I used to play a lot of squash. It looks like this, though those players are exceptionally good at it. It took a long time to get there, but I found could achieve a state of flow, where my game would become very good. Your use of the phrases “psyched up” and “coldly predict” reminded me of my squash game immediately.
I’m worried about the analogy I’m about to make, since a sport has well-defined rules, and I trained myself to implement narrow strategy. We don’t tend to get that in messy real life. But here goes: squash involves strategic concerns (deciding where to place your next shot and which region of the court to occupy between shots) and obviously, concerns of execution (managing to actually hit a shot where you intended).
It becomes very important to calibrate your strategy to your own technical skills and fitness. A weak player will tend to implement a completely different strategic game from that of a strong player. It’s almost as though a player “graduates” from one style of play to another as the improve.
When I was training, we spoke alot about “high percentage” and “low percentage” shots. And that was appropriate; the game involves making quick decisions in the face of uncertainty. It’s easy to play a “high percentage” shot along a side wall, a shot that tends to mitigate the risk that your opponent will be able to do something fancy, but not a shot that really gives you any sort of upper hand in the rally. A low percentage shot might be to play a low shot across the font of the court—if hit well, this will move your opponent out of position, or maybe even win the rally, but a poor hit is at risk of losing the rally for you, as it’s easy to play the ball out of bounds, or to lob it up where your opponent gains a huge advantage.
There are some objective decision criteria that you can use to decide whether to play various types of high or low percentage shots, based mostly on your position and your opponent’s position on the court. (I had a coach actually name zones on the court and me and my friends would play drills where we have to play a certain type of sot, depending on which zone we were in.) But there’s a huge subjective component to deciding whether to make a low percentage shot. After a lot of training, you just ask yourself: “does this feel right?” if ‘yes’, you make the risky move and if ‘no’, you don’t. This all undoubtedly depends on things like your balance, whether you’re placed in a comfortable position relative to the ball, and all sorts of other subtle physiological conditions.
I was a fairly inconsistent, though skilled player 10 years ago. What tended to happen is that I could “psyche myself up” by taking a fast, hard warmup before a game. I’d play confidently, and make lots of impressive shots, but at the cost of getting too aggressive. “Playing too many low percentage shots” is actually a slight lie, but it captures the gist and fits for the purpose of my narrative. Other times, I’d come on much too cold. I’d know what decision to make, but I’d do it through deliberation; I’d be cool and non-committal. This leads to some very disastrous shots. I’ve hit the ball into the ceiling just because I changed my mind about where I want the ball to go halfway through a swing. But then there were days when I could achieve “flow”. I make the right decisions, almost entirely subconsciously, and never question them. I always described the feeling that came with it as “cool intensity”. There was no “fire in my belly”. Maybe a small flame, but nothing excessively passionate. Just awareness of my surroundings and what I need to do next.
I usually fail to achieve anything like that state in the rest of my life, except in solving simple math problems on tests during my undergrad. The only thing I think these two things have in common is that I learned them using theory and then trained them a lot. The problem I’ve had in generalizing this lesson is that the world is large and complex and there’s no way to train for everything. But Eliezer’s notion of a rationality dojo resonates with my only two successful experiences. Winning in gerenal is going to be a subtle art, and we’re going to have to practice somehow.
I used to play a lot of squash. It looks like this, though those players are exceptionally good at it. It took a long time to get there, but I found could achieve a state of flow, where my game would become very good. Your use of the phrases “psyched up” and “coldly predict” reminded me of my squash game immediately.
I’m worried about the analogy I’m about to make, since a sport has well-defined rules, and I trained myself to implement narrow strategy. We don’t tend to get that in messy real life. But here goes: squash involves strategic concerns (deciding where to place your next shot and which region of the court to occupy between shots) and obviously, concerns of execution (managing to actually hit a shot where you intended).
It becomes very important to calibrate your strategy to your own technical skills and fitness. A weak player will tend to implement a completely different strategic game from that of a strong player. It’s almost as though a player “graduates” from one style of play to another as the improve.
When I was training, we spoke alot about “high percentage” and “low percentage” shots. And that was appropriate; the game involves making quick decisions in the face of uncertainty. It’s easy to play a “high percentage” shot along a side wall, a shot that tends to mitigate the risk that your opponent will be able to do something fancy, but not a shot that really gives you any sort of upper hand in the rally. A low percentage shot might be to play a low shot across the font of the court—if hit well, this will move your opponent out of position, or maybe even win the rally, but a poor hit is at risk of losing the rally for you, as it’s easy to play the ball out of bounds, or to lob it up where your opponent gains a huge advantage.
There are some objective decision criteria that you can use to decide whether to play various types of high or low percentage shots, based mostly on your position and your opponent’s position on the court. (I had a coach actually name zones on the court and me and my friends would play drills where we have to play a certain type of sot, depending on which zone we were in.) But there’s a huge subjective component to deciding whether to make a low percentage shot. After a lot of training, you just ask yourself: “does this feel right?” if ‘yes’, you make the risky move and if ‘no’, you don’t. This all undoubtedly depends on things like your balance, whether you’re placed in a comfortable position relative to the ball, and all sorts of other subtle physiological conditions.
I was a fairly inconsistent, though skilled player 10 years ago. What tended to happen is that I could “psyche myself up” by taking a fast, hard warmup before a game. I’d play confidently, and make lots of impressive shots, but at the cost of getting too aggressive. “Playing too many low percentage shots” is actually a slight lie, but it captures the gist and fits for the purpose of my narrative. Other times, I’d come on much too cold. I’d know what decision to make, but I’d do it through deliberation; I’d be cool and non-committal. This leads to some very disastrous shots. I’ve hit the ball into the ceiling just because I changed my mind about where I want the ball to go halfway through a swing. But then there were days when I could achieve “flow”. I make the right decisions, almost entirely subconsciously, and never question them. I always described the feeling that came with it as “cool intensity”. There was no “fire in my belly”. Maybe a small flame, but nothing excessively passionate. Just awareness of my surroundings and what I need to do next.
I usually fail to achieve anything like that state in the rest of my life, except in solving simple math problems on tests during my undergrad. The only thing I think these two things have in common is that I learned them using theory and then trained them a lot. The problem I’ve had in generalizing this lesson is that the world is large and complex and there’s no way to train for everything. But Eliezer’s notion of a rationality dojo resonates with my only two successful experiences. Winning in gerenal is going to be a subtle art, and we’re going to have to practice somehow.