November 26, 2012
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Environmental Mods versus Tool Development
Every now and then, I’ll play [SiB] at a game of Baduk. Aside from [CM], he’s the player who I’ve learned the most from over the years. He’s still a fair bit stronger than me, and more importantly, he’s good at explaining battle concepts in understandable ways, so it’s always really useful for me to get some feedback from his about my technique.
The nice thing about Baduk is that, at least at my level, there are computer games that I can practice against (at the higher levels, apparently high level humans can quickly learn the algorithms behind AI baduk games, and easily exploit them). That means that when I am learning a new, particular technique, I can test it out against an opponent that consistently reacts in the same way. That gives me a lot more useful feedback than playing a human, because a human opponent will learn as I learn, and their responses will adapt to me in a range of ways from subtle to obvious. That makes it hard for me to really quantify the changes going on in me, because I’m measuring my results against a human that is simultaneously growing. Computer simulations help me to really test my progress with a technique inside out, because the benchmark that I’m testing my progress against will maintain consistent reactions.
I’m not someone who can do something purely for the sake of grinding at it– I need to know, at the very least, that I’m making some progress. Note that even the concept of “grinding” in a videogame is a bit out of context here– grinding in games is a controlled envirtonment where your opponent is static, and you will notice the advantages you accrue.
What I’m getting at, in any case, is that in the pursuit of success, it’s not only important to do the work, but it’s equally important to me to make sure I set up mechanisms by which I can recognise that I’m making progress. I consciously try, whenever taking something up, to create a model of work and learning whereby there are automatically checkpoints that I can use to quantify my progress with the matter. After all, it’s hard to do anything when you don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere– if you feel like you’re not getting anywhere, you just wonder what’s the point of even trying, and that has a huge toll on fighting spirit.
The tricky part is applying the concept to the more complicated areas of life.
The more complicated parts of life arise out of the fact that life seldom throws you exactly the same situation twice. You seldom get to try and develop yourself in exactly the same scenario.
For example– say you haven’t found that special someone yet, and you’re still going through the process of trying to land that second date. You might have learned all sorts of things of “dos” and “do nots” up until then, but you can’t just abide by that too strictly– it takes two to tango, and the other person you’re trying to interact with is completely different from the way things worked with people in the past.
So, when it comes to the complicated stuff, it’s not just a question of building and testing new tools. Bruce Lee, more than once, said that it’s not daily addition, but daily reduction. What this means is that in a lot of situations, the answer isn’t always to add to your arsenal or toolbox– sometimes, it’s about making the problems themselves simpler, so they can be solved by existing tools.
Of course, there’s only so much that you can break a complicated problem into smaller ones before you just have a huge mess of disintegrated parts that make no sense. However, going back to what I said earlier, if for no other reason, it is very important to define a problem in easier to chew pieces because at least then you know that you’re getting somewhere. Knowing is half the battle!
