> As I said, it's probably not 100% true, but that doesn't matter.
It matters to me. If you were my parent and you told me the 10k hour rule even though it wasn't true, I would be really annoyed that I couldn't trust the adults in my life to tell me the truth.
I am sure that not everyone feels the way I do about this, but I feel this way very strongly, and you don't seem to acknowledge that anyone could possibly prefer a truth-based approach to this.
> Again, what's the alternative solution to motivate people to try hard?
Well one way would be: "Everyone who is good at this put in a lot of work. No one started out knowing everything."
That, unlike the promise that 10k hours promises anything, would actually be true.
If absolute truthfulness matters greatly to you, I would like advice from you about how to live life happily in face of the fact that we live in a deterministic universe that gives us no free will (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_determinism), and that we evolved from primates who kill and rape, and it's potentially in our nature to do the same. I'm serious in asking this, because I think you might have a good answer. These are truths (and I presume they are truths to you too) that are hard to reconcile with, at least for me. How do you reconcile with them? I apologize profusely for the digression, I don't think it's a ridiculous one though, as we're basically now talking about epistemological limits of truth anyway.
If you're really asking, I'd enjoy writing an answer; it's a good question/prompt.
I don't believe that lack of free will and hard determinism are conclusively established. To me they are tied up with what I consider one of the universe's greatest epistemic mysteries, which is where consciousness/sentience comes from. My own perception of my "free will" is that my mind/will have a default response in any situation, but that by spending some kind of mental energy I can override this default behavior. I believe that quantum mechanics leaves plenty of room for this self-perception of my mental process to have an actual basis in reality (though I also admit the truth could be something else entirely).
The idea that we have violent tendencies hard-wired, so-to-speak, doesn't bother me except in extreme cases of people who seem enslaved to them. If you want to know what does seriously trouble me, it's people who struggle internally with something like pedophilia, and are doing everything they can to resist it, but have to fight against it constantly.
I am really asking (as I've said elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8382692 I find these truths very difficult to live with). If you can write an extended answer to this, I would enjoy reading it.
> To me they are tied up with what I consider one of the universe's greatest epistemic mysteries, which is where consciousness/sentience comes from.
Trend of recent findings from modern science increasingly seem to suggest of a pretty dispiriting answer, our consciousness is not so different from a dog's, and it's not as remarkable as we deem it to be, (somewhat relevant article from the times this week: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/opinion/sunday/god-darwin-... ).
> I believe that quantum mechanics leaves plenty of room for this self-perception of my mental process to have an actual basis in reality (though I also admit the truth could be something else entirely).
I'm similarly finding solace in the fact that a lot of these things don't seem to be falsifiable, and that QM suggest potentially of a non-deterministic universe. What you say about pedophilia is also a concern, it's also an immense struggle for me to deal with these unhappy truths about human nature. I'm finding it extremely hard to come up with comforting answers.
It matters to me. If you were my parent and you told me the 10k hour rule even though it wasn't true, I would be really annoyed that I couldn't trust the adults in my life to tell me the truth.
I am sure that not everyone feels the way I do about this, but I feel this way very strongly, and you don't seem to acknowledge that anyone could possibly prefer a truth-based approach to this.
> Again, what's the alternative solution to motivate people to try hard?
Well one way would be: "Everyone who is good at this put in a lot of work. No one started out knowing everything."
That, unlike the promise that 10k hours promises anything, would actually be true.