I feel like you’re purposefully arguing in bad faith. Are you legitimately trying to convince me that “the same thing” means “not really the same thing”? Regardless of how you meant to ask the question I believe most people, in this thread at least, have a very different sense of what the original quote meant. Your responses throughout the thread feels like trolling.
It’s impossible to do the identical thing twice. Try it. Try to throw a ball absolutely identically twice. That’s not possible. Each time the ball will end up flying slightly different. So obviously “doing the same thing over and over again” cannot mean “doing an identical action over and over again”.
Because that would be equivalent to “the definition of insanity is performing an impossible action”. That’s nonsensical.
Thus “the same thing” must refer to that the overarching action is the same, not that every detail is identical. And that’s what you do when you practice: You e.g. play the same song on the same instrument over and over again. Crappy at first, proficient in the end.
Repeat a task in a way that if you’d describe the task with a few words you would use the same words for both tasks. E.g. “Throw a baseball at the target”.
It’s physically impossible to identically repeat any action. If you e.g. throw a ball twice, no matter how hard you try, neither your movement nor the travel of the ball will be identical. Even someone with perfect ball throwing skills will e.g. not be able to hit the same exact spot on a target with sub-nanometer accuracy. So it would be kinda pointless to claim that “do the same thing multiple times” means “do an absolutely identical string of absolute identical actions multiple times”.
So obviously it’s a bit more bird’s eye view: If you throw a ball twice at the same target, you have done the same thing twice. Even if you don’t manage to hit exactly the same spot and your motion wasn’t exactly identical.
You’re arguing that human error doesn’t allow for the same results which I agree with. But if you want to achieve the goal of being better at something through practice, you have to rely on more than just hoping that by chance, your error will achieve a better result than the last time you tried. That does not contribute towards learning to be better at a task. You must make conscious decisions to correct mistakes. If said decision changes something you did last time, I wouldn’t call that “doing the same thing”.
Back in school, it took my teacher maybe a minute to explain the theory behind shooting a three-pointer in basket ball. It’s super easy to know the correct theory and do all the cognitive decision making to do it right. But then it takes dozens of hours, or even hundreds of hours, to actually getting it right. Even though there’s no concious change or decision, it’s just pure practice.
Second point: “I’m going to get a drink.” - “I’m gonna do the same.”
Is the second person going to imitate every single motion of the first one identically? Or is the second person just also going to get a drink, maybe not even the same drink?
You are doing the same thing (playing the same piece of music on the same flute). You aren’t doing an identical thing.
You don’t think the context of the quote is implying doing the same exact thing repeatedly?
No, it says “the same thing”, not “the identical action” or even “the same thing exactly the same way”.
If you are practising something, are you not doing the same thing (“practising X”) no matter whether you are good or bad at it?
Do you call it differently, depending on your skill level?
I feel like you’re purposefully arguing in bad faith. Are you legitimately trying to convince me that “the same thing” means “not really the same thing”? Regardless of how you meant to ask the question I believe most people, in this thread at least, have a very different sense of what the original quote meant. Your responses throughout the thread feels like trolling.
It’s impossible to do the identical thing twice. Try it. Try to throw a ball absolutely identically twice. That’s not possible. Each time the ball will end up flying slightly different. So obviously “doing the same thing over and over again” cannot mean “doing an identical action over and over again”.
Because that would be equivalent to “the definition of insanity is performing an impossible action”. That’s nonsensical.
Thus “the same thing” must refer to that the overarching action is the same, not that every detail is identical. And that’s what you do when you practice: You e.g. play the same song on the same instrument over and over again. Crappy at first, proficient in the end.
How do you define the phrase “the same thing”?
Repeat a task in a way that if you’d describe the task with a few words you would use the same words for both tasks. E.g. “Throw a baseball at the target”.
It’s physically impossible to identically repeat any action. If you e.g. throw a ball twice, no matter how hard you try, neither your movement nor the travel of the ball will be identical. Even someone with perfect ball throwing skills will e.g. not be able to hit the same exact spot on a target with sub-nanometer accuracy. So it would be kinda pointless to claim that “do the same thing multiple times” means “do an absolutely identical string of absolute identical actions multiple times”.
So obviously it’s a bit more bird’s eye view: If you throw a ball twice at the same target, you have done the same thing twice. Even if you don’t manage to hit exactly the same spot and your motion wasn’t exactly identical.
You’re arguing that human error doesn’t allow for the same results which I agree with. But if you want to achieve the goal of being better at something through practice, you have to rely on more than just hoping that by chance, your error will achieve a better result than the last time you tried. That does not contribute towards learning to be better at a task. You must make conscious decisions to correct mistakes. If said decision changes something you did last time, I wouldn’t call that “doing the same thing”.
Two points:
Back in school, it took my teacher maybe a minute to explain the theory behind shooting a three-pointer in basket ball. It’s super easy to know the correct theory and do all the cognitive decision making to do it right. But then it takes dozens of hours, or even hundreds of hours, to actually getting it right. Even though there’s no concious change or decision, it’s just pure practice.
Second point: “I’m going to get a drink.” - “I’m gonna do the same.”
Is the second person going to imitate every single motion of the first one identically? Or is the second person just also going to get a drink, maybe not even the same drink?
“practicing” is spelled with a ‘c’
Oh, another American who hasn’t heard of British English!
TIL, forget it