Forum: Author Hangout

If you actually had to THINK about what you were doing, you couldn't work nearly as fast as we did.

Exactly that.

Muscle memory exists, but it isn't really muscle memory. It is doing something repeatedly until you can do it without thinking.

BUT. The catch is that you can train yourself to do something incorrectly just as easily as you can learn to do so correctly. So those who take such learning seriously tend to concentrate on each movement or response, each step, so as to train themselves to respond not just reflexively but perfectly, each and every time.

That doesn't just apply to physical skills but mental skills too. It's a good job James Bond is a fictional character because, based on the number of disciplines at which he's world class, in real life he'd have to be North of 100 ;-)

Not necessarily. We don't like to talk about it, but there are some rare people who are simply... better.

Back in the 90s I knew a woman who was ex-military. Colonel in the Israeli military to be specific. She became a colonel because she spoke at least 17 languages fluently, including Arabic and several dialects, but also knew all the customs and cultural details that were needed to act as a diplomat. She was also a trained sniper with marksman status. She knew four different martial arts and had qualified at the equivalent of master status (eg, black belt).

When I met her, in her mid-thirties, she been out of the military for several years, immigrated to Canada, married, completed a master's degree, and had gotten involved in a medieval group where she was learning fencing, dance, and archery. From what I could see she'd already mastered all three, but she wasn't yet at the point that she considered to be good.

James Bond is fictional and these people are super rare, but they do exist. Just like there are people on the opposite side of the spectrum.

Not necessarily. We don't like to talk about it, but there are some rare people who are simply... better.

Back in the 90s I knew a woman who was ex-military. Colonel in the Israeli military to be specific. She became a colonel because she spoke at least 17 languages fluently, including Arabic and several dialects, but also knew all the customs and cultural details that were needed to act as a diplomat. She was also a trained sniper with marksman status. She knew four different martial arts and had qualified at the equivalent of master status (eg, black belt).

When I met her, in her mid-thirties, she been out of the military for several years, immigrated to Canada, married, completed a master's degree, and had gotten involved in a medieval group where she was learning fencing, dance, and archery. From what I could see she'd already mastered all three, but she wasn't yet at the point that she considered to be good.

James Bond is fictional and these people are super rare, but they do exist. Just like there are people on the opposite side of the spectrum.

In every forum I read, and in every dive bar I've went to, someone knows a person just like this. I guess they aren't as rare as we think.

It's also probably fair to say that the people like this probably impress more than one person they meet. So even if they are one in a million, it's not unreasonable to think that they'll each meet and impress thousands of people over their lives.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at.... The one woman I knew who resembled this could also fly with or without her cape.

Professional sportspersons believe in the concept of muscle memory

I would add musicians to that group. Practice is more than just learning the sequence of notes.

Muscle memory is a thing, but it's a misnomer. It's a nervous system optimization that facilitates the skill being 'memorized'.

This is close to my understanding. It's really about how neural pathways that fire often accumulate more "insulation" (myelin), thus making those pathways quicker to fire and re-fire, and, of course, making the firing pattern consistent. A pro tennis player doesn't have to think about all their different types of forehands (top spin, slice, drop shot, etc.), and they definitely don't have to "feel" their way through the shot. That would be impossible. They just trigger the swing and it happens.

As has also been suggested, something that is consciously learned is difficult, awkward, and attention and energy intensive when it is being learned, but much less so when it gets "becomes second nature" or "gets handed off to the subconscious" or whatever. Think of a child learning to tie a shoe vs. how it is for you today. Or typing, driving, or doing anything else that you've "mastered."

Of course, even memories themselves involve creating and modifying neural connections in the brain. This is why flash card style studying is so effective. It's not enough to create the memories (memorising material), you also need to practice retrieving the correct memory when given an appropriate stimulus (recalling the memory). You build that pathway by memorising, trying to recall, rememorising, and repeating.

All of which means that from any realistic neuropsychological standpoint any kind of Do-over or brain transfer (eg, cybernetic immortality) would probably require the ability to completely recreate a physical copy of the brain at a molecular level.

None of which means that authors shouldn't tell these stories, of course. All stories have a certain degree of hand-waving. I'm just saying that there's a point you have to stop trying to explain things, because in some situations the more you know the harder it is to explain what you want.

Or to put it more simply, realism does not mean the same thing as realistic.

Wax on, Wax off Danielson

Paint the fence.

Since you brought up typing -- if you switch the keyboard layout, say from qwerty to dvorak, all indications seems to be that you need about 2 months before you get back to the same typing speed. That is the time it takes to "reprogram" the neurons.

It also works for subconsciousness interpretation too. For example, back in secondary school a long time ago (before this "muscle memory" term enters popular use last decade or so) I took up rowing/sculling for P.E. and the first lesson (aside from how expensive the boats were) is that there are two main points in time for scullers falling into the river:
(1) when they first start out and didn't react fast enough because they need to think first.
(2) when they completely stop consciously thinking about what they are doing, as everything become second nature.
Case (1) we don't laugh at (usually). But it was usually at the 2-month mark (just before term ends) when one of the new pupils did exactly (2) and we all had a good laugh about it when it occurred.