Emo Phillips once said, “A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick-boxing”. This outlines for me that people and machines can be experts in one area but then not good in another.
In the 1970’s someone ran an experiment that showed a chess game in progress to a Chess Master and a chess amateur. When the board was removed after only a few seconds, the Chess Master could remember the layout of the entire game whereas the amateur could not. Expert conditioning.
It’s A Bit Like Thinking Outside The Box
On the other hand this experiment shows just how spectacularly narrow some expertise is. We automatically think that people who are experts in one field will be good in another and we can put experts on a pedestal and think ourselves somehow inferior to them. This applies to experts, grown ups, screen stars, senior managers, TV pundits, teachers, surgeons and the like.
We can do lots of things that they cannot do…
BitILike
“Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.” Italian Proverb
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