Take that (not) Einstein!
“If at first you don’t succeed, give up and blame the Jews”
watch that get downvoted
Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is not the definition of insanity. It's the definition of practice.
Submitted 1 day ago by squaresinger@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
paequ2@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Yeah, no. You should be adjusting each cycle when you practice, until you start getting the desired results.
joonazan@discuss.tchncs.de 4 hours ago
It depends on what you are practicing. If it involves things out of your control, for instance poker, you definitely shouldn’t adjust after every result. In the poker case that leads to not playing well just because you lost one time.
Even in less random things you have to be absolutely sure you found the problem before adjusting.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 20 hours ago
sometimes you need the muscle memory.
in this case its all repetition.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No matter whether you are awful or great, if you are practising skateboard tricks it’s called “practising skateboard tricks”. Because you are doing the same thing. You aren’t doing identical actions while practising skateboard tricks, but you are doing the same overall task.
oxomoxo@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Imagine you are practicing basketball free throws. The goal of the practice is to get the ball through the hoop.
To be clear the key word is goal, which can be defined as an achievable end result. In this example the ball goes through the hoop or it doesn’t.
If you throw the ball away from the hoop in such a way that it doesn’t even come close to going through the hoop, a reasonable person would say you need to change your actions to get a different result.
However, if you do not change your actions yet you expect the ball to go through the hoop, this is unreasonable and could broadly be seen as “insanity” as a sort of pejorative for a person who may be suffering from mental illness or is simply being unreasonable.
Practice by definition is synonymous with iteration, which is repeating an activity while making changes to affect the result or outcome of that activity.
The statement is about the individual goal not the general activity you’re practicing.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 1 day ago
No.
You’re either doing the thing right, and expecting the same result, or you’re doing it wrong and then adjusting. Either way, you’re not doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You are doing the same thing (e.g. practising a specific piece of music on a specific instrument). If you are doing it poorly or on world-class level, it is still the same thing. It’s not identical actions within the task of practising that song, but no matter how good you are, it would be still called the same thing (“practising to play song X on instrument Y”).
Lightor@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I mean how much do you want to generalize? Practicing now means doing the same thing over and over, ignoring the adjustments you make? Ignoring the fact that someone who never practiced vs a 10 year practiced will sound different, but she did the same thing for 10 years, it should sound the same if nothing changed.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 21 hours ago
If you’re expecting the same result (and getting a different result) you’re doing scientific research.
njm1314@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If you’re practicing the exact same way over and over you’re doing something wrong.
kelpie_returns@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That’s not always true. Finding the optimal way to do something is only one potential aspect of practice. Another is getting to a level where you can do it consistently and on demand, over and over and over, without missing a beat.
And even once you’ve reached that level, that skill can be lost or degrade over time if you dont keep at it, so repeatedly performing the same motions in the exact same way becomes entirely necessary in order to maintain your skill level.
stephen01king@piefed.zip 1 day ago
If you were looking for consistency, that is by definition you looking for the same result, which is not covered in the definition of insanity.
njm1314@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Finding? How are you going to find it? Since you’re arguing to never change what you’re doing in practice the very first attempt at practice must be the thing you always repeat right?
rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
You must not be a bowler.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 hours ago
Anyone else kind of hate this “definition”? I’ve been hearing that shit my entire life, and I just can’t help but roll my eyes every time.
Hugin@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
It’s terrible, wrong, and out of context. Einstein was talking about quantum mechanics not mental health. He really didn’t like that at the quantum level results are random but follow a very spefic probability curve.
He though quantum mechanics would be able to achive classical physics like results. Where the only uncertainty was because of measurement error.
quantum uncertainty is the most experimentaly proven theory in physics. So even in the context Einstein made the statement he was wrong.
bunchberry@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Putting aside the fact that you cannot “experimentally prove” anything as proof is for mathematics, claiming you can experimentally demonstrate fundamental uncertainty is, to put it blindly, incoherent. Uncertainty is a negative, it is a statement that there is no underlying cause for something. You cannot empirically demonstrate the absence of an unknown cause.
If you believe in fundamental uncertainty, it would be appropriate to argue in favor of this using something like the principle of parsimony, pointing out the fact that we have no evidence for an underlying cause so we shouldn’t believe in one. Claiming that you have “proven” there is no underlying cause is backwards logic.
Einstein, of course, was fully aware of such arguments and acknowledged such a possibility, but he put forwards his own arguments as to why it leads to logical absurdities to treat the randomness of quantum mechanics as fundamental; it’s not merely a problem of randomness, but he showed with a thought experiment involving atomic decay that it forces you to have to reject the very existence of an perspective-independent reality.
There is no academic consensus on how to address Einstein’s arguments, and so to claim he’s been “proven wrong” is quite a wild claim to make.
“[W]hat is proved by impossibility proofs is lack of imagination.” (John Bell)
squaresinger@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Einstein wasn’t talking about anything at all, since it’s a misattribution. Einstein never said that. Someone just stuck Einstein’s name in front of their own stupid garbage quote to make it sound smarter.
MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Idk about that…
When you practice something, you’re actively changing your technique to elicit better results. You’re not making huge changes, but rather a series of miniscule ones that add up.
For instance, I could sit down with a flute and a piece of music, and play it decently. It wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be terrible. If I play it the same way every time, it’s always going to sound decent - but it’s always going to have the same wrong notes, the same rushed passages, the same intonation issues… If I practice it, I can make changes over time that fix those things. I can fix my fingerings, even out the rushed bits, adjust my intonation… But then I wouldn’t be doing the same thing anymore, I’d be doing something slightly different.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You are doing the same thing (playing the same piece of music on the same flute). You aren’t doing an identical thing.
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 1 day ago
You don’t think the context of the quote is implying doing the same exact thing repeatedly?
Krauerking@lemy.lol 20 hours ago
Oh doing something over and over and over again cause you want to get the diminishing returns milked for all its worth is absolutely insane.
It just also happens to be useful insanity.
Its what pushes humanity at its fringes is the insane going for more and trying to get the little they can. Most of the “sane” people arent much worth talking about.squaresinger@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
How do you get proficient at anything? Practice it well past the first 10 minutes where you have the highest returns.
Alsjemenou@lemy.nl 1 day ago
“The same”. In a literal sense. Not figuratively like in practice, where you’re repeating things to aim for better performance/outcomes. Every repeat is different, or at least should be otherwise there is this great qoute… something about repeating the same thing and expecting different results…
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Did Einstein actually say that? Even if he did, he wasn’t a psychologist. Plus, scientists recreate experiments all the time, literally doing as close to the same thing as possible and often getting different results.
mxeff@feddit.org 1 day ago
So No. I also was always very irritated by this quote, because from a scientific point of view this is rather incorrect, as (like you said) experiments need to be repeated.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No, Einstein did not say that. But it’s often misattributed to him, that’s why I put it as “(not) Einstein”.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Gotcha, thanks!
thelittleerik@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A idiotic comments trying to argue that its different, dont understand that the AIM stays the same. And yes after each iteration you get closer with practice.
The execution might look a bit different but the aim is still at the exact same after each iteration.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Thanks!
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 1 day ago
We have (at least) two fundamentally different types of knowledge—there’s our intuitive world model that does improve with repetition learning (much like a neural network) and does change with practice; and there’s rule-based knowledge that improves by eliminating possible rules/theories via observation.
My interpretation of Einstein’s quip is that insanity consists in confusing the two—thinking that rule-based knowledge can improve by performing the same tests over and over until the results match our theories, instead of modifying our theories to reflect the results.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s not an Einstein quote. It’s a common misattribution to make a stupid quote sound smart.
kate@lemmy.uhhoh.com 1 day ago
even if you agreed with this (definitely not) einstein quote it would be an example not a definition !!
Dorkyd68@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This was one guys opinion and everyone took it to heart. For example, If we listened to and did everything Neil degrass Tyson said then we’d all be closed minded condescending assholes
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
And we don’t even know who that one guy was apart from that it wasn’t Einstein.
alecsargent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
The difference is that when one is practicing something one knows that “the result” can be achieved or improved.
Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 19 hours ago
No. Practice isn’t doing the same thing over and over again.
Practice is an iterative process where each time you fail, you learn something new and add it to the process until eventually you find a result that is different.
You’re practicing your golf swing because you keep shanking the ball to the right. You don’t keep making the same shot over and over agin. You adjust your stance. You adjust your leg positioning. You adjust a hundred little things until you find the combination that gives you the results you want. THAT’S Practice…not just repeating the same action.
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Ehh, I get what you’re saying but…that’s iteration, improvement, development
Practice is rehearsing the same move over and over, the phrase “practice like you play” exists for that reason. It is by definition, repetition.
howrar@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
When I get a movement right, I keep repeating it over and over until it’s committed to memory. You’re saying I could’ve stopped at the first success? Why did no one tell me earlier?
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
But do you expect different results when doing this? I think the point of that would be to get the same result every time.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Same is not identical.
“I am going to get a drink.” - “I’m gonna do the same.”
Will the second person now do identical movements to the first one? Will the second person use identical words to order an identical drink?
Or will both of them walk up to the bar and each of them will get some drink they like?
“I’m going to practice golf this weekend.” - “Yeah, I’m going to do the same.”
Will the second person immitate every movement of the first one? Or are both of them just going to practice golf, one of them maybe on a golf course and the other one on a drive range?