

The Illusion of Winning - cwan
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_illusion_of_winning/

======
kenjackson
I find the following long quote a bit of a tangent,but for some reason I find
it relevant:

" How long will you need to find your truest, most productive niche? This I
cannot predict, for, sadly, access to a podium confers no gift of prophecy.
But I can say that however long it takes, it will be time well spent. I am
reminded of a friend from the early 1970s, Edward Witten. I liked Ed, but felt
sorry for him, too, because, for all his potential, he lacked focus. He had
been a history major in college, and a linguistics minor. On graduating,
though, he concluded that, as rewarding as these fields had been, he was not
really cut out to make a living at them. He decided that what he was really
meant to do was study economics. And so, he applied to graduate school, and
was accepted at the University of Wisconsin. And, after only a semester, he
dropped out of the program. Not for him. So, history was out; linguistics,
out; economics, out. What to do? This was a time of widespread political
activism, and Ed became an aide to Senator George McGovern, then running for
the presidency on an anti-war platform. He also wrote articles for political
journals like the Nation and the New Republic. After some months, Ed realized
that politics was not for him, because, in his words, it demanded qualities he
did not have, foremost among them common sense. All right, then: history,
linguistics, economics, politics, were all out as career choices. What to do?
Ed suddenly realized that he was really suited to study mathematics. So he
applied to graduate school, and was accepted at Princeton. I met him midway
through his first year there--just after he had dropped out of the mathematics
department. He realized, he said, that what he was really meant to do was
study physics; he applied to the physics department, and was accepted.

I was happy for him. But I lamented all the false starts he had made, and how
his career opportunities appeared to be passing him by. Many years later, in
1987, I was reading the New York Times magazine and saw a full-page picture
akin to a mug shot, of a thin man with a large head staring out of thick
glasses. It was Ed Witten! I was stunned. What was he doing in the Times
magazine? Well, he was being profiled as the Einstein of his age, a pioneer of
a revolution in physics called "String Theory." Colleagues at Harvard and
Princeton, who marvelled at his use of bizarre mathematics to solve physics
problems, claimed that his ideas, popularly called a "theory of everything,"
might at last explain the origins and nature of the cosmos. Ed said modestly
of his theories that it was really much easier to solve problems when you
analyzed them in at least ten dimensions. Perhaps. Much clearer to me was an
observation Ed made that appeared near the end of this article: every one of
us has talent; the great challenge in life is finding an outlet to express it.
I thought, he has truly earned the right to say that. And I realized that, for
all my earlier concerns that he had squandered his time, in fact his entire
career path--the ventures in history, linguistics, economics, politics, math,
as well as physics--had been rewarding: a time of hard work, self-discovery,
and new insight into his potential based on growing experience."

<http://www.colby.edu/colby.mag/issues/84n3/ivory.html>

~~~
gaius
I don't know what it was like back then, if anyone could get hired for
anything, but someone who can apparently breeze into such disparate roles as
political spin doctor and graduate student in mathematics must be seriously,
seriously talented... He was going to succeed at whatever he finally decided
to put his mind to.

~~~
vecter
Ed Witten showed mathematical precocity at an early age:
<http://www.maa.org/pubs/mar04.pdf> (page 28). Without exposure during his
youth, it's almost impossible he could've completed a PhD in math at
Princeton.

~~~
volski
He has a PhD in physics, not math.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Witten>

~~~
vecter
My apologies, it was in (mathematical) physics.

Though, from the wiki article:

Sir Michael Atiyah said of Witten, "Although he is definitely a physicist, his
command of mathematics is rivaled by few mathematicians... Time and again he
has surprised the mathematical community by a brilliant application of
physical insight leading to new and deep mathematical theorems... he has made
a profound impact on contemporary mathematics. In his hands physics is once
again providing a rich source of inspiration and insight in mathematics."[6]
One such example of his impact on pure mathematics is his framework for
understanding the Jones polynomial using Chern–Simons theory. This had far
reaching implications on low-dimensional topology and led to quantum
invariants such as the Witten–Reshetikhin–Turaev invariants.

Even if his degree is in physics, and he's part of the "physics department" at
IAS, I would classify him as a brilliant mathematician who decided to apply
his energy to his passion, physics. And, come on, the guy won a Fields Medal.

------
kenjackson
I think Adams makes a couple of mistakes in his post.

1) He implies that practice is something to be less proud of than inherent
ability to play pool. Life is all about making decisions to
practice/pursue/play certain things over another.

The other thing is that few people have the willpower/dediction/stamina to
devote time to activities that truly challenge them. Sure, I can play
chopsticks on a piano, but beyond that I couldn't sit still. Yet, I don't hear
a great musician and think, "They just practiced more than I did."

That's why certain activities are viewed with more respect. For example, being
great at Modern Warfare 2 is not something that will win you much praise.
People don't view it as taking much willpower to play a video game for hours
on end. It's kind of like the default state of most people. But people will
likely praise you for being great at math.

2) He also seems to think that inherent ability plays no role (I presume that
5% luck, is luck in the instance of the game, not luck being gifted at it).
While practice is important. I suspect there is probably large variance in the
initial condition of various people for various activities.

The only thing you can probably be confident of is that with good practice you
will improve. But no guarantee that if you do more hours of practice than
another person that you will be better.

Tracking something like this in class I suspect is more likely to actually
teach kids that practice isn't sufficient. In fifth grade I spent many of
hours trying to breakdance, and I never could do a headspin that friends of
mine could do almost out the womb. I think I'd only be more discouraged to see
how much time I wasted on it. Although looking back, it was worth it, and it
strengthened my upper body for other activities. I just can't head spin for
some reason.

~~~
tajddin
Not to mention the fact that while practice and genetics are extremely
important at finding success, innate enjoyment/passion is also a major factor.
I can think of several things that I'm particularly good at and have practiced
a lot on, yet don't enjoy -- soccer being one of them.

I think that there's such a thing as a 'calling in life' and that's why people
stand out -- it's a combo of genetics, practice and passion. One would think
that vision is a genetic prerequisite to playing the piano, and yet there are
people like Stevie Wonder who've surpassed anyone's expectations.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Another observation following from the example of Stevie Wonder: if you
compare, say, "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" with "I Just Called To Say I Love
You", it's not at all clear that more practice makes you better.

------
tommynazareth
Adams doesn't address the issue of quality of practice. Practice makes
permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.

There is a huge advantage to practicing something useful even if you're not
very good compared to the best. Like he says, he can beat 99% of people in
eight ball, even though he'd probably be easily defeated by most
professionals. Of course, playing billiards is pretty much useless. I don't
consider my computer skills in any area to be top notch, but when I help out
non-technical people they think I am some kind of wizard. I say "hey, I barely
did anything!", but to them any interaction with a computer is a complete
mystery. So I'm not a great programmer, and I'm definitely not a great
sysadmin, but with just some basic skills 99% of people will defer to mean on
technical issues.

I agree that this is a vital lesson to teach kids. It is even more important
to give them the freedom and support to discover what endeavor they really
want to apply that effort to.

------
nbashaw
Adams has a point about using pool in schools to teach the correlation between
effort and effectiveness.

His experiment might have interesting side effects. Number of hours spent
practicing isn't the only variable that affects skill - it matters what type
of practice you do. The kids who practice deeply and push themselves to the
limit of their abilities will see much greater return on their investment of
time. The kids who just mess around won't get that much better.

It would be interesting to see the look on the kid's face who spent 100 hours
practicing over the course of a year, after he gets beaten by the kid who
spent 50 hours practicing. I wonder if he'd understand the concept of
"intentional practice", or if he'd just be humiliated.

Just another example of how easy it is to measure the wrong thing.

------
nkurz
I think this is a better article than most of the commenters here imply. I
think Adams realizes that genetics plays a role, that there is such a thing as
good and bad practice. But he's not claiming any universals: rather he's
proposing a deft experiment to show how ability correlates to practice rather
than to innate talent with regard to one particular arbitrary skill.

I don't know exactly how his experiment would turn out. And it would be hard
to decorrelate practice time from innate ability --- I certainly find it
difficult to keep dedicating time toward activities in which I see no progress
being made. But it's a good experiment, and a style of reality-based learning
we should encourage.

My intuition is that he's right, and that the winners would be dominated by
those who spent the most time practicing. But I'd love to have real numbers
against which to test that intuition.

~~~
WilliamLP
> I don't know exactly how his experiment would turn out.

I'm sure there would be correlation, but I suspect that it would be very far
from perfect, possibly because of talent or inadvertently (or deliberately)
discovering better and more effective ways to practice.

I'm reminded me of when I was a kid and played chess with a friend a lot. At
first I could beat him and we played about the same amount but suddenly he
inexplicably got far better than me. It bugged the hell out of me:)

So I think the result of Adams' "lesson" would actually be to teach people
that they have strengths and weaknesses, and practice helps a lot, but it will
(rather quickly) get swamped by talent in any realistic endeavor. And results
might also be strongly affected by effective coaching or acquiring specific
knowledge to make those hours of practice dramatically more effective.

------
aasarava
Wait a minute -- doesn't school already offer repeated examples of the effects
of practice on results? After all, what is studying but practice? And what is
an exam, but a way to measure one's skills (and therefore compare them)?

In other words, this message is already pounded into students' heads every
day.

The problem is, there's not always a direct link between the number of hours
of studying and a student's grade on a test. How many times have you or a
friend spent hours and hours preparing for a test only to get a barely passing
grade, when the guy in the next row barely studied but got an A?

Incidents like these tend to be demotivating and have the opposite effect of
what Adams is striving for. Students then feel that effort _doesn't_ yield
results. Sometimes they just give up and stop expending more effort.

Certainly that's not the correct reaction. (Those students should get help
adjusting the way they study and what they study until their effort pays off.)
But I imagine it's probably the same reaction that you'd get if you were to
try an experiment like Adams is suggesting with 8-ball or bowling or soccer or
whatever activity you choose.

~~~
praptak
_"Wait a minute -- doesn't school already offer repeated examples of the
effects of practice on results?"_

No, not in the sense that Adams proposes. The key factor is missing, that is
the published practice logs.

~~~
dcx
This is true. I did high school in Western Australia, where your university
admission is determined by a percentile scaled factoring in your peers'
scores, school and other information. It's complex but the end result is a
very fair system. However an unfortunate side effect is that your classmates'
scores going down makes your score goes up.

We found out years after graduation that there were quite a few students who
actively hid the amount of study and after-school tuition they did, possibly
due to the above incentive. In school they felt like naturally talented
geniuses, which made it feel futile to compete.

Kids don't really have a clear picture of hard work creating ability, because
in their experience they only see talent and potential, not end results. I
think Adams' idea would be a pretty good demonstration of this.

------
scotch_drinker
Calling athletes "freaks of nature" does both a disservice to athletes in
general and his argument in particular. He falls into the same trap of missing
the fact that regardless of talent or genetics, if you don't work your tail
off, you aren't ever going to amount to much. Just because you're born tall,
doesn't mean you can play basketball any more than if you're born as Scott
Adams, you can play pool. It still takes an inordinate amount of work to
become a "professional" at anything regardless of your starting point.

I don't see how it's impractical to keep a log of how much time you spend
practicing something. It can be as simple as placing an X on a calendar or as
complex as keeping a detailed journal. Once a person does that, they can
typically begin to track their personal progress in any particular skill.

~~~
briancooley
The point isn't really that athletes don't work their tail off. The point is
that, because of the small number of available slots, professional athletes
tend to be the intersection of the sets {people who work the hardest} and
{people who are the most genetically gifted}.

The fact is, the average person couldn't become a professional athlete no
matter how hard they worked. That causes athletes' genetic gifts to overshadow
their hard work.

~~~
pg
That sounds plausible, but it is pretty hard to verify.

~~~
Retric
The following men won gold in a solo swimming even in 2008.

    
    
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Phelps
      6 ft 4 in
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Bernard
      6 ft 5 in
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9sar_Cielo_Filho
      6 ft 5 in
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Tae_Hwan
      6 ft in
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oussama_Mellouli
      6 ft 3 in http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/TUN/Oussama+Mellouli/217537
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Peirsol
      6 ft 4 in 
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Lochte
      6 ft 2 in   
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosuke_Kitajima
      5 ft 10 in 
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maarten_van_der_Weijden (10 km marathon)
      6 ft 7 1⁄2 in 
    

Height is not the most important factor in swimming, but out of 10 people,
only one was under 6' and he is still taller than average. Now look at
something like size of hands and they are going to stand out even more.
Practice may be able to get an average person to the 90th percentile in most
things but once you start talking about 99.99% DNA becomes extremely
important.

~~~
pg
This was the part I meant was plausible but hard to verify:

    
    
        That causes athletes' genetic gifts to 
        overshadow their hard work.
    

Obviously successful swimmers have to be tall, but merely being 6' 4" isn't
the sort of genetic gift that's so rare it outweighs effort.

~~~
briancooley
I should have added "in the minds of observers." to make that sentence
clearer. It's more a statement about human nature than the relative weighting
of the ingredients most vital to elite athletic success.

------
alan-crowe
I couldn't find any warning that practising doing it wrong counts against you.
Thinking back to when I was ten years old and we practised sums in school I
would get nine out of ten of while many in the class would get four out of
ten.

We diverged and I went on to study mathematics at Cambridge, but I'm left with
a question about the origin of the divergence. At ten years old I wasn't
putting in extra hours on arithmetic. On the other hand, if you only get four
out of ten there is probably a reason, such as not understanding carrying.
When you add up, with carries stuck in at random as you hope for the best, you
both get half marks, and you practise doing it wrong. What is the value of an
hour of practising doing it wrong? 1/2? 0? -1? -2?

~~~
lars512
To drill into your example more, I think that many small issues in proficiency
get carried on through schooling, especially in areas like mathematics. My
little sister-in-law was having trouble with it at school, and started doing
some Kumon method remedial classes.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumon_method>

The material was embarrassingly simple for her, but speed and accuracy
improvements at this simple level suddenly made the more difficult mathematics
her peers were studying accessible, and her ability picked up substantially.

I'd say this is an example, not so much of practicing doing it wrong, but of
practicing the wrong thing for her level. Given that skills build on on
another, plenty of people might be practicing later skills poorly, instead of
the base skills they really need to progress.

------
yason
I don't believe that winning others is a sustainable source of motivation in
the first place.

A true master must learn to love one-upping himself again and again. Otherwise
his skills are dependent on continuously finding someone greater to compete
against. This becomes harder and harder when he gets better.

Similarly I believe that you can't build a successful business solely based on
beating the competition. People talk about competitiveness and competence all
the time and I smell false. I think that success is a side-effect of doing
what you can't not do.

------
runT1ME
He's missing the differentiation between strategy and execution when it comes
to games. From what I understand of pool, the strategy isn't overly
complicated and, while the execution takes thousands of hours of practice to
have the required manual dexterity, it is probably achievable by a good
percentage of the population.

However, lets look at something like basketball. The vast majority of the
population, no matter how much practice, will never be able to dribble a ball
as quick as Kobe Bryant, or jump five a five foot vertical, etc.

Chess, on the other hand, has almost no 'execution' barrier to entry. Most
everyone can move pieces around and understand the rules. However, the
strategy and mental state one needs to be in takes a lot of both practice
_and_ innate ability. I'm sure if you took his experiment of seeing how much
people practiced chess, the winner would _not_ be the one who practiced the
most.

------
yters
A third variable is inventiveness. While such may occur through practice,
practice does not guarantee inventiveness. I would argue that it is ultimately
the inventive and tenacious choices made during a game leading to a win which
people actually enjoy. Such choices can be conditioned by practice and talent,
but ultimately are not reducible to such.

Here is a personal anecdote to illustrate my point. I was part of a bowling
league for a season. I sucked at bowling, and had trouble breaking 70.
Throughout the season my teammates patiently critiqued my style and gave me
advice until I gradually learned to line up the ball with the arrows and bowl
straight. It was very tedious and boring, but I improved per Scott's
observation. At the end my high game broke 120.

Then I stopped bowling for about 2 years. On a whim, some friends and I bowled
a game. This time I decided to discard everything I learned and just make up
my own style, which was more fun. During that game I invented my own technique
of curving the ball. However, instead of the gradual, painful process of
"practice" and slow accumulation of points I dramatically improved my game,
beating my friends despite my lack of practice and rusted skill.

After about 6 visits to a bowling lane over the course of another 2 years I
regularly score in the 130s and 140s. Additionally, bowling is now very
enjoyable and the game is intuitive.

The difference between the two techniques is quite dramatic. When I switch
back to straight bowling my score drops again and I have difficulty climbing
above 100. However, I am more consistent with straight bowling. Curve bowling
has a much higher variance in score (from a recent game): X, 00, X, /, X00.
So, I combine the two techniques and arrive at an augmentation of Scott's
view: practiced skill plus innovation/intuition.

------
doki_pen
I don't like that he mentions music. Music should be about self expression and
not competition. It is rewarding, even if you suck at it, and _most_ real
musicians would never put someone down for not having fully developed skills,
but instead try to appreciate what skills they have developed.

~~~
danbmil99
There's also a counter-intuitive: some expression almost requires a lack of
finesse. REM changed which instruments they played at some point because they
were "sounding too professional" or something like that.

Punk Rock was not about practice.

------
skowmunk
I agree with the point that Adam makes about practice being so important.

Yet, I would also have to disagree, because that may not be the complete
picture, but just part of it.

This is how I would put my reason for disagreement:

Where the inherent talent is the same between two people, the one with the
higher amount of practice would have higher chances to win.

and

Where the amount of practice is the same, the one with the higher inherent
talent would have higher chances to win.

What would happen, when they are more or less evenly matched in talent and
practice? Someother factors must be at play.

creativity? Mental, physical and emotional stamina? Ability to perform under
severe stress?

Nevertheless, a nice thought illustrated well.

------
famousactress
The statistics thrown out seem silly. 95/5% ? Sure.. Maybe if you're really,
really, really good.. But as you approach someone with similar skills, your
chances of winning drop off.. Probably exponentially. Also, practice is far
from everything. Are two people who've never played just as likely to win?
Even if they're playing eachother? :). But seriously, there's all kinds of
aptitudes and tendencies, and the specific effects of two players individual
style/skills affecting the outcome. Winning is finding a way to take whatever
odds you show up with and gaming your resources to tip them in your favor.
This article ought to be titled "winning is boring because I'm better than,
like, everyone."

------
run4yourlives
Winning is a requirement of competition. (School systems take note). From
competition comes the very best of the human species; often along with the
very worst.

To say that winning is an illusion is to miss this larger reality. Individual
wins are irrelevant in most cases, because they are only symptoms of a much
more profound and important behavior. Ironically, winning is the most
important thing in the world to the human species.

Unless you have some other method to achieve the best of the human species,
I'd be careful how much hatred you direct towards competition by discounting
winning.

------
proee
Practice doesn't make perfect. It only get you 80% there and the remaining 20%
is from a combination of sweat-equity and talent.

At some point, the efforts of B-grade practice sessions result in a saturated
level of performance.

If there's something we should teach our kids, it's that doing "OK" is not
good enough - you should focus on doing YOUR BEST.

The spirit of competition and "winning" is that you are giving 100% of your
effort to the goal at hand - be it winning a race or leaning a new hacking
skill.

~~~
ggchappell
> Practice doesn't make perfect. It only get you 80% there and the remaining
> 20% is from a combination of sweat-equity and talent.

Is there a difference between _practice_ and _sweat-equity_?

~~~
proee
Touche' I probably need to think through that line a little better.

------
roadnottaken
I think the experiment that Scott Adams suggests would be a dismal failure. I
think some kids would be naturally good and others naturally bad. Among people
with similar natural talent, practice would be the main determinant of
success. But natural talent likely varies so widely that this correlation
would get lost in the noise, and most of the participants would come away with
the wrong message.

Or is it the right message?

------
antirez
practice is what you need to be good at everything, but the same amount of
practice will lead to very different performances between individuals...

Not just that, maybe I can have the same amount of pool skill than other
people from the point of view of number of game won, but I'll have my stile
that can be more enjoyable (or less) to watch compared to other players, or
can tell something about me to people watching me playing.

Now I'm starting to hope that this "news" of the recent years that practice is
an absolutely fundamental factor for success does not get misunderstood in
this way. I know plenty of people that practiced years after years in the most
different disciplines and they simply suck, because talent is not water.

------
danbmil99
I'm guessing he chose pool because it's basically a solo sport (certainly the
practice he talks about is). He doesn't seem to have a feel for the
interpersonal dynamics that occur in a head-to-head game -- think McEnroe vs.
Borg, Fisher/Spassky, etc.

------
sin7
The game begins when you have the basics down and a lot of practice behind
you. Before that it is a simple game of luck. After that it becomes a game of
bluffs, calls and game theory.

