"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
This post is a followup to Leveling IRL. Thanks to SarahC, taryneast, Benquo, AdeleneDawner and MixedNuts, we have an outline of level 1. At this point I feel it's more productive to post it as-is than discuss it further:
- Strength: reach the "untrained" level on each exercise in the ExRx tables.
- Endurance: run 1 mile (1.6 km) without stopping.
- Social: initiate a conversation with someone you know and arrange a meeting with them later. Do that 4 times with different people within 1 month.
- Self control: work for 2 hours without interruptions. Do that on 8 separate days within 1 month.
- Memory: memorize and recite a passage of your choosing, at least 250 words long, without making any mistakes.
- Programming: solve Project Euler problem #1 by writing and running a program in any language you choose.
- Cooking: make pancakes. Here's a good recipe.
- Finance: make a simple buy vs rent calculation, using prices appropriate for your area and your current standard of living.
- Creativity: write 500 words of fiction in one sitting.
The list has some glaring omissions, like math or chess, because I don't yet know of a crisp enough way to test those skills. Ideas are welcome! Also it seems very likely that some items on the list are wildly miscalibrated, some of them will turn out to be too hard for a beginner, and others will be too easy for anyone with a pulse. I'll be happy to hear about such miscalibrated requirements from the people who achieved them or at least tried :-)
And here's what I think the rules should look like:
- The requirements for a level are frozen. No discussing them while you're trying to achieve them.
- A level is indivisible, you don't get moral whuffie points for doing half of the tasks.
- The only exception is that some people may opt to try for Level 1 No Physical, so they don't have to meet the Strength and Endurance requirements. (In university we had a saying that "sports is the only test you cannot cram in a weekend".)
Personally, I'm going to try to make the level, but already know that some tasks will be difficult. I hope it's the same way for you.
I think this a good idea in general, but I see some problems in the specific.
First, the list seems sort of arbitrary. For example, why "write 500 words of fiction" rather than "paint a simple picture" (I'm not much of an artist, but I'm sure someone else could make that more specific -- "use four watercolor colors to paint a picture of an x" or something) or "create a simple song"?. Similarly, why cooking rather than, say "learn how to fold a fitted sheet" for household skills? I think it would be better to create a longer list and then say leveling up requires satisfying at least eight of the criteria. This would also solve the "I just don't care" problem (e.g. my non-knowledge of programming is a consequence of lack of interest, not lack of discipline, so I would not choose it as one of my required skills).
Second, the difficulty of these criteria seems very uneven. And that's a very subjective thing. To me, most of these seem about right for level 1, but Self-Control seems too easy, while Memory and Finance seem like they should be at least level 2. However, I suspect other people would rank them differently. Relatedly, it would probably be easier to appropriately scale level 1 if you first established what the peak level is and what that would look like (that is not to say that people should stop trying to improve after that point -- martial arts ranks stop at Judan even though self-improvement continues after achieving that rank) .
Finally, I think the Strength aspect is just misguided, at least according to the specific criteria cited. Deadlifts and cleans in particular can be fairly dangerous if you aren't doing them correctly, which makes them an odd choice for level 1. More generally, bulking up doesn't actually improve life for most people. I would substitute Tone for Strength, and base it on #pull-ups, #pushups, #situps, and #squats (w/o weights) to failure.
ETA: Heinlein appears to me to be doubly mistaken. First, because specialization and comparative advantage are one of the things that set humans apart from other animals. Second because social insects do not have a lot of different specializations (I stand ready to corrected by any entymologists around, but my lay understanding is that there is a basic worker - drone - queen division, and that is about it).
I think Heinlein may have meant that different insect species have very specific niches.