This has been on my mind lately. Salvatier's blog post is great, but it's been sinking in for me that everything he says applies to major collective delusions as well. The stock market for eg. has a surprising amount of detail. So does the Marvel Cinematic Universe.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1279986009489301505 …
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I think the more correct, or at least more precise statement is: "reality has a surprising amount of _surprising and boring detail_" Being a reality nerd is about making that boring part interesting for yourself.
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When you go down a tvtropes or fandom wiki site bunnytrail, there is an endless amount of detail to master, but it is also endlessly interesting AND not entirely surprising (like looking up the details of a minor and obscure superhero's superpowers is never truly surprising).
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But if (for eg) you do what Salvatier recommends and look into the surprising amount of detail in "boiling water", it's both surprising how complex it is, and kinda boring unless you find a way to get interested in say convection physics and heat transfer in uneven metal plates.
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Salvatier's post is well-paired with the "effort shock" articlehttps://www.cracked.com/article_18544_how-the-karate-kid-ruined-modern-world.html …
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Wong's point in that article is that effort shock is a result of miscalibrating the surprising amount of detail in reality due to the conditioning effects of karate-kid style sports montages that make it look easy, quick, and fun, with a nice soundtrack.
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Replying to @vgr
disagree: the karate kid actually goes out of its way to present martial arts as onerous, absurd, and always reversible in whatever gains you make, which doesn't jive with our expectations i.e. daniel-san keeps getting his ass kicked, and has to
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Replying to @swimming_blerd
But he gets to black belt in <2h and wins the championship. There is *necessary* compression in the presentation. In reality that would take like a decade.
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Replying to @vgr
i agree with that--compressing that pattern in a short time period is unrealistic, but if you revisit it; he never really gets his black belt, they just have him put one on to enter the joke there is that black belts and tournaments are fundamentally meaningless
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Replying to @swimming_blerd @vgr
the end fight in 2 (one of my favorite martial art movie fights) is a perfect antithesis to karate kid 1--not just because it's sloppy & brutal, but before it starts mr. miyagi tells daniel-san, "forget about that shit before; this is real"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmElew2NIS8 …
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Still, it compresses the time unrealistically. Whether or not black belts mean anything, the time investment they represent is what it is.
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Replying to @vgr
i think that's part of the challenge of learning/teaching martial arts (or anything else)--we want to reap rewards commensurate to the time invested/effort, and conceive of discrete ends; we feel entitled the black belt has become a sort of concrete remedy to that desire
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Replying to @swimming_blerd
Are you arguing that if you set aside ceremony and ritual, martial arts is easy enough that you can gain significant mastery in 2 hours? A "one weird trick" course? Note that even in movie, montage time ~=0.01 real time. Presumably Daniel trains for a few months in story time.
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