Yesterday morning I was stuck on a research problem, so I went out for a run. Athletes often remark about how participating in sport taught them important lessons about time management and perseverance in other aspects of their lives. After pushing myself through a temptation to reduce the run to a walk, I ditched thinking about the research problem and turned to the question of athletic perseverance: why is it easier to push myself to keep running than to keep pushing myself through a research problem?
I believe it comes down to a simple abstraction. Running offers three basic levels of movement: walking, shuffling/light jogging, and running. Once I'm walking, I've stopped doing what I'm really trying to do. Once I'm shuffling, I've stopped respecting the time I allocated to getting some exercise. In short, there's an obvious metric for whether or not I'm (a) running and (b) doing a decent job at it.
Research, in contrast, offers more of a continuum of effort. There are some very concrete states (e.g. writing a paper, preparing a talk), but the creative portions of research are much more open ended. I can look like I'm working without really having my attention on my work. There's also a catch-22 to monitoring my attention to research: once I'm checking that I'm focused on a problem, I'm no longer focused solely on the problem! It's fairly easy to fake research effort and convince myself that I am really working when I'm not really there. Running doesn't let me get away with that.
So what does running teach me about perseverance in research? It doesn't teach me _how_ to persevere, or even how to recognize that I'm off-track. It does remind me that one can push through temptations to stop. It's attitude-conditioning. This isn't always a good thing though: I've been guilty of spending many a truly unproductive hour sitting at my desk trying to force work that my mind simply wasn't up to at that point. Research has taught me that giving up and walking away is often extremely valuable, especially since my mind keeps working subconsciously (which is why running helps with research in the first place).
Which brings me back to my original question: what does sport teach us about perseverance in creative fields? I concluded that it actually doesn't teach me much. Running works for me because my creative brain works better when "distracted" by a simple run. I'm glad that running has such clean states, because I want a simple metric for "good enough" when I'm trying to restore rhythm to my day. It doesn't scale to the sorts of perseverance needed in the continuum of creative work. There, it's far too easy to fool yourself.
Showing posts with label sport. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sport. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Ride to Time Bad a Never
On a visit to Williamsburg, Virginia last weekend, I got in a bike ride on the Colonial Parkway, which extends from Jamestown to Yorktown via Williamsburg. The parkway is a scenic road with a surface of stone embedded in something like concrete. Speed limit is 45 mph and the car rattles quite a bit along the surface. On a bike, it's a whole body vibrating experience better than that of riding on cobblestones, but hardly conducive to a smooth, relaxing ride.
Jiggling along the 7 miles from Williamsburg to Jamestown, I noticed that my bike bottle kept rotating leftwards in its cage on the bike frame. As a result, its imprinted slogan read out in reverse, yielding the title of this post, over and over. Contemplating this phrase provided distraction from the tooth-chattering ride.
It actually made surprisingly good sense, if read in pseudo Irish-speak. Why ride? To never have a bad time. To keep from being slow. To maintain understanding of your own pace and ability. To stay healthy. They're all pretty good reasons, and decent explanations of why I enjoy a good ride. I also ride for scenery, which the road certainly offered. I tend to ride to release tension though, which this ride induced instead. However, at a time when I could have easily seen myself chucking the ride and turning back, I instead found wisdom from my rotating water bottle that reminded me of all the fun of just being out on a bike on a summer day. Spinning around can indeed help change your perspective, especially when it happens in the opposite-than-usual direction.
Vegetarian recommendation: Food for Thought in Williamsburg, Virginia has several interesting veggie options (some vegan). They're on Richmond Road. Probably the best veggie food we've had there outside of ethnic restaurants, and certainly the best selection. In the ethnic category, we enjoyed Emerald Thai as well.
Jiggling along the 7 miles from Williamsburg to Jamestown, I noticed that my bike bottle kept rotating leftwards in its cage on the bike frame. As a result, its imprinted slogan read out in reverse, yielding the title of this post, over and over. Contemplating this phrase provided distraction from the tooth-chattering ride.
It actually made surprisingly good sense, if read in pseudo Irish-speak. Why ride? To never have a bad time. To keep from being slow. To maintain understanding of your own pace and ability. To stay healthy. They're all pretty good reasons, and decent explanations of why I enjoy a good ride. I also ride for scenery, which the road certainly offered. I tend to ride to release tension though, which this ride induced instead. However, at a time when I could have easily seen myself chucking the ride and turning back, I instead found wisdom from my rotating water bottle that reminded me of all the fun of just being out on a bike on a summer day. Spinning around can indeed help change your perspective, especially when it happens in the opposite-than-usual direction.
Vegetarian recommendation: Food for Thought in Williamsburg, Virginia has several interesting veggie options (some vegan). They're on Richmond Road. Probably the best veggie food we've had there outside of ethnic restaurants, and certainly the best selection. In the ethnic category, we enjoyed Emerald Thai as well.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Computational doping, part 2
My sister responded to my first computational doping post with a link to a NYTimes article (subscription reqd) from a couple of weeks ago about an amputee with prosthetic legs who wants to compete in Olympic track. The jury is still out on whether he will be allowed to compete, with one of the major questions being whether his prosthetics give him an unfair competitive advantage.
This got me thinking about my memory software again. My description in the first post said nothing about the intended interface between me and the software. I've generally envisioned a standard sort of interface with menus and links to click as I actively navigate this auxiliary memory. This interface would require so much active use on my part that I'd never really use the software. I want this auxiliary memory to operate without my having to direct it all the time. One such interface would be a brain prosthetic that tapped into my existing thought process and augmented my technical information management, like in the ongoing research into using brain signals to control prosthetic limbs
And now I bet the Turing award committee gets uncomfortable, even if the wearer developed the interface and the software (a fairly formidable research challenge that might well be deserving of the award in and of itself). How does a change of interface make this much difference? Using the first system still required substantial work on the part of the researcher (to initiate use of the system). The second system works subconsciously. It saves effort on the part of the user. Once the user no longer has to actively work as hard, the results feel less worthy of recognition. The work matters as as much as the result. The ends don't compensate for the means.
So perhaps the perception of work is what leads us to view some forms of advantage as unfair. Doping works passively. Training in wind tunnels requires action and dedication. Prosthetic limbs (are perceived to, at least) work without active behavior by the wearer. It's the good old work ethic again. That's an American interpretation, at least. We want work to count for something (students often plead for a higher grade based on effort). But that doesn't explain our acceptance of altitude tents for athletes (which at least require some inconvenience of loss of comfort compared to a hotel bed). There, the distinction with doping appears to be whether we violate the body for advantage. A prosthetic auxiliary brain might also violate us physically (if nerve probes had to be implanted rather than worn on the surface). I somehow suspect that even surface probes to access an artificial brain would make some people uncomfortable with rewarding the results, though.
Doping makes me uncomfortable because it might effectively demand an athlete to violate their body to be able to compete. A breakthrough in prosthetic memory research could do the same to scientists. Much excellent research still arises from human perception and inspiration, so the human scientist still has a tremendous role to play in creating results. Athletes similar have instincts of when to hang back, when to attack, and how to read a competitor. It would be interesting to see studies of these more perceptual skills in elite athletes, and how much they correlate with winning performances.
This got me thinking about my memory software again. My description in the first post said nothing about the intended interface between me and the software. I've generally envisioned a standard sort of interface with menus and links to click as I actively navigate this auxiliary memory. This interface would require so much active use on my part that I'd never really use the software. I want this auxiliary memory to operate without my having to direct it all the time. One such interface would be a brain prosthetic that tapped into my existing thought process and augmented my technical information management, like in the ongoing research into using brain signals to control prosthetic limbs
And now I bet the Turing award committee gets uncomfortable, even if the wearer developed the interface and the software (a fairly formidable research challenge that might well be deserving of the award in and of itself). How does a change of interface make this much difference? Using the first system still required substantial work on the part of the researcher (to initiate use of the system). The second system works subconsciously. It saves effort on the part of the user. Once the user no longer has to actively work as hard, the results feel less worthy of recognition. The work matters as as much as the result. The ends don't compensate for the means.
So perhaps the perception of work is what leads us to view some forms of advantage as unfair. Doping works passively. Training in wind tunnels requires action and dedication. Prosthetic limbs (are perceived to, at least) work without active behavior by the wearer. It's the good old work ethic again. That's an American interpretation, at least. We want work to count for something (students often plead for a higher grade based on effort). But that doesn't explain our acceptance of altitude tents for athletes (which at least require some inconvenience of loss of comfort compared to a hotel bed). There, the distinction with doping appears to be whether we violate the body for advantage. A prosthetic auxiliary brain might also violate us physically (if nerve probes had to be implanted rather than worn on the surface). I somehow suspect that even surface probes to access an artificial brain would make some people uncomfortable with rewarding the results, though.
Doping makes me uncomfortable because it might effectively demand an athlete to violate their body to be able to compete. A breakthrough in prosthetic memory research could do the same to scientists. Much excellent research still arises from human perception and inspiration, so the human scientist still has a tremendous role to play in creating results. Athletes similar have instincts of when to hang back, when to attack, and how to read a competitor. It would be interesting to see studies of these more perceptual skills in elite athletes, and how much they correlate with winning performances.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Computational doping
As a fan of road cycling, I've been following the Floyd Landis trial and recent doping revelations (mostly via velonews). The whole affair feels a bit like a witch-hunt at a wizarding convention, in that doping sounds sufficiently commom back in the late 90s that lots of riders probably could make confessions. The question remains whether they will be burned at the stake fueled by collective desire to do something about this practice now.
At the same time, getting into a new research project reawakened my envy at my husband's memory for research results. He's very good at recalling the gists of projects, who worked on them, and how they relate to other projects. He builds mental roadmaps of research areas in his head as he reads, and can recall and access those models easily. My memory is far better for birthdays and people's stories, which isn't usually as useful for professional computer science.
As this skill I desire is all about managing information, though, I should be able to imagine a software system to help me build, manage, and access a store of professional knowledge. The technical challenges to this notwithstanding, I found myself pond ring whether using such a tool would be analogous to doping in sport.
There are clearly some similarities: person uses artificial substance to enhance their ability to perform; person may get more money and more prestige as a result of better performance; person isn't competing solely on their natural talents. There are also some strong differences: sport has one winner (individual or team) whereas research competition usually has several; elite sporting is more financially lucrative than elite research; the public gets emotionally caught up in sport.
High-profile awards such as a Nobel or a Turing (the analogue for computer science) are exceptional in having single winners and non-trivial financial rewards (though not sport level). Imagine a Turing-award winner attributing success partly to a program used to help manage idea infrastructure. The awardee would probably get bonus points for having written the program, but even if someone else wrote it, I can't imagine the computing press calling to revoke the reward.
Is this because what prompts a research award is the ideas instead of the person (the person gets credit, but the idea is what captures the imagination). The same emotion arises in sport: I don't want to let the doping allegations taint Floyd's stage 17 ride in the 2006 Tour de France because it was so frigging _beautiful_. I love cycling for those moments of explosive power where the person disappears and only an instrument highly tuned to its environment, internal condition, and condition of its competitors remains. At that moment, I don't care whether the riders are aided by technology: the joy is my drug, and I just want to experience it.
But when the ride is over and the podium gone, doping takes us past the performance and focuses on the person. One standard argument against doping is that it is unfair, disadvantaging those who choose not to dope. The usual counterargument is that doping can help some riders be more competitive with those with more natural abilities. My memory-enhancing software would fall into the latter, but an already top person could use the same software to widen the gap again. Unlike drugs, my software would cause me no physical harm. In an ideal world, nobody would have to choose between winning and harming themselves, but winning often requires risk and compromise. How is sport truly different?
In the end, research and sport have different value systems, different notions of what makes a heroic performance. Both value results. In research, purity of results comes from replicability; collaboration is both welcome and expected to be visible (via attribution and citation). In individual sport, purity manifests as an unaided athlete achieving the improbable. Collaboration is rampant (top cyclists use a myriad of bike designers, clothing designers, wind tunnel simulations, etc), but expected to be invisible. Doping destroys invisibility and becomes an affront to purity. If our culture viewed scientists as heroes on par with athletes, would my software become distasteful? I suspect not, because we still view research as "hard" and athletics as inborn. If our athletes are simply trying to live up to our expectations of them, perhaps we need to ask whether it is us, not them, who are really on drugs.
At the same time, getting into a new research project reawakened my envy at my husband's memory for research results. He's very good at recalling the gists of projects, who worked on them, and how they relate to other projects. He builds mental roadmaps of research areas in his head as he reads, and can recall and access those models easily. My memory is far better for birthdays and people's stories, which isn't usually as useful for professional computer science.
As this skill I desire is all about managing information, though, I should be able to imagine a software system to help me build, manage, and access a store of professional knowledge. The technical challenges to this notwithstanding, I found myself pond ring whether using such a tool would be analogous to doping in sport.
There are clearly some similarities: person uses artificial substance to enhance their ability to perform; person may get more money and more prestige as a result of better performance; person isn't competing solely on their natural talents. There are also some strong differences: sport has one winner (individual or team) whereas research competition usually has several; elite sporting is more financially lucrative than elite research; the public gets emotionally caught up in sport.
High-profile awards such as a Nobel or a Turing (the analogue for computer science) are exceptional in having single winners and non-trivial financial rewards (though not sport level). Imagine a Turing-award winner attributing success partly to a program used to help manage idea infrastructure. The awardee would probably get bonus points for having written the program, but even if someone else wrote it, I can't imagine the computing press calling to revoke the reward.
Is this because what prompts a research award is the ideas instead of the person (the person gets credit, but the idea is what captures the imagination). The same emotion arises in sport: I don't want to let the doping allegations taint Floyd's stage 17 ride in the 2006 Tour de France because it was so frigging _beautiful_. I love cycling for those moments of explosive power where the person disappears and only an instrument highly tuned to its environment, internal condition, and condition of its competitors remains. At that moment, I don't care whether the riders are aided by technology: the joy is my drug, and I just want to experience it.
But when the ride is over and the podium gone, doping takes us past the performance and focuses on the person. One standard argument against doping is that it is unfair, disadvantaging those who choose not to dope. The usual counterargument is that doping can help some riders be more competitive with those with more natural abilities. My memory-enhancing software would fall into the latter, but an already top person could use the same software to widen the gap again. Unlike drugs, my software would cause me no physical harm. In an ideal world, nobody would have to choose between winning and harming themselves, but winning often requires risk and compromise. How is sport truly different?
In the end, research and sport have different value systems, different notions of what makes a heroic performance. Both value results. In research, purity of results comes from replicability; collaboration is both welcome and expected to be visible (via attribution and citation). In individual sport, purity manifests as an unaided athlete achieving the improbable. Collaboration is rampant (top cyclists use a myriad of bike designers, clothing designers, wind tunnel simulations, etc), but expected to be invisible. Doping destroys invisibility and becomes an affront to purity. If our culture viewed scientists as heroes on par with athletes, would my software become distasteful? I suspect not, because we still view research as "hard" and athletics as inborn. If our athletes are simply trying to live up to our expectations of them, perhaps we need to ask whether it is us, not them, who are really on drugs.
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