The evolution of skill
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- Baskerville
I'm listening to a cd of Chopin piano etudes. They were written as studies for pianists to concentrate on elements of their playing but they are also great music.
Anyway, at the time they were written they were considered to be extremely challenging and only the best concert pianists could attempt them.
Then slowly over time, generations improved and more people were able to attempt them. Nowadays you get little kids with pushy parents playing them!So this other composer called Godowsky, after chopin had died decided to rearrange the pieces to make them more challenging.
Some of them he arranged for just the left hand only! These are pieces that are incredibly hard with 2 handsMy point is, I'm always amazed by what humans achieve over time, how with each generation we are able to handle complex information that previous generations have struggled with.
Here's a great video of Boris Berezovsky playing one of the more challenging studies first with both hands, then just with his left. Seriously scary.
worth watching whatever kind of music you like.
- kelpie0
so disappointed in you baskerville.
LINK??!!!?????!!!11111!!!!!!
- Kuz0
video please :)
- Baskerville0
sorry, I have a habit of doing that, I do it in emails too, here it is:
- Baskerville0
just kidding:
- Kuz0
are there not limits to what we can do??!!!!!!!!
- kelpie0
fuck yeah, we're cool. don't see a fucking dolphin playing chopin with one flipper do you?
humans rule.
- Bottlerocket0
I know what you mean BAskerville.
I always thought about it in terms of running, something i do occasionally, and how there were performance barriers that were then broken down, 4 minute mile for example.
You'll get school kids now who could push that mark.
I mean, has biology changed that much ?
- flagellum0
Humans seem to be programmed with a tremendous potential regarding artistic expression. I'm reading a great book which investigates this. I just finished a section which talks about the genius of shakespeare. Fascinating:
- vespa0
could human evolution be represented by a 3d pie chart where chopin's etudes and said pushy parented child genii are wee cherries on top and the rest has to get filled up with any old pap?
which part of the pie are you? crunchy biscuit base, sparkly hundredsandthousand or alcohol sodden fruit filler?
- Baskerville0
surely that would be a trifle chart?
not really thinking about evolution, more a generation on generation improvment in ideas, abiliity, skill, health etc.
Although of course I reckon that past generations were better at stuff like mental arithmetic than the current ones. works both ways I guess.
- skt0
- -sputnik-0
i think about this often, baskerville, and where it'll take us
- Nairn0
'programmed'?
*throws stone at wasp nest, runs like buggery
- Baskerville0
I think all human evolution had come about to allow kids to be able to do this:
ps look at the first comment!
- paraselene0
he's right-handed, you know.
- Baskerville0
who?
- skt0
- Brookoioioi0
Another silly book endorsed by our favorite bogus partisan group eh discipler?
quote: (snip useless junk) ...part of a larger materialist and reductionist program that undercuts the natural foundation of counting and distorts the natural origin of mathematics....burn away the original ties that bound the meaning of mathematics to the world and instead leave it stranded on a solipsistic island of the human imagination.
or as someone else put it:
"It makes prefect sense. The reason why modern biology and all other sciences make mathematical sense and Id doesn’t is because evolution perverted the mathematical system. If humans were counting today as God had originally intended, evolution wouldn’t make mathematical sense and ID would. I just don’t understand how you evilutionist can’t see that. 1,2,3,7,4,8,4,2,7.......
(P.S. My spelling is the correct. Evolution has pervert English and letters too.)"
- Baskerville0
I wish I could draw a circle like that. Imagine you go for a design job. You don't need a folio, just draw a perfect circle and you're in!