Jake Spatz wrote: >>What, in the first place, does the drive-to-excel have to do with /pleasure/?<<
My previous comments confused to some degree the pursuit of pleasure with the pursuit of excellence. Let me try to clarify. I think it's fair to assume that most people attend milongas to enjoy dancing with others--not a drive to excel Some people may attend milongas to show off their dancing skills to feed their ego or to advertise themselves as teachers. For these people, showing their superiority may be more important than enjoying dancing with any particular partner. Let's start with the proposition that we looking at the people who attend milongas for pleasure to enjoy dancing with others. The enjoyability of dancing with someone might be regarded as a function of the skills of both partners: E = f(B,L) where E represents enjoyment, B represents the skills of the better dancer and L represents the skills of the lesser dancer. One specific functional form might be: lnE = lnA + w lnL + (1-w) ln B where w is A is a constant, and w is a weight (1 > w > 0). As shown in this function, Increasing one's own skills increases enjoyment but at a decreasing rate. Balanced growth in the skills of the two individuals allows for the greatest increse in enjoyment. Furthermore, based on some of the comments on Tango-L, there seems to be a perception that the weight that many dancers give to the skills of the lesser dancer increases with experience, practice and own's skills. Other things being equal, a relatively inexperienced dancer seems to enjoy dancing with a more skilled dancer than the skilled dancer seems to enjoy dancing with an inexperienced dancer. Suppose our person starts working to develop skills, total enjoyment from tango becomes TE = n avgE - g(D) where TE represents total enjoyment from tango, n represents the number of tandas, avgE represents the average level of enjoyment from dancing given one's own skills and those of the dance partners in the community, and D is the individual development cost. The typical individual quits developing skills when they find that the additional enjoyment from having better skills is exactly offset by the cost of doing so. Moreover, the return to developing skills increases as the quality of one's potential partners increases--which encourages the individual to further develop skills. A person with lower development costs may pursue the development of skills further but still reaches a point where the additional cost of development outweighs the gains. Let's look at some group dynamics, as suggested by Jeff Gaynor's comments: In established communities dominated by mediocrity, a number of individuals seemingly have stopped their development at a relatively low level. Maybe these communities suffer from high development costs. Maybe they are mired at a low equilibrium created by group dynamics--and the view that everyone dances with everyone. Remember each rational individual thinking of their own enjoyment from dancing stops developing skills when additional enjoyment from developing those skills just offsets the additional cost. Each person acting individually bears their own development costs but only gains a portion of the improved dance experience. Some of the benefits are distributed to their partners. If self-interest dominates, individuals will not pursue the development of tango skills to the point the community would like. Consequently, each member of the community would like everyone in the community to develop a higher level of skills, but no one individual acting alone has an incentive to do so. What happens if an individual chooses to work on development with a partner? The development costs may be reduced somewhat, but the enjoyment in dancing at milongas may not be improved enough to encourage a substantial increse in skills because the effects of both developing skills are diluted when they dance with others. For the individual, total enjoyment from tango becomes TE = m highE + (n-m) avgE - g(D) where m represents the number of tandas with one's partner, and highE represents the more enjoyable dance experiences with one's partner. As m increases to n, the returns to development with a partner are increased, but social acceptability tends to push m down toward 1, as people revile the couple for not contributing to the community when they dance with each other rather than everyone in the community. No one cares if the inferior dancers keep to themselves. It's only better dancers keeping to themselves that people don't like. The idea of a forming a larger practice group is that it could further reduce development costs and at the same time push the ratio of m to n upward. An increase in the number of better dancers in a community may also stimulate others to develop their skills because the return to doing so increaes. With best regards, Steve (de Tejas) _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
