# Half of this game is 90% mental!



## Hamstrung (Sep 21, 2007)

I just saw yet another video of some little kid punching waaay above their weight class on guitar and it got me to thinking (as I have often)... Is there an element of "mental block" that hinders some people's ability to excel at guitar or any instrument for that matter?

It seems to me that in a lot of these kids cases it never occurred to them that they _couldn't_ play a Guthrie Govan tune (as an example) so off they go and before long they're killing it whereas some (I'd argue, most) people listen to a virtuoso and immediately think "There's no way I could ever do that". I've put myself in the latter category for most of my time with the guitar and I often wonder if simply having that thought (or belief) is what prevent's one from excelling. 

The next 100 yards (thanks for the saying Dave) is can that "block" be conquered and if so how?


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

First, my hat is tipped to anyone citing Yogi Berra or Casey Stengel. Thank you.

Second, the net has provided phenomenal access to learning materials (and I place the thousands upon thousands of good examples of playing in the category of learning materials) for successive generations of players. They each reach successively higher levels of skill because of that, the same way the level of mathematical knowledge of your average high school graduate - even factoring in our disappointment at some of it - is leagues beyond what their age-mates might have achieved 100 years ago.

It is also the case that the calibre of equipment available for peanuts to beginners is_ leagues _above what you could buy at the local department store 50 years ago. My generation had to struggle with Black Diamond and LaBella medium-gauge strings on cheap guitars with warped necks and action you could slide a sandwich under. It is no great insight to recognize that being able to sound like your heroes, almost right away, is a tremendous motivator for woodshedding.

I think the "block" is that folks throw up their hands when they are impressed with the wrong things, or set the wrong targets. Will I ever play as fluidly as Guthrie Govan or Allan Holdsworth? Nah, not with these aging joints. But I CAN borrow elements of what they do that are within the perimeter of my capabilities and use that to *be more expressive in my own style*. I think that's the big fork in the road: treating virtuosos as a benchmark of total performance versus treating them as a source of some very good (and feasible) musical ideas and techniques.


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## Hamstrung (Sep 21, 2007)

Valid points but there seems to be an element of emotion (for lack of a better way to describe it) with regard to even what one is willing to attempt regardless of the available tools. For instance, when I was 14-15 years old I'd listen to guys like EVH or any of his contemporaries and immediately think "there's no way in hell I could ever do that". As bad as I'd like to I didn't feel it was or would ever be in my abilities. 
My first guitar was of a quality that wouldn't have hindered me in any way. My OP is questioning whether it's possible for one to put up a mental road block by saying and believing that playing at an advanced level is beyond one's abilities or are these abilities simply reserved for the gifted few... and furthermore is this something that can be overcome?
One could say that it's simply a case of putting in the time but I have a hard time believing these little kids are spending 8 hrs a day to learn what they do. Perhaps I'm wrong but I still see some sort of mind-set affecting either outcome.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

When you're young, it is generally much easier to learn things as the brain is more adapted to taking things in at that age. Also, once we hit our thirties and up, there is much more on our plate, so to speak, so learning to play guitar or any other instrument is more difficult because our time and thought processes simply don't have are filled with so much more than they were when we were 8, 10 or 15 years old.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

The "older brain" is just as plastic as the younger one, there's just a lot more to attend to, more counter-preparedness, and often not as much incentive to devote the time to some things. I mean, once you have a dependable source of sex, why would you _need_ to learn to play guitar, right? 

There haven't been many days since late 1963 when I haven't picked up a guitar. Some of that time has been mere repetition of what I know how to do, and some has involved increasing my tool belt.

Certainly the standards and exemplars of playing for the typical young learner have changed. When I started, I'd play along with the radio, and try to find one note that would "work" for a whole Beatles song, playing it at the right moment, then two, then more. And as great a player as George Harrison was, and as much other music as there might have been going on at the time, as a teen I never got to hear it. We had "teen music" on the radio for about 90 minutes a day, and the only music we could carry with us WAS the radio. Contrast that with the pyrotechnics that your typical youngster gets to hear all day long, whenever and wherever they want.

The "pull" is VERY strong for a kid who decides that's what they want to do, and as I noted earlier, the tools are readily available.


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## Hamstrung (Sep 21, 2007)

mhammer said:


> I mean, once you have a dependable source of sex, why would you _need_ to learn to play guitar, right?


Alas, if that were the only factor I'd be giving Yngwie Malmsteen a run for his money by now! :O

Where was this "plastic" brain when _I_ was 15? I had the same hangups then as now. Again to my original question. Does "state of mind" factor into it, if so, how much and to what extent could it be manipulated to one's advantage?


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Thank goodness you're not. One Yngwie is enough.


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## -ST- (Feb 2, 2008)

Hi Hamstrung,



Hamstrung said:


> I just saw yet another video of some little kid punching waaay above their weight class on guitar and it got me to thinking (as I have often)...* Is there an element of "mental block" that hinders some people's ability to excel at guitar or any instrument for that matter?
> *
> It seems to me that in a lot of these kids cases it never occurred to them that they _couldn't_ play a Guthrie Govan tune (as an example) so off they go and before long they're killing it whereas some (I'd argue, most) people listen to a virtuoso and immediately think "There's no way I could ever do that". I've put myself in the latter category for most of my time with the guitar and I often wonder if simply having that thought (or belief) is what prevent's one from excelling.
> 
> The next 100 yards (thanks for the saying Dave) is can that "block" be conquered and if so how?


I may be looking at this too simply. I think a "mental block" is binary. If you're blocked, it's 100%. If you're not, it's nothing. 

I don't think that age is a sole determinant. Experience (a history of even _some_ successes) might be more liberating than naivety.


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## fredyfreeloader (Dec 11, 2010)

I remember teaching music back in the 1960's the young guys all wanted to learn how to play just like the top groups of the day, the young girls would take the time and start learning classical guitar and then slowly move towards their favourite folk singer(s), the girls in my opinion did better in the transition to the pop music of the day while the young guys struggled to get beyond learning that first song. Once they had that song figured they thought they had it all figured out, why waste time learning more . Today there is so much more available for anyone to learn from no matter who you are the progression is that much faster and easier for male or female to learn any instrument.


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## Hamstrung (Sep 21, 2007)

-ST- said:


> Hi Hamstrung,
> 
> 
> 
> ...


If it serves the question better let's call it "mental hindrance" 
Even taking into account all the valid points about the youthful malleable mind and availability of better instruments and the ability to stand on the shoulders of giants there's still seems to be something that separates those who excel from the rest of the rabble. 

What makes a Jeff Beck or EVH woodshed their entire youth and become monster players? What mental connections were made to make that prospect of them emulating or even exceeding their hero's abilities look possible to them?... and they had to do it the hard way!


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## -ST- (Feb 2, 2008)

Hi Hamstrung



Hamstrung said:


> If it serves the question better let's call it "mental hindrance"
> Even taking into account all the valid points about the youthful malleable mind and availability of better instruments and the ability to stand on the shoulders of giants there's still seems to be something that separates those who excel from the rest of the rabble.
> 
> What makes a Jeff Beck or EVH woodshed their entire youth and become monster players? What mental connections were made to make that prospect of them emulating or even exceeding their hero's abilities look possible to them?... and they had to do it the hard way!


Naivety or Hubris?

[video=youtube;Irl_6h_55eo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irl_6h_55eo[/video]


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## kat_ (Jan 11, 2007)

Attitude is critical. I've taught 10-year-olds who can do full barre chords after 3 weeks of playing simply because no one ever told them that they're hard to do so they kept trying until they learned. I've also had students who never got past Jingle Bells because if they couldn't nail something on the first try they gave up. Our culture needs to stop focusing on the myth of talent start valuing perseverance and proper, careful practice.


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## Hamstrung (Sep 21, 2007)

-ST- said:


> Hi Hamstrung
> 
> Naivety or Hubris?


I wouldn't mind a "little yellow pill" for either when picking up my guitar to practice!


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

kat_ said:


> Attitude is critical. I've taught 10-year-olds who can do full barre chords after 3 weeks of playing simply because no one ever told them that they're hard to do so they kept trying until they learned. I've also had students who never got past Jingle Bells because if they couldn't nail something on the first try they gave up. Our culture needs to stop focusing on the myth of talent start valuing perseverance and proper, careful practice.


Psychologist Carol Dweck was interested in the frequent "underperformance" of young women in math and sciences, so squirmingly illustrated by the Talking Barbie proclaiming "Math is hard!".

What she and her colleagues have observed is a continuum of "self-theories" or "implicit theories" of performance, that people use to explain their own and others' performance to themselves. 

At the one end is what she refers to as an "*incremental theory*", in which both poor and good performance is deemed to be due to improveable or remediable causes: "I didn't study/practice/try hard enough", "It was just a bad day", "I didn't have enough preparation beforehand", "I was distracted by a family problem", "Shows you that hard work pays off", "I had a great teacher/study-partner", "The textbook/practice-exercises really cleared things up", "Always helps to have a good night's sleep", etc.

At the other end of the spectrum is what she refers to as an "*entity theory*", that treats performance as stemming from something built-into the person and unmodifiable. Labelling someone as "good at" something or "not good at" something is partly a retrospective _description_ of their performance, but also a bit of an _explanation _for that performance. Being "good at" or "not so good at" some particular task/domain implies either high or low expectations for future performance, almost independent of circumstances.

So why does this matter? Dweck finds that the two types of individuals are similar as long as the tasks are easy and the person meets with success, but the sort of theory one adopts to explain one's own performance is predictive of how difficulty or failure is responded to. In the face of failure, incrementalists exert more effort, while entity theorists are more inclined to give up. Incrementalists will seek out information or "tips" that could improve performance, while entity folks will endeavour to simply avoid that kind of task. Clearly, if you think your performance reflects something about YOU that you can't change, then you're not so crazy about anything that reminds you about your shortcomings. So task-avoidance is a means of preserving self-image. If your performance doesn't reflect YOU, but rather simply what happened, and what happened can always be fixed, then there is nothing aversive about the task itself; you get back on the horse.

There are entity theorists and incrementalists about _everything_ in life, guitar and love included.


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## Hamstrung (Sep 21, 2007)

mhammer said:


> Psychologist Carol Dweck was interested in the frequent "underperformance" of young women in math and sciences, so squirmingly illustrated by the Talking Barbie proclaiming "Math is hard!".
> 
> What she and her colleagues have observed is a continuum of "self-theories" or "implicit theories" of performance, that people use to explain their own and others' performance to themselves.
> 
> ...


Thanks! This is more along the lines of what I was looking for. It makes sense and I suspect there's a continuum between those two points. If I were a pure entity theorist I'd have just given up guitar a long time ago however I'm not enough of an incrementalist to be as good as I _should _be (by my own reckoning) by now. I guess guys like Jeff Beck, EVH and the host of little kid virtuoso's are just further to the incrementalist side of the spectrum than I am. 
Now, the question is can one move themselves along this spectrum or are we basically planted along the way wherever we happen to be?


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## bw66 (Dec 17, 2009)

kat_ said:


> Our culture needs to stop focusing on the myth of talent start valuing perseverance and proper, careful practice.


Yup. it's all about quality time spent with the instrument.

(Which, admittedly, seems to be easier to schedule when you are young.)


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Hamstrung said:


> Thanks! This is more along the lines of what I was looking for. It makes sense and I suspect there's a continuum between those two points. If I were a pure entity theorist I'd have just given up guitar a long time ago however I'm not enough of an incrementalist to be as good as I _should _be (by my own reckoning) by now. I guess guys like Jeff Beck, EVH and the host of little kid virtuoso's are just further to the incrementalist side of the spectrum than I am.
> Now, the question is can one move themselves along this spectrum or are we basically planted along the way wherever we happen to be?


It IS a continuum, so your instincts are correct. The next level of research, I suppose, is: can self-theories be modified and _maintained_ in modified form (anyone who has ever been to a retreat/workshop knows that temporary changes are easy, and change that sticks is much trickier), and if so, by what? I've been away from the journals for a decade, so it may well have been explored already. Carol is presently at Stanford, and has PDFs of a big chunk of her work available for download on her page: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/cdweck

Certainly no one is born with such a self-explanation, so it has to come from _somewhere_, and be informed by something. About 6 years after I first became aware of this literature, a study appeared that I had expected to see, but had to wait for, and that is regarding the sort of praise people use with their kids. We think that praise and encouragement is _necessarily_ a good thing, because the opposite - constant criticism - is NOT. But the *form* of encouragement and praise is every bit as important as giving it. "Boy, you're really good at <X>!" instructs the child that their performance comes from something intrinsic to them, not circumstances or effort. "Well done! A little more practice makes a big difference, doesn't it?" instructs the child that there is always a route to improvement somewhere, and that maintenance of performance is not to be glibly expected.

Praise that offers the child an entity explanation of their performance tends to result in kids that react poorly to failure or difficulty. Here's the paper: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/psycho... Can Undermine Motivation and Performance.pdf


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## Shark (Jun 10, 2010)

mhammer said:


> The "older brain" is just as plastic as the younger one, there's just a lot more to attend to, more counter-preparedness, and often not as much incentive to devote the time to some things.


I always thought that as we age things like dopamine receptors and testosterone decrease, resulting in less drive, less ability to learn new tricks and possibly, less creativity.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I'm reluctant to turn to those sorts of explanations. I know they can certainly _sound_ more "scientific", and the physical/chemical context humans operate in should not be ignored, but I'm a firm believer that one needs to exhaust what other sorts of approaches can and can't explain first, before we turn to the easy quasi-magical ones.

There isn't any age-related cognitive change you can't observe/demonstrate in young adults, whose chemical systems are presumably all in tip-top shape. Our lab published one of the first major studies of use-it-or-lose-it in cognitive aging, back in 1992, and we found much stronger associations between intellectual capacity and health/smoking than with "staying mentally active". So, while there ARE general population-wide age-related changes in the chemical soup in our nervous systems, chalking up mental declines entirely to such overall chemical soup patterns, rather than to the particular impediments in particular individuals, is unlikely to offer much insight.

Whenever I see boneheaded scientific reporting in the media (often by minimally informed reporters, guided by researchers who can't explain, don't know much beyond their own research, and are eager to look like the greatest thing since sliced bread so they can get funding), I am reminded of the Woody Allen film "Love and Death". Allen is in the Czar's army during the Napoleonic invasions, and pokes fun at the "training films" more contemporary troops used to get about VD. He and his infantry comrades sit down in uniform to see a short sketch before being sent off to war. The sketch begins with a young woman saying to a soldier "I hope you had a GOOD time". "Yes I did" he replies. He takes a few steps to indicate it is now a few days later, touches his face and says "Hmm, what is this sore on my lip? I will go see a doctor." he walks a few more steps to indicate the visit, and a distinguished looking guy with a goatee, monocle, and lab coat declares in punctate speech "You have a social disease!". At which point the sketch is over, all three bow, and the seated soldiers applaud wildly.

I find a lot of ostensibly "scientific" explanations I hear have about that level of depth. It's endorphins. It's seratonin. It's dopamine. It's genetic. It's left-brain/right-brain. It's vitamin A/B/C/D/E. It's vaccinations. It's a chemical imbalance. Etc. For my part, until there is enough that explains the details, and provides linkages between what we see, as observers, and the sequence of processes that lead to it (including being able to predict when it doesn't happen and why it can fluctuate), it's all just voodoo handwaving.

The late Paul Baltes had an ongoing project at his lab in Berlin, in which folks in their 80's and older were being trained to memorize enormously long strings of numbers (think 100 consecutive single-digit numbers), using a simple strategy that anyone can use. They were all taken on delightful historical tours through Berlin, looking at monuments and heritage buildings and such. All of these places had important events and dates associated with them, many going back hundreds of years. They were then taught to mentally group and associate the numbers read out to them in the lab, with the dates associated with the places. As they were then read out the long digit lists, they would create their own "mental tour" of Berlin, going from this place to that. And when they were asked to recall the numbers, they simply mentally retraced their steps through the city. I am quite confident their dopamine and testosterone levels were nothing to write home about.

Though not elderly, another study of exceptional number memory at Univ. Colorado, some years ago, involved a guy who was a runner. His strategy was to encode the number strings in terms of running times for different events he was familiar with. So, 5 digits in a row, beginning with a 1, might be stored as "a good time for running 800 metres", and so on.

As for creativity, theres a guy at UC-Davis, named Dean Simonton, who has spent a big chunk of his career studying creativity, and creativity in later life (particularly "swan songs"; those great works that artists produce before the end of their career). He has a bunch of his work posted here: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/simonton/


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## deadear (Nov 24, 2011)

Most these kids you see putting out something that looks great are nothing more than robots. If it was not for guitar tab they would not have a clue how to play what they are playing. Great players are born with it. The ear the dextarity the melody etc. So to respond to the original post no it is not mental but a lot of these wizz kids are not as good as you think.
Put them in a room with a piece of music and a guitar and the result will probably be a big fat nothing.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

mhammer said:


> But the *form* of encouragement and praise is every bit as important as giving it. *"Boy, you're really good at <X>!"* instructs the child ( and adult, hopefully) that their performance comes from something intrinsic to them, not circumstances or effort.


"Hamstrung, you're really good at playing the guitar!" (see above)
....and I know this first hand from listening to you and watching you play.

I hope this praise helps you...according to Carol at Stanford, it should.

Cheers

Dave


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## Shark (Jun 10, 2010)

mhammer said:


> There isn't any age-related cognitive change you can't observe/demonstrate in young adults, whose chemical systems are presumably all in tip-top shape. Our lab published one of the first major studies of use-it-or-lose-it in cognitive aging, back in 1992, and we found much stronger associations between intellectual capacity and health/smoking than with "staying mentally active".


Hmm. I would think that if you're finding associations between (I assume poor) health and smoking and cognitive ability, then surely those participants do not have chemical systems in tip-top shape. Bear with me if I'm missing your point.



mhammer said:


> I find a lot of ostensibly "scientific" explanations I hear have about that level of depth. It's endorphins. It's seratonin. It's dopamine. It's genetic. It's left-brain/right-brain. It's vitamin A/B/C/D/E. It's vaccinations. It's a chemical imbalance. Etc. For my part, until there is enough that explains the details, and provides linkages between what we see, as observers, and the sequence of processes that lead to it (including being able to predict when it doesn't happen and why it can fluctuate), it's all just voodoo handwaving.


Ah, c'mon! Speculation is the mother of scientific progress!  I have a better reply to this, but my brain is not cooperating. I am, however, in favour of quantifiable and replicable results. We can happily agree there. But I do like to see people explore new ground, even when they're wrong. After all, newness is related to dopamine, which relates to excitement. Now I'm just provoking you. 



mhammer said:


> As for creativity, theres a guy at UC-Davis, named Dean Simonton, who has spent a big chunk of his career studying creativity, and creativity in later life (particularly "swan songs"; those great works that artists produce before the end of their career). He has a bunch of his work posted here: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/simonton/


I'm on a break at work, but I'll look at this later. It sounds very interesting. Thanks for the link.


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## Hamstrung (Sep 21, 2007)

greco said:


> "Hamstrung, you're really good at playing the guitar!" (see above)
> ....and I know this first hand from listening to you and watching you play.
> 
> I hope this praise helps you...according to Carol at Stanford, it should.
> ...


I appreciate the praise however I feel mhammer hit the nail on the head (pardon the pun) for my original question when he said...


mhammer said:


> In the face of failure, incrementalists exert more effort, while entity theorists are more inclined to give up. Incrementalists will seek out information or "tips" that could improve performance, while entity folks will endeavour to simply avoid that kind of task. Clearly, if you think your performance reflects something about YOU that you can't change, then you're not so crazy about anything that reminds you about your shortcomings. So task-avoidance is a means of preserving self-image. If your performance doesn't reflect YOU, but rather simply what happened, and what happened can always be fixed, then there is nothing aversive about the task itself; you get back on the horse.


We can all agree that it's quality time spent with the instrument (or whatever endeavor) that makes people excel at it. 
The analogy I'll use to differentiate that aspect of the subject to what I'm asking is this... we all know a full tank of fuel will allow the car (= ability) to run it's full range (= potential) my question was more what makes/allows/compels/encourages some people get more fuel than most others and do some people through some sort of mental/emotional aspect prevent themselves from fully fueling up? This is assuming equal potential for the purpose of this question. I believe the above explains this quite well.

The second part of my question is can the negative aspects be overcome and if so, how?

And to the idea that great people are born with "it", what causes "it"? Shy of a measurable impairment do we not all have the same "potential"? I guess that's a nature vs. nurture argument.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

deadear said:


> Most these kids you see putting out something that looks great are nothing more than robots. If it was not for guitar tab they would not have a clue how to play what they are playing. Great players are born with it. The ear the dextarity the melody etc. So to respond to the original post no it is not mental but a lot of these wizz kids are not as good as you think.
> Put them in a room with a piece of music and a guitar and the result will probably be a big fat nothing.


It won't be "nothing", but it will likely lack some of the elements that we hear in a "mature" player. So, for example, the ability to construct a solo that builds in a manner that anticipates the listener's expectations, and plays with them, is something you get from a player who has enough experience to take the bird's-eye view of soloing/playing. 

I won't say that speed and technique are easy, but they ARE relatively attainable outcomes of extended practice. Practice, however, does not always yield perspective.

Myself, not a big believer in "born with it".


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

greco said:


> "Hamstrung, you're really good at playing the guitar!" (see above)
> ....and I know this first hand from listening to you and watching you play.
> 
> I hope this praise helps you...according to Carol at Stanford, it should.
> ...


...only until he attempts something really hard and flubs it.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

mhammer said:


> If your performance doesn't reflect YOU, but rather simply what happened, and what happened can always be fixed, then there is nothing aversive about the task itself; *you get back on the horse.*


Hamstrung...Is part of the problem that you need to buy a horse ?

(Sorry...my warped sense of humour couldn't resist the temptation...good thing Hamstrung knows me well !!)

Sincerely now...very interesting thread. I have learned a lot from it.

Cheers

Dave


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## Hamstrung (Sep 21, 2007)

mhammer said:


> ...only until he attempts something really hard and flubs it.


Exactly!
Again to bring up the little kids... they pull off stuff that to me seems "hard". I can't help but think "they weren't aware that it was hard, they just did it".... followed by "How the hell did they do that!?" Not that they pulled it off the first time they tried but how long did it take? What was the motivation? I'd love to see a time lapse breakdown of the process.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

mhammer said:


> ...only until he attempts something really hard and flubs it.


Would it help if I said my praise is good for "x" number of consecutive flubs?

Cheers

Dave


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Shark said:


> Hmm. I would think that if you're finding associations between (I assume poor) health and smoking and cognitive ability, then surely those participants do not have chemical systems in tip-top shape. Bear with me if I'm missing your point.


Virtually any drug I've seen that is reliably demonstrated to boost thinking in older people basically improves cerebrovascular circulation. Crappy circulation, less oxygen and other essential needs to those neurons, and neurotramsitter levels don't matter all that much. Health and smoking are also associated with little strokes here and there, that can build up. People are the summed outcomes of a lot of little things unique to them.

As for neurophysiology research, and speculation, I'm all for it, and I dearly miss the smell of animal labs, the surgery, the brain slicing, the staining, the syringe preparation, the liquid scintillation counters, the rat poop on my clothes. But the state of much of the speculation about the relationship between specific neurochemicals and what happens in the world of human interaction and cogitation is a bit like blaming the economy on "all those immigrants from Muslim countries". Yes, the two events are showing a _sort_ of a relationship in time, but there is a HUGE gap and causal leap between the two that demands MUCH more detail in order to constitute any sort of full explanation. A lot of what passes for neuroscience is often not that much deeper or more profound than someone explaining health in terms of chakras. I'm not trying to impune traditional Indian medicine here, but folks who think that talking in terms of "chemical imbalances" is somehow more precise, and a truly fuller explanation than chakras, just because there are lab coats, big words, and $3M grants attached to it, are being duped.

I think if folks knew more about how the research is conducted, they'd be a little more reluctant to accept some of the simplistic things they hear on shows like Quirks and Quarks, or see in those little side-column inserts in newspapers. For instance, all the left-brain/right-brain stuff? A lot is derived from studies where people make judgments as fast as they can about something that is briefly shown to both eyes from the right side of the screen or the left (seen and gone before you can move your eyes), and after hundreds and hundreds of trials for dozens of people, the researcher will find that it takes, on average, _20msec_ more (let us say 6% longer) to make a decision about something seen on the right than something seen on the left. Left does it, right does it too, but one is a teensy bit slower than the other.

I don't blame the listener or casual consumer for such misunderstanding. In many instances it is the scientist themselves who is inept and unskilled at explaining what they do and have learned. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard a scientist (who ought to know better) using the words "experiment" and "prove" in circumstances where they were unsubstantiated and inappropriate, I could buy and sell you all.

I remember a paper published by a former prof of mine at Concordia many years back. He surveyed a bunch of science and non-science students, regarding popular beliefs about things that clearly had no scientific support at all, and found that likelihood of believing in such ideas (e.g., pop astrology, telekinesis) was unrelated to how much scientific instruction one had, in terms of #courses or #years. Not everyone walking around with a "science passport" is a real citizen of science.


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## deadear (Nov 24, 2011)

Me again . Like I say put the wizz kid in a room with a recording and say a sax solo. First could he figure out the Key the song is in? could he figure out the chords? could he play the solo back to you on the guitar nailing the notes. Tab does not teach him this stuff.


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## Shark (Jun 10, 2010)

mhammer said:


> Virtually any drug I've seen that is reliably demonstrated to boost thinking in older people basically improves cerebrovascular circulation. Crappy circulation, less oxygen and other essential needs to those neurons, and neurotramsitter levels don't matter all that much. Health and smoking are also associated with little strokes here and there, that can build up. People are the summed outcomes of a lot of little things unique to them.
> 
> As for neurophysiology research, and speculation, I'm all for it, and I dearly miss the smell of animal labs, the surgery, the brain slicing, the staining, the syringe preparation, the liquid scintillation counters, the rat poop on my clothes. But the state of much of the speculation about the relationship between specific neurochemicals and what happens in the world of human interaction and cogitation is a bit like blaming the economy on "all those immigrants from Muslim countries". Yes, the two events are showing a _sort_ of a relationship in time, but there is a HUGE gap and causal leap between the two that demands MUCH more detail in order to constitute any sort of full explanation. A lot of what passes for neuroscience is often not that much deeper or more profound than someone explaining health in terms of chakras. I'm not trying to impune traditional Indian medicine here, but folks who think that talking in terms of "chemical imbalances" is somehow more precise, and a truly fuller explanation than chakras, just because there are lab coats, big words, and $3M grants attached to it, are being duped.
> 
> ...


Well said. 

Although I can't imagine missing rat poop.


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