I apologize in advance for the lengthy and tangential reply.
Gerd Gigerenzer offers a counterpoint—expertise in orderly systems is very different from expertise in complex systems (such as sports or financial markets). In the latter heuristics and System 1 type thinking performs better, quite simply explicit modelling is too inefficient or incapable of dealing with all the differing factors.
“In a world of known risk, everything, including the probabilities, is known for certain. Here, statistical thinking and logic are sufficient to make good decisions. In an uncertain world, not everything is known, and one cannot calculate the best option. Here, good rules of thumb and intuition are also required.” Gerd Gigerenzer—Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions
A sporting related example he gives is that if catcher in baseball simply fixes his eyes on the ball and runs towards it, he doesn’t need to explicitly calculate the trajectory of the ball. While you could argue that indirectly the calculation is performed by the player’s proprioceptors and Vestibular system, I think that it’s certain it’s not “explicit”.
However expertise tends to be narrow, I’m thinking of that overused Niels Bohr quote about how an expert is someone who has learned the hard way every mistake possible in a narrow field. Or in the Cynefin framework that you have “Simple” “Complicated” “Complex” and “Chaotic” systems, and “Simple” sits on a cliff next to “Chaotic” in the paradigm because once the constraints are removed, the expertise or best practice that works predictably in Simple systems falls apart.
This can be exploited for competitive gain. I’m sure this all ties back to OODA loops. Double Formula One World Champion Fernando Alonso like most elite sportsmen is extremely competitive and he claims that even when he plays against professional tennis players he still needs to “kill their strength”. And to do this he operates outside of their comfort zone:
“I used to play tennis, and when I play with someone good, I would put the ball very high. Because, like this, you stop the rhythm of them because they are used to hitting the ball very hard.
“Playing with professionals, the ball arrives very strong for them so they are used to that kind of shot.
“But when you put the ball high, they make mistakes, because the ball arrives very soft. So I can play better tennis when putting the ball high.
“Putting the ball high is my only chance to beat them. So I do that automatically.
“It’s not only on racing I just need to destroy the strengths of the others, and try to maximize mine.”
At the risk of throwing in another tangent Marvin Minsky’s idea of negative expertise—that the mind is comprised more of ‘critic circuits’ that supress certain impulses more than positive or attractive circuits—to prevent us babbling or experimenting with strategies or tactics that haven’t worked before. This is why when we think of leaving a room, we don’t consider the window, even though it is a means—we opt for the much more expeditious door.
Expertise is more about what not to do than what one should do.[1]
I think what Alonso is doing here is he’s exploiting or rather inverting Negative Expertise, these professional players have trained in a narrow band of situations—playing against other elite players—and have a intuitive bag of tricks to play against them. Alonso instead forces them to play in a way they are not trained.
I wonder if choking is just that—that there has been something in the environment which they weren’t trained for. It’s not that they are overthinking—it’s that they can’t rely on intuition because there isn’t a precedent?
Another explanation for choking I see is that it isn’t conscious at all? Maybe I’ve been too influenced by the Hollywood movie trope of the player at the championship game, somehow locking eyes with his estranged wife in the grandstand, and being so overcome by a wellspring of feelings that he screws up the play. This may be why I assume Choking is related to anxiety. And anxiety is a whole-body experience, not merely “thought”. It is somatic. It affects your endocrine system, your cardiovascular system etc. etc. It is perhaps the body driving the thoughts just as much as the thoughts driving the body?
At any rate, I think when it comes to building models firstly one needs to identify which systems one is operating in—those which there are known risks, or high uncertainty. In the latter it would seem the first priority is focusing on what the circumference is of “optimal” operation (i.e. “don’t step over that line” “avoid the impulse to...”) and then finding heuristics rather than explicit models.
Interestingly, Refutative Instruction has been very profitable for John Cleese and Antony Jay, both as comedians who made comedy from the wrong way to run a hotel or a government ministry, and as businessmen who made actual industrial training videos that showed students the wrong way to do something before showing them best practice.
While the pedagogical value might simply come from the fact it is “entertaining” I am inclined to believe that it is also effective in the same way that Minsky’s Negative Expertise theory explains how learning works. (I invite you to draw your own comparisons to the kairos of Plato’s Dialogues.)
I apologize in advance for the lengthy and tangential reply.
Gerd Gigerenzer offers a counterpoint—expertise in orderly systems is very different from expertise in complex systems (such as sports or financial markets). In the latter heuristics and System 1 type thinking performs better, quite simply explicit modelling is too inefficient or incapable of dealing with all the differing factors.
A sporting related example he gives is that if catcher in baseball simply fixes his eyes on the ball and runs towards it, he doesn’t need to explicitly calculate the trajectory of the ball. While you could argue that indirectly the calculation is performed by the player’s proprioceptors and Vestibular system, I think that it’s certain it’s not “explicit”.
However expertise tends to be narrow, I’m thinking of that overused Niels Bohr quote about how an expert is someone who has learned the hard way every mistake possible in a narrow field. Or in the Cynefin framework that you have “Simple” “Complicated” “Complex” and “Chaotic” systems, and “Simple” sits on a cliff next to “Chaotic” in the paradigm because once the constraints are removed, the expertise or best practice that works predictably in Simple systems falls apart.
This can be exploited for competitive gain. I’m sure this all ties back to OODA loops. Double Formula One World Champion Fernando Alonso like most elite sportsmen is extremely competitive and he claims that even when he plays against professional tennis players he still needs to “kill their strength”. And to do this he operates outside of their comfort zone:
At the risk of throwing in another tangent Marvin Minsky’s idea of negative expertise—that the mind is comprised more of ‘critic circuits’ that supress certain impulses more than positive or attractive circuits—to prevent us babbling or experimenting with strategies or tactics that haven’t worked before. This is why when we think of leaving a room, we don’t consider the window, even though it is a means—we opt for the much more expeditious door.
Expertise is more about what not to do than what one should do.[1]
I think what Alonso is doing here is he’s exploiting or rather inverting Negative Expertise, these professional players have trained in a narrow band of situations—playing against other elite players—and have a intuitive bag of tricks to play against them. Alonso instead forces them to play in a way they are not trained.
I wonder if choking is just that—that there has been something in the environment which they weren’t trained for. It’s not that they are overthinking—it’s that they can’t rely on intuition because there isn’t a precedent?
Another explanation for choking I see is that it isn’t conscious at all? Maybe I’ve been too influenced by the Hollywood movie trope of the player at the championship game, somehow locking eyes with his estranged wife in the grandstand, and being so overcome by a wellspring of feelings that he screws up the play. This may be why I assume Choking is related to anxiety. And anxiety is a whole-body experience, not merely “thought”. It is somatic. It affects your endocrine system, your cardiovascular system etc. etc. It is perhaps the body driving the thoughts just as much as the thoughts driving the body?
At any rate, I think when it comes to building models firstly one needs to identify which systems one is operating in—those which there are known risks, or high uncertainty. In the latter it would seem the first priority is focusing on what the circumference is of “optimal” operation (i.e. “don’t step over that line” “avoid the impulse to...”) and then finding heuristics rather than explicit models.
Interestingly, Refutative Instruction has been very profitable for John Cleese and Antony Jay, both as comedians who made comedy from the wrong way to run a hotel or a government ministry, and as businessmen who made actual industrial training videos that showed students the wrong way to do something before showing them best practice.
While the pedagogical value might simply come from the fact it is “entertaining” I am inclined to believe that it is also effective in the same way that Minsky’s Negative Expertise theory explains how learning works. (I invite you to draw your own comparisons to the kairos of Plato’s Dialogues.)