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Prateek Jain's avatar

Putting in the effort is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Many point to examples where it wasnt a sufficient condition to claim it isnt a necessary condition.

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Wind83's avatar

“Selection Bias, or lengths people will go to try to justify their world view.” 

A lot of subjective opinions presented as objective truths, yet the article is lacking in objectivity. 

References to the poem “The Road less travelled” which is generally seen as an affirmation of taking the “path less travelled” but if you read it carefully and go through any critical analysis of the poem, you will find that that is not what the poem is trying to say. Frost makes it a point to say that one road seemed less travelled but after further introspection both were about the same. But in the end he will “claim” that he is where he is because he took “The Road less travelled”. It is considered one of the most misunderstood poems.

Getting back to: “Should I choose the path of difficulty or comfort.”

After stating this you continues to go on as if it is completely understood that the difficult path will lead to “Mastery” and the path with “comfort” will not. But in the entire article one cannot find anything substantiating that claim. There is a failure to acknowledge the existence of failure. The fact that you can try your hardest, give it your all, burn your life away, and still fail. Or that people putting in much less effort than you might be successful where you won’t be. It can be due to luck, talent, circumstances, etc.

Now you can say that the failure is understood and what you are talking about is what it takes to get to be a master, to which one can say that “Correlation does not imply causation”.

Just because someone has identified a few common elements in these people that you consider a Kensei on some other criteria you have (which is not defined whatsoever), does not mean those things are fundamental to their success. If someone colours their hair green and goes on to do something great does not mean everyone can do it as well just by colouring your own hair green. That is because people are not defined by these singular traits, each person has different circumstances.

There are mentions of things like work ethic, passion, attention to detail, etc. And yet no clarification on what any of that means, nor any context has been given so as to why we should believe these people exemplify these traits. 
How does one know that Elon Musk works hard? Because he said so? A rich white billionaire born with a silver spoon in his mouth? Maybe he does work hard by his own standards, but who is to say what those are. Pretty sure he does not have to worry about putting food on the table or following his dreams. Elon Musk is rich because he was born rich. He is a successful entrepreneur but no reasoning has been given here as to how the six traits you identified are essential to getting him there.

There’s nothing wrong with the traits that have been mentioned. But the way they are defined here and the conclusions that are drawn from them are based on anecdotal evidence which then have been used to make broad generalisations. 
History is written by the victors. If someone says they are ahead because they worked hard then does that mean everyone else was not working hard? How do you quantify something like that?

People have a habit of rationalising everything, and putting them into neat little boxes, in an effort to make sense of this illogical world. Just because someone famous said something then it does not automatically mean that it is right. It should be able to withstand critical analysis. Also you need to look at their circumstances and the context in which the things were said and judge it based on that. You’ve used a lot of examples of famous people saying things as if it is the end all be all of everything. In the spirit of using quotes from famous people here’s one I like from Arnold Schwarzenegger: "I Am Not a Self-Made Man" (Article:https://www.lighthousecommunity.global/post/arnold-schwarzenegger-i-am-not-a-self-made-man)

The last sections about “The Modern-day Fantasy” and “Becoming a Kensei” highlights coming from a place of privilege. Maybe do some self introspection and try to understand the perspective of other human beings and that everyone has different circumstances and personalities, and they deal with things differently. What works for you does not work for everyone. Neither do the definitions of what counts as hard work? Who says you can’t be a hard worker if you only work in your defined work hours? 
There is a dismissal of notion of work life balance, working smarter, 4 day work weeks etc, because you don’t believe in them. No proof, no logic. Pretty sure with your Steph curry example you are falling into the non sequitur fallacy. There’s also a lot of supposition, you believe things to be a certain way and just go with that belief as if it is the truth. 

Anyways, maybe it’s just me but this article jumps straight to too many conclusions with no reasoning as to how you got from point A to point B. Neither does it make considerations for any other conclusions or paths to mastery. Adding “Just my Opinion, don’t hate” at the end does not solve anything. You have to actually apply that in the article itself. The article does not read like someone’s opinion, it reads like someone stating objective facts.

In conclusion, I hope you take my criticisms in good faith, no offence intended. Just offering differing views.

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