Hacker News Reader

Comment by alecco | Hacker News Reader

I'm not fond of all these attention grabbing hotshots. Gladwell's theory is completely bogus.

A guy in UK tried to do that for Marathon and aimed to become an olympian. He did a lot of media and called his upcoming documentary "The Road to Beijing". He didn't make it, and wasn't even close (from what I remember it was 2:40 or 2:45). Then he went to Ethiopia and picked a protege. His protege was fast but didn't win a thing.

He is now a motivational speaker. I guess blatant self promotion always works. He used to be the running joke in UK runner's forums but he is the one laughing now.

View on HN

The world record is 2:03. The guy you mentioned may not have been close to the world record, but a 2:40 marathon is 26 back-to-back 6 minute, 10 second miles. That's pretty damned good.

Looking at the 2010 results from the NY and Boston Marathons, that's a few minutes shy of the 100th best person. Considering that those are elite races with entrants from around the world, I think his time is pretty damned good in an absolute sense, not just a relative sense. Best in the world, no. Olympic level, no. But I'd consider him elite.

Certainly he's very good, but there's still a huge gulf between him and the best marathon runners.

And that's why this ten thousand hours thing is pretty random, yet pretty unfalsifiable. In any specialised activity, the first hundred hours of dedicated practice is good enough to make you better than most people. Keep practicing and you'll be better than 80% of the world. Keep it up for a bunch more time and you'll be better than 90% of the world. By the time the irrelevant ten thousand hours milestone pops by, you'll certainly be impressive at your activity, but whether you're in the top 5% or the top 0.001% depends on which activity you've chosen (plus your natural talent in that field).

So for some definition of "expert", it's fair to say that ten thousand hours will make you an expert.

but whether you're in the top 5% or the top 0.001% depends on which activity you've chosen (plus your natural talent in that field).

I would be fine with that result. My objection is when people say "I'm just not good at X," when what they really mean is "I'm not as good at X as I think I should be, that frustrates me, and I lack the motivation to continue trying." If we can demonstrate that with enough practice, anyone can get good at anything (with a large delta of good), then I think that's meaningful.

If that statement is self-evident to you, I've talked to people who don't consider it so. For example, I've talked to other CS majors who think that most people just don't have the right "mind" for programming, and I've taught programming to people who said similar things.

If we can demonstrate that with enough practice, anyone can get good at anything (with a large delta of good), then I think that's meaningful.

I'd agree with that, which is a very different claim than "there's no such thing as innate talent".

I've talked to other CS majors who think that most people just don't have the right "mind" for programming

I'd also agree with that, and I don't think it's contradictory. Have you really not observed that some people pick up programming far easier than others? I believe that almost anyone can get to the point where they can write basic software, but not that everyone is capable of becoming the next Dennis Ritchie.

I think that initial aptitude at a task is not a good predictor for how well you can do after doing it for a decade. It is a good predictor for likelihood at actually pursuing it for a decade, because it often determines whether or not you like the activity.

Put another way, people become good at things that they like because they keep doing them. We get positive reinforcement. But I don't think there are a class of people who have the "mind" for programming.

Also note that by bring up Dennis Ritchie, you've now introduced the "what does it take to be a genius" discussion, which is different from achieving expert status.

Well, you probably wouldn't ever get in the top 5% of marathon runners if you didn't have legs [1]. I'd argue that it's similar for something like programming. I think you'll find that some people lack the mental acuity or analytical reasoning skills to be in the top 5% of programmers. Those skills can be taught to a certain extent, I suppose, but I don't doubt you'll find people that would plateau well before breaking into "expert" territory. You'd likely find the same for someone trying to reach that point in golf or any other number of skills.

Do most people lack those necessary skills? I'm not really sure.

[1]: For the purpose of the argument, ignore prosthetics. AFAIK, there isn't anything similar to prosthetics for someone that lacks certain necessary abilities to be an "expert" programmer.

So for some definition of "expert", it's fair to say that ten thousand hours will make you an expert.

I've just been using Google to find a crisp definition of "expert" that I can cite to one of Ericsson's papers. Some of those are in nonsearchable .PDF documents. The short answer is that the formal scientific literature on acquisition of expertise does not bless anyone who desires the title "expert" with that title, but rather uses objective performance measures to identify persons with statistically reliably superior performance. I'll post this now, and look for more definitions and references, and try to edit this post during the edit time limit if I find something more on-point for you to look up. Ericsson's seminal paper on the issue

http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/course/6/6.055/readings/eric...

has already been linked to by at least two participants in this thread.

From

http://web.me.com/pw70/ACE_lab/Publications_files/2007%20Eri...

we can find this extensive discussion of the definition of expertise:

"Since [Bedard's and Chi's (1992)] review, researchers have become increasingly dissatisfied with studies that define experts by social criteria (e.g., peer nominations), by extended domain experience, or by (high) education. When scientists measured the level of real-world performance of so-called experts they found that many were not reliably better than their less-experienced colleagues. For example, reviews (Ericsson, 2006) have described studies showing that a psychotherapist’s level of education and clinical experience is unrelated to their treatment outcomes. Recent reviews of performance in health-related fields show that extended experience of doctors and nurses (beyond the first couple of years of practice) is not associated with continued improvements, as most people had thought. In fact, performance has frequently been found to decrease without continued training (Choudhry, Fletcher, & Soumerai, 2005; Ericsson 2004).

"There are numerous domains of expertise in which some performers are reproducibly superior to most others engaging in the domain.For example, chess masters, bridge experts, and experts in other games consistently beat less-skilled individuals. More generally, in the arts and the sciences some individuals reliably generate superior products that are selected for presentation in journals, conferences, and competitions. Some individuals are able to perform at a reproducibly higher level in professional domains too. Our framework focuses on understanding the mechanisms that mediate consistently superior performance, and to distinguish this approach from the traditional study of expertise we will refer to it as the expert-performance approach (see Feltovich, Prietula, & Ericsson, 2006, for a description of the historical development of several approaches to the study of expertise using psychological methods)."

You must have accidentally looked at rankings for subgroups of runners.

In the 2010 Boston Marathon, the runners between 2:40 and 2:41 placed from 208th to 227th. This group included a man in his 50's. 2:40 is a nice PR for a hobbyist, but it was a bit much for that guy to start talking Olympics and make a documentary of himself.

http://www.marathonguide.com/results/browse.cfm?MIDD=1510041...

I think that calling Gladwell's suggestion that 10,000 hours is the magic number to become an expert bogus based on your single data point is a bit hasty. Gladwell didn't say that everybody who puts in 10,000 hours of band lessons becomes the Beatles. The way I interpreted the book was that the 10,000 hours of practice was simply a prerequisite to becoming the Beatles. There were numerous other factors outside of this practice time requirement that lifted the Beatles to fame. Many of those factors were luck-driven, including but not limited to inherent talent that they were born with.

In fact, my interpretation of Outliers was that being good is simply a prerequisite - the rest is heavily luck-driven even though nobody really likes to talk about it.

The theory isn't about becoming the best in the world. It's about achieving "greatness" or "success." Most people can't even run a marathon, much less do so in under 3 hours. I don't see how you could call someone unsuccessful who can do so.

>"Most people can't even run a marathon, much less do so in under 3 hours."

// Most people don't try.

I think that most healthy people could walk (you said "run") a marathon if they desired to. even if you walked for 2 miles an hour and had a 10 minute break that would be 17 hours of effort. 3mph is the usually quoted walking speed.

Perhaps I'm wrong.

This kind of crazy promise sidelines real athletes working hard for many years. Many athletes working hard were in his shadow in the media. Media spots are very important for non-professional athletes as they depend on sponsorships and donations.

I find it very disrespectful.

How is someone practicing 6 hours a day, 6 days a week for 6 years with the intention of going pro not a "real athlete working hard for many years?"

That's what I don't understand about all the negative replies in this thread. What defines a "real athlete" if it's not a whole lot of hard work? How does quantifying the effort make it less real?

1. It isn't Gladwell's theory.

2. Even Gladwell isn't stupid enough to say that it's sufficient to put in 10,000 hours, he just implies it.

This article is about someone committing to practicing "six hours a day, six days a week, for six years". Are you sure your "guy in UK" story is analogous? He actually committed 10,000 hours to the mission not once but twice?

A 2:40 time isn't terrible - even at the Olympic level: http://www.iaaf.org/oly08/results/eventCode=3659/bydisciplin...

(Of course, most of these guys had to do better than 2:40 to qualify, but still..)

The Beijing 2008 marathon was run in extreme heat and humidity. The times were pushed back severely and some elite runners refused to participate. The last one to finish was 2:41 and the rest were DNF'd.

Actually, I was too generous. He only did 3h10.

From forum comments (not mine):

  I have to say after being an early supporter of this project I
  totally lost interest. I initially felt inspired by Vero's enthusiasm
  and drive and a feeling that "anybody could do it" in an American
  dream kind of way. Not sure if it was injury, but why didn't he
  run Amsterdam?

I think there is a limit that motivation and hard work can only push that far. Beyond that, it's basically gift or talent rules the game. That may sound bitter when you realize it, but it's a fact of truth. That's especially the case in Math and competitive sports.

I think it is the other way around. Talent can take you only so far. After that you got to put in a lot of hard work. Ask teachers around, and most of them can tell you of many bright kids with big potential who never did anything with it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com