Talent Competitions

How often have you heard the judges in talent competitions say that the competitors are so great this year it's going to be difficult to judge a winner? Sometimes they'll just be being nice. Sometimes they'll have a point. They'll certainly have a point in competitions where people are judged against disparate sub-disciplines. Recent examples are this year's BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, which pits sopranos against baritones.

The end choice is often arbitrary, and thus up to the whims of the judges and the political atmosphere of the time. No matter how professional the judges are, they're still just humans. Humans have (and are affected by other people's) biases. The less easy it is to judge an apple against a pear, the more the judge will be tempted (not even consciously) to rely on those biases. And that renders the result irrelevant, unless the goal of the competition is merely to use PR in order to win over the judges' personal likes. But then, people watching the competition don't want to know what the judges prefer, they want to know "who's best" - whatever that means. Judging specifics and extremities in art is easy: A child's picture is not as good (from an artistic point of view) as a Picasso - unless you're judging the childishness of art, I suppose, but that would be straining to prove a point.

Or you judge people based on what others think as well? Is a Metacritic-style judgment fairer? Even that might be frought with political biases, this time on a Eurovision standard (although hopefully far tamer).

So, why judge a winner at all? If the finalists really are difficult to choose from, and they're so disparate in their talents that you're essentially comparing different arts, why not declare them all the winner, or none? The only answer seems to be because, just like with a film you've got to have a montage, with a competition you've got to have a single winner. It's the focal point of the whole competition, and it's what draws in the viewers, gives them interest through the series of rounds until they get to The Big One.

"It's just a bit of fun," you might think. But in some cases, competitions are a part of someone's livelihood. Winning a competition can be akin to gaining a qualification, as far as the birth and progression of their career is concerned. Is it fair to tell someone that they're not as good as someone else, when in reality that's just someone's opinion rather than a provable reflection of reality? Just because an opinion is presented as a fact doesn't make it one, but that's irrelevant because people believe and treat it as such.

And so we've arrived at the truth: Those who fail to win were put through that mental hardship merely for people's entertainment. Is that what we should be doing, as a mature, organised society, and one that claims to take mental health seriously?

"Psychologists"

I have come to the conclusion that there are good psychologists, who are naturally good at judging and dealing with the way people think, and bad psychologists, who have to study it at University. The former think nothing of their talent, assume it’s a normal ability and use it in everyday life. The latter cannot do this, and instead have to use what they’ve learned by taking a psychology-related job that recognises their newly-found “skills”.

The result of this situation is that psychology-related jobs draw not on talent, but solely on skill. So no wonder the ability of psychologists, when occasional studies emerge into the public eye, seem so pathetic to the rest of us. Skill applies standard procedures to all possible tasks. But what use is this when everyone's different? Surely, in practice, the best method is to be innovative. Learning - that is, research into previous work - should only be the starting point in becoming a successful psychologist. The other 90% should be realising that no-one knows much about the human mind, and coming up with one's own theories, not endlessly reusing those of other people. So what use is a degree in such an area as psychology that only tests for the first small bit, when in practise it's the rest that matters?

The consequence of this stupid state of affairs is obvious - it only serves to degradate the quality of the work of these so-called psychologists. For example, I draw your attention to this piece of genius (see link):

Women find men more attractive if they see other women admiring them, a study has suggested.

Psychologists discovered that a man was judged more desirable by a woman if she saw her peers using positive facial expressions, such as smiling.

Previous research indicated that facial attractiveness was based on personal taste and types of person.

But Aberdeen University's Face Research Laboratory found facial expressions of others could influence attractiveness.

In other words, they found that “women are attracted to popular men.” Another world-beater from the world of psychology. Society will be ever so much richer for that pearl of wisdom. In fact, not only have they found something that the rest of us knew already: Oh no, it gets worse. Later on, the same article mentions this:

Dr Ben Jones, who led the project, said: [...] "It is really the first time that a phenomenon called social learning - where we learn by what other people think or do - has been shown to influence attractiveness.

No, “Dr.” Jones, it’s the first time that psychologists like you have realised that “social learning” (as you call it) has been shown to influence attractiveness. The rest of us were way ahead of you, I’m afraid.

From reading articles like this, it’s like looking into the world of a bunch of degenerates who don’t have the skills in life to pick up facts of life like the rest of us, but who we should applaud for trying out of kindness because it isn’t their fault that they don't know otherwise. If it weren’t for the fact that this work was publicly funded, I’d pity them for wasting so much time and energy.

Another thing: “Face Research Laboratory”? So we have a publicly funded laboratory that thinks of something to study, gets a load of people in a room and records their facial expressions, and then notes down any trends. Is this even in the least bit useful to society? Is it not something that we do in our everyday lives without thinking about it, because we don’t need to think about it? Is it not something that anyone could do, let alone a group of people arrogant enough to call themselves “psychologists” who are paid to do it?

There is only one way of using empirical evidence to discover and substantiate claims about psychology: by observation. The psychologist’s way is to gather a group of people into a controlled environment and perform experiments on them, experiments of which the group is aware. Everyone else’s way is to see and talk with people in their natural environment – friends at the pub, people in the street, the family at home – and learn about how they think that way instead. Which is better: an artificially created situation where people will inevitably react similarly artificially, or a natural situation where everyone is reacting in a real environment? It doesn’t take to much observing to realise that the general public has a better approach to it all than so-called psychologists.

Perhaps the most famous consequence of quantum mechanics is that observing a photon alters the state of that photon, and, consequently, that one can never know what the photon was up to (its velocity) prior to the observation. There are lessons to be learned here by “psychologists” about observing people in controlled environments. Yet it’s obvious to the rest of us. Perhaps we should found a psychological journal for so-called “psychologists”, written by people who do not call themselves psychologists. I think the first article will be about the common-sense fact that if you control the way people act, then that might just invalidate studies into the way people act.

The thing is, we are all psychologists. We are all experts in human minds, because not only do we have human minds, we observe others with them too. We all have our own theories about how the mind works, regardless of whether we are aware of our theories, because they are necessary in order to help us to get along with people in everyday life. Our theories are just as relevant as any of those invented by those who call themselves psychologists, because none can be proven and all of them can be supported by observations. So if we’re all psychologists at heart, those that call themselves psychologists must really be arrogant in order to think that the rest of us are not capable of doing their jobs.

God bless the psychologists – just let them be, making their irrelevant and often incorrect conclusions. And perhaps the human resource managers, as well, for similar reasons to those discussed. As for the rest of us, lets continue to observe human behaviour in our own way and use what we naturally learn in a meaningful way. After all, it’s all just common sense, surely?