I suspect with Starcraft there might be the issue of… conflicting intuitions/muscle-memories? Muscle-memory mix-ups sometimes happen when you learn 2 things that have similar cues, and avoiding those mistakes can cost you in reaction-time.
If there’s a batch of early-game keystrokes you need to drill into muscle-memory to begin a Zerg play, and a different batch of keystrokes for a Protoss play, having them mash-up on you under stress is a setback on both skillsets.
A more glaring example: learning to ride left-right reversed bikes is likely to disrupt your ability to do regular bike-riding for some time.
I’d have suspected that for things as different as baseball and basketball, this probably wouldn’t apply as much. (And if you commit HARD to the switch, it’s probably not as big of an issue; just a hill to climb initially, then smooth sailing for a while, but some transition-time needed when you switch back.)
...but the Michael Jordan article actually mentions that there was at least one case where MJ followed basketball intuitions to run more bases than anyone else thought was optimal. So the “misapplied cross-field intuitions” disadvantage might still have a role here.
(Something something generalizability vs hyperspecialization trade-off)
I suspect with Starcraft there might be the issue of… conflicting intuitions/muscle-memories? Muscle-memory mix-ups sometimes happen when you learn 2 things that have similar cues, and avoiding those mistakes can cost you in reaction-time.
If there’s a batch of early-game keystrokes you need to drill into muscle-memory to begin a Zerg play, and a different batch of keystrokes for a Protoss play, having them mash-up on you under stress is a setback on both skillsets.
A more glaring example: learning to ride left-right reversed bikes is likely to disrupt your ability to do regular bike-riding for some time.
I’d have suspected that for things as different as baseball and basketball, this probably wouldn’t apply as much. (And if you commit HARD to the switch, it’s probably not as big of an issue; just a hill to climb initially, then smooth sailing for a while, but some transition-time needed when you switch back.)
...but the Michael Jordan article actually mentions that there was at least one case where MJ followed basketball intuitions to run more bases than anyone else thought was optimal. So the “misapplied cross-field intuitions” disadvantage might still have a role here.
(Something something generalizability vs hyperspecialization trade-off)