Deformity
A week ago I saw The King Of Kong, a film about videogames. Since then, I've caught Akeelah And The Bee--about spelling bees--and Rocket Science--about debating.
What they all have in common is not only that they're about things associated with young people (though in Kong the grown-ups are still playing), but also that they're about doing something at the highest level.
Now for some things--say, football--the highest level is obviously far better than a local game, but it's still recognizably football. Same for chess.
But what fascinates me about some disciplines is, at the far-right tail-end of the bell curve, it becames so specialized, so mutated, that they almost seem to be doing something else.
The best videogame players will take common arcade games and play them for hours, even days. They'll play screens you've never seen before, at difficulty levels that seem impossible. They'll use strategies (see the ones for Centipede) that allow them to score a few levels of magnitude greater than what a merely "good" player can manage.
Spelling bees were originally created to test how well kids could handle everyday words. Now the top players are so specialized that they spend months memorizing obscure words, words that no one uses in real life, much less spells. Watching the Scripps National Spelling Bee, you're not just watching decent spellers, but word freaks. (Are they outmoded due to Spell Check?)
Then there's debate. It used to be about who could make the best argument. Now the discipline is as much about who can make the most arguments in the time allotted. The top debaters sound more like auctioneers than people trying to make a point.
Furthermore, these skills don't really lead to anything else. In some ways, that makes me admire the people who have them even more.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:18 AM
8 Comments:
Is your "more" because they have disdained the mediocre trappings of real life and pedestrian questions of utility and focused all energy on the achieving the superlative state in their specialized area of interest- while being ignored and when not ignored, generally insulted by the mass? Is this because achievement for achievement's sake is an unmodified good and the quest for excellence (in the actual meaning of the term, not the B-school jargon) is pure expression of the human condition (OK I don't even know what that means- I mean something like "really important" said fancily)
Not that I disagree, just curious but I am glad we have plenty of paper pushers too.
Yeah.
The encouragement of ever more specialized functions is something that Frank Herbert explores in his Dune series of books. Dune describes a world where its seems a sizeable portion of the population dedicates their entire lives to one of several very specialized pursuits, often requiring the constant use of specialized, performance enhancing drugs. Mentats are human computers. Bene Geserits have mind powers. Various warrior classes are become killing machines. Oddly, only the governing classes seem not to have specialized abilities.
I think it is inevitabvle that mankind will drift in this direction. A group of specialists, dividing tasks amongst themselves, can simply accomplish so much more than a group of generalists over a shorter period of time. We see it in the practice of law and medicine especially. Unfortunately, as portrayed in Dune, there does not seem to be a way to specialize in good governing skills, and so our leaders continue to be very general in their approach (to society's detriment?).
Interesting you'd bring up Dune, since I was thinking of Mentats as I wrote this. We may become more specialized as we learn more (which I consider mostly a good thing), but also, as we build better machines, all sorts of old skills and specializations are no longer required.
As we're on the subject, which film adaptation do you prefer - David Lynch or the Sci Fi version from a few years ago? I'm sentimental toward the Lynch version (even though it made no sense that Paul had a different accent than his father). William Hurt was not good as Leto, imho.
I'm not a big fan of either. I prefer the David Lynch version because it's got a cool look and some interesting Lynch moments. (It's oddly faithful, I might add).
For the same reason, I prefer the Kubrick version of The Shining over the TV miniseries. Neither is much, but the first features a lot of interesting Kubrick weirdness, while the other was a flat if straightforward adaptation.
I was on the UCLA debate team for one quarter. And it was as you described: based on highly specialized skills that don't seem to prepare someone for debate/discussion in the real world.
On the other hand, the way we elect our presidents is also based on silly skills that don't indicate that he'll actually be good in office.
Over-specialization is one of the fundamental centrifugal forces in our society. Two hundred years ago, a famous mathematician and a famous historian would be able to discourse about many subjects. Today, they can't. Indeed, when I was in math grad school, only the first year students could converse with each other. After that, everyone specialized to the point that we couldn't discuss our work with our fellow math students.
I thought math was the universal language.
When it comes to debate, there are three different standards:
1) What would win an official debate, which generally includes making as many points as possilbe.
2) What would be the best argument, which often involves only one point, but a good one.
3) What would convince the most people (this is related to running for office), which often involves strong appeals to emotion and simplying the facts.
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