary in how technically challenging the standard material is for them. Further soloists face more demands on their technical skill usually. It depends on your job and role.

[Splatted]

Okay, but I'm not really sure how that's relevant. (Possibly because it's 4am) It's easy to see how that headstart would affect your chances of getting in to a conservatoir at 18, but what I thought we were discussing is whether you could make up for that by practicing for a few more years and then tread that path as an older student.

[Boidhre]

Okay, but I'm not really sure how that's relevant. (Possibly because it's 4am) It's easy to see how that headstart would affect your chances of getting in to a conservatoir at 18, but what I thought we were discussing is whether you could make up for that by practicing for a few more years and then tread that path as an older student.

Yeah, I find it confusing too. Are we interested in someone scraping their way into a lower tier professional or semi-professional orchestra (still beyond the reach of the vast majority who pick up a violin or cello) or are we talking about in-demand concert soloists? Does this change things? Are such people separated more by raw talent than anything else?



With respect to go. It's something you really don't require any life experience (in the broad sense) to be exceptional at (a child can write a novel, but novels by children with emotional or thematic depth are rare as hens teeth), nor do you require the physical attributes of adulthood (the greater strength and stamina, it doesn't matter how gifted a 5 year old pianist is, there are pieces they simply cannot play because their arms can't reach or their hands aren't big enough to form the chords). The games of go themselves are relatively short, in the correct environment it shouldn't be hard to gain a lot of experience in the game itself, compared to many other endeavours which are trickier to get experience due to either it being rare to get a chance to do the activity (e.g actually running a marathon, there's a physical limit to how many of these you can run a year for most people and it's rather low) or the activity taking a long time to do (writing a novel for instance, you're not going to churn out several a week).

Go to me looks ideally placed for mastery by children. If you have talent and are in an environment where you can devote yourself completely to it, there isn't anything with regard your age that'll hold you back in terms of physical attributes or life experience. Mental attitude and similar may, but again environment is important here. Perhaps the answer to why go stars peak young is, similar to mathematics, it's one of the few fields where you can be brilliant from a shockingly young age.


Anyway it's late and I'm rambling too much as usual.

[billywoods]

what I thought we were discussing is whether you could make up for that by practicing for a few more years and then tread that path as an older student.

I find this a very interesting topic, but it's difficult to talk about it in any interesting way. I want to conjecture something like the following: if a child who starts playing the violin at 8 years old can join a conservatoire at 18 (I'm making these numbers up...) by practising lots, then an adult who starts playing the violin at 18 and follows the same practice routine can join a conservatoire around 28. That is, crudely, if it takes about 10000 hours of practice for an 8-year-old, it takes about 10000 hours for an 18-year-old. I may be wrong, but hey - can we even find out? Is there a statistically significant sample of people who started around 18 and were able to follow the same practice regimen that a child can? Probably not: work, study, family, lack of external pressure, lack of self-motivation, lack of confidence and lack of ambition probably reduce our sample size to a very small handful. And then we do the socially unhelpful thing of calling those people prodigies, and crushing the dreams of anyone else who wanted to follow in their footsteps.

[lemmata]

Becoming a pro in any sport (including go) is a difficult task regardless of the age at which you start training. For go pros, the extra tricky thing is that you must be stronger than the vast majority of existing pros in order to be certified as a new pro. To achieve that level of strength is a truly monumental task indeed.

If we are talking about reaching Tygem 8 dan (or bottom-rung 9 dan) strength, then I think that a person in his 20s need not despair. Frankly, I feel that a person in his 40s could do it if he had the right guidance and sufficient self-discipline. Of course, those two conditions are nontrivial...but it is known where good teachers can be found and the second part is a matter of willpower.

Oh yeah, this is probably impossible if you have kids...but most 20-somethings don't.

[EdLee]

For go pros, the extra tricky thing is that you must be stronger than the vast majority of existing pros in order to be certified as a new pro.

I believe this is false. What is the source of this information?
In China, Japan, and Korea, my understanding is one has to achieve a certain win-loss threshold
in the annual pro qualifying tournament. In other words, one has to make it into the "Top N" slots
(where N is different in each of China, Japan, and Korea), so the candidate has to beat the vast majority
of the amateurs, not pros, who are also taking the same pro qualifying tournament.

[HermanHiddema]

For what it's worth, most of us answered you seriously: age doesn't affect very much except how much motivation and time you have, how good your concentration span is, how likely you are to put up with boring practice rituals, and so on. Your brain does deteriorate, but the effect of it on an average 23-year-old is dwarfed so much by all the other factors that you can't even notice it.

I still wonder why so many people in this thread seem to think this is true. An unwillingness to accept that they have limitations?

The truth of the matter is that there are no examples of people making professional when starting in their twenties, no matter how much time they put in it. Meanwhile, there are kids that make professional by age 11 or 12, so they have had perhaps 6 years to get that far. Surely someone in their twenties can put in a similar amount of time and effort in, say, 10 years?

All the evidence we have indicates that starting age is extremely important.

[hyperpape]

Surely someone in their twenties can put in a similar amount of time and effort in, say, 10 years?

How many actual examples of anyone putting that time and effort in during their twenties do we actually have?

Here's someone's attempt with golf: http://thedanplan.com/

(I tend to agree with you Herman, but I'm playing devil's advocate).

[Boidhre]

For what it's worth, most of us answered you seriously: age doesn't affect very much except how much motivation and time you have, how good your concentration span is, how likely you are to put up with boring practice rituals, and so on. Your brain does deteriorate, but the effect of it on an average 23-year-old is dwarfed so much by all the other factors that you can't even notice it.

I still wonder why so many people in this thread seem to think this is true. An unwillingness to accept that they have limitations?

The truth of the matter is that there are no examples of people making professional when starting in their twenties, no matter how much time they put in it. Meanwhile, there are kids that make professional by age 11 or 12, so they have had perhaps 6 years to get that far. Surely someone in their twenties can put in a similar amount of time and effort in, say, 10 years?

All the evidence we have indicates that starting age is extremely important.

I think people are confusing becoming very, very good at something relative to most people (say 5d EGF) with getting to the very top. Which is what lemmata was getting at.

[HermanHiddema]

Surely someone in their twenties can put in a similar amount of time and effort in, say, 10 years?

How many actual examples of anyone putting that time and effort in during their twenties do we actually have?

Here's someone's attempt with golf: http://thedanplan.com/

(I tend to agree with you Herman, but I'm playing devil's advocate).

I have no idea, I don't know how much time most people have put in. I think the best chance of making it would be if you are from Japan, Korea or China, as you would have much easier access to professional teaching during those ten years, and to strong opponents for practice. But I don't know if I know any Asian players who started as adults.

Still, I have not heard of even one example. I think if someone became pro in their late twenties or thirties after only starting as an adult, it would generate plenty of interest. Until such time as such a case is reported, I will remain sceptical.

[Polama]

Some possibilities for why people at the top of certain skills start young:
1) There is something fundamentally different about a young child's capacity for learning.
2) Children are forming routines for the first time: it may be much easier to practice 10 hour days as a first routine then switch to it later in life.
3) Young children have much more free time.
4) Some spark of natural talent and interest seems necessary. It may be unusual for a prodigy to make it to 20 without any exposure to their natural predilection.
5) If a 9 year old and a 30 year old reach comparable levels of excellence after 3 years of practice, we view the 9 year old as far more talented. Partially it's, 'wow, she's so young!', partially it's 'if he improved that much already, what will he be in 20 years???', while the 30 year old we perceive as probably at their peak already. It's easy to mistakenly make linear extrapolations in improvement, not 'wow, this 12 year old already reached close to their peak', but 'their peak must be twice as good as they are now!'
6) Similarly, if it's accepted that top violinists always start by 5, and it takes 10 years to reach mastery, it may be very difficult for a 15 year old to find top quality teachers willing to put the time and encouragement in to helping the student reach an elite status. It may be hard to convince orchestras that this 25 year old they've never heard of is one of the best in the world.

I can believe it's any and all of those. Ultimately, we still don't understand the brain particularly well.

[wineandgolover]

G. H. Hardy, wrote in his 1940 memoir, A Mathematician’s Apology, “No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man’s game.”

We all know the pictures of old Einstein. But E=Mc^2 was derived when he was 26. There are many similar examples.

Do mathematicians gets stupid once they hit their 30's? No. But their most insightful, innovative days are behind them.

There is no reason to believe go is any different. And, all the real-world evidence says it isn't. Strong pros may stay strong into their 30's and well beyond, but they don't become strong in their 30's.

[Magicwand]

1) Young people will have less preconception. Their minds are free to think and make a judgement on its own.
which means that their creativity is always greater than older person.
2) Young people will have better mental concentration than older person.
I am sure Cho hunhyun can value position well as young players but he can no longer maintain the level of concentration as he did during his prime. I notice that i make dumb mistakes lately and i didnt have that problem when i was younger.
3) I know at least one case in korea where they learned the game after 20 and became professional. then again..it was long time ago and level of professionals were far weaker than now and also he was never the top professional.
4) Einstein was never good at math and i pointed that out before in this forum before. and i am not trolling.

final thought: if you learn this game over 20 years of age anyone can reach strong 5d possibly 7d. BUT past that??? i think it is very very hard.

[HermanHiddema]

4) Einstein was never good at math and i pointed that out before in this forum before.

Well known urban legend, actually: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php ... in-school/