Narcissism Part 2 February 21, 2007
Posted by ymarsakar in Psychology, Truth.trackback
What do you know, I found another boatload about this most peculiar of human behavior.
I’ve been looking for Kathy’s OperationDoubles blog, and it is a rather humorous location simply because OperationDoubles is a …. tennis blog about professional tennis. And it is also about professional writing… and some psychological analysis as well. You get the picture now? 5 separate blogs by mostly one author, although it is kind of hard to tell which is which considering certain mislabelings.
On another note, here’s a good example between what people think they know and what the truth really is. It may apply to fighting, war, diplomacy, spycraft, tradecraft, as well as such things as professional tennis tips and Bookworm’s post on conventional wisdom concerning current events.
Tim Larkin talks about this a lot. In the sense that there are a lot of baggage and preconceptions people have with them as they grow older. The newer generation usually is ignorant but because they don’t know the limitations everyone else knows (the volk wisdom), this means they experiment and dare to try out new things. Sometimes succeding.
An interesting balance between youth, knowledge, age, and wisdom. Whoever wins is whoever is left standing.
Y, I hope we get to meet up and play tennis sometime so I can whoop up on you.
No, J/K, but it is cool that you’re a tennis player (I’m assuming). That’s good advice about the “not putting your arms up on an overhead smash until right before you hit it”. . I think the reason why the “get your hands up and racket ready early” method has become conventional wisdom is because brand new learning players that have never played (let alone hit an overhead smash) progress faster when you teach them to just put their racket behind their head and point their free hand at the ball way before the ball reaches them.
With new players, you tend to lob it right at them for learning purposes, instead of making them move around too much while they’re still trying grasp the concept of just making contact on an overhead smash (it helps build confidence too). The key is that as soon as a beginner player grasps the concept of the proper way to hit (make contact)an overhead smash, they should immediately begin teaching them the proper method of keeping both arms down until just before the ball reaches you and your feet are in in place. I think many tennis instructors choose not to do this because they don’t want to confuse the beginner player, and so the player never learns the proper way and genuinely believes that running around with your free hand pointed in the air and racket behind your head is the best way. That is, until, they’re sick of falling flat on their ACE. Anyways, just thought I’d add to the tennis conversation….tennis is a great sport!
That does indeed make sense if the instructor’s purpose is to make a person get the form down, rather than making them do the right sequence completely by themselves.
Yes, I agree, the new best way might be to make the player do the correct sequence right from the beginning even though it may take them longer to learn. I think if you’re dealing with an adequately athletic person, it makes sense. I think the problem is that instructors are many times dealing with very un-athletic people, and so they just focus on the form, and then teach them the complete sequence further down the road. It may be a lazy decision by the instuctor, but then again, many instructors are paid pretty poorly.