

Succeed by being an Incrementalist - edanm
http://www.loopycode.com/succeed-by-being-an-incrementalist/

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jakevoytko
The "entity theorist" street goes both ways: they're unwilling to learn skills
outside of their expertise, and they are unwilling to share their expertise
with others. The entity theorists I know all act like tasks require magic, and
you have it or you don't.

My family has lost an excellent bread recipe as a result! Growing up, my
mother always helped my grandmother in the kitchen. My grandmother was a fair
cook, but she could (according to legend) make the best bread. She never
permitted her children to make the bread - they just didn't "have the knack."
Their loaves weren't as good as hers. So when she passed, so too did the
recipe. But that's garbage! They weren't missing some magic knack, they were
children who had never made bread before.

There is no magic. It's hard work all the way down.

I'd like to see research done on the teaching methods of entity theorists
versus incremental theorists. I bet Incrementalists are more willing teachers!

~~~
10ren
I think this is related to pecking order, in that once someone is elevated to
a dominant role in some sense, the tendency is to not question them, day-to-
day. A challenge is a dramatic and unusual event. This tendency makes for a
more stable society (or troop of chimps/flock of sheep).

There's a jurisprudential idea that people don't obey the law only out of the
goodness of their heart, nor out of an economically assessed fear of
sanctions, but of a "habit of obedience". This (to me) seems related to the
pecking order instinct.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisprudence#Bentham_and_Austi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisprudence#Bentham_and_Austin)

Fairy tales (for young and therefore impressionable children) have a strong
theme of people being born to a certain role. And the idea appeals to
children.

The belief that you can improve is a revolutionary, subversive and dangerous
idea.

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wallflower
A article about related research by Carol Dweck, academic psychologist

> During one unforgettable moment, one boy-something of a poster child for the
> mastery-oriented type-faced his first stumper by pulling up his chair,
> rubbing his hands together, smacking his lips and announcing, "I love a
> challenge."

[http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/feat...](http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/features/dweck.html)

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mstevens
The thing that always interests me in these discussions is:

Apparently believing you can achieve through hard work increases your
achievement over believing you're born good or bad.

What I'm curious about is how much this is actually true, which never seems to
be addressed - articles (eg the linked one) talk about how holding one belief
or another affects your success in life, but never about which is a better
understanding of reality.

~~~
edanm
I've had plenty of tries at taking a field I know nothing about, then learning
enough to be at least mildly good. I've never given anything the kind of
commitment I give to computers, but I know that I _can_ learn other things to
a degree that I'll be good there.

That's not to say you shouldn't concentrate on your strengths; there are just
some things you'll _have_ to learn along the way, especially if you want to
create a company, and you're _going to suck at them_ , at least at first.

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mynameishere
Pop psychology, you know? It can teach you a lot about the reductionist
inclinations of people.

Let me posit something: A segment of the population thinks, for one reason or
another, that hard work [1] isn't very useful.

Now, go back in time TEN THOUSAND years, learn the local language and ask the
nearest slave/peasant/hunter (in the local dialect) whether hard work results
in improvement. "Yeah, sure." say most. But some of them will be downers and
say, "No."

What have we learned? That farmers from 10,000 years ago are up on the latest
in pop pyschology. Now, if you try to apply this illuminating insight, and
attempt to change children into harder workers then you're really doing
something that _no one's ever thought of before_. Maybe write a book about it.

[1] By the way, I use the phrase "hard work" instead if "incrementalism" or
whatever, because that is another bad habit: Renaming an existing concept in
order to sound original.

~~~
edanm
Just a word on the terminology I used in the article: it was taken from Josh
Waitzkin's book, and he took the terms from actual psychological studies
performed by Carol Dweck, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck>. So the
terminology does have some roots in actual psychology).

~~~
mbateman
Yes, but academic psychology can also coin terms that are a bit silly.

There is a real distinction here, to be sure, and I'm glad that there are
academics working on it. But "entity theorist" vs. "incremental theorist" is
bad terminology for the distinction. It's "entities" (i.e. people) that do the
learning, after all, and learning isn't necessarily "incremental", especially
not in the sense of regular increases along a scale of fixed units. Implying
that people are "theorists" of these things, either by calling them so or
turning the terms into -isms or -ists, is also misleading.

What you really have are people with different kinds of mentalities or
attitudes towards the relationship between ability and effort. If we need a
new term, it could be based on that, such as "effort-oriented mentality" vs.
"aptitude-oriented mentality" (or something like that).

~~~
gcheong
Dweck popularized her work using the terms "fixed mindset" and "growth
mindset".

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jamesrcole
I think there's probably a deeper explanation of this.

Our brains have a strong tendancy to see results as being caused by
"essences". Our brains naturally think of all results and their causes in this
fashion, and it takes work to override this kind of thinking. Science has been
largely a matter of showing that causes are not essences but mechanisms.

And "entity theorists" are people who see human capabilities as the result of
essences - as an intrinsic "essence" that you either have or haven't got.

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jargon
So basically, practice makes perfect.

