bpev

joined 11 months ago
[โ€“] bpev@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Reminds me, Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers" book had a section about his interesting observation that pro hockey players' birthdays are skewed to the earlier months of the year. He attributed that to a kind of butterfly effect:

  1. Youth hockey leagues set league cutoffs by age, and mostly all start at the same time.
  2. The early month kids are slightly older, bigger, and stronger
  3. Since they are better at the very beginning, they get more playing time, more encouragement, maybe visit more "all-star" events, where they might get extra coaching, etc.
  4. eventually those kids actually just become better, because they had a better environment to grow.

I mean idk how accurate this exact instance is, but I feel it's a good thought experiment in thinking of how seemingly insignificant parts of the environment (like when in the year all the youth hockey leagues start) can impact whatever talent is. The whole nature vs nurture thing.

[โ€“] bpev@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Anyone got store recs for non-english books? Or that mostly just gonna vary a ton by language?