This claim gives an impression of being unfalsifiable. Any counter-example could be dismissed as the person being either insufficiently self-aware, insufficiently motivated to work towards a goal or not really desiring a 1:1 relationship.
I have seen people make similar claims in a way that is not falsifiable. That isn’t what I’m going for. Let’s see if I can make the terms a bit more concrete:
if that is their desire—Can only really go with self-reports on this one when trying to falsify.
self-aware Are able to notice that they have that desire? (Self reports again) Are they able to make observations about their beliefs, actions and the experiences that result from those actions. (Self reports). Only rudimentary self awareness is required. The process of developing social skills is extremely good at improving self awareness too.
Willing to personally develop—Will take actions and perform activities in order to change themselves. (External behavior which can be observed.)
work towards goals—As opposed to doing nothing. I don’t have any prediction about what happens when you do not take directed action. (Similar to the previous point.)
Rare—Let’s say < 1%. Obviously depends on the specific criteria used for the study.
What kind of evidence would lead you to conclude that this is not as rare as you suggest?
A significant number of people dedicating 3 hours a day for 3 years to the goal of developing social skills and sexual attraction ability and not being able to form a relationship. With that much effort it is extremely improbable for someone without significant mental or physical disability to fail and it would be enough for even most people with moderate disabilities to have quite good odds.
Is insufficient self-awareness an impediment you think people could also overcome if willing to develop and work towards a goal or is it merely a convenient label for people who prove unable to get a 1:1 relationship if that is their desire?
Self awareness usually comes with time and maturity. You know, realizing how you act, etc. I include self awareness because obviously anyone who doesn’t realize (or admit to themselves) that they want to achieve a goal or notice what results they currently get will not even bother trying. The people you mention seem to already have plenty of self awareness. If they don’t then they are extremely lucky and someone else has input the relevant goal while they were on auto-pilot.
One more thought: Doing a lot of something doesn’t always make you better at it. There’s practice, and then there’s meaningful practice, and you need meaningful practice to get better, not just any practice.
For example, suppose you’re a poor writer and you’re trying to get better, so you set out to write more stories. However, after spending a lot of time writing, all that happens is that you’ve become better at writing poorly; you don’t suffer from writer’s block any more and can finish a story much more quickly than you used to, but each individual story isn’t much better than the ones you wrote before you practiced. What went wrong?
You’re the best chess player in your area, and you want to get better after getting trounced in a regional tournament. You play lots of chess games, and you rack up more and more wins against the people you always beat anyway. You then go to another regional tournament, and lose just as badly as you did before. What went wrong?
You’re the worst chess player in your area, and you want to get better. So you play a lot of chess games against your computer, but it seems that no matter what you do, you still lose, and you don’t seem to be any better at beating human players, either. What went wrong?
You want to be a better pianist, so you spend a lot of time practicing a number of songs on the piano until you’ve completely mastered them. This takes a long time. You then sit down to play a new song you’ve never played before and have a lot of trouble with it. It takes you just as long to master as all the others. What went wrong?
It’s pretty easy to practice something and never get any better, or only show improvement in a small part of a larger skill set.
You’re right, 3 hours a day practicing how to drop a piano on your toe will not help you learn to be a concert pianist, nor will 3 hours slamming the keyboard shut on your genitalia help improve your sex life. Between ‘self-awareness’, ‘willing to work’ and most particularly ‘willing to personally develop’ is the necessity to be willing and able to google ‘how to date’.
Something like that, yes. Or look at what successful daters are doing and acting kinda like what they do instead of doing the opposite and failing for another three years.
I think you’re neglecting some possible failure modes. Unless you deny the existence of failures of the kind CronoDAS describes they don’t seem to be fully accounted for by your model. Why is it that some things that others find difficult we find relatively easy and others that others find easy we find relatively difficult? I think there is a bit more to the answer than means, motivation and effort.
I can think of examples of things I have accomplished relatively easy that many others seem to find difficult or impossible. I can also think of things that I have made some significant effort to become good at and have met with limited success and have ultimately abandoned. I think the reasons for success or failure when trying to develop some new ability are a little more complex than you seem to be implying.
I guess I was hoping that on reflection you might be able to offer some advice intermediate between ‘it’s easy, google it’ and ‘it’s hopeless, give up now’. This is not a criticism—I know I am largely unable to offer any constructive advice on the things I am good at to people who would like to become good at them.
Thanks for the clarification. Your criteria for judging if it is someone’s true desire, willingness to personally develop and for self-awareness are significantly weaker than I had anticipated. The time commitment is rather higher. That level of commitment seems likely to eliminate quite a few people as it is on the order of other goals that have a significant failure or drop out rate (completing a university degree, achieving and maintaining significant weight loss, mastering a musical instrument, sport or physical activity).
Your claim seems plausible with that level of time commitment but it seems to me that it gets into somewhat ambiguous territory. For skills that require that level of commitment to develop it is unclear to what extent ‘anyone’ can acquire them since intrinsic motivation and innate talent become hard to separate. It is not quite on the level of ‘anyone can become a concert pianist if they just learned to play the piano’ but it is somewhat similar. To what extent is failure to follow through with the commitment to acquire the skill a lack of talent or a lack of drive?
The level of commitment I list as minimum primarily an indication of how confident I am in making predictions regarding the success of individuals at 5 std deviations below the norm. If someone else has more familiarity with that class of people they would be able to specify a more realistic picture. I gave my criteria to demonstrate that such a claim is, in fact, falsifiable.
It is not quite on the level of ‘anyone can become a concert pianist if they just learned to play the piano’
It is even more like: ‘anyone can become a concert pianist if they just spent 3 hours a day for 3 years practicing the piano’. (Except the piano thing is way harder.)
To add some perspective and as a belated reply to CronoDAS I would expect that anyone who could not get a relationship after spending 3 hours a day for 3 years trying and practicing would not be able to manage a full time job anyway.
If we’re talking about what it takes for me to have extremely high confidence that exceptions will rare then I need to be conservative. Most people need less but there are some, I’m quite sure, who do need to work extremely hard!
Three hours a day for three years doesn’t seem compatible with having a full-time job.
It is if (hypothetical generic) you have no ‘life’. The three hours a day could include one hour while commuting (studying, preparing and reviewing). All other social commitments that you have also count towards the three, assuming you do use them to develop and experiment with your social skills. Finally, I think it would be safe to relax the conditions of the ‘maximum required to expect rare exception’ such that the weekly average is 3h/d.
It is, but it is far from a trivial commitment. I, for example, wouldn’t bother spending so much time. Just wouldn’t care enough. But I am not a slow learner and even without explicit practice I could meet the minimum condition (“a simple relationship”). That is a fairly low bar, most people spending significant time could be expected to work towards a more specific kind of relationship with a partner ranking higher in their preferences.
I have seen people make similar claims in a way that is not falsifiable. That isn’t what I’m going for. Let’s see if I can make the terms a bit more concrete:
if that is their desire—Can only really go with self-reports on this one when trying to falsify.
self-aware Are able to notice that they have that desire? (Self reports again) Are they able to make observations about their beliefs, actions and the experiences that result from those actions. (Self reports). Only rudimentary self awareness is required. The process of developing social skills is extremely good at improving self awareness too.
Willing to personally develop—Will take actions and perform activities in order to change themselves. (External behavior which can be observed.)
work towards goals—As opposed to doing nothing. I don’t have any prediction about what happens when you do not take directed action. (Similar to the previous point.)
Rare—Let’s say < 1%. Obviously depends on the specific criteria used for the study.
A significant number of people dedicating 3 hours a day for 3 years to the goal of developing social skills and sexual attraction ability and not being able to form a relationship. With that much effort it is extremely improbable for someone without significant mental or physical disability to fail and it would be enough for even most people with moderate disabilities to have quite good odds.
Self awareness usually comes with time and maturity. You know, realizing how you act, etc. I include self awareness because obviously anyone who doesn’t realize (or admit to themselves) that they want to achieve a goal or notice what results they currently get will not even bother trying. The people you mention seem to already have plenty of self awareness. If they don’t then they are extremely lucky and someone else has input the relevant goal while they were on auto-pilot.
One more thought: Doing a lot of something doesn’t always make you better at it. There’s practice, and then there’s meaningful practice, and you need meaningful practice to get better, not just any practice.
For example, suppose you’re a poor writer and you’re trying to get better, so you set out to write more stories. However, after spending a lot of time writing, all that happens is that you’ve become better at writing poorly; you don’t suffer from writer’s block any more and can finish a story much more quickly than you used to, but each individual story isn’t much better than the ones you wrote before you practiced. What went wrong?
You’re the best chess player in your area, and you want to get better after getting trounced in a regional tournament. You play lots of chess games, and you rack up more and more wins against the people you always beat anyway. You then go to another regional tournament, and lose just as badly as you did before. What went wrong?
You’re the worst chess player in your area, and you want to get better. So you play a lot of chess games against your computer, but it seems that no matter what you do, you still lose, and you don’t seem to be any better at beating human players, either. What went wrong?
You want to be a better pianist, so you spend a lot of time practicing a number of songs on the piano until you’ve completely mastered them. This takes a long time. You then sit down to play a new song you’ve never played before and have a lot of trouble with it. It takes you just as long to master as all the others. What went wrong?
It’s pretty easy to practice something and never get any better, or only show improvement in a small part of a larger skill set.
You’re right, 3 hours a day practicing how to drop a piano on your toe will not help you learn to be a concert pianist, nor will 3 hours slamming the keyboard shut on your genitalia help improve your sex life. Between ‘self-awareness’, ‘willing to work’ and most particularly ‘willing to personally develop’ is the necessity to be willing and able to google ‘how to date’.
Or hire a dating coach, I guess.
Something like that, yes. Or look at what successful daters are doing and acting kinda like what they do instead of doing the opposite and failing for another three years.
I think you’re neglecting some possible failure modes. Unless you deny the existence of failures of the kind CronoDAS describes they don’t seem to be fully accounted for by your model. Why is it that some things that others find difficult we find relatively easy and others that others find easy we find relatively difficult? I think there is a bit more to the answer than means, motivation and effort.
I can think of examples of things I have accomplished relatively easy that many others seem to find difficult or impossible. I can also think of things that I have made some significant effort to become good at and have met with limited success and have ultimately abandoned. I think the reasons for success or failure when trying to develop some new ability are a little more complex than you seem to be implying.
My model is probably wrong. I am sure there are many people who cannot hope to get laid.
I guess I was hoping that on reflection you might be able to offer some advice intermediate between ‘it’s easy, google it’ and ‘it’s hopeless, give up now’. This is not a criticism—I know I am largely unable to offer any constructive advice on the things I am good at to people who would like to become good at them.
How about “it is really hard, google it”? ;)
Thanks for the clarification. Your criteria for judging if it is someone’s true desire, willingness to personally develop and for self-awareness are significantly weaker than I had anticipated. The time commitment is rather higher. That level of commitment seems likely to eliminate quite a few people as it is on the order of other goals that have a significant failure or drop out rate (completing a university degree, achieving and maintaining significant weight loss, mastering a musical instrument, sport or physical activity).
Your claim seems plausible with that level of time commitment but it seems to me that it gets into somewhat ambiguous territory. For skills that require that level of commitment to develop it is unclear to what extent ‘anyone’ can acquire them since intrinsic motivation and innate talent become hard to separate. It is not quite on the level of ‘anyone can become a concert pianist if they just learned to play the piano’ but it is somewhat similar. To what extent is failure to follow through with the commitment to acquire the skill a lack of talent or a lack of drive?
The level of commitment I list as minimum primarily an indication of how confident I am in making predictions regarding the success of individuals at 5 std deviations below the norm. If someone else has more familiarity with that class of people they would be able to specify a more realistic picture. I gave my criteria to demonstrate that such a claim is, in fact, falsifiable.
It is even more like: ‘anyone can become a concert pianist if they just spent 3 hours a day for 3 years practicing the piano’. (Except the piano thing is way harder.)
To add some perspective and as a belated reply to CronoDAS I would expect that anyone who could not get a relationship after spending 3 hours a day for 3 years trying and practicing would not be able to manage a full time job anyway.
Three hours a day for three years doesn’t seem compatible with having a full-time job.
I never said it was easy. ;)
If we’re talking about what it takes for me to have extremely high confidence that exceptions will rare then I need to be conservative. Most people need less but there are some, I’m quite sure, who do need to work extremely hard!
It is if (hypothetical generic) you have no ‘life’. The three hours a day could include one hour while commuting (studying, preparing and reviewing). All other social commitments that you have also count towards the three, assuming you do use them to develop and experiment with your social skills. Finally, I think it would be safe to relax the conditions of the ‘maximum required to expect rare exception’ such that the weekly average is 3h/d.
It is, but it is far from a trivial commitment. I, for example, wouldn’t bother spending so much time. Just wouldn’t care enough. But I am not a slow learner and even without explicit practice I could meet the minimum condition (“a simple relationship”). That is a fairly low bar, most people spending significant time could be expected to work towards a more specific kind of relationship with a partner ranking higher in their preferences.