Interesting point, Stuart! I think when people say a given ability is easy to achieve they are referring to the chance of achieving it conditional on putting some effort into it. Sensorimotor tasks may be hard in the sense of requiring lots of effort (even if we forgot about it), but the vast majority of people achieve a great level conditional on the training effort of a typical upbringing. I guess there would be much greater variance in chess and maths ability conditional on a given amount of training.
Not sure if this is responsive, but while most people (barring disability) do reach a decent level of proficiency at navigating the world, I think the variance can still be huge. Look at the feats of Olympic gymnasts or professional basketball players—hardly anyone could reach that level no matter how much they trained.
Thanks, Stuart. I think Ege’s point is that there is less variation in activities that humans have done for a long time, which does not apply to all sporty activities. I would say most of olympic gymnastics and professional basketball do not qualify, whereas walking and running do. The fastest marathon was run in around 2 h, whereas a random person with age 30 can maybe complete one in around 9 h moving at a walking pace of 4.67 km/h[1] (= 42⁄9), which is 4.5 (= 9⁄5) times as much time. In contrast, a random person would not beat the best chess players even if they had 4.5 times as much time (unless they had very little time like 4.5 s against 1 s for the top players).
Interesting point, Stuart! I think when people say a given ability is easy to achieve they are referring to the chance of achieving it conditional on putting some effort into it. Sensorimotor tasks may be hard in the sense of requiring lots of effort (even if we forgot about it), but the vast majority of people achieve a great level conditional on the training effort of a typical upbringing. I guess there would be much greater variance in chess and maths ability conditional on a given amount of training.
Not sure if this is responsive, but while most people (barring disability) do reach a decent level of proficiency at navigating the world, I think the variance can still be huge. Look at the feats of Olympic gymnasts or professional basketball players—hardly anyone could reach that level no matter how much they trained.
Thanks, Stuart. I think Ege’s point is that there is less variation in activities that humans have done for a long time, which does not apply to all sporty activities. I would say most of olympic gymnastics and professional basketball do not qualify, whereas walking and running do. The fastest marathon was run in around 2 h, whereas a random person with age 30 can maybe complete one in around 9 h moving at a walking pace of 4.67 km/h[1] (= 42⁄9), which is 4.5 (= 9⁄5) times as much time. In contrast, a random person would not beat the best chess players even if they had 4.5 times as much time (unless they had very little time like 4.5 s against 1 s for the top players).
Healthy young people can walk all day if needed even if they do not exercise regularly.