The Faculty of Effort Pt. 4
Monday, November 18
Another from Nate Soares (this one from The Art of Response):
Imagine two different software engineers in job interviews. Both are asked for an algorithm that solves some programming puzzle, such as "identify all palindromes in a string of characters."
The first candidate, Alice, reflexively enters problem-solving mode upon hearing the problem. She pauses for a few seconds as she internalizes the problem, and then quickly thinks up a very inefficient algorithm that finds the answer by brute force. She decides to sketch this algorithm first (as a warm up) and then turn her mind to finding a more efficient path to the answer.
The second candidate, Bob, responds very differently to the same problem. He reflexively predicts that he won't be able to solve the problem. He struggles to quiet that voice in his head while he waits for a solution to present itself, but no solution is forthcoming. He struggles to focus as the seconds pass, until a part of his brain points out that he's been quiet for an uncomfortably long time, and the interviewer probably already thinks he's stupid. From then on, his thoughts are stuck on the situation, despite his attempts to wrest them back to the task at hand.
Part of what makes the difference between Alice and Bob might be skill: Alice might have more experience that lets her solve programming puzzles with less concerted effort, which helps her get to a solution before self-doubt creeps in. Self-confidence may also be a factor: perhaps Alice is simply less prone to self-doubt, and therefore less prone to this type of self-sabotage.
A third difference between Alice and Bob is their response pattern. Bob begins by waiting blankly for a solution to present itself; Alice begins by checking whether she can solve a simple version of the problem ("can I solve it by brute force?"). Bob is more liable to panic when no answer comes ("I have been quiet for too long"), Alice is more liable to break the problem down further if no solution presents itself ("Can I divide and conquer?").
A bit off-topic, but bear with me: in the past few years, the video game world has been having a debate about whether notoriously difficult games (like those from famous Japanese studio FromSoftware) should be made with optional, easier difficulties as a matter of accessibility.
If you aren’t familiar with FromSoftware’s games, they are notoriously challenging — as in, requiring hundreds or thousands of attempts to pass a single level — and that’s long been their distinctive quality.
I don’t have much to add to the debate, but I do think we should consider whether games (and the ways we play them) teach us patterns that we want to replicate in our daily life. And one of the better things about extremely difficult games like FromSoftware’s is that they force the player into adopting healthy response patterns in the face of difficulty (at least if they want to succeed).
In these games, feeling sorry for yourself gets you nowhere — in order to proceed, you have to respond to failure by trying again, and trying in new ways — constantly searching for new strategies that work and discarding those that don’t. There’s no easy way out, and that’s the point. Stick at it enough, and a solution will emerge, either through clever planning or through sheer luck.
Real life has no easy mode, and when we are confronted with difficulties, we can’t resort to lowering the difficulty slider. The best we can do is adopt a pragmatic response pattern — breaking the problem down into smaller parts, experimenting with what we know, and persevering until a solution emerges (though there’s no guarantee it will). I’m glad that video games, for all their faults, offer me a place to practice that mindset.