Implicit theories of intelligence - Entity vs. Incremental View

[Darrell_Johnston]

An entity theorist would email a resume to a company and do nothing more. If he even bothers at all. He will insist that its not worth anymore energy because he knows the odds are so low, so why bother?.

An incremental theorist will recognise that this is a very difficult task to achieve and figure out how to get in with the company, can he network with the owners of the company some how? Can he get an introduction? Or can he find out where the staff of the company like to party and rub shoulders and get leads?. Can he come up with a deal or proposal to help that company that the company couldn't refuse?.

Ghost: And in the incremental theorist's case, it wouldn't help him. That is, doing those things wouldn't help him in the current job market. His go-get-'em attitude won't undo cold, hard reality.

He wouldn't know if it would help him or not until he tried.....An IT (Incremental theorist) would try everything he can though, an entity theorist would not"

Winning is never guaranteed by doing your best....but it sure increases the odds.

But the best way to be 100% guaranteed not to win is if you give up before trying everything you possibly could.

GhostSame for the entity theorist. If the entity theorist didn't put much effort in, but had sufficient connections, or a family member in the field, his chances would be much higher for getting a good job.

But if he is an entity theorist....unless he changes.....he doesn't stand much chance at doing well at that job, or even holding it down. I worked with a guy like that whose dad was best friends with the cub owner so he got the job as entertainments manager.....and he sucked, he kept losing money for the company and his dad had to pay the money they lost to the club to compensate and keep him in a job. No one liked working with him and he eventually got fired.

you cannot self improve your way into success,

Bruce Lee, Arnie, Mike Tyson, Connor McGregor, just a few examples of people who would disagree with you. Their success was 100% attributed to slow INCREMENTAL dedication to improvement of their skill sets.

not your attitude or positive thinking.

I don't know if you have ever worked in sales....I have.....if you haven't, speak to someone who has, or if you have worked in sales you will know what I mean when I say that having a positive mindset increases your sales success and being in a negative state of mind decreases it.

Of if you have known anyone to run a company, they will tell you that if they hire negative staff, the company will do worse than if they employ positive staff.


Besides that.....Implicit theories of intelligence is not about positive attitude or mindset.......its about each individuals belief about their own ability.

And in the end if he tried every possible angle he could think of to make it happen but it still didn't end up going his way, he knows he still tried his best and he will try again elsewhere or he can travel to where there is more work or try a new avenue of career, you have to have plan B's and plan C's anyway. If he cant find money from his passion and has to work at something else he will still continue his passions in his spare time until he figures out a way he can make money from his passion, can he freelance on the side? can he save up from his job to create his own business where he can work in his passion and maybe even employ others? can he network with others if he needs help?.

Ghost So in other words, things didn't work out in his own country because the deck is stacked against him, so he needs to go abroad.

Well, thats just one possibility that I mentioned out of several, and you chose to micro focused on that while ignoring all the other possibilities, the possibilities are not just restricted to the ones I mentioned either......there are many more. I do not talk in absolutes and present one way as the only way and ignore everything else. Yes.....travel is a very viable option, if there are more jobs and higher salary else where then moving is a very intelligent thing to do.

I wanted to be a DJ and half the country was a DJ and there are very few good night clubs, no one knew who I was so I couldnt get booked anywhere. I rented out my local bar and invited young DJs from my community and I booked my self to play.

I wanted to play in the biggest Dance music festival in my region but I wasnt well known enough and a big festival can choose from tens of thousands of DJ's, so sending my CV would have been pointless. Instead I emailed them and proposed that I would put a small stage in their festival for free if they allow me to have a free stall there to sell drinks and food, they agreed and I networked with a dutch party promoter to borrow all the equipment, that was great exposure and that spring boarded a 20 year career playing in over 13 countries as well all over my own country.

Ghost : Then there was nothing in cold, hard, objective, reality that prevented you. Had those festival organizers decided that they didn't accept outside soliciting emails, nothing you could have done would've worked.

That is entity theory right there in a nut shell. "They didn't reply to the email, don't bother do anything else, it won't work".

If they didn't reply to my email.....there are other strategies I could have implemented. I could show up to their office and ask to have a meeting with the boss. Go the the festival its self and approach him face to face. I think I might know what you are thinking now and that is....."even if you did manage to nail down a meeting they can still decline your offer". And this is totally true, like I already said earlier....

"He wouldn't know if it would help him or not until he tried.....An IT (Incremental theorist) would try everything he can though, an entity theorist would not. Winning is never guaranteed by doing your best....but it sure increases the odds. But losing is 100% guaranteed if you give up before trying everything you possibly could"

Also, I don't know if we are both discussing looking for employment in something you are passionate about or just getting employed in any job in order to make money. I am personally talking about living life through your passions being the key to happiness and enjoyment of life. And we also have to presume that the person knows that they have the skills required to deliver, and skill are developed through putting in hours and months and years of dedication......thats called.....wait for it.....improvement.

Look at that will smith movie "pursuit of happiness" here you see a text book incremental theorist who is passionate about sales, marketing and numbers, he stands out side the office every day till he gets to introduce himself to the CEO, and no matter what obstacles life throws at him, he keeps working his shitty job but puts all his extra energy into applying himself for the job he wants. That is incremtalism on steroids.


And if push comes to shove and I did try everything I possibly could and I still didn't get the position, I know I did my best and I would still pursue my passion through other outlets. At the very least I had made a new acquaintance and increased possibility of getting booked for the festival in the future. I would continue working a regular job and perfecting my skills to make myself more hirable and promoting myself in as many ways as I can think of, as long as I was getting to live through my passion it wouldnt matter to me if I played in small bars my whole life or if I became the biggest DJ in the world, obviously the latter is the preferred, but nothing would have ever stopped me pursuing my passion.


Funny enough, when I first started, many pf my friends tried to push entity theory on me....."no one is going to like your music", "You really think you can make it" etc.....I wasn't going to let their defeatism stop me, I said " I'm still going to try my best" and I did. And I played to rooms of 30 people for the first year, good job I didn't let my lack of success at the beginning define who I was and give up.

I will quote david Wong also, because he is another text book incremental theorist....

"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 shittiest 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"

Darrell:

An entity theorist would never put all that effort in to get what he wants.

Ghost It seems anyone who puts in all the effort but still fails anyway because of things outside of his control, you will just automatically group into the 'entity theorist' camp, whether or not he even agrees with it.

For the record, everybody is part entity and part incremental. But no, someone who tries everything they possibly can in their power is not applying entity theory to his practice, he is applying incremental, because and entity theorist would not try everything he possibly could, he perceived bar of limitation is set lower than what the actual bar is......and no one knows where the limit is until they have reached it.

Ghost: Now how about all the non-extreme examples of men who are trying their damndest to make life work but are failing due to objective factors far outside of their control? I'm talking about the men who have applied for hundreds or thousands of jobs but get nothing. I'm talking about the men who just want a foothold in their own countries but can't even get a basic life started, and not for lack of trying.

See everything I said above.

Ghost: so don't give me these bullshit examples of a man who applied for three jobs and quit. That is not a typical example.

I wasnt specifically giving those examples to YOU. Cornfed brought up how he thought when taken to extreme that its insane, I agreed and gave two extreme cases and outlined how extremism can lead to insanity.

The example of the guy from London was very relevant to this discussion, it shows how that applying entity theory to EVERYTHING in your life leads to zero action, zero results, increases stress, boredom, negativity, anxiety and depletes him of all the necessary skills he needs for life because he is not improving his ability at anything at all and ultimately has no skill or value to offer to the world.

If you apply entity theory to everything in life.....nothing gets done. If you apply incremental theory to everything in life......you are never guaranteed to succeed in every single thing you try, but if you are putting 100% into everything you try and you apply yourself to as many things as possible, you are going to succeed in many, many ways.

[onethousandknives]

The only problem I see with thinking full incremental vs entity is neuroplasticity. The problem is, past 25 or so, you lose a lot of neuroplasticity, and it is less likely you will be able to learn new skills or in general change your psychology. I feel learning new things is needed as an adult, though, to keep neuroplasticity somewhat active, but it's significantly harder to in general learn or change yourself as an adult.

Going with this, during your formative years, and incrimental or entity thinking, it again depends on your environment and motivators to become a certain way. But with the neuroplasticity thing, once you hit the age of neuroplasticity slowing down, it's hard to catch up. For example, when I was younger, I was OK at drawing, a little better than average. My sister was worse at drawing compared to me. But, she drew a lot more, and because she was a girl, was encouraged to draw and do arts and crafts in general more compared to me, and got more art classes, supplies, etc compared to me from my parents. So despite possibly worse "innate" talent at drawing, she's a very talented artist now. But, this was achieved with support and practice during a time of accelerated learning and neuroplasticity. Surely I can become better at drawing as an adult, but to get better than her would be very very hard, as she had the advantage of increased neuroplasticity in her adolescent years. And with encouragement or conditioning, and blaming society, etc, in some ways it's valid, even if there concerns are only in the past now, because society messed you up in a crucial window of neuroplasticity and conditioned you to be a certain way.

If you played any sports, you'd see there's genetic outliers and freaks, but also people with the advantage of training/practicing while young, or a combination of both that a lot of times can NEVER be made up for when you're old, as your psychomotor learning skills and neuroplasticity decreases. Same with music and developing perfect pitch, adults simply can't do it. Again, this doesn't give up and never try to improve yourself, but to try to think in terms of only "incremental" as you'd call it is delusional to me. Because even if incremental or entity was fully true, it still does not deal with the very real issue of neuroplasticity and in general the past forming your present thoughts and influencing your present actions that is impossible to start with a totally blank slate and erase from your consciousness.

In this regard where I think modern psychological theory doesn't work enough is with things like say "depression" a lot of people imo are stuck being "depressed" simply because that was the state they were in when their neuroplasticity window closed up. So in this way, I think encouraging people to do or learn something new, and increase generalized neuroplasticity might be a more effective cure for depression/etc than talk therapy or what have you.

[Darrell_Johnston]

Great insights @onethousandknives

I don't have too many objections to what you say, for sure it gets harder to change the older you get. The expressions "stuck in his ways" and "long in the tooth" have real meaning towards this.


The study into implicit theories of intelligence explains how the 2 mind sets are developed at an early age and seems to be largely influenced by how much praise they received for their efforts and the encouragement they received or didnt receive in face of struggling with difficult tasks.

[Contrarian Expatriate]

The brain is akin to a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. Parents who push their children to exercise their brains, from infancy onward, will see their children flourish intellectually.

There is a small window of opportunity to establish high IQ in children. When that window closes, it is much harder to solidify the
neurological structures that that lend themselves to high IQ. Parents who simply have children plopped in front of tht TV can expect low or average IQ kids. Conversely, parents who read to kids (and encourage them to read), expose them to music (and music lessons) art (and creative activities), and rational discussions, will have very intelligent children.

Exercising the young, developing brain is THE key. So mark my vote for the incremental theory.

[Darrell_Johnston]

The brain is akin to a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. Parents who push their children to exercise their brains, from infancy onward, will see their children flourish intellectually

Yep, the biggest brain killer is stagnation.

Telling people they can't is contributing to the destruction of their mind.

[Ghost]

.

[Darrell_Johnston]

He wouldn't know if it would help him or not until he tried.....An IT (Incremental theorist) would try everything he can though, an entity theorist would not"

Winning is never guaranteed by doing your best....but it sure increases the odds.

But the best way to be 100% guaranteed not to win is if you give up before trying everything you possibly could.

The reality is that there are a lot of men who have tried their hearts out and gotten nothing for it. This is how the world works for many now, and it's getting worse. No amount of pseudo self improvement is going to fix that. Just as how dating and marriage in the West is a raw deal for men. When you are working within a system that punishes you for what you are, you cannot flourish within said system unless you are very lucky. In other words, even if you do succeed in the West nowadays it has little to do with what you did yourself.

Bruce Lee, Arnie, Mike Tyson, Connor McGregor, just a few examples of people who would disagree with you. Their success was 100% attributed to slow INCREMENTAL dedication to improvement of their skill sets.

Those men worked on something that they had control over (bodybuilding, boxing, martial arts, etc.) plus they had opportunity - they lived within a system that gave them a place and a way to use their skills. And there's a lot more to it than that too. None of these examples contradicts anything I've said.

I don't know if you have ever worked in sales....I have.....if you haven't, speak to someone who has, or if you have worked in sales you will know what I mean when I say that having a positive mindset increases your sales success and being in a negative state of mind decreases it.

Salesmen do indeed use positivity, but this isn't why the successful ones are successful. Many people wash out of sales even though they employ positive mindsets, because - surprise, surprise: becoming a successful salesman does not happen because of positive thinking.

Of if you have known anyone to run a company, they will tell you that if they hire negative staff, the company will do worse than if they employ positive staff.

Companies do try to hire enthusiastic employees, yes. Companies prefer employees that have the dedication and positivity of cultists. This is no replacement for know-how and skill, however. Now, if you had a knowledgeable and talented employee that also had a corporate cult type of pseudo positive attitude, that employee could do a lot indeed for the company. But I wouldn't call that a good thing.

Well, thats just one possibility that I mentioned out of several, and you chose to micro focused on that while ignoring all the other possibilities, the possibilities are not just restricted to the ones I mentioned either......there are many more. I do not talk in absolutes and present one way as the only way and ignore everything else. Yes.....travel is a very viable option, if there are more jobs and higher salary else where then moving is a very intelligent thing to do.

It also works great for finding and dating non-feminist foreign women too. But you know all about that, living in Vietnam.

That is entity theory right there in a nut shell. "They didn't reply to the email, don't bother do anything else, it won't work".

If they didn't reply to my email.....there are other strategies I could have implemented. I could show up to their office and ask to have a meeting with the boss. Go the the festival its self and approach him face to face. I think I might know what you are thinking now and that is....."even if you did manage to nail down a meeting they can still decline your offer". And this is totally true, like I already said earlier....

"He wouldn't know if it would help him or not until he tried.....An IT (Incremental theorist) would try everything he can though, an entity theorist would not. Winning is never guaranteed by doing your best....but it sure increases the odds. But losing is 100% guaranteed if you give up before trying everything you possibly could"

The email thing is just one example. In reality, a lot of tactics and ideas simply don't work or aren't allowed. Of course sending an email is low tier effort. The problem is that high tier efforts are rejected nowadays too and are thus out of a man's control. Some examples:

-Barging in and refusing to leave until you speak to the manager: good way to get security called on you.
-Follow up emails and calls: ignored dismissed.
-Sending thank you notes: nobody cares.
-Looking for people who know the person you want to know (hiring manager or whatever): seen as creepy and undesirable; person you want to get to know doesn't need anymore contacts.
-dressing to impress, firm handshake, eye contact, etc.: again, no effect and nobody cares.
-learning how to ace interviews: doesn't matter since the hiring manager is going to hire his mistress' cousins ditzy daughter.

Just a few examples. And yes, I've tried this kind of stuff and more. Eventually I realized the truth: things are largely predetermined now. I went abroad to work and suddenly these things did matter. I succeeded working in my field abroad because I got the chances my own society wouldn't allow me. The system you live under determines how everything goes that's outside your control.

Look at that will smith movie "pursuit of happiness" here you see a text book incremental theorist who is passionate about sales, marketing and numbers, he stands out side the office every day till he gets to introduce himself to the CEO, and no matter what obstacles life throws at him, he keeps working his shitty job but puts all his extra energy into applying himself for the job he wants. That is incremtalism on steroids.

Haven't seen the movie, so nothing to comment on here. But the way you describe it sounds unrealistic and hollyweirdy.

And if push comes to shove and I did try everything I possibly could and I still didn't get the position, I know I did my best and I would still pursue my passion through other outlets. At the very least I had made a new acquaintance and increased possibility of getting booked for the festival in the future. I would continue working a regular job and perfecting my skills to make myself more hirable and promoting myself in as many ways as I can think of, as long as I was getting to live through my passion it wouldnt matter to me if I played in small bars my whole life or if I became the biggest DJ in the world, obviously the latter is the preferred, but nothing would have ever stopped me pursuing my passion.

Pursuing your passion is great. I work on mine too by the way, even though I haven't hit great success with it yet and can't realistically expect to. I'd do it for myself for free anyway. I also recognize that whether I succeed or fail with it is largely up to other people. That's just reality. For me, my passion is writing. I've written several ebooks. Now, parts of this process are under my control and for those I am entirely responsible. That includes writing a damn good book, editing it well, self-publishing it, etc. But then come things that are outside of my control: people have to choose to buy it and review it on their own. I can influence this somewhat perhaps, but I cannot control it. That's just the reality.

Funny enough, when I first started, many pf my friends tried to push entity theory on me....."no one is going to like your music", "You really think you can make it" etc.....I wasn't going to let their defeatism stop me, I said " I'm still going to try my best" and I did. And I played to rooms of 30 people for the first year, good job I didn't let my lack of success at the beginning define who I was and give up.

You did things that you were able to do, and good on you for it. Now, say you wanted to become the biggest, most highly paid, most famous DJ in the world? Tons of stuff outside of your control.

I will quote david Wong also, because he is another text book incremental theorist....

"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 shittiest 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"

Seems familiar. I believe this Wong guy wrote for cracked.com and this text is (IIRC) from an article that was about self-improvement. New Year's motivational bullshit I think it was. In this passage, he's talking about improving a skill...which is something he had control over. That's about the only self-improvement that is real.

For the record, everybody is part entity and part incremental. But no, someone who tries everything they possibly can in their power is not applying entity theory to his practice, he is applying incremental, because and entity theorist would not try everything he possibly could, he perceived bar of limitation is set lower than what the actual bar is......and no one knows where the limit is until they have reached it.

The funny thing in all this humorless exchange is that, in practice, I am much more incremental than entity. It's just that I have a good nose for fake bullshit that doesn't work. If I am in control of something, then I am responsible for how it turns out. If I am not in control of it, then I am not responsible for how it turns out. The things that I can't control I either try to influence or escape into a better system. You'll never see me blaming Murphy's Law, Archons, or some supernatural force for holding me back. Time management works. Routines work. Forming new habits work. Improving skills works. Some things don't work, like trying to find a good woman to marry in a society of feminist women, or trying to get a good job in a society that vastly favors giving economic opportunities to women over men. Sure, these things COULD happen even in a shit society, but they don't happen because of what you did. For example: a Mormon guy grew up in Salt Lake City and got a good wife material woman from his religion, or a chad got a good job because some bimbos wanted an office chad. These are places where any notion of self-improvement falls apart entirely.

Hell, I'd love to live in an incremental theory type or world. I think it'd be wonderful if a man could gain success by his efforts in everything. I think I'd do much better in such a world. But this is not the world we live in. It's no sin to recognize and accept that.

The example of the guy from London was very relevant to this discussion, it shows how that applying entity theory to EVERYTHING in your life leads to zero action, zero results, increases stress, boredom, negativity, anxiety and depletes him of all the necessary skills he needs for life because he is not improving his ability at anything at all and ultimately has no skill or value to offer to the world.

Apply incremental to things you control, apply entity to things you do not control. That's the only reasonable way to approach it.

Alot of this has already been covered in this conversation. To avoid this dragging out too far and recycling conversation, I will summarise.

There is no "incremental theory type world" its a psychological pattern that is developed through learning and experience. A person can not gain success in everything they apply effort to, all someone can do is their best and see where it leads. There are limits as we discussed, but no one knows where limits are until they have reached that limit. The entity theorist has a lower perceived limitation and sets the bar lower than what it really is and never tries beyond his or her perceived limitation, a entity theorist will push themselves to the limit. As a result.....the incremental theorist will experience a wider scope of success in life because he will apply himself to more situations.

[Ghost]

.

[Winston]

@Darrell_Johnston
What do you think of the self-improvement industry that claims anything is possible if you believe in yourself, and that the power of your beliefs can accomplish anything? etc? Do you endorse and defend those too? I'm talking about the stuff preached by Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Robert Greene, Napoleon Hill, etc.

Haven't you heard of books like "Think and Grow Rich" or "The Magic of Believing"? They claim you can do anything if you believe with all your mind and your heart. What do you think of that? Such books act as if there are NO LIMITS to what you can accomplish and the sky's the limits.

New Agers say that too. They always say that the only limitations are in your mind, not in reality. And that if you believe there are no limitations, then it's true, there are no limitations, and vice versa. Many new age books and memes say such stuff. Ghost and I have had a field day ripping apart those ridiculous claims. What do you think? Do you believe in them?

In reality though, of course there are limits to everything. There are limits to what you can do and achieve. You gotta work within those limits and find something that is ACHIEVABLE. In life there are things which are achievable and things which are not. We all know the difference I'm sure.

Also, talent and aptitude matter too, as well as intelligence. You have to be VERY GOOD at what you do to succeed too. Every successful person in history has been VERY GOOD at what they did. Sure they were persistent and had drive and ambition and worked hard, but that's not enough. They had to be very good at what they did too, in terms of talent, aptitude, skill, creativity, etc.

For example: Ask any professional serious athletic coach or olympics coach. They will tell you that if you don't have an innate talent for the sport and a strong athletic aptitude, you will not succeed and they will not train you, no matter how much you "believe in yourself", because there will be no point. They are realists and know that only those with an innate natural talent and aptitude for the sport, can be trained to succeed. New Age books never dare to tell you that. The point is very simple: Just because you believe something doesn't make it true. But new age and self-improvement books lie to you and tell you that whatever you believe is true. That's a total lie and easy to disprove. But that's what sells. Go figure.

Question: Do you think Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were just "average Joes" who worked hard, believed in themselves, and got lucky? No of course not. Those men were geniuses with strong talent in computers and technology and programming, and had a high IQ as well. They were VERY GOOD at what they did. Persistence and attitude and belief are not enough. They had to have genius and talent too of course. And not only that but they had to have good business sense as well and good organization skills and good at delegating tasks to those who helped them, etc. Those men had multiple factors that led to their success. And yes, SOME of those factors are NOT ATTAINABLE or ACHIEVABLE for the average Joe or average Jane. That's the cold hard truth. I don't know why the self-improvement industry tells you otherwise, instead they lie and claim that anyone can be a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates if they simply believe in themselves and use the power of belief and law of attraction (The Secret), which is total BS. Men like Jobs and Gates were born with genius and talent too. That's not something an average person has or can get. So they were not average Joes.

I know that Thomas Edison said that persistence is everything. But that's not really true. Edison had a knack and talent for taking apart things like watches and clocks and putting them back together. He had a strong mechanical aptitude, and was a genius and talented in technical areas too. His IQ was not average and he was not an average Joe. If he was just an average Joe and had average intelligence only, he would not have invented anything, not even the light bulb, no matter how persistent he was, no matter how much he believed in himself. You get what I mean?

But new age and self-improvement books NEVER dare to tell you that, because that doesn't sell. Genius and talent aren't something you can control or get out of nowhere. They are INNATE. That is true but no one wants to hear that. That doesn't sell. People want to believe in a world of unlimited possibilities and that they have unlimited potential to do anything, so that is the message that sells. It's a lie of course, but if you don't say that, you cannot sell books or make it as a new age or self-improvement guru, like Tony Robbins for example. So their profession requires them to lie.

What do you think of that? Is it ok to lie and spread false beliefs because that's what people want to hear, and because that's what sells? Do you defend that?

And how does this fit into your incremental vs entity theory?

Btw, you defend "The Secret" too. Why? Don't you realize that "The Secret" makes a lot of extreme exaggerated no-limit type claims like the above? That you can achieve anything and get anything with the power of belief, because you create your own reality and thoughts create reality, blah blah. And they act as though the universe and God were a cosmic vending machine, there to give you whatever you want. How can you defend that?!

[Darrell_Johnston]

There is no "incremental theory type world" its a psychological pattern that is developed through learning and experience. A person can not gain success in everything they apply effort to, all someone can do is their best and see where it leads. There are limits as we discussed, but no one knows where limits are until they have reached that limit. The entity theorist has a lower perceived limitation and sets the bar lower than what it really is and never tries beyond his or her perceived limitation, a entity theorist will push themselves to the limit. As a result.....the incremental theorist will experience a wider scope of success in life because he will apply himself to more situations.

Most men are hitting up against hard and fast limits that they have no control over. They are putting tons of effort in and getting nothing for it. If the world had always been that way (i.e. not rewarding a man's efforts) then we would never have been born. The vast majority of men are not self-limiting themselves - they are trying their damndest but have been shut out entirely through no fault of their own. There is no self-improving your way out of such a system - the system is the problem. If you do not understand this then you simply are not living in reality.

We will have to agree to disagree then. I dont think most people ever come close to reaching their potential

[onethousandknives]

Bruce Lee, Arnie, Mike Tyson, Connor McGregor, just a few examples of people who would disagree with you. Their success was 100% attributed to slow INCREMENTAL dedication to improvement of their skill sets.

I would not place any of those people in the "slow incremental" camp at all. The more I realize about life is the most successful people usually devote 80-90% of their life to one thing, do it for X number of years, and simply maintain their skillset or momentum from the thing after that. Mike Tyson and Bruce Lee trained 40-60 hours per week, it was their full time job. I have no idea about Connor McGregor at all. Arnold had a training schedule that could conceivably be done by an adult with a job, just twice daily for 1-2 hours a day. But as a kid he'd take lots of dianabol and train for 3-4 hours at a time. Obviously all of their training was done over a period of years, but I would not classify it as a slow incremental effort at all, it's a gung ho redline race effort in hopes of making it, with a lot of losses if failure happens.

One other commonality with all these people is performance enhancing drugs, and other nasty things they had to do and don't tell anyone about. Bodybuilding itself as a sport is essentially gay prostitution and financed by rich homosexuals (at the pro level currently, it takes at least $2000 a month in steroids and growth hormone to compete, most of the time financed by homosexuals paying for "wrestling" or videos of said bodybuilders) of which Joe Weider was one and financed and "made" Arnold. Going with Arnold, plenty of other bodybuilders were bigger, stronger, better looking, etc, but because Weider chose Arnold, he got the fame, while guys like, say, Sergio Oliva didn't get anything and got cheated out of contests by Arnold. Bruce Lee, as much as I do like him, did take a lot of drugs as well, some performance enhancing, some to relax. Tyson was on a ton of steroids, too. That's the only way the human body can handle their "inhuman" training loads. This is not to diminish their efforts, but it's more my point that usually any "miracle" effort comes with something they're not privy to telling you about they paid in costs to do it.

So how it goes with going abroad, etc, I find that much more similar to a Tyson, a Bruce Lee, etc. Even if you fail and flop out entirely, you're doing most people simply do not have the balls to do, to hop on a plane and go across the world with who knows what awaiting, and you're taking a road other people don't travel as much. Going abroad is like Mike Tyson training 8 hours a day to get where other people don't get to go, staying here is like boxing recreationally an hour and a half 3 times per week, and what I feel you're suggesting is "well hey, maybe it'd be better if you know, you just practiced an hour and 45 minutes three times a week instead of an hour and a half, and maybe have an extra protein shake, that'll do it" (like calling the manager, etc...) when quite simply, it won't, and you need to take the extreme effort of 8 hours a day and roids to win it. Suggesting people stay at home and work in an office and be content not being abroad living their dream life could be like saying to a future Mike Tyson "hey, you'll never make it as a boxer, why not just uh, you know, work in this warehouse here..."

I still am more of a believer in incremental vs entity, but again, there's chance and luck, and a lot of times what people perceive as incremental changes is really whirlwind efforts for short blasts of time. I feel for some/most people, to achieve stuff, they're better off doing short blasts of extreme effort, devoting their life for X numbers of years to a pursuit, then just maintaining it after. And of course as well, with the 10K hour rule, etc, there's actually been studies on that as well. Some people need 20-30K hours to do what other people can do in 5K or less.

Just some thoughts.

[Winston]

@onethousandknives
Yes it's true that being obsessed with something and living and breathing it all day, makes you very good at it. However, Bruce Lee and Mike Tyson were not average Joes. They were very good at what they did and naturally talented in their field too. Bruce Lee had great talent in kung fu and tap dancing and acting too. And he had fiery intense passion and drive and vision. Talent and vision isn't something you can just acquire out of nowhere. It's something innate, you are either born with it or receive some "calling" (like Steve Jobs did in India while with his spiritual guru) from the universe, like in the hero's journey motif, and once you receive that calling, it comes with the talent you need to pursue the calling too. It's not something you can read a self-improvement book and then decide to have.

For example, when I was a teen I had no writing talent or ability. I had nothing to write about and nothing to say. I was a shy nerdy asian with nothing except a vivid imagination and sensitive soul. However, when I was 18 I received my "calling" while abroad. Gradually, I felt like I wanted to spread truth and awaken the world. And with this calling I suddenly began to acquire talent and creativity in writing that I never had before. It came slowly but gradually I got better and better at it. I was filled with vision, passion, creativity. It all flowed through me naturally, kind of like an inspiration from God. Artists usually describe it as a zone, where they feel like they are channeling their creativity from above. Perhaps the Bible writers felt this way too, when they were "inspired" to write the books of the Bible (though inspiration is not dictation like Christian fundamentalists claim). But this is something you receive from the universe or God or your higher self or a guardian angel. It's not something you can just decide to have out of nowhere after reading a self-improvement book.

As I mentioned above, this is the big ingredient that the self-improvement and new age industry won't tell you - that you need STRONG TALENT and APTITUDE too in the thing you want to succeed at. In other words, you gotta do what you're GOOD at naturally. I've never seen an average joe with no talents at all become very successful just by working hard or being persistent or "believing in himself". That just doesn't happen. Every successful person had strong talent and geniusness and aptitude in his field. That's what the self-improvement industry doesn't tell you, yet it's very crucial.

Do you think the world chess champion Gary Kasparov, was just an average joe with no talent? Of course not. He had a strong talent in chess and photographic memory, as well as a passion for chess, and a genius IQ too. Without those things, he would never have won any world chess championship, no matter how much he "believed in himself" or persisted. For some reason the self-improvement gurus and authors never tell you that, because it doesn't sell, because that's not something you can control, and people don't like to feel powerless, they prefer to believe that they can control everything and accomplish anything they believe in.

[Darrell_Johnston]

Talent and vision isn't something you can just acquire out of nowhere.

Strawman. No one said it was. Did you read the paper?.....

"the incremental theory of intelligence proposes that intelligence and ability are malleable traits which can be improved upon through effort and hard work. For incremental theorists, there is a perceived possibility of mastery even when initial ability to perform a task is low. Those who subscribe to this theory of intelligence "don't necessarily believe that anyone can become an Einstein or Mozart, but they do understand even Einstein and Mozart had to put in years of effort to become who they were". This possibility of mastery contributes in part to intrinsic motivation of individuals to perform a task, since there is perceived potential for success in the task."

It's something innate, you are either born with it or receive some "calling"

Thats incremental theory!.

"The entity theory of intelligence refers to an individual's belief that intelligence and ability are fixed traits. For entity theorists, if the perceived ability to perform a task is high, the perceived possibility for mastery is also high. In turn, if the perceived ability is low, there is little perceived possibility of mastery, often regarded as an outlook of "learned helplessness" "

And with this calling I suddenly began to acquire talent and creativity in writing that I never had before. It came slowly but gradually I got better and better at it.

Slowly and gradually?......so you mean you developed a talent you didn't have before by putting in practice INCREMENTALLY over time?. That is incremental theory.....except you are not taking credit for your own hard work, giving credit to a higher power which flips it back to entity theory..... "it wasnt me, it was god"

[Winston]

Well artists and writers tend to say that they feel like they are channeling something from above. Not from raw logic. They've said that all throughout history. That should tell you something Darrell.

What I said is not a straw man. That's what new age authors and self improvement gurus say, such as Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Robert Greene, etc. I heard Robert Greene say on YouTube that talent and genius and intelligence doesn't matter. And that matters is being persistent and obsessed with what you want to accomplish. He said that literally. You want me to find it for you? That's what these authors who claim to be experts say. It isn't true of course, but they say it. Not me. So it's not a straw man. It's something they really say. I can prove it in their books and videos.

Of course persistence matters. But so does talent, genius and intelligence. So why does Robert Greene deny it? And why do all believers buy into it too like a hive mind? Obviously because truth doesn't sell, but lies do sell.

Which self improvement gurus have you read or studied? You never heard Wayne Dyer lecture on PBS even? How can you know what I'm talking about? This is a huge commercial field. How do you not know it? Who do you know exactly?

Don't try to fit the universe into simple theories. Yes some people do receive a calling from higher forces and are given talents to help them accomplish their calling or destiny. If you believed in higher forces and divine spiritual dimension of reality, that would not surprise you at all. But you aren't a spiritual type are you?

What about my question above about "The Secret"? Why do you defend it? Everyone here thinks it's BS. Why not you?

[Contrarian Expatriate]

There is nothing to prove that it cannot be both, entity for some individuals and incremental for others. Innate ability and developing ability are not either/or propositions.

All of our brains are wired differently and respond differently to different stimuli.

What goes without saying is that innate ability, without the incremental development work, is not going to produce extraordinary results.