Talent is Overrated by Colby book review

Being the heirs of the Judeo-Christian tradition, we Westerners conceive of talent as a divine gift stemming perhaps from the Parable of the talents in Matthew. It may come to a surprise that talents, in the modern sense of the word, have a dominating component of behind-the-scenes thought & effort.

In Talent is Overrated, Colby makes a quite convincing case that talent is not the result of luck or grace but rather from directed effort towards a goal. In the first four chapters he examines the evidence bringing many specific cases to bear, such like that of Mozart, and puts forth an alternate hypothesis to the gift/luck scheme that, in its core, consists of conscious, deliberate practice.

Once he has convinced the reader he minutely looks at the specific components that makes talent happen in chapters 5-7 and, what may be the best part, how to do that for oneself.  These chapters warrant careful combing. For these I'd recommend have take pencil & paper close at hand to unearth all the treasures.

The application doesn't end with the individual as Colby expands the framework to include organizations. In chapter 8 he shows that this can be done and what steps might be necessary to incorporate the framework to larger scale entities.

On the closing chapters he addresses some miscellaneous topics, such as creativitity & innovation, youth & age and the sources of passion.

For someone who simply wants to get better at something or excel at top levels or who coaches someone else on physical or mental skills, this book might refocus your efforts for the better or reinforce what you already believe works.

If you're in a hurry, some of the very same concepts, but without the application component, are explored in the Scientific American July 2006 cover article, Secrets of the Expert Mind by Phillip E. Ross. Now, If you want an even deeper understanding on how this stuff works there is The Mind And the Brain by Sawyer. The Willpower Instinct is also a good companion to any of these.

The Way to Willpower book review

It is reasonable to suppose that once that you have struck gold, the neighboring lots might be valuable as well. Same thing happens with authors: once you have found a great book from one, it is not too far off to think that he or she might have others. Having greatly enjoyed Thinking As a Science by Henry Hazlitt I came across his bibliography on Wikipedia and discovered that he had a book on willpower as well. I immediately went on to acquire it and it also is great stuff.

As with Thinking, Hazlitt goes with great care dissecting the subject and making it accessible to the reader. This book, having been written in the early 20th century lacks all of the recent scientific developments of which The Willpower Instinct (the other great book on willpower I've read) bases itself on. Notwithstanding,  Hazlitt builds his program on the philosophy and psychology from his time and ends with commendable results. The founding stone for his method, and a very controversial one at first, is the negation of the existence of the will.  Allowing that, he builds on it by adding the costs of exercising willpower and the way of habit formation. This trio allows him to offer methods and recommendations that if, are unexplored by The Willpower Instinct, are no less powerful.

Once more, as in Thinking, one is very well rewarded by taking notes.

Thinking as a Science book review

In his latest book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, cartoonist Scott Adams describes the ways he has found to to hack his wet computer, ie his brain, for success, health and happiness. His advice is a bit spooky as it goes the grain of established wisdom and because of, as he readily admits, the source. However, its a fine book and the contents appear as they might work.

I bring that up as excuse to mention Thinking as a Science by Henry Hazlitt. This one too, helps one get hold of the resources of one's own mind but in an organized, rational way. In a sense: hack it too. Somehow, this gem has fallen out of the attention of the wider public, and deserves to be brought more to the forefront. The goal of it is to bring method to the thinking process and this geared towards the solution of practical problems.

Here's the table of contents:

I The Neglect of Thinking

II Thinking With Method

III A Few Cautions

IV Concentration

V Prejudice and Uncertainty

VI Debate and Conversation

VII Thinking and Reading

VIII Writing One's Thoughts

IX Things Worth Thinking About

X Thinking as an Art

XI Books on Thinking

Chapters 2 & 4 are the core of his system. Chapter 2 spells out the different thinking methods one can unfurl at a given problem and how to thread them together. Chapter 4 is of particular interest are his recommendations on concentration, which jibe well with the views of William James, neuroplasticity and zen practice. By itself, this one is worth its weight in gold.  Other chapters reinforce the method like nos. 3 and 5 while  chapter 6 extends the method to include other persons. This area has been explored and expanded by other authors independently, so you might also want to check out other books devoted to it.

All throughout, but on chapter 7 in particular, this book is surprisingly against reading. Drawing heavily from Schopenhauer's essay On Thinking for Oneself, Hazlitt believes that reading actually is an excuse for not using one's own mind and offers remedies.  This part reminds me about Brottman's Solitary Vice which also assails reading as an act but from a different angle. Despite his apparent aversion, he obliges and shares his advice on tackling texts. Another virtue of his advice on reading is that it is easier to apply than others, such as Adler's of which we talked recently.

I admit it:  I too usually shoot from the hip when faced with problems, rather than taking a more rational stance as a Hazlitt proposes. If you're anything like me, you  are likely to do likewise. Why shortchange ourselves, when there's help at arm's reach? As I see it, there are two aspects to habitual use of thinking as a science: 1) the acquaintance with the techniques, starting from actually being aware that there are such; and, 2)  getting into the habit of using them when needed, which I feel is the most difficult part (more on this related to chess on a previous post). Good ol' Harry Lorayne used to stress this point. Hazlitt retakes it on the second to last chapter and offers guidelines.

A further reading section is included at the end (with commentary).

The book stands on its own, but Hazlitt made a retrospective comment on it on a later book, The Wisdom of Hazlitt, which rounds off his system. Here, a mellowed Hazlitt relaxes his  stance against reading and gives further advice . The further reading section is now greatly expanded.

One of the best books I've read over the last couple of years, because, if anything, challenges ones viewpoints. Bring out pen and paper.

Reading Set: An OED stunt journalism project

Is it me or have we seen this one before?

In Reading the OED, under the letter 'S', Ammon Shea issues a friendly exhortation to the reader to read the longest entry in the Oxford English Dictionary which is for the word 'Set'. Within the proposal one can notice some challenge undertone  which makes it too good to pass. So, having already read his experiences with the whole dictionary, liking the word 'set' myself, and wanting to experience some stunt  journalism firsthand I decided to take him up on the challenge.

The first difficulty was to actually be able to read the words. Yes, I have a set handy, but that is the 4 in 1 compact version, the one with the included magnifying glass. For a quick look up I can  easily do without any magnification, but not wanting to to reenact any of Shea's physical discomforts I brought out the glass. Setting it at about two inches from my eyes and five from the page I got comfortable sized text.

Now, since I decided not to rush through the definitions, I decided to break the job into 5 to 10 minute segments. I figured this would give me both the experience and the greater attention span without any of the physical strain. Since my available deskspace was already taken over by other projects I decided to lay down the dictionary flat on the floor and read hunched over it.

As I read I found that my gaze is constantly wandering from the older quotations to the the newer ones and from the quotations in general to the next definition. I attribute this to my greater interest to actual meanings and elegant corralling of signification than Old or Middle-English archaeological sifting. This is just me; I'm sure older eras of the language can be fascinating enough for a lifetime, but I'll pass on that. Also, after two or three of the quotations, generally the more recent ones, I get already the sense spin at hand and don't really feel the need for more.  Yet, there are many more still to go through and one feels under some sort of obligation to at least acknowledge them.

Part of the whole in stunt reporting is embarrassing yourself when explaining your project to others.  One day when my nephew, Matt, came in for a visit he found the oed lying open on the floor and asked what was it. I took the opportunity to briefly introduce him to it telling him that it was the largest dictionary in the English language.

"But, what is it doing here?"

"Oh, I'm in the middle of a project: I'm trying to read all the entries for the word 'set', which I'm told is the longest defined word in the book here. Someone says its quite difficult to go through all of them. It is 25 pages in all."

He, quite prudently, did not pursue the topic, thinking perhaps that his uncle was odder than he previously imagined.

On another occasion my dad came up and asked me

"Are you looking up something?"

"No, I'm trying to read all the definitions of a word"

Next day he asked again

"Are you looking up something?" as if the previous conversation had never happened.

"I told you yesterday. Do you remember?"

"Ah, yes I remember. You told me that you were reading it because it has lots of words."

Anything interesting?

The senses themselves generally do stand well separate, yet sometimes the senses  threatened to go and stay in unfamiliar territory, but they always came back. After all, most of the definitions are senses of put or place, only each differentiating from the other in their own particular twist. Sometimes however I cannot tell one sense from another like sense 1 (first def) and sense 15 (third def)  which both refer to the setting of a heavenly body like the sun: they both look to me the same (oh, I get it now, one is the verb and the other is the verb as a noun […]).  It also appears that s.34 (setting a fire) could be included in s.25, but a distinction is made, which I've not yet  fathomed.  Alternate spellings of other words like suit or sit add some amount to the bulk. In at least one instance these came round in a full circle.  A hen can set itself on eggs (s. 5b) or if presumably it doesn't want to on its own, you can either set the hen to the eggs (s. 1c) or set the eggs to the hen (s. 15d). This pun has been made before, but isn't this an instance fowl play?   Before brushing ourselves clean of feathers let's not forget that also the eggs themselves, as a clutch, can be a set (s. 9e).

Just by reading this word I also got the eerie sense that Shea describes about doubting if one is speaking English at all when talking to others.  There are so many shades of meaning that one feels dizzy.

The sources are varied and mostly obscure to me. The most notable find is the letters of king Richard III taken as a source.

As for typos I only found one on s. 109 where "to cause to move" is printed as "to canse to move" as far as I can tell.  Even with the glass I can't really be sure if it's a misprint or not, though I believe the type was not set right for this word (Ok. I'll stop now).

So in true stunt fashion, I must state what I've learned from the experience. I've learned that I wouldn't read the OED more than an hour daily (30 minutes appears to be my max) even if paid. I've learned that even one word can surprise you with a kaleidoscope of meanings; that citations can be boring  as [fill in the blank]. I've learned why the setter dogs are called that (they are set to game), how old are pancakes (dating at least to the XV century; try to to find where I got that from), what do you set on the Ready, set, go! (your muscles), and that there is more than one way to have your eggs set.

Letter to my niblings: a gift of great books

Dear Matthew, Anne & Daniel

You are probably a bit disappointed with the gift you received from me this Christmas. Maybe you were expecting candy, perhaps toys. But you need not worry: on this holiday season I'm giving you what may very well be the very best material gift you'll ever receive. It is better than playthings and sweets I assure you. Can you imagine that?

Well, let's see. What you have here are a set of tomes, ten in all, labeled "Gateway to the Great Books". One may be apprehensive about receiving books, of all things, and pictureless ones at that. However, these books are quite different. By themselves, they are full of wonders. They consist of a collection of short pieces that relate to storytelling, man and society, science and philosophy. You already love storytelling, what grownups call literature,  and within the pages here you'll find some of the very best, some of which you'll want to read over and over again. You also have a family (a lovely one at that), friends and attend school, which means you already belong to groups that are larger than yourself. The volumes colored blue, deal with these and with even bigger groups. Now, man has been called an animal that asks questions. You also ask questions, we all do pretty much all the time. Some of these questions relate to why things are as they are in nature. Science is at it's heart the search for answers in this area. The volumes coded green, show how persons have sought to answer and explain them, from where we stand in the Universe (take a look at Kees Boeke's Cosmic View),  to how bugs (!) behave (Fabre, the Sacred Beetle), to what is what really happens when a candle burns (Faraday, Chemical History of a Candle). Math, which is closely related to science, is not a boring school subject, and in fact can be quite delightful. You use Google daily, do you know where that name came from? Or how big a number can get? Finally, there are other questions that cannot be answered, for all its worth, by science.  How should one behave? How do we know things? What is one's purpose? These, and more, are explored in the last volume. In a sense, we're all philosophers (lets grow a beard!)

These books not only great by themselves, but are planned as an entryway to even greater books that are out there. You already know about some of them: remember Achilles and the  war of Troy (The Iliad)? Have you ever heard of Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)? Perhaps you've heard of a certain knight that once fought against windmills (Don Quixote).

Starting now, this books will let you make a better use of your greatest asset which is your mind. They'll also help you place things throughout your life in perspective, and strengthen your will and study habits, which in turn will pave the way in school, and to whatever goals you set for yourselves as members of society.

All these is set before you, if you'll only read them.

Gateway to the Great Books reviewed

In my first excitement over the Great Books I found that there was a companion set and got my dad to order it for me. Somewhere during the second year reading programme of the Gateway to the Great Books I made the jump to the Great Books proper. Taking a look at the former after some years I see that I've been missing some great reading and decided to retake them.

Gateway to the Great Books (GGB) is a 10 volume set that serves as an entryway to Great Books of the Western World (GB).  It was prepared the same editors of the GB and lives within the same philosophical vein. In contrast to the GB flagship set, this one focuses on shorter works by a more diverse group of authors.

As with GB, GGB are divided and color coded into a) imaginative literature and critical essays (tomes 2-5); b) Man and Society (tomes 6-7); c) Science and Mathematics (tomes 8- 9) and d) Philosophy and Theology (tome 10). The covers have a nice texturized feel and the pages themselves are whiter than GB's cream colored.

The first volume contains the introduction to the set, the Syntopicon to the set and a reading plan. The intro is written by Adler, and here, once again rehashes his reading Methodology (of which we talked in the last post). This time, however, he puts it forth in a more polished clearer straightforward fashion. I would still recommend getting How to Read a Book if one intends to take him up on it, nevertheless. Unlike the one in the GB, the syntopicon here radiates each work to the Great Ideas and to related works both in the GB and the GGB.  The reading plan is structured according to difficulty and it is suggested to be taken from 7/8 grade to College Sophomore and covers the entirety of the works in the set.

As taken from its introduction, serving as a gateway  is GGB's only stated purpose. It is not too far off to think of the works in GGB as those that didn't quite make it into the bigger set. Nonetheless, that being so, doesn't make any of them second-rate in absolute terms.  The works are delightful to read  for the most part. I find that there a bit few, say the United Nations Charter or moderately demanding like Sweetness and Light (took me 3-4 tries to get traction), but, as said, these are by far the exceptions and still enriching. There are times when one feels the joy of learning; this set is a surefire way to get that feeling at any time without the heaviness of complexity. Many of the included works are not as readily available as those from the GB, so once again one ends ahead by having all of them in one place.

As with the GB the pieces in the GGB are mostly devoid of footnotes or clarifying explanations. Some editor's guidance is provided however before each work along with some pointers. Unlike the GB, in the GGB allow themselves to offer selections over complete works when appropriate. For instance, in the very first work, Robinson Crusoe, the editors abridge the novel by letting go scenes, such as Crusoe's stay in Brazil, that don't relate as closely to the Great Ideas. Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico centers on a single episode.

Taken as a duo, both sets interplay well as is evidenced by the Syntopicons.  Now then, both  don't really need each other other as the two can live a meaningful independent existence.

If one's gung-ho with Adler's method, this is the set to get. The brevity of the pieces, ease and greatness allow, and some level demand, the method to be tried. One can always move up to the GB when one feels she has gained sufficient proficiency in the art. Maybe one's still uncertain about this great book reading idea or project, and doesn't want to commit all the way in just yet. GGB solves this allowing the reader to dip her toe in them. Best part (best? all aspects with this set appear to be top notch) is that complete sets can be get dirt cheap at Ebay for well under $100 and not infrequently under $50. Go for it, I guarantee it'll be the best book purchase you'll ever make.

Adler's How To Read a Book

At one time reading was regarded an untainted virtue, later it was seen that it did us no good unless we read good books, and now there is a dawning consciousness that even if we read good books they will benefit us little unless we read them in the right way. But even where this consciousness has been felt, little attempt has been made to solve the problem systematically. Leisurely discourses, pretty aphorisms, and dogmatic rules have been the forms in which the question has been dealt with. Such conflicting adages as "A good book should be read over and over again" ; and "The art of reading is the art of skipping," are not  very serviceable. The necessity of some sort of orderly treatment is evident.

Henry Hazlitt Thinking as a Science

There are some books that are just difficult to get into. You try, find it isn't working, give up, retry at some later point in the future only to give up once again having not advanced much further. This has happened to me with Peter Straub's Ghost Story, which is supposed to be a fine book scare-wise, but I have not got past the Chowder Society's second or third mention. It has also happened to me with Adler's How to Read a Book. After more than a decade and a half of having it on a bookshelf and pulling it interminently to take a look at the list of recommended great books at the end, I decided to take one more crack at it and see if I could finish it this time around and get something worthwhile out of it.

In this latest attempt I now see why I had failed before:  The title itself had been misleading me all this time. Where I expected some quick set of rules, Adler instead makes a large scale exposition of the state of reading  and education and the way to revert it by great book reading. So in reality How to Read a Book is more like three books in one: a) poor education; b)rules for nonfiction; and c) guidelines for imaginative literature and the great books. By accepting it as it is, I finally got over the hump.

Now, this may only aply to the 1940 solo edition which is the one I've got.  There are in reality two versions of this book under the same title, the 1940, on which I'll center on and the more readily available 1972 refurbished edition with Van Doren. Not until I began writing this post I became aware of this.

The focus of this book are books that are for instruction, deliver an exposition and are Great in the sense of aligning themselves to the Ideas of the Great Conversation, as opposed to those books that are for entertainment, delight or are shallow.

I had also another reason for reading this book which was to learn a bit more about the philosophy of The Great Books of the Western World of which we talked about last time and of which Adler is an editor. With more berth than Hutchins allows himself on The Great Conversation Adler takes a more leisurely pace getting his point across. This takes the form in the Education/Great books/Rules triad, the latter being the core of the book. If one is approaching How to from the perpective of Education or that of the Great Books, the longish first part (now finally) makes sense.

The rules proper don't start until deep into the book and these are heavy duty. These in a sense require the reader dissect the reading material (ie. a Great book) forwards and backwards, minutely so, and put it all back together. Adler's explanations are a bit circomlocuted, but does make himself clear by the time he wraps up each point. What would have been great would have been an example to illustrate parts or the whole process with a sample text and to be sure what Adler expects from the reader and text. We don't have such in this tome. As far as I know the closest we get to hands-on examples is in the relatively obscure book General Introduction to the Great Books.

In the second section of the last chapter contains nonetheless a model reading group and ways to conduct it. This is motivating to say the least. Even more because the pontential richness of the Great Books can be drawn the most by discussion.

The final section projects a society where its citizens and state officials work in symphony with the Great Books. A society where force, charm and ease of word don't sway the minds, but reason. Editorially, I regret that as of late we have undemocratically moved away from such ideals mainly through fear. We've let our true liberties be impinged. As long as this continues, they win.

This book is not for the faint of heart. It assumes you can already concentrate in the first place, so there's no help there. You either read as he asks or you don't ; though at the very least you get a sense of what you are missing.

Instead of trying the rules full force on the inmensity Great Books proper (a gargantuan task, no doubt) why not give them a go with shorter, easier, and still 'great' books? Of these we'll talk next time.

*sidebar*

This all sounds right and well but, and I may be wrong on this, the point on which Adler's great book reading as a solution for America's education woes hinges on is, ironically, not quite sound.

Ch VI. p101

Today's public was educated in the schools of yesterday and today; it cannot be expected to demand that the schools to change tomorrow. It cannot be expected to make demands if it does not know intimately, as a matter of its own experience, the difference between real education and all the current impostures. That "if" gave me the clue. Why couldn't it be made a matter of people's experience, instead of their having to rely on hearsay and all the crosscurrents of talk among disputing experts? It could. If somehow out of school and after it, people generally could get some of the education they did not get in school, they might be motivated as they are not now, to blow up the school system. And they could get the education they did not get, if they could read. Do you follow this reasoning?

No, not really.

Substituting:

"Know of their own experience": 'k'

"Make demands": 'd'

~k→~d

∴ k→d

Ok this is hairsplitting. I'm still sold on his general idea, but I had to call him on this one.