"How many people don’t actually believe that you can practice and get better at something?"
"If a farmer in North Korea doesn't become a billionaire, is it because she didn't have a growth mindset?"
I think that's a strawman of the weak and strong arguments. Effort is a substantial component of success and many capable people fail to seek to improve themselves, leading to substantial shortcomings and a life of mediocrity and limited accomplishment.
Not everyone is going to be a billionaire or a centamillionaire or ultra-famous or world class. But the vast majority of humanity stagnates in so many aspects as completely unremarkable or downright awful and fails to cultivate excellence at anything.
"How many people don’t actually believe that you can practice and get better at something?"
That's the strawman of the weakest version, which then makes it seem unremarkable and obvious and so it's easy to defeat.
There's a load of people who do not believe they can meaningfully improve their position in life through concerted effort, and view their position as static and unable to be changed. You see fat people who simply don't believe they can lose weight if they put the fork down, or people deeply in debt who can't recognize that cutting back now will lead to them being in dramatically improved positions in the future.
This reminds me of that awful pop psych book Grit, did you ever read that? I absolutely believe in trying hard at things because I’ve often found that the more I try at stuff the better my outcomes tend to be.
But like it’s so convenient to say growth mindset is the key to success all the time if the person saying that has a certain base level of privilege. I have a pretty fortuitous mix of privilege that means when I try and put my mind to stuff I’m generally rewarded. I wouldn’t have the career I have if I wasn’t a try-er. But being a try-er without the circumstances I have wouldn’t overcome shitty circumstances.
I dunno what the answer is, it’s not like trying is a bad thing. But I’ve worked with folks who are just as try hard as I am and they aren’t able to get ahead in the same way because they have student loans, or their parents didn’t give them great financial education so they are paying off a lot of credit card debt, or they have caregiving responsibilities they didn’t ask for, and on and on it goes.
Trying isn’t bad but I do with the hyper successful folks of the world would be more honest about the role luck has played in their circumstances.
Yep, definitely agree. I’m not trying to deny that baseline level of conscientiousness is required to produce improvement. That would be like denying neural plasticity itself.
The issue is that it’s so vague and nebulous that there’s no way to falsify it. In other words, there’s no scenario which somebody had a growth mindset but didn’t improve. Therefore if somebody doesn’t succeed you can just point to their fixed mindset.
Duckworth’s own research is misleading in terms of grit. She cites a study where she says that 99% of soldiers who adopt grit go on to succeed in the physical examinations. What she leaves out is that the base rate of success is 95%. So it’s hardly a revolutionary improvement.
It’s kind of like when an employee is stressed out because of modern working conditions. Instead of actually helping them (allowing them to work less, disconnect, pay them more, etc.) you give them free meditation classes. I’m not saying that meditation doesn’t work, but it’s being used in a way to put the burden back on the individual, rather than address the problem.
"How many people don’t actually believe that you can practice and get better at something?"
"If a farmer in North Korea doesn't become a billionaire, is it because she didn't have a growth mindset?"
I think that's a strawman of the weak and strong arguments. Effort is a substantial component of success and many capable people fail to seek to improve themselves, leading to substantial shortcomings and a life of mediocrity and limited accomplishment.
Not everyone is going to be a billionaire or a centamillionaire or ultra-famous or world class. But the vast majority of humanity stagnates in so many aspects as completely unremarkable or downright awful and fails to cultivate excellence at anything.
"How many people don’t actually believe that you can practice and get better at something?"
That's the strawman of the weakest version, which then makes it seem unremarkable and obvious and so it's easy to defeat.
There's a load of people who do not believe they can meaningfully improve their position in life through concerted effort, and view their position as static and unable to be changed. You see fat people who simply don't believe they can lose weight if they put the fork down, or people deeply in debt who can't recognize that cutting back now will lead to them being in dramatically improved positions in the future.
This reminds me of that awful pop psych book Grit, did you ever read that? I absolutely believe in trying hard at things because I’ve often found that the more I try at stuff the better my outcomes tend to be.
But like it’s so convenient to say growth mindset is the key to success all the time if the person saying that has a certain base level of privilege. I have a pretty fortuitous mix of privilege that means when I try and put my mind to stuff I’m generally rewarded. I wouldn’t have the career I have if I wasn’t a try-er. But being a try-er without the circumstances I have wouldn’t overcome shitty circumstances.
I dunno what the answer is, it’s not like trying is a bad thing. But I’ve worked with folks who are just as try hard as I am and they aren’t able to get ahead in the same way because they have student loans, or their parents didn’t give them great financial education so they are paying off a lot of credit card debt, or they have caregiving responsibilities they didn’t ask for, and on and on it goes.
Trying isn’t bad but I do with the hyper successful folks of the world would be more honest about the role luck has played in their circumstances.
I *wish the hyper successful would be more honest. Can’t edit lol.
Yep, definitely agree. I’m not trying to deny that baseline level of conscientiousness is required to produce improvement. That would be like denying neural plasticity itself.
The issue is that it’s so vague and nebulous that there’s no way to falsify it. In other words, there’s no scenario which somebody had a growth mindset but didn’t improve. Therefore if somebody doesn’t succeed you can just point to their fixed mindset.
Duckworth’s own research is misleading in terms of grit. She cites a study where she says that 99% of soldiers who adopt grit go on to succeed in the physical examinations. What she leaves out is that the base rate of success is 95%. So it’s hardly a revolutionary improvement.
It’s kind of like when an employee is stressed out because of modern working conditions. Instead of actually helping them (allowing them to work less, disconnect, pay them more, etc.) you give them free meditation classes. I’m not saying that meditation doesn’t work, but it’s being used in a way to put the burden back on the individual, rather than address the problem.