Entry 25.23

So, a couple of years ago when I was still working at Highland, my boss showed me a video of Terrence Howard talking about how 1 x 1 = 2. Now I’m decent at math but I’m pretty sure that my multiplication tables never showed that equation as being correct. It was definitely interesting listening to Mr. Howard go on for several minutes about how he came to this conclusion. Obviously, he’s a pretty smart dude to come up that detailed and articulate of an argument. Lots of big fancy words that I understand and made for a very compelling argument. Except for the fact that he is dead wrong. You see, if your initial argument is wrong, then everything you base that argument off of is wrong. Which means your conclusion is wrong. Or should be. This has happened multiple times throughout history but the end result was later found to be correct. So, errors in the beginning can still happen but you end up with a good result. Sounds like golf. The first example that comes to mind is Tom Kim topping the ball off the first tee at Pebble Beach earlier this year. Big error right in the beginning. Still made birdie on the hole. The difference in the two stories is that unlike Mr. Howard’s early error, Tom Kim’s error didn’t throw the entire hole down the drain. It just made the good result a little harder to come by. Another funny Tom Kim story for you. At the PGA Championship this year while I was working the range, Tom came up to the range tent and just handed me his GCQuad. Thankfully this was the second day I was working the range so I had a little more experience and coffee was much more plentiful than on day one. It seems fairly normal for Tour players to ask the range personnel to hold onto their launch monitors while they practiced elsewhere. But he didn’t say a word to me. Just handed it to me and turned to walk off. My response? “Thanks, I’ve always wanted one of these!” He stopped, turned around slightly confused and said “No, no. I’m gonna need that back.” Alright, fine. It’s pretty easy to determine which of those guys you can joke with and which ones you can’t. Ok, time to get back on track.

Back to Mr. Howard and his argument. At some point down the road someone may be able to prove his argument is valid. But so far every mathematician and scientist that I have seen respond to it, have shown how his initial error invalidates his entire argument. Because in math when you make an error early, that error starts to compound pretty quickly and you work your way further and further away from the correct answer. If you do long multiplication and forget to carry the 1 at some point, your final answer is going to off, by a lot. If you then have to take that answer and use it in another formula then that answer is going to be even further off. And then you take that answer… I think you see where I’m going with this. It’s what is known as a “compounding error”. That single error early creates a snowball effect that is catastrophic by the time it gets to the end. This is the reason that I have two launch monitors running when I teach now. One type of launch monitor is really good at some things, and the other is really good at others and they agree on a lot. But there’s a reason that I finally went away from solely relying on a radar unit for data. Because they don’t read spin. They calculate it from what they call “known measurements”. But if one of those measurements is incorrect, you’re going to get that snowball effect and the final answer is going to be way off. I know several of you have been in lessons with me while hitting a wedge we watch the ball spin back when it lands and the Trackman would tell us “1374” rpm of spin. Uhm, yeah we can be fairly certain that isn’t the case. When I started seeing it more and more often as I was teaching, I had to make a change. Not only did I feel like that was hurting Trackman’s credibility, it was hurting mine. Which is why I went to GCQuad, because it measures the spin, it doesn’t calculate it. But it does calculate other things like carry distance. It also doesn’t measure things like vertical and horizontal swing planes which I rely on heavily when I teach. So, the reason I have two. But I’m still wandering along the path that I was going to write about today so let’s get back to it.

A few days ago, I was clearing notifications off my business Facebook page (which is even sorrier than my Instagram page) when I noticed one of the suggested videos was called “Physicist Neil Degrasse Tyson checks Actor Terrance Howard”. Remembering the original video I had watched a couple of years prior, the caption did its job and grabbed my interest. I ended up watching a video that was sixteen minutes and twenty-nine seconds long in which Neil talks his viewers through what had occurred (or at least his version of it. There are always two sides to a story and often there are details missing or added to one version or the other. A very important concept I learned as a young Vermont State Trooper. I can’t tell you how often you get one side of the story and get all fired up to arrest someone and then when you talk to the accused party, you find a similar story with different details that change the original story. Eventually you learn to get both sides of the story first). The two men met at one point and then Terrance Howard sent Neil Degrasse Tyson a 36-page thesis on how 1 x 1 = 2. So, I have Neil’s side of the story in how this all went down and clips from Joe Rogan’s Podcast where Terrance is recounting this apparent egregious act of aggression and disrespect not only towards Terrance, but all the scientists that Terrance had referenced in his paper. Neil keeps reading what he wrote in Mr. Howard’s thesis in response and to me, if that is the only correspondence the two had in regard to the thesis, then Neil treated Terrance with the utmost respect. Because it could have been very easy to say “I’m not reading a 36 page thesis from a nut job”. Instead, out of respect for the passion and effort that Terrance had put forth, it appears that Neil put in just as much effort explaining why the thesis was wrong. He explains to the viewers that he treated it just as if a highly respected scientist had sent him an article for peer review before publishing it in a journal. I know this is a common occurrence in those circles as no one wants to publish a work with a simple mistake that makes the entire argument wrong or publish something that someone else has already done the work on. It’s actually a fantastic practice in my opinion, but we’ll get to that here in a minute. It’s actually something else that Neil explains in his video that I found fascinating and will link in why we are looping back to that practice of peer review.

Neil brings up the Dunning Kruger Effect, and takes a minute or so to explain what it is and why it was applicable to bring up. What is the Dunning Kruger Effect? Good question. It’s a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. On the flip side, people with high amounts of competence tend to underestimate their skills. It is this issue that Neil says that Terrance has. Basically, enough knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough to know he is wrong. Which could actually be taken as slight if you preferred to stay ignorant and not learn. Neil accused Terrance of being in the first stage, “Unconscious Incompetence”. Basically, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. That’s all of us at some point in our lives. The next stage is “Conscious Incompetence” where you are aware of what you don’t know, you just haven’t learned it yet. I’d much rather be in this stage than the first one. Next, we move into “Conscious Competence” where you are learning. The final stage is “Unconscious Competence”. This is where you are so knowledgeable and skilled that you don’t realize how good you really are at whatever subject. Two things to note. While at first glance it seems like the original format of the Dunning Kruger Effect has clear cut lines between the four stages, I don’t believe that is the case. In my mind, there has to be a blurring of the lines, but I don’t think it is a continuum either. It is entirely possible that you are in the “Unconscious Competence” stage but at the same time have some “Unconscious Incompetence” going on. A master of a subject who is simultaneously ignorant about some part of that subject. It is not possible for anyone to know all things. Even the world’s foremost expert will have some shortcomings that they are completely unaware of. I always think of the stories that you hear about masters asking a child a question and the child giving a response that stuns the master and makes him or her rethink their position.

Knowledge is both a blessing and a curse. Knowledge causes us to look at everything through the keyhole of what we know. For example, a heart patient can go to 5 doctors all with different specialties and none of them will agree. Sounds like golf instructors. Want to start an argument? Show a group of golf teachers a picture of a tour player and ask them what the player is doing. You will probably get some agreement but also some dissent. Sadly, these days that dissent no longer means an opportunity to converse, learn and understand, but a time to argue. Now let’s circle all the way around to that peer review process. As I watched Neil’s video, I noticed it was suggested to me because another coach that I know and respect had commented on it. His comment? “Imagine if we applied this to golf”. Would it really help anything? Probably not. Because golf coaches are stubborn. Even the top ones in the world. Especially the top ones in the world. They teach their way as THE way. Not A way. I’ve rubbed shoulders with a growing number of them. I’m trying to think of a recent encounter that I’ve had with a coach in an educational setting who did not take time to put down someone else’s teaching methodology. I mean if you wanted to get uber technical that’s exactly what I’m doing right now! I’m just sick and tired of the constant back and forth that goes on because our focus is broken. It’s not on golfers getting better, it’s on being right. And I think that’s wrong. We as coaches have to be better. We MUST be better. You deserve better.

You’re probably asking “Tim, what’s the point? Why did I read this wandering path of nonsense?” Ask questions and then truly listen to the answer, even if you don’t like it. You might not be as smart as you think you are. I’m honestly not sure what stage of the Dunning Kruger Effect I’m in when it comes to teaching and coaching golf. I know where I want to be, but I don’t know that I will ever get there (that would be stage four, Unconscious Competence, or complete mastery if you were unsure). I’m just being honest. Right off the bat, I put myself in stage 3, the learning stage. As I started studying the Dunning Kruger Effect a little more, I backed myself up into stage 2, where I know what I don’t know, but I haven’t learned it yet. And as I thought about it even more, I backed myself into the newbie stage where I don’t know what I don’t know. That’s when I started thinking about this being a continuum or more overlapping. Maybe I can be in a couple stages at the same time in the same domain. And as I took this look at myself and started backing myself up then completely restructuring the Dunning Kruger Effect (of which I have very little intricate knowledge) it breathed new life into me. Which might sound odd. But I have a seemingly unquenchable thirst for knowledge, although at times that thirst isn’t as strong. It hasn’t been as strong lately, but when you realize you might be a dunce when people are expecting you to be a master, you get back in the game. So here’s some questions. Maybe it’s a call to wake up. What phase are you in? Are you satisfied with that phase? If not, now is the time to act. Don’t wait. Like right now. Go!