Its all about the small details

[stamper]

Some seem to be adding to the small details making them B I G details.

[Isaac]

What is all this got to do with Mark's essay regarding photography?

Nothing. Nothing to do with the essay; and nothing to do with photography, and never going to be until at least the fundamental points listed by Dave Miller are addressed rather than ignored --

Photographic skill isn't measurable in a simple sense. etc etc

[Isaac]

Some of us are thinking about the following small details in his essay ... "10,000 hours"

All we need to know about Mark Dubovoy's "10,000 hours" comments, which you repeat, is that they are just wrong - those comments are simply a misunderstanding of the reported research and we should stop repeating them.

[BJL]

@Isaac, first, thanks for the various citations and comments: I have learnt a lot more from this discussion than from Mark Dubovoy's fleeting reference. But I am still puzzled as to what you think is outright _wrong_ about his comment: if anything, out of its sheer vagueness, it does not contradict your observation that the important thing is many hours of "deliberate practice", not just idle, unstructured activity (”one hour, repeated 10,000 times“, as the old cliché goes).

But never mind: getting the facts straight on the role of both "hours" and innate assets in achieving expertise is far more important than worrying about whether "someone is WRONG on the Internet" --- http://xkcd.com/386/

P. S. a version of Gresham's law comes to mind: in any sufficiently long photographic debate, people will eventually invoke Ansel Adams and/or Henri Cartier-Bresson.

[Isaac]

... getting the facts straight on the role of both "hours" and innate assets in achieving expertise is far more important than worrying about whether "someone is WRONG on the Internet"

And that's why I haven't been saying WRONG - to me it seems like the ordinary accumulation of misunderstandings that corrupt a message as it's passed from person to person, just wrong in a way that isn't even interesting.

But I am still puzzled as to what you think is outright _wrong_ about his comment...

Start with this -- "to master the basics of most worthwhile human endeavors takes 10,000 hours" -- and -- "To master the basics takes 10,000 hours." No, the research is not about mastering the basics it's about "further improvements" beyond that point.

...people will eventually invoke Ansel Adams and/or Henri Cartier-Bresson.

That is how the essay began, and I'll wrap-up with this generous acknowledgement -

Henri Cartier-Bresson once said of himself, Robert Capa, and Brassaï, “Whatever we have done, Kertész did first.”