Philosophical Stories (and Questions about them)

[Thinking Skins]

So here's a story that I didn't like

 

Quote

A pottery teacher split her class into two halves.

To the first half she said, "You will spend the semester studying pottery, planning, designing, and creating your perfect pot. At the end of the semester, there will be a competition to see whose pot is the best".

To the other half she said, "You will spend your semester making lots of pots. Your grade will be based on the number of completed pots you finish. At the end of the semester, you'll also have the opportunity to enter your best pot into a competition."

The first half of the class threw themselves into their research, planning, and design. Then they set about creating their one, perfect pot for the competition.

The second half of the class immediately grabbed fistfulls of clay and started churning out pots. They made big ones, small ones, simple ones, and intricate ones. Their muscles ached for weeks as they gained the strength needed to throw so many pots.

At the end of class, both halves were invited to enter their most perfect pot into the competition. Once the votes were counted, all of the best pots came from the students that were tasked with quantity. The practice they gained made them significantly better potters than the planners on a quest for a single, perfect pot.


In life, the best way to learn a skill, is to make a lot of pots.

 

My question is this. What if the second half had a different, more practical question like make as many pots as you like, submit your best but you pay for what you make. Sure experience is important but it costs money to make pots and they can't just make an infinite number of pots. That's why design / planning comes into play, right? 

[Jabbyrwock]

18 minutes ago, Thinking Skins said:

My question is this. What if the second half had a different, more practical question like make as many pots as you like, submit your best but you pay for what you make. Sure experience is important but it costs money to make pots and they can't just make an infinite number of pots. That's why design / planning comes into play, right? 

 

Ahhhh...the never ending tension and balance between "Failure to plan is a plan to fail" and "**** or get off the pot."  The former never feels the relief of production, the latter forgot to check for toilet paper.

 

It is entirely possible that I have distilled the story and your subsequent question to these terms due to current personal predicaments. 

[PleaseBlitz]

4 hours ago, Thinking Skins said:

So here's a story that I didn't like

 

 

My question is this. What if the second half had a different, more practical question like make as many pots as you like, submit your best but you pay for what you make. Sure experience is important but it costs money to make pots and they can't just make an infinite number of pots. That's why design / planning comes into play, right? 

 

I knew what the outcome was going to be immediately upon reading the setup.   The way to get really good at a thing is to do that thing a ton.  I could design and plan all kinds of awesome ****, but the ability to actually execute comes from practice.  

 

I guess my response to "experience is important but it costs money to make pots" is, well, if the pots are good, they can sell them.  

 

Here is a short passage from one of my favorite articles of all time, one that I read and re-read regularly.  It is called "6 Harsh Truths that will Make you a Better Person."  One of the harsh troops is that people have low self esteem because they don't put in the time and effort to learn how to do cool ****.  

 

https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person

 

Quote

"But I'm not good at anything!" Well, I have good news -- throw enough hours of repetition at it and you can get sort of good at anything. I was the world's ****tiest writer when I was an infant. I was only slightly better at 25. But while I was failing miserably at my career, I wrote in my spare time for eight straight years, an article a week, before I ever made real money off it. It took 13 years for me to get good enough to make the New York Times best-seller list. It took me probably 20,000 hours of practice to sand the edges off my sucking.

 

[PokerPacker]

6 hours ago, Thinking Skins said:

So here's a story that I didn't like

 

 

My question is this. What if the second half had a different, more practical question like make as many pots as you like, submit your best but you pay for what you make. Sure experience is important but it costs money to make pots and they can't just make an infinite number of pots. That's why design / planning comes into play, right? 

I, too, have a problem with it.  If you're graded solely on how many pots you can make, you'll won't be building experience making good pots, you'll be building experience making the fastest pot you can make.  You won't be making big pots to go with the small pots, because those will take more time.  You'll simply make a ton of small, low-quality pots because you are graded purely on quantity.  There needs to be some balance.

[dfitzo53]

Wait, are you guys telling me a subjective parable somebody made up to sound smart lacks nuance and doesn't actually translate to the real world?