"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.
The biggest problem here seems to be that a lot of these things would be pretty annoying even if you had well beyond the skills necessary to accomplish them.
Self-control and Social seem like the worst offenders here, especially insofar as it's harder to dismiss them as something you already know you can do (I already know I can run a mile or what passages I have memorized, but I don't count how many times per month I meet with friends, or how many times per month I work two hours straight).
It also threatens to conflate how skilled you are at things with how much you're willing to do something just to tick off a box on a worksheet. Imagine someone arranging four meetups, then calling back and saying "Actually, I'm not interested in meeting up at all, I just asked you to meet up to prove I could do it, for this online worksheet thing. Anyway, I'll talk to you next time I have some real plans, and sorry about the inconvenience."
(if you don't believe anyone could possibly be that pathetic, consider that it was the first thought that came into my mind when I saw that requirement.)
This is even more true of self-control. Anyone could work two hours straight to save their own life, most people could work two hours straight if there's a big project due the next day, but I don't know how many people could work two hours straight because a leveling worksheet told them to.
For the skill of self control, is there a difference between these two things? :-)