Domain Specificity and Grade School Basketball

I played sports through grade school and some of high school like most good suburban kids. In eighth grade I started off the pre-season with my usual couple of baskets a game. This isn't that impressive considering I was, generally, pretty athletic. My inability to score didn't come from a lack hustle either, and not meeting my potential was a source of frustration for my coaches.

It eventually became glaringly obvious to me that I was held back by something mental. What was even more surprising was how this realization started that year from a simple moment. It happened as I was playing a game of one-on-one with my dad. As I was giving him a run for his money, he asked why I didn't play ball in the actual games like I do against him. I too was confused why I didn't, so I decided I was going to do just that. I ended up being the highest scorer on the team that year, because of this change in perspective.

Throughout my life I've used that eighth grade basketball season as a reference point to try and understand how I might be limiting myself with my own blind spots. What I've concluded so far is that I suffer, like everyone, from what evolutionary psychologists would call "domain specificity". Domain specificity is when something evolves, whether a physical attribute, behavior, belief, etc. out of a particular environment. When applied to knowledge, then, it's easy to miss how the learned thing can translate to a different setting since it isn't where the adaptation began. In the case of my basketball playing, I saw street ball as a different domain than organized basketball. This resulted in me not carrying over things I learned from one court to another despite them being nearly identical. I played differently in each domain until someone pointed out that they were almost completely interchangeable.

Because of this experience, I try and break down the walls of various domains as much as it is justified. This way I don't have to relearn something I already know. Also, finding out what's applicable from unrelated domains is where profound creativity lies. What one knows about writing, even if it's abstract principles, may be applied to photography, or even building a business. Einstein's Theory of Relativity was influenced by music maybe even more than the field of physics itself.

Maintaining an understanding of what makes a domain unique is difficult though, because reductivism is easy. Basketball is not just "throwing a ball into a hole" as detractors may proclaim. These kind of merely statements are popular, because most don’t realize that, despite elegance being simple, simplicity isn’t elegance. Further, elegance often denotes deep universal truths, such as the Theory of Relativity is said to have. Dismissiveness and cynicism are only parodies of elegance, because its answer tends to be oversimplification and reduction.

There’s always more going on beneath the surface though and the whole is not just the sum of its parts. The challenge is to keep tinkering with associations while maintaining a sense of wonder. Perhaps this is the only way to have one’s evolved abilities transcend it’s specific domain.