Life In 19x19

An update: 3,997 Hours to go before 10,000

I guess I heard about this story in "The Sports Gene". It's too bad that he has back problems, but it is also true that in most of the things I personally have worked really hard to improve on, at some point the accumulated fatigue of simply trying to put in the practice time becomes a real obstacle in itself. I was an avid golfer for a while and had a variety of overuse injuries because I wanted to work hard to get better.

This is also very true for me in Go--mental fatigue sort of sneaks up on me until my level drops really badly, and because I want to do a lot of Go to get better and I got a late start, I end up with a dilemma about whether to take a break for a while and (it feels at the time) progress even more slowly or keep grinding away even though I think it's probably not helping.

Being able to complete 10,000 hours of training focused on improvement in anything in less than a decade is really an accomplishment in itself imo whether you achieve mastery (whatever that means) or not.

An aside about how good pro golfers are, though obviously the same thing is true in Go: This guy is now at a 2.x handicap after 6,003 hours of deliberate practice. To a reasonable degree of approximation his chances of being good enough to play in a professional golf event have not changed since he started playing.

The whole 10,000 hours thing is confusion between "necessary" and "sufficient" conditions.

It may well be necessary to put in 10,000 hours to achieve mastery.

That does NOT mean that 10,000 hours are sufficient to achieve mastery.

It may also be necessary to have the innate talent.

In other words, talent plus practice => mastery. Just talent or just practice not enough.

It's still 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. And when I remember correctly innate talent was pretty much dismissed in the studies from Ericsson et al (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blo ... iew%29.pdf).

For example: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_an ... genes.html

Mike Novack wrote:The whole 10,000 hours thing is confusion between "necessary" and "sufficient" conditions.

It may well be necessary to put in 10,000 hours to achieve mastery.

That does NOT mean that 10,000 hours are sufficient to achieve mastery.

It may also be necessary to have the innate talent.

In other words, talent plus practice => mastery. Just talent or just practice not enough.

I agree that this 10,000 hours concept really must come with some caveats. Talent is not the only factor. There are many other qualities such as age, physique or mental toughness that might prove to be limitations. A short, stout, fifty year old won't become a great swimmer no matter how long he paddles about.

Ortho wrote:For example: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_an ... genes.html

Uh, a headline all dressed up but nowhere to go.

There is no source claiming you can't reach an expert status through deliberate practice. There is also no source claiming, that you can't reach an expert status because of your genes. There are a lot of studies that show that deliberate practice for around 10,000 hours is not all there is to reach an expert status and that within the expert group there can be quite the difference between experts.

The important bottom line regarding the expert status is - as far as I understand it: 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are no guarantee to reach expert status. On the other hand it's also not the minimum amount required, you can be faster, too. It's a rule of thumb, not a law. There is nothing preventing you to become an expert in any given field (except maybe sports where a specific body type is required), though you might not be the best expert there is.

I've not thought about or studied the field much, but do believe there is such a thing as innate talent which plays a significant role in your proficiency in various fields. The Polgar sisters are an interesting case though. Was it just by chance that girls with a huge talent for chess happened to be born to an educationalist who wanted to test the "geniuses are made not born" idea? For sure coming from an intelligent family means you'll get some decent genes and a supportive upbringing, but is just some general smarts plus their training enough to make Judit Polgar's chess strength. I wonder what would have happened if Laszlo Polgar had an adopted child too. Or a boy (when compared to men Susan and Sofia aren't so exceptional, but then Susan has apparently said Judit didn't have the most talent of the 3 but worked very hard).

Musicians know that good practice technique is necessary to get to a high level of skill. If you can't play a particular passage just repeating it over and over won't help, you have to think about it and figure out what it is about your playing that makes that passage difficult. In other words, mindful practice is necessary.

In go just memorizing the joseki dictionary or playing 10000 (mindless) blitz games won't get you to dan level.

Uberdude wrote:I've not thought about or studied the field much, but do believe there is such a thing as innate talent which plays a significant role in your proficiency in various fields. The Polgar sisters are an interesting case though. Was it just by chance that girls with a huge talent for chess happened to be born to an educationalist who wanted to test the "geniuses are made not born" idea? For sure coming from an intelligent family means you'll get some decent genes and a supportive upbringing, but is just some general smarts plus their training enough to make Judit Polgar's chess strength. I wonder what would have happened if Laszlo Polgar had an adopted child too. Or a boy (when compared to men Susan and Sofia aren't so exceptional, but then Susan has apparently said Judit didn't have the most talent of the 3 but worked very hard).

From what I've read and what I "feel" talentjust serves as a bootstrap: you enjoy it a little more, so practice more, so in the end are ahead in time devoted to it.

Mozart gave a new student an assignment to write a short chorale. The student complained that Mozart had written a whole symphony at age 6. To which Mozart replied, "Yes, but nobody had to tell me how to do it."

I think Dan is doing just fine with his 6,000 hours to be in the top 5% of golfers who have a handicap in a country where golf is very popular. Consider being in the top 5% of rated baduk players in Korea. Anyone able to do that---especially starting later in life than the elites did---that's not too shabby.