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Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

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Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

#51

Post by tbrownaw »

...so some people develop their sills using something like RAD* tooling which lets them develop skills quickly, and some don't and end up taking longer but getting better eventual results?

Also, the ungated part doesn't say how they're measure "top" high-school vs university students. It doesn't match what I've heard about the persistence and consistency of basically all standardized tests; are they using within-school rankings for this? If so, that would fit perfectly with students being sorted during university selection.

.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_application_development

Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

#52

Post by darkfloo »

soperj wrote: post #18
truted2 wrote: post #8

> For example, world top-10 youth chess players and later world top-10 adult chess players are nearly 90% different individuals across time. Top secondary students and later top university students are also nearly 90% different people. Likewise, international-level youth athletes and later international-level adult athletes are nearly 90% different individuals. Motivation if you feel like you're young and failing

from sports i know (hockey), generally the next generational player is identified when they're like 12-13 years old (earlier for Gretzky). You look at the top scorers from the Brick Tournament(9-10 year old kids play in that tournament) from 10 years ago ( https://www.eliteprospects.com/league/brick-invitational/201... ), 3 of the top 5 scorers were drafted in the first round, and the top goalie was Team Canada's goa…

Can also offer anecdotal support from esports I know about (League of Legends , StarCraft 2, and counterstrike) For StarCraft 2 the best historical players are all child prodigies , same for Formula 1 , all recent World Champions are child prodigies

Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

#53

Post by maxbond »

gmadsen wrote: post #50
jongjong wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. My perspective is that fast learners are fast because they absorb information quickly without the overhead of cross-domain synthesis. They have more logical contradictions in their minds which they haven't resolved or aren't even aware of. Their worldview is not coherent as a whole. In some cases, they don't have a worldview; instead they just rely on expert data to inform their decisions... But the expe…

That is a very idealistic perspective. There are certainly fast learners due to the fact they are faster at cross domain synthesis.

In my experience when I am able to pick something up quickly it's because I can exploit cross domain knowledge. I have ready-made analogies to things I understand, or I understand the domain which informs the fundamentals of the new domain.

Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

#54

Post by zozbot234 »

Aurornis wrote: post #35
hockey wrote: post #32

Lower early life performance we with lots of multidisciplinary experience, later life hyperfocus on a specific discipline until world-class levels are reached. Sounds like they're describing ADHD. (Side note after the important ADHD joke: there's an old sport textbook called "Periodization" that mentions focusing on breadth rather than depth of sports experience in early life is a better path to olympic-level perform…

It’s amazing how far the pop-culture definition of ADHD has strayed from the medical definition. “Hyperfocus … until world class performance” is in no way consistent with the medical definition of ADHD. I’m well aware that “hyperfocus” is a prominent part of the Reddit and TikTok-ification of ADHD diagnostics, but being able to focus intensely on your job until you perform it at world class levels is decisively not i…

Hyperfocus is not about "focusing intensely on your job until you perform it at world-class level". The hyperfocus of ADHD is essentially random and driven by the very same inattentive "monkey mind" that's the defining feature of ADHD itself: it's not necessarily targeted to a productive task.

Those who face this issue can of course try to "gamify" their upcoming tasks to themselves in a way that will hopefully steer that focus in desirable directions, but that's not always easy. The monkey mind also resists ongoing habit formation, which is the tool most non-ADHD folks would generally resort to in order to effectively manage their overall schedule and just be more on-task.

Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

#55

Post by jongjong »

gmadsen wrote: post #50
jongjong wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. My perspective is that fast learners are fast because they absorb information quickly without the overhead of cross-domain synthesis. They have more logical contradictions in their minds which they haven't resolved or aren't even aware of. Their worldview is not coherent as a whole. In some cases, they don't have a worldview; instead they just rely on expert data to inform their decisions... But the expe…

That is a very idealistic perspective. There are certainly fast learners due to the fact they are faster at cross domain synthesis.

This does not match my observations. Also, what I've heard from experts is that 'intelligent' people are more suggestible. The way society measures intelligence is thinking speed; which tends to correlate with learning speed.

Some people learn surface-level information quickly without deep integration; what educational researchers sometimes call "shallow learning." And specialization can create blind spots.

Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

#56

Post by bsder »

soperj wrote: post #18
truted2 wrote: post #8

> For example, world top-10 youth chess players and later world top-10 adult chess players are nearly 90% different individuals across time. Top secondary students and later top university students are also nearly 90% different people. Likewise, international-level youth athletes and later international-level adult athletes are nearly 90% different individuals. Motivation if you feel like you're young and failing

from sports i know (hockey), generally the next generational player is identified when they're like 12-13 years old (earlier for Gretzky). You look at the top scorers from the Brick Tournament(9-10 year old kids play in that tournament) from 10 years ago ( https://www.eliteprospects.com/league/brick-invitational/201... ), 3 of the top 5 scorers were drafted in the first round, and the top goalie was Team Canada's goa…

> from sports i know (hockey), generally the next generational player is identified when they're like 12-13 years old (earlier for Gretzky).

Yeah, I'm really unconvinced by the paper.

1) Adult chess GMs all come from super advanced kids, now. Period. GM Ben Finegold talks about this at length.

2) We know that, for example, hockey success is correlated with birth month. This means that juniors who happen to be slightly larger and promising get more attention and coaching and so wind up being the world class adults, too.

I could be more convinced by academics and music that you need multi-disciplinary education to be world class, but I'd need to see a lot more evidence.

Nevertheless, the single thing I extract from my anecdata is that being top ten in a world class field requires a dedication bordering on psychotic mania. You have to be willing to not just go the extra mile but the mile beyond that and beyond that and ...

Most people are completely put out by the minimal amount of effort to get to the top 1% so they would be stunned by the amount of work you have to put in to get to top 10.

Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

#57

Post by gmadsen »

jongjong wrote: post #55
gmadsen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very idealistic perspective. There are certainly fast learners due to the fact they are faster at cross domain synthesis.

This does not match my observations. Also, what I've heard from experts is that 'intelligent' people are more suggestible. The way society measures intelligence is thinking speed; which tends to correlate with learning speed. Some people learn surface-level information quickly without deep integration; what educational researchers sometimes call "shallow learning." And specialization can create blind spots.

I'm sure there is an association between personality traits {openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism} with preferences to specialize or learn broadly. That is seperate from the phenomena of nearly all cognitive tasks being correlated with each other positively, e.g. verbal scores are positively correlated with math and musical scores. This is referred to as g-factor in literature.

My overall point being, yes people learn differently, but it is also true that there exists outliers in general intelligence

Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

#58

Post by wisty »

Aurornis wrote: post #35
hockey wrote: post #32

Lower early life performance we with lots of multidisciplinary experience, later life hyperfocus on a specific discipline until world-class levels are reached. Sounds like they're describing ADHD. (Side note after the important ADHD joke: there's an old sport textbook called "Periodization" that mentions focusing on breadth rather than depth of sports experience in early life is a better path to olympic-level perform…

It’s amazing how far the pop-culture definition of ADHD has strayed from the medical definition. “Hyperfocus … until world class performance” is in no way consistent with the medical definition of ADHD. I’m well aware that “hyperfocus” is a prominent part of the Reddit and TikTok-ification of ADHD diagnostics, but being able to focus intensely on your job until you perform it at world class levels is decisively not i…

I suspect it's partly diagnostic creep. Either real actual professional creep, or self diagnosis.

Some mental illnessess are extreme versions of traits that are often useful. It's good have one person in the village who frets about dangerous stuff, for example. Anxiety is useful at times.

But as you start to diagnose the very functional people who just need a few points to get a top uni course (or people self diagnose) ... well ... maybe you're picking up far less extreme and maladaptive versions of the trait.

Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

#59

Post by mjanx123 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #54
Aurornis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing how far the pop-culture definition of ADHD has strayed from the medical definition. “Hyperfocus … until world class performance” is in no way consistent with the medical definition of ADHD. I’m well aware that “hyperfocus” is a prominent part of the Reddit and TikTok-ification of ADHD diagnostics, but being able to focus intensely on your job until you perform it at world class levels is decisively not i…

Hyperfocus is not about "focusing intensely on your job until you perform it at world-class level". The hyperfocus of ADHD is essentially random and driven by the very same inattentive "monkey mind" that's the defining feature of ADHD itself: it's not necessarily targeted to a productive task. Those who face this issue can of course try to "gamify" their upcoming tasks to themselves in a way that will hopefully steer…

Its not random. The neurodivergent brain lacks the ability to perceive (some aspects of) the virtual social reality as something real and to focus on that. In a startup, where the problems at hand are objectively real, the ADHD hyperfocus can excel. In a typical corporation, where the situation is the opposite, it struggles.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9541695/

Re: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

#60

Post by Aurornis »

zozbot234 wrote: post #54
Aurornis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing how far the pop-culture definition of ADHD has strayed from the medical definition. “Hyperfocus … until world class performance” is in no way consistent with the medical definition of ADHD. I’m well aware that “hyperfocus” is a prominent part of the Reddit and TikTok-ification of ADHD diagnostics, but being able to focus intensely on your job until you perform it at world class levels is decisively not i…

Hyperfocus is not about "focusing intensely on your job until you perform it at world-class level". The hyperfocus of ADHD is essentially random and driven by the very same inattentive "monkey mind" that's the defining feature of ADHD itself: it's not necessarily targeted to a productive task. Those who face this issue can of course try to "gamify" their upcoming tasks to themselves in a way that will hopefully steer…

> Hyperfocus is not about "focusing intensely on your job until you perform it at world-class level"

I was responding to the comment that compared the high performing people in this article to a case of ADHD.

I agree that the features of ADHD are not consistent with intense, directed focus on specific goals as discussed in the article.

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