[HN Gopher] The B Lane Swimmer ___________________________________________________________________ The B Lane Swimmer Author : Schiphol Score : 33 points Date : 2023-09-02 07:29 UTC (15 hours ago) (HTM) web link (holly.witteman.ca) (TXT) w3m dump (holly.witteman.ca) | elchief wrote: | similar to https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful- | animal/why-b... | | "Why Bronze Medalists Are Happier Than Silver Winners" | fgblanch wrote: | I've observed the same pattern in corporate world with folks | which are close to promotion stage. Nice people suddenly become | bitter and very hard to work with. Only the best stay nice. | booleandilemma wrote: | It's because everyone knows the A's are A's, so they don't have | any problem being nice, sharing tips, helping others along. | | The B's are trying to become A's. Maybe they even think they're | _better_ than the A 's, but their skill isn't acknowledged. The | _last_ thing they need is some dumb C coming up and competing | with them as another B. Better to kick the C 's to the curb. | | Meanwhile the A's don't care, they're on top, after all, and life | is good - let me share that blog post on clean code I saw the | other day to my team's channel. | pedalpete wrote: | I think this is tied to the 90% effort model (which I thought was | attributed to Carl Lewis, but I can't find a source). | | The A group are pushing themselves, but they have a confidence of | being at the top of the pack, and that slight bit of relaxation | that lets their body flow freely through the water. | | The B group are striving and pushing and tense, putting 100% | effort in all the time to try to get to the A group. This extra | tension in their body is actually slowing them down. But from a | mental state, it is also putting them in a position of excessive | competitiveness. They are more focused on beating the other | swimmers to get into the A group. | | The A group aren't trying to beat the other swimmers in the A | group. They are trying to beat themselves. They want the other | swimmers to be better, in order to push themselves to be better. | | The C group know they are in the bottom half, and have very | little to gain from hyper-competitiveness. Might as well get | along with everyone. | | The D group are just happy to be there. | Affric wrote: | This is a well documented phenomenon in mammalian social systems. | | Second from the top in the hierarchy is the most stressful (as | measured in cortisol). It's 99% of the stress of the top with | none of the benefit. | version_five wrote: | Just thinking about this, I feel like it maps well to skill level | driven stuff - you have recreational people who are easy going, | those at the top who are secure, and the "petty little men" (to | borrow from my experience with my high school teachers) who have | a chip on their shoulder and something to prove. | | I don't think it maps entirely to business / work though, where | you can find insecure jerks at the highest levels. I was thinking | about the *Gervais* "psychopath, confused, losers" framework that | largely makes sense to me, and how the lanes would map. I don't | think it's 1:1, as in the psychopaths are notionally the A-laners | but they can still be insecure and jerks. The confused are | probably the B-laners, though it's not clear they're all petty | little men. And I think the losers map to the C and D just fine | (note if you aren't familiar with the framework, losers isn't | meant to be derogatory). | | https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... | | Anyway, just my initial thought. | | Edit: I suppose it's a stereotype more than an iron law, there | are presumably jerk A-laners and nice B-laners. | xhkkffbf wrote: | A friend tells me that performance enhancing drug use is pretty | common on the high amateur, almost pro level of bicycling. These | are folks who are very good and obsessed with the sport, but not | at the pro level. But there's also no testing at many of their | races so they can get away with the PED use. | | No one is really sure what to do because these dedicated semi- | pros pay lots of fees to support the races. If they're a bit | strict on PED use, the registrations could really drop off. But | on the flip side, the PED use drives away others who are | competing fairly but just not ready to submit their body to all | of those extra chemicals. | buran77 wrote: | When you're the best (A lane) it's easy to be magnanimous or | nice. Your reward was the win and that gives you all the peace of | mind needed for this. | | When you're the average or below average (C or D lanes) it's just | as easy to be nice. Being far from the top means the competitive | pressure is not as taxing and maybe even the effort is lower. In | those lanes if you feel the pressure to be the best you can | either become the best (winning is the reward), or learn to deal | with it and "take it easy" (playing the game is the reward), or | since you're pretty far from the top you can give up to relieve | the pressure (not feeling the pressure is the reward). | | But the B lane can be a bit of hell. You are competitive, you are | so close to the top, and yet so far. Becoming the best is hard, | giving up is just as hard, and learning to live with this "close | but no cigar" situation is hard. Second best is the worst place | to be. Almost all of the effort and qualifications, none of the | laurels. The most frustrating position. Nobody remembers the | second best. All that might build up to a less than pleasant | attitude. | | Once you see it you recognize it all over the place. The player | from the winning team offers to help his opponent up but never | the other way around. The second best student is always far less | happy than the one who just passed by the skin of their teeth. | The candidate who won an election shakes his opponent's hand | while the opponent is broken. | 23090jfd wrote: | I guess I'll be honest with myself and say I'm probably the | equivalent of the B lane swimmer in a certain area. Some might | say I'm A but maybe there's always an A lane where you're B? I | guess it depends on your goals; most of life isn't reduced to a | single clear metric like speed. | | One of the things I find frustrating in this particular area -- | and maybe not all areas are like this -- is how much things | like luck and questionable ethics separates A from B. I don't | mean to suggest all of it is like that, or that A people are | all unethical people who stumbled on their fortune by chance, | but a lot of the differences between A and B that I see are due | to things like B people being especially unlucky at where they | landed their first job, or A people being especially lucky, or | A people in fact being pretty ethically sketchy or outright | corrupt about certain things. So I tend to get especially angry | when I see these relatively big consequences from differences | that don't really matter, or the differences aren't actually | present, or people in the area professionally pretend all this | stuff isn't going even though everyone wholly acknowledges in | private it is. | | So the more I think about it, the more I'm not really sure the | swimming analogy is entirely apt. There you have a pretty clear | criterion, and it's all about what lane you're in. In life, the | criteria might differ from person to person, the lanes come | with major consequences, and there's plenty of chances to game | the criteria where they do exist. It's like if which lane you | were in was determined by a lifeguard with a timer, but the | swimming time differences between lanes were smaller than the | error tolerance of the timing devices, and a majority of | swimmers (but not all) were bribing the lifeguards for lanes. | | The way in which the comparison is apt is that as you get "up" | the lanes, the more and more stressful it gets, until you cash | out or get a secure position or whatever, when it becomes worth | it, whatever "it" is. So you're sensitive to BS until it | doesn't matter because you've already got yours. As you go | down, you're surrounded by people who don't really give a damn | about trying to go up, it's just not a concern of theirs. So | superficially the pattern of stress is probably similar. But in | general, I'm not sure it's really the same processes causing | that stress. | ggm wrote: | C probably feels spiritually close to D. B is scared anyone from | C or D can shoot past them. Most A fear nothing from a C or a D | and probably a B but exposed to the competitive edge of a B may | act differently to them? | | On this topic of toxic (or not: you decide) competitiveness "The | master of Go" by Kawabata is a good read. Or "the Glass Bead | Game" by Hermann Hesse ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-09-02 23:00 UTC)