Take that (not) Einstein!
What? No it’s not when you practice you expect to get better… The results vary greatly.
Also one would practice a variety of things that are completely different from each other not the same thing over and over.
Also Albert Einstein never said that the first recorded use of the phrases is in the 1980s.
Yeah if you miss the target you adjust your aim.
Q. How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
A. You get on a plane
“If at first you don’t succeed, give up and blame the Jews”
watch that get downvoted
YOULL GET AN UP VOTE ABD LIKE IT!!!
No. Practice isn’t doing the same thing over and over again.
Practice is an iterative process where each time you fail, you learn something new and add it to the process until eventually you find a result that is different.
You’re practicing your golf swing because you keep shanking the ball to the right. You don’t keep making the same shot over and over agin. You adjust your stance. You adjust your leg positioning. You adjust a hundred little things until you find the combination that gives you the results you want. THAT’S Practice…not just repeating the same action.
When I get a movement right, I keep repeating it over and over until it’s committed to memory. You’re saying I could’ve stopped at the first success? Why did no one tell me earlier?
But do you expect different results when doing that? I think the point of that would be to get the same result every time.
Ehh, I get what you’re saying but…that’s iteration, improvement, development
Practice is rehearsing the same move over and over, the phrase “practice like you play” exists for that reason. It is by definition, repetition.
Same is not identical.
“I am going to get a drink.” - “I’m gonna do the same.”
Will the second person now do identical movements to the first one? Will the second person use identical words to order an identical drink?
Or will both of them walk up to the bar and each of them will get some drink they like?
“I’m going to practice golf this weekend.” - “Yeah, I’m going to do the same.”
Will the second person immitate every movement of the first one? Or are both of them just going to practice golf, one of them maybe on a golf course and the other one on a drive range?
Anyone else kind of hate this “definition”? I’ve been hearing that shit my entire life, and I just can’t help but roll my eyes every time.
It’s terrible, wrong, and out of context. Einstein was talking about quantum mechanics not mental health. He really didn’t like that at the quantum level results are random but follow a very spefic probability curve.
He thought quantum mechanics would be able to achive classical physics like results. Where the only uncertainty was because of measurement error.
quantum uncertainty is the most experimentaly proven theory in physics. So even in the context Einstein made the statement he was wrong.
Putting aside the fact that you cannot “experimentally prove” anything as proof is for mathematics, claiming you can experimentally demonstrate fundamental uncertainty is, to put it bluntly, incoherent. Uncertainty is a negative, it is a statement that there is no underlying cause for something. You cannot empirically demonstrate the absence of an unknown cause.
If you believe in fundamental uncertainty, it would be appropriate to argue in favor of this using something like the principle of parsimony, pointing out the fact that we have no evidence for an underlying cause so we shouldn’t believe in one. Claiming that you have “proven” there is no underlying cause is backwards logic. It is like saying you have proven there is no god as opposed to simply saying you lack belief in one. Whatever “proof” you come up with to rule out a particular god, someone could change the definition of that god to get around your “proof.”
Einstein, of course, was fully aware of such arguments and acknowledged such a possibility that there may be no cause, but he put forwards his own arguments as to why it leads to logical absurdities to treat the randomness of quantum mechanics as fundamental; it’s not merely a problem of randomness, but he showed with a thought experiment involving atomic decay that it forces you to have to reject the very existence of a perspective-independent reality.
There is no academic consensus on how to address Einstein’s arguments, and so to claim he’s been “proven wrong” is quite a wild claim to make.
“[W]hat is proved by impossibility proofs is lack of imagination.” (John Bell)
Einstein wasn’t talking about anything at all, since it’s a misattribution. Einstein never said that. Someone just stuck Einstein’s name in front of their own stupid garbage quote to make it sound smarter.
“Einstein wasn’t talking about anything at all, since it’s a misattribution. Einstein never said that. Someone just stuck Einstein’s name in front of their own stupid garbage quote to make it sound smarter.” - Einstein, 2025
“That’s exactly how to do that!” - Gandalf
Oh doing something over and over and over again cause you want to get the diminishing returns milked for all its worth is absolutely insane.
It just also happens to be useful insanity.
Its what pushes humanity at its fringes is the insane going for more and trying to get the little they can. Most of the “sane” people arent much worth talking about.How do you get proficient at anything? Practice it well past the first 10 minutes where you have the highest returns.
Yeah, no. You should be adjusting each cycle when you practice, until you start getting the desired results.
It depends on what you are practicing. If it involves things out of your control, for instance poker, you definitely shouldn’t adjust after every result. In the poker case that leads to not playing well just because you lost one time.
Even in less random things you have to be absolutely sure you found the problem before adjusting.
sometimes you need the muscle memory.
in this case its all repetition.
No matter whether you are awful or great, if you are practising skateboard tricks it’s called “practising skateboard tricks”. Because you are doing the same thing. You aren’t doing identical actions while practising skateboard tricks, but you are doing the same overall task.
Imagine you are practicing basketball free throws. The goal of the practice is to get the ball through the hoop.
To be clear the key word is goal, which can be defined as an achievable end result. In this example the ball goes through the hoop or it doesn’t.
If you throw the ball away from the hoop in such a way that it doesn’t even come close to going through the hoop, a reasonable person would say you need to change your actions to get a different result.
However, if you do not change your actions yet you expect the ball to go through the hoop, this is unreasonable and could broadly be seen as “insanity” as a sort of pejorative for a person who may be suffering from mental illness or is simply being unreasonable.
Practice by definition is synonymous with iteration, which is repeating an activity while making changes to affect the result or outcome of that activity.
The statement is about the individual goal not the general activity you’re practicing.
Identical actions are impossible to do. No matter how great you are at throwing a basket ball, the ball will never hit exactly the same spot even if you allow for full nanometers of tolerance (and even then it wouldn’t be identical).
So if your definition of “doing the same thing” is to do each repetition absolutely identical, then the whole statement is an impossibility, and then we don’t need to talk about this at all, because it’s already impossible to “do the same thing” multiple times.
If you allow for variance though, your whole argument doesn’t work anymore.
So what do you want to go with?
Actions are absolutely repeatable to a level of precision enough to achieve a desired goal. Hence your ability to type this comment, for musicians to perform music, for athletes to win games, so on and so forth. Repeatable actions are at the center of humanities ability to function.
All actions have variance, but the level of accuracy is only relevant to the prescribed goal. In the example of a basketball, the ball only needs to enter the top of the hoop from a given range of angles, at a range of speeds. As long as you are within this tolerance you will achieve the goal of making a basket. The whole concept of the game relies on this repeatability.
When a person learns to write they must draw a series of shapes. At first the letters are often difficult to read and will make the words they attempt to write unintelligible. As they practice, they refine their motor skills to within a tolerance of legibility. Each letter doesn’t have to be truly identical. Just within the tolerance of the goal.
So the key points here are; tolerance of repeatability is defined by the goal, repeatable actions are ingrained in nearly everything we do, and finally if you think that repeating your position through a series of pedantic semantics, goal post shifting or false premises is going to change the outcome of this argument, that might just be the definition of insanity.
Now we are getting to the point: You are saying that an action doesn’t have to be identical to be the same. There can be variance.
All actions have variance, but the level of accuracy is only relevant to the prescribed goal. In the example of a basketball, the ball only needs to enter the top of the hoop from a given range of angles, at a range of speeds. As long as you are within this tolerance you will achieve the goal of making a basket. The whole concept of the game relies on this repeatability.
Now, let’s say this is the case. Look at a random professional basketball game. If it’s as repeatable as you say and the whole concept of the game relies on this repeatability (so without that repeatability there is no game of basketball), then that means every single shot will go into the basket. Otherwise it’s not as repeatable as you claim. Is that true?
If this repeatability is so simple and easy to make, why would anyone need to practice for it? Do you think that pro basketball players just show up for the games and never practice?
repeating your position through a series of pedantic semantics, goal post shifting or false premises is going to change the outcome of this argument
Now the cool and fancy but inapplicable terms arrive, when the real arguments disappear.
If you want to, I can supply some other non-fitting terms as well: Selection bias, survivorship bias, stockholm syndrome, strawman argument. Happy now? Throwing non-fitting fallacy names out doesn’t make you look smarter.
I teach MMA. I specialize in BJJ. When I’m showing someone a technique, I show them the proper way. They then do the move, and most times they get 90% of it right but have to keep working on that last %10. If they just practice that over and over at %90 it’ll never be good. They need someone there correcting it, until they perfect it. Once you perfect it, you expect the same outcome over and over from the same thing. That is muscle memory.
“The same”. In a literal sense. Not figuratively like in practice, where you’re repeating things to aim for better performance/outcomes. Every repeat is different, or at least should be otherwise there is this great qoute… something about repeating the same thing and expecting different results…
If you’re practicing the exact same way over and over you’re doing something wrong.
That’s not always true. Finding the optimal way to do something is only one potential aspect of practice. Another is getting to a level where you can do it consistently and on demand, over and over and over, without missing a beat.
And even once you’ve reached that level, that skill can be lost or degrade over time if you dont keep at it, so repeatedly performing the same motions in the exact same way becomes pretty much necessary in order to maintain your skill level.
If you were looking for consistency, that is by definition you looking for the same result, which is not covered in the definition of insanity.
Oops. I appreciate you clearing up the confusion. You ever just feel like a big dumb idiot sometimes? Cause I sure do.
I do feel like that sometimes, so completely understandable.
Not necessarily. If you are learning a skill that requires accuracy (e.g. darts), you will sdo the same thing ovre and over. In the beginning the result will be that you will hardly be able to hit the board at all, and after a ton of practice the result will be that you will hit where you want to hit.
So by doing the same thing over and over again you will get a different result.
If your results are different, then by definition what you did was not exactly the same.
Ok, let’s try this a different way:
“I’m gonna get a drink.” - “I’m gonna do the same.”
Is the second person going to immitate every single motion of the first person?
Or will the second person just also get a drink, maybe not even the same drink?
Every time I go to the park, I’m able to knock balls right out the park with my favorite bat. Am I more likely to get a career in major league baseball or arrested for animal cruelty?
Your argument is on par with arguing that because you saw an article about people playing base that you think we should arrest everyone in the stadium for animal cruelty.There’s a saying in German: “Nicht alles was hinkt ist ein Vergleich”.
Roughly translated: “Not everything which is flawed is an analogy.”
People do say “I’m going to do the same” when doing something that has the same kind of outcome without being an identical copy of an action.
People do not use a bat (animal) as a replacement for a bat (sports equipment) because usually people understand the concept of homonyms.
That’s really not the comeback that you think it is.
Finding? How are you going to find it? Since you’re arguing to never change what you’re doing in practice the very first attempt at practice must be the thing you always repeat right?
Why are you pretending I said things I didn’t say? Finding the optimal way of doing something involves getting it wrong before you get it right. We all know this. What I was talking about was not greenhorn entry-level practice, but the practice of an expert who has already figured that much out. Obviously, you have to learn the right way to do something before you can do it the right way.
Ask literally any half-decent guitarist if trying to do the same exact thing in the same exact way helps or hurts their skill. Now ask a martial artist. A dancer. A singer. A painter. An engineer. A carpenter. Even a bowler, as someone else already mentioned. These are all skills that are honed through repitition.
In the spirit of the dialogue, I am going to repeat myself because it seems like I might need to; none of them got it right the first time. But after they did get it right, I guarantee you, their practice became about doing it again in exactly the same way. And then, once they were happy with their newly refinded skill, they learn something else and start that cycle again.
What’s that Bruce Lee quote? “I do not fear the man that has practiced a thousand moves once. I fear the man that has practiced one move a thousand times”. Skill comes with understanding and understanding comes with focus. At first, you focus on placing your fingers on exactly the right frets at exactly the right time, and then, after you’ve figure that out and can do it correctly, you focus on doing it over and over again until you’re sure that can always do it exactly the way you want to, whenever you want it done. This isn’t esoteric lore. It’s common sense.
Finding the optimal way of doing something involves getting it wrong before you get it right. We all know this. What I was talking about was not greenhorn entry-level practice, but the practice of an expert who has already figured that much out. Obviously, you have to learn the right way to do something before you can do it the right way.
Congratulations that was the point.
If that’s the point, then I had it right the first time, and only seemed to lose you when I followed the idea to its obvious next leg. After you figure out how to do it right, then the rest of that initial comment comes into play.
You not following along well enough until it’s been reiterated and fed to you as directly and simply as possible is not the dunk you seem to think it is.
Oh look you lost the point again.
You said that practicing something the same way over and over is wrong, fullstop. I said that’s not always true because after a certain point, that is the exact kind of practice that keeps the skill ready. I miss, lose, and never find many points, but I see this one clear as day. Your absolute statement was not absolutely true, and it’s really just not that big of a deal.
While I don’t appreciate that you misconstrued what I said earlier, wilfully or otherwise, I also don’t think that’s a rightful excuse for me to get as rude with you as I chose to. So, take it or leave it, I offer my apologies for that.
You must not be a bowler.
No.
You’re either doing the thing right, and expecting the same result, or you’re doing it wrong and then adjusting. Either way, you’re not doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
If you’re expecting the same result (and getting a different result) you’re doing scientific research.
You are doing the same thing (e.g. practising a specific piece of music on a specific instrument). If you are doing it poorly or on world-class level, it is still the same thing. It’s not identical actions within the task of practising that song, but no matter how good you are, it would be still called the same thing (“practising to play song X on instrument Y”).
I mean how much do you want to generalize? Practicing now means doing the same thing over and over, ignoring the adjustments you make? Ignoring the fact that someone who never practiced vs a 10 year practiced will sound different, but she did the same thing for 10 years, it should sound the same if nothing changed. Then the next 10 years will sound the same since they perfected it. But they will practice. So practice sometimes means you change but sometimes means you don’t? See how things get complicated when they are overgeneralized.
“I’m going to get a drink.” - “I am doing the same.”
Will the second person immitate every movement the first one makes? Will the second person use the exact same words and intonation to order a drink? Will the second person order exactly the same drink?
Or will both people make their way to the bar however they like, and then each use their own words to order any drink they happen to want and “doing the same” just means that they will each end up with a drink in their hands?
You reworded my comment.
edit. You’ve lost your keys. You look in your pants pocket 500 times. Insanity, because you’re doing the same thing and expecting that this time the keys will show up, even though they weren’t there the first 499 times.
You play “O, Canada” on the steel drums 500 times. Sometimes you play it through perfectly and occasionally you make a mistake. You note the mistakes. When you play it right you’re getting the result you expect, and if you make a mistake, you adjust.
You claimed the opposite.
- My original post was: Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
- You said “No, you are not doing the same thing and expecting different results”
- I said “You are doing the same thing when practising”
- You said “You reworded my comment”
If you mean “saying the opposite” by “rewording the comment” then you are right. But to me, saying the opposite is not rewording.
I’ll let whoever reads this decide.
You’re correct, OP is wrong
Thank you
At least you got the fisting enthusiast on your side.
Idk about that…
When you practice something, you’re actively changing your technique to elicit better results. You’re not making huge changes, but rather a series of miniscule ones that add up.
For instance, I could sit down with a flute and a piece of music, and play it decently. It wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be terrible. If I play it the same way every time, it’s always going to sound decent - but it’s always going to have the same wrong notes, the same rushed passages, the same intonation issues… If I practice it, I can make changes over time that fix those things. I can fix my fingerings, even out the rushed bits, adjust my intonation… But then I wouldn’t be doing the same thing anymore, I’d be doing something slightly different.
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.
“practicing” is spelled with a ‘c’
Oh, another American who hasn’t heard of British English!
TIL, forget it
Did Einstein actually say that? Even if he did, he wasn’t a psychologist. Plus, scientists recreate experiments all the time, literally doing as close to the same thing as possible and often getting different results.
So No. I also was always very irritated by this quote, because from a scientific point of view this is rather incorrect, as (like you said) experiments need to be repeated, to verify the results.
No, Einstein did not say that. But it’s often misattributed to him, that’s why I put it as “(not) Einstein”.
Gotcha, thanks!
A idiotic comments trying to argue that its different, dont understand that the AIM stays the same. And yes after each iteration you get closer with practice.
The execution might look a bit different but the aim is still at the exact same after each iteration.
Thanks!
I’d argue it’s all but impossible to do the exact same execution every single time, even if you aren’t practising.
I feel like some people (and on the internet maybe even most people) need to disagree to everything that is said. I had that so often that I agree with someone, and offer another point arguing in the same direction, only for the other person to misunderstand my support of their point as an attack and starting to argue against my supporting point.
I hate contrarians.
We have (at least) two fundamentally different types of knowledge—there’s our intuitive world model that does improve with repetition learning (much like a neural network) and does change with practice; and there’s rule-based knowledge that improves by eliminating possible rules/theories via observation.
My interpretation of Einstein’s quip is that insanity consists in confusing the two—thinking that rule-based knowledge can improve by performing the same tests over and over until the results match our theories, instead of modifying our theories to reflect the results.
It’s not an Einstein quote. It’s a common misattribution to make a stupid quote sound smart.
even if you agreed with this (definitely not) einstein quote it would be an example not a definition !!
