When I was a kid, I was easily tickled, and my older brother was a cruel, ruthless tickler. Then somebody told me that he wasn’t ticklish, that he had willed himself to not be tickled. It took me quite a while, and it was terribly hard, but I got to where I would not be tickled.
My brother discovered that it’s no fun to tickle somebody who refuses to be tickled.
See, that’s what always killed me about phys ed. Because I have played the violin, cello and piano, and I draw people’s portraits for a (modest) living.
But there’s no way on God’s earth that I could ever jump over that little bar in gym class. It’s the one they set up in the playground in front of the sand pit & everyone else in the 3rd grade managed to jump over the damn thing. Except me - I crashed through it.
It’s an interesting OP, but true, somewhat unanswerable; nobody’s going to spend hours on a tangible skill set that they have no hope of achieving. The ones they train for are the ones for which they have some innate ability, which lowers the difficulty level significantly. So you’re comparing apples and screwdrivers.
You could look at which vocations and avocations have the fewest practitioners, but it would be hard to know whether that was because of difficulty or because of a lack of opportunity (due to cost, geography, cultural barriers, whatnot).
You could possibly meaningfully answer the OP by looking for a skill that has the following attributes:
I’m not sure which skills satisfy these, but some guesses: professional boxer, professional football (soccer) player, Go master, visionary research scientist.
Not flinching away or even blinking as something’s coming at your face. It’s absolutely critical in practically every sport, and it requires telling a few million years of human evolution to shut the hell up.
Geez, Louise. You can do that stuff and feel somewhat bad because you can’t jump over a stinkin’ stick?
Please don’t be embarrassed by my bowing down before you.
And also, please ignore my building jealousy at your being able to…well, create things. :mad: <—(not really)
I’d think that math or physics would be up there with the hardest mentally though medicine would also be up there.
There are many things that are hard to do but most people can learn by rote repetition. Playing an instrument, swinging a bat and painting would probably fall into this category. These require some smarts but not a whole lot but do require a great deal of practice and some aptitude. Things like medicine require a good amount of brains, a good memory and a hell of a lot of work. There are probably a reasonable amount of people who could become a doc if they worked for it. A standard doc has to be pretty smart and dedicated to get that far. Brain surgery, OTOH, is couple steps up from a general doc, I’d imagine that a small subset of docs could go on to being a high level brain surgeon. High level mathmaticians and physicists (I am thinking Einstein, Feynman and Hawkings level) are pretty rare. I know a bunch of mathmaticians and physicists and from my discusions with them they most seem to think that certain people, like Einstein, had a bit more brain power than the average mathmatician/physicist with a PHD. These guys generally understand most of the physics really well (all of them are PHDs) but understanding something and figuring something out are two different things. As a total side note, most of the math people I know didn’t really do math for a living, they did other things that required a lot of math. They learned what they needed about the subject after getting the job. For example, my Dad did nuclear reactor research but he started out with a PHD in math. He knew enough math that he could go figure out the physics. Another guy, Dick a physicist, was a professor at BYU, did nuclear research then ran his own business doing physics for hire and studied things like oil flow through rock. To do that particular project he basically had to become a geologist.
Slee
I disagree. Assuming you have no debilitating condition which makes it physically impossible, I assert that you most definitely could learn to jump over the little bar if you felt like learning to.
In my experience the feeling of “I never could do that” is often a matter of poor teaching, lack of practice opportunities, or lack of desire.
I’ve taught people to juggle who couldn’t tie their shoes (that’s not an exaggeration, I’m being literal). And as a flight instructor I’ve soloed people in airplanes who had only a 50-50 shot of WALKING to the aircraft without hurting themselves.
I truly believe, through much experience and study, that it’s all about desire and repetition.
Sorry, my point was about relative ease.
In 3rd grade, I was playing violin with the 6th grade orchestra following a lengthy campaign on my part. Perfectly doable for me, but not a typical feat and definitely NOT something that was expected of my peers.
OTOH, it was taken for granted that EVERYONE could manage a little high-jump (which for me was not doable) to the point where it wasn’t even taught.
I suppose I could’ve sought help and training for the task, but that would’ve left me less time for pursuits that I actually enjoyed and stood a chance of performing well. Not a high return on investment for phys ed v. music & art.
Which is why the OP is apples and screwdrivers - sometimes the simplest task can be nearly impossible.
That’s true, but for the very highest levels of achievement, the success goes beyond natural ability. Not only do those that accell on a world class level have natural ability beyond their peers, but they also put all their effort into improving it, and with no guidance from superiors (since there are none). The intuition that doing difficult things can be easy is the perspective of someone who hasn’t approached the limits of ability.
That’s easy. Running in a circle till you’ve ran 3100 miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Transcendence_3100_Mile_Race
I’ll never understand how people can train themselves to kill other people. Possibly even in self-defense, but of course you never know until you’re there.