As a counterexample, every time I have valiantly tried to use Grit to face a challenge that's uncomfortable and hard for me naturally I have failed miserably. In all occasions, I would have been better just quitting the challenge or doing it in a different way that didn't require as much grit.
Yes, you can say that I just wasn't "gritty" enough, but that's the same as saying that everyone who injures themselves in exercise wasn't "careful" enough. You're redefining "careful" in order for your theory to be right. Sometimes bad outcomes happen even when you do everything you can.
My goal here is not only to discourage you from trying hard to achieve your goals (that's a goal, of course). The main thing here is to get ready for life to kick you in the face no matter how much grit you have, and sometimes, precisely for having a lot of grit (no, I won't go into details).
The most important skill isn't grit, it's the wisdom to decide when applying grit is worth it. And no, I don't know how you train this or even if it is trainable. It might be just luck.
Instead of relying on grit, stick to what you do best and don't try to use grit as a replacement for talent or other qualities. If someone is naturally better than you, in a competition they'll just get grittier than their baseline and eclipse you.
This is anecdotal but so is the linked article. For any aphorism there is an equally valid and opposite aphorism.
> A bloke my sister knows (she's a nurse), was diagnosed with 'hypertension not otherwise specified', at the ripe old age of 31. But they didn't catch it early because he 'felt fine'. He wasn't overweight unhealthy. But he needs new kidneys now!
It's possible that kidney disease caused hypertension in that case. It's pretty much impossible to prove which one came first in many cases. None of this argues in favor or against regular checkups, it was just something I thought was interesting to refer.
I can see both sides of that argument, and I'd be lying to say I didn't consider Unsong rationalist fiction at least partly as an attempt to redeem the genre in my own estimation.
This is a major problem for me when reading digital material, especially if not on something like a PC. On the comuter I can at least Ctrl+F for the part I'm after.
This is very interesting. Do you know if they have any interesting misconceptions about those animals they know about but have never seen (assuming you yourself know enough about rabbits, badgers, hares and such to know that they are misconceptions)?
It's interesting when many people know about a certain phenomenon through media or things like cartoons, which obviously distort reality beyond any possibility of recognition.
The most amazing example I've ever seen is the one about bullfights. Apparently, many Americans know about bullfights from a single Bugs Bunny sketch, in which he is dressed as a Matador and kinda "dances" with the bull in the arena. This apparently made many people think that that's basically what happens in a bullfight. Then you get some nasty culture shock when people watch the real thing, as in this reddit thread (WARNING: video with blood and violence against animals, first in CGI then in real life): https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/68i332/to_those_who...
The comments were really surprising to me. I would expect most people from outside of Spain, Latin America and Portugal not to know about bullfights, but I definitely didn't expect people to know about it from a cartoon and harbor so many misconceptions about what it really is!
Spoiler: in a bullfight, the matador does nasty things to the bull (like sticking short spears with hooks so that they don't come out when the bull moves), dodges the bull's charge while distracting it with a cape, and in the end he kills it with a sword through the back. If the killing blow fails to kill the bull, they kill the animal with a knife just below the brain. Also, Matador literally means killer in Spanish, because he kills the bull.
> Do you know if they have any interesting misconceptions about those animals they know about but have never seen
Another misconception kids seem to have is about the hippopotamus, which is always depicted as a cute animal, but which in fact is one of the most dangerous animals around.
Regarding the study they mention(the one that shows that children recognize Pokemon better than real animals and plants).
There is an important aspect of this finding that the article doesn't discuss. They don't link to the study, so I can't check for myself.
All the Pokemon names they mention are first generation. There are only 150 first generation Pokemon. It's a relatively small closed corpus. They also have bright colors and are very easy to distinguish. How many species of animals or plants does England have? Way more than 150, of course. How large was the sample from which the ones used in the study were chosen? It wouldn't surprise me if there were more than 150 relevant species that are needed to be knowledgeable in "nature stuff" in England.
Of course kids in urban environments don't know much about naming animal or plant species, that's just common sense. My beef with the study is that it doesn't seem to go beyond the common-sense notion because of the problems above... Knowing a small limited corpus of highly distinct entities will always be easier than knowing the very large (although still finite) corpus of animal and plant species that might be quite similar on the surface (e.g. cork oak vs holm oak, bee vs wasp, cat vs lynx, etc)
If you only wanted "highlight" animals and plants, you could probably get away with a list of 150 (or less - I'm struggling to think of 150 off the top of my head) but they definitely wouldn't be as easily distinguished as the Pokemon.
Cool, thanks. That definitely answers my questions. They really should link the study!
The part about distinguishing the animals from one another is still a problem, but I think that if Pokemon were actually real animals kids would distinguish them just fine anyway.
I'd also venture that Pokemon are almost certainly deliberately designed and focus tested to be recognisable and distinguishable because, well, that's how you market stuff and that makes this a bit of a dumb study.
Only if you assume no intent on the part of the study's authors. For example, I wonder if they would have had quite a different result if they'd used, say, 14 year olds. Or a mix of ages.
I wasn't overly encouraged that two of their citations were for the Biophilia Hypothesis. An interesting book, for sure, but not exactly rigorous science.
I was left with the definite impression that this study was as much about politics as science. To that end, maybe not dumb just not particularly impartial.
That's a great point. Pokemon were designed to be distinguishable from one another, that's good game design. However many birds and plants look similar with minute differences to distinguish them.
Also, Pokémon tend to have their species' name written somewhere on them. If instead you see a cool plant or animal outside, then good luck trying to look that up.
This is very interesting, and I particularly like the causal test of inducing sensitization to the antigens present in the bacteria through exposure. It's probably the strongest causal link you're going to get in humans (you can't infect them with the bacteria to see if it induces nerve damage for real!).
The problem here seems to be that this doesn't measure how feasible it is to reverse the tendency for the immune system to attack the nerves. Even if you erradicate the causative bacteria, once the immune system has started to attack the nerves, it's possible that it won't stop. Maybe the presence of the antigens (the proteins that are attacket) in the bacteria is needed as the trigger that starts the attack, but once that's gone, the low level presence of the same antigens in the nerves might be enough to sustain the attack. On a more optimistic note, maybe the erradication of the bacteria leads to a lack of simulation that causes the aggressive cells tow ither and die. This must be tested experimentally.
If the autoimmune ttack doesn't stop after erradication of bacteria, maybe a case can be made for aggressive prevention with testing for those bacteria periodically, ,especially in families predisposed to the disease, and prompt erradication once they appear. Maybe there are correlations between diet and the presence of such bacteria, which we can exploit.
I think the long term impact of these studies will depend on how reversible the "state of war" between the immune system and the nerves is.
You still have gut bacteria in the small intestine, and they're probably as important as the ones in the large intestine. I can guarantee you that without both the small and the large intestine, you do notice a difference (but unfortunately for reasons more serious than just not having the bacteria). Glad you're adapting well to living without the large intestine!
Yes, you can say that I just wasn't "gritty" enough, but that's the same as saying that everyone who injures themselves in exercise wasn't "careful" enough. You're redefining "careful" in order for your theory to be right. Sometimes bad outcomes happen even when you do everything you can.
My goal here is not only to discourage you from trying hard to achieve your goals (that's a goal, of course). The main thing here is to get ready for life to kick you in the face no matter how much grit you have, and sometimes, precisely for having a lot of grit (no, I won't go into details).
The most important skill isn't grit, it's the wisdom to decide when applying grit is worth it. And no, I don't know how you train this or even if it is trainable. It might be just luck.
Instead of relying on grit, stick to what you do best and don't try to use grit as a replacement for talent or other qualities. If someone is naturally better than you, in a competition they'll just get grittier than their baseline and eclipse you.
This is anecdotal but so is the linked article. For any aphorism there is an equally valid and opposite aphorism.