Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?
This is a matter of getting the premise wrong. This is the idea:
“I think the most general claim here,” Ericsson says of his work, “is that a lot of people believe there are some inherent limits they were born with. But there is surprisingly little hard evidence that anyone could attain any kind of exceptional performance without spending a lot of time perfecting it.” This is not to say that all people have equal potential. Michael Jordan, even if he hadn’t spent countless hours in the gym, would still have been a better basketball player than most of us. But without those hours in the gym, he would never have become the player he was.
So the mistaken premise is that since world-class practitioners put in a lot of work at their craft, putting in a lot of work will make you world-class. As the logician reminds us, universal affirmatives can only be partially converted. The idea behind the 10,000 hour “rule” is that it gets you to your best, i.e. it’s a local maximum.
Is there any real, serious, scientifically valid evidence for this “10,000 hour rule,” or is it just another example of something a pseudointellectual like Malcom Gladwell pulled out of his hind end? It’s clear that being brilliantly good at something takes a whole lot of practice, but that highly specific number (What are the error bars? Plus or minus a factor of 5 or so?) sets off my BS klaxons at full volume.
No science that I’m aware of. Just an observation that those who occupy the top of any skilled activity work hard at whatever they do.