Memory, Playing Pool, and Aiming

[Imac007]

Correct, but the mind of a normal person (one who has no frontal lobe damage or disorder) eventually irons out inconsistencies through repetition. In other words, regardless of the process or method you use to acquire a certain skill, your mind will eventually figure it out with enough repetition and trial and error. Some methods allow this to happen faster than others, but all methods require focused conscious attention in order to work through successful and unsuccessful efforts. Without focused attention, learning from experience takes a long time, and it may not ever develop into the skill level you desire.

Here's a fun story to show how we learn....Let's say you move into a new house that has a basement. You've never had a basement, so you're excited to have a place to store a few things. You grab a box or two from the kitchen and start down into the basement. You take 3 steps and smack your forehead on a beam, which immediately hurts like hell and calls for several choice words to be directed at the beam. Meanwhile, the boxes tumble down the steps. You place a hand over the sore place on your forehead, then duck and go on down and pick up the boxes and put them away.

You go back upstairs, ducking to avoid the beam. You grab a water and pop some ibuprofen, rubbing that sore forehead. The house phone rings. It's your wife. She wants to know why you didn't answer your cellphone. You tell her it must be in the basement. She wants to know if you can pick the kids up from school and meet her at the Olive Garden for an early dinner. Your head is pounding, but you say yes.

You hang up you check your watch and see that you have to leave now in order to pick up the kids. You look at all the boxes scattered over the kitchen floor and resting on the countertops, then turn and head back to the basement for your cellphone.
You start wondering when you're going to find the time to finsh putting all those boxes away. You hit the stairs and walk right into that beam again, and it hurts even worse now because the same sore spot has been smashed a second time. You get a little a dizzy because it hurts so much, then you cuss it out really well and tell yourself how stupid you are.

But you're not stupid. This is a new experience. And in order to learn you must make a conscious effort to pay attention to the beam every time. By doing this you can avoid hitting the beam. And through the repetition of deliberately/consciously avoiding the beam, you will create a new learning experience that will eventually allow you to avoid the beam without having to think about it anymore. In fact, once that becomes automatic, if you ever have that beam moved you will still duck to avoid it, even if it's not there anymore, at least until you relearn that you don't have to duck.

Neurons generate the signal to duck or not.
Nerves have on an insulating coat called myelin.
Repetition acts to build a pathway with an increasing buildup of myelin.
Not only does it shield the nerve but it acts as a signal booster increasing the speed of transmission.
Choosing what works over what doesn’t, eventually creates a fast predictable response, triggered by situation recognition.
Learning is the choosing of what works.

 

[JB Cases]

Correct, but the mind of a normal person (one who has no frontal lobe damage or disorder) eventually irons out inconsistencies through repetition. In other words, regardless of the process or method you use to acquire a certain skill, your mind will eventually figure it out with enough repetition and trial and error. Some methods allow this to happen faster than others, but all methods require focused conscious attention in order to work through successful and unsuccessful efforts. Without focused attention, learning from experience takes a long time, and it may not ever develop into the skill level you desire.

Here's a fun story to show how we learn....Let's say you move into a new house that has a basement. You've never had a basement, so you're excited to have a place to store a few things. You grab a box or two from the kitchen and start down into the basement. You take 3 steps and smack your forehead on a beam, which immediately hurts like hell and calls for several choice words to be directed at the beam. Meanwhile, the boxes tumble down the steps. You place a hand over the sore place on your forehead, then duck and go on down and pick up the boxes and put them away.

You go back upstairs, ducking to avoid the beam. You grab a water and pop some ibuprofen, rubbing that sore forehead. The house phone rings. It's your wife. She wants to know why you didn't answer your cellphone. You tell her it must be in the basement. She wants to know if you can pick the kids up from school and meet her at the Olive Garden for an early dinner. Your head is pounding, but you say yes.

You hang up you check your watch and see that you have to leave now in order to pick up the kids. You look at all the boxes scattered over the kitchen floor and resting on the countertops, then turn and head back to the basement for your cellphone.
You start wondering when you're going to find the time to finsh putting all those boxes away. You hit the stairs and walk right into that beam again, and it hurts even worse now because the same sore spot has been smashed a second time. You get a little a dizzy because it hurts so much, then you cuss it out really well and tell yourself how stupid you are.

But you're not stupid. This is a new experience. And in order to learn you must make a conscious effort to pay attention to the beam every time. By doing this you can avoid hitting the beam. And through the repetition of deliberately/consciously avoiding the beam, you will create a new learning experience that will eventually allow you to avoid the beam without having to think about it anymore. In fact, once that becomes automatic, if you ever have that beam moved you will still duck to avoid it, even if it's not there anymore, at least until you relearn that you don't have to duck.

True. And then there is the story of the new homeowner who buys a basement home and the old owner thoughtfully made a bright yellow sign that alerts people going into the basement that there is a low beam. The new homeowner then never once hits their head and neither does any other human going into that basement.

No concussion inducing headaches required to learn to avoid the beam. After a while the barest glimpse of the sign is enough to remind the person to duck.

In other words as I stated, there are better ways that brute-force trial and error.

You can find hundreds of woodworking videos online where people have worked out systematic methods of building common items.

New and old woodworkers alike benefit from these discoveries. New woodworkers because they don't have to cut up a lot of wood to develop good skills and old woodworkers because they can gain efficiency and not have to rely on their own experience for the best way to do something.

 

[BC21]

True. And then there is the story of the new homeowner who buys a basement home and the old owner thoughtfully made a bright yellow sign that alerts people going into the basement that there is a low beam. The new homeowner then never once hits their head and neither does any other human going into that basement.

No concussion inducing headaches required to learn to avoid the beam. After a while the barest glimpse of the sign is enough to remind the person to duck.

In other words as I stated, there are better ways that brute-force trial and error.

You can find hundreds of woodworking videos online where people have worked out systematic methods of building common items.

New and old woodworkers alike benefit from these discoveries. New woodworkers because they don't have to cut up a lot of wood to develop good skills and old woodworkers because they can gain efficiency and not have to rely on their own experience for the best way to do something.

Lol.... Thank goodness for signs. I mean, imagine if there were no signs on doors that read "PULL" or "PUSH".... damn, we'd have people pushing when they should be pulling, or pulling when they should be pushing.

 

[JB Cases]

Lol.... Thank goodness for signs. I mean, imagine if there were no signs on doors that read "PULL" or "PUSH".... damn, we'd have people pushing when they should be pulling, or pulling when they should be pushing.

Yeah, that's right. So imagine the amount of time and frustration saved by those who read the signs and efficiently pull or push as indicated. Clearly untold billions of minutes along with uncountable expressions of frustration and accidents have been avoided because of the simple system of using letter and pictograms to indicate usage.

 

[JB Cases]

Neurons generate the signal to duck or not.
Nerves have on an insulating coat called myelin.
Repetition acts to build a pathway with an increasing buildup of myelin.
Not only does it shield the nerve but it acts as a signal booster increasing the speed of transmission.
Choosing what works over what doesn’t, eventually creates a fast predictable response, triggered by situation recognition.
Learning is the choosing of what works.

And this is also how bad habits are set as well. The brain can be programmed to respond to stimulus in the wrong way. For example if you grow up watching Earl Strickland play and choose to adopt his fast style before you have learned the requisite foundational knowledge then you will be pulling the trigger on a lot of shots without being aimed right. From a purely psychological standpoint between stimulus and response lies choice as Viktor Frankl put it. But from a neurological standpoint hardened synaptic connections can overwhelm conscious choice and make the response to stimulus far less of a deliberate choice to the point where the response is automatic. So if one has developed a habit of doing the "wrong" thing but without any actual catalytic consequences that would force a deep introspective conscious attempt to change the response it becomes really hard to even know how to fix it much less to find the willpower to do so.

In pool people are largely left on their own to find and use that which is helpful. How many pool rooms offer weekly workshops? NONE that I know of. How many offer classes from beginner to advanced? None that I know of.

My wife goes to two dance studios. Both offer lots of weekly classes and special clinics with prominent guest instructors.

We talk about forming good habits and "shot pictures", shot references, building a library etc....but the places we play are TERRIBLE at developing the players who play there frequently. Of course there are exceptions and I expect that someone will mention them but as a rule I would say that the vast majority of pool rooms are NOT running programs to develop players. Imagine how much farther along we might all be if they did.

 

[Imac007]

from a neurological standpoint hardened synaptic connections can overwhelm conscious choice and make the response to stimulus far less of a deliberate choice to the point where the response is automatic

Joan Vickers, originator of the quiet eyes concept, and the decision training program used by Olympians, spoke to the automaticity of response.
Her findings were that top participants were able to take the learning model stage of unconscious - competence and pull it back into consciousness.
Our mind puts things into categories in order to keep it being overwhelmed from trying to keep each unique shot as a separate memory.
Experts need to address each shots uniqueness and differences from the bucket of similar shots.
The differences give birth to what Jeremy Jones called shot keys.
The small differences that can be the difference between getting position or not, or avoiding shot complications, compared to the knee jerk response of just another shot from the automatic bucket.
That is one of the true differences between the best and others, not being on automatic pilot, fighting automaticity.