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anykineclimb
Mar 24, 2007, 3:21 AM
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freeforsum wrote: curt wrote: freeforsum wrote: Who cares? Its just bouldering. bouldering alone is lame. Funny how all incredibly weak climbers say that. Curt No, I just think bouldering is practice for roping up. If all you do is boulder, then you’re missing the point of climbing. Going places on a rock wall that has a sense of commitment to get there is part of the fun of climbing. Not just “how hard can you pull”. That is the ego part of it. Don’t get me wrong. I have had some really great experiences bouldering, but roping up and climbing more than 25 feet Is were its at.
Don't tell me what the point of climbing is. You don't don't what it is. For me.
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matterunomama
Mar 25, 2007, 9:59 PM
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Perhaps not the best, but certainly the youngest and earliest.....
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/02/06/books/12broo2.html
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fracture
Mar 26, 2007, 7:09 AM
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jt512 wrote: In reply to: Ok. So, how does the difficulty differ, then? (Again, the set of energy-production systems that may be used is not different.) Short boulder problems tend to emphasize power, whereas long traversing problems and routes tend to emphasize endurance.
But who cares how they tend to differ? We've already agreed that grades are meaningless without a context, and that tendencies are very much area specific. In my area, boulder problems and sport routes both tend to emphasize either power or power-endurance. So what gives? Should your area roped problems using a different scale than mine? Do we have another factor (area tendencies) to combine into your proposed multiplication of rating systems?
Oh and for that matter, long traversing problems probably as often emphasize power-endurance (which is once again conspicuously absent from your pithy retorts) as they emphasize local endurance. (Many long climbs have rests.)
In reply to: Numbers are inherently metaphorical? Since when? What are they an inherent metaphor for?
Basic number concepts are rooted in counting, which is a universal human ability running on dedicated neural hardware that has evolved specifically for the task. You can look at small collections of objects and instantly count ("subitize") how many there are without any conscious work. Simple arithmetic is built on top of this basic feature of the human brain using a number of "conceptual metaphors" (an idea arising originally from cognitive linguistics). Concepts (and the inferences allowed based on them) such as zero, limits, or transfinite cardinality, all result from layered application of further metaphors.
Much of everyday reasoning---at least the stuff involving abstract concepts---takes place using these metaphorical mappings (this has been described as an early empirical "result" of cognitive science, by some). What that is supposed to mean (put very briefly): inferences involving abstract concepts (like numbers) are often made by reusing other neural hardware (often related to the sensorimotor system) for a new purpose, and "mapping" the results over to the other domain. (An evolutionary rationale for this is easy to invent, and hard to test or prove.) So (loosly speaking), when you do arithmetic, the parts of your brain doing the work may be the same parts of your brain that are involved in making deductions about motion through space, guesses about distances of objects, inferences about containment, and things like that.
Back to numbers. Numbers themselves do not appear to be part of human-independent reality. No one has ever found a number. On the other hand, in everyday language there is no question that sentences like "there exists a number n such that 2n = 4" are true. This has been a recognized philosophical problem long before computer science, cognitive science, formal systems, or the vast majority of modern mathematics itself. Of note is the fact that the debate goes back long before 1859, and much of it is accordingly a bunch of bullshit.
A (post-Darwin) way to answer to the problem is to say that numbers do exist, but not in an organism-independent sense. In other words: before the evolution of minds capable of creating them, numbers did not exist. But now they do, they just aren't what we used to think they were (much like colors, which must also have an organism-relative ontological status). Explaining mathematics from a third-person perspective (as a human behavior), in a scientific and empirically-responsible way and without resorting to some sort of unfalsifiable, neo-Platonist multiplication of entities, requires something rooted in the nitty-gritty details of our biology, our cognitive apparatus and our evolutionary history (even if the particular theory based on conceptual metaphor I'm alluding to above turns out to be false).
So. Now that I've managed to frame this as "either you agree numbers are inherently metaphorical, or you've got a fundamentally pre-Darwinian worldview", you can consider yourself amply licensed to sling further flames about my lack of coffee. Or something.
In reply to: In reply to: The use of a "two-dimensional object" is an ironic example, by the way. (It's another fictional-but-useful entity.) There is nothing fictional about it, but it occurred to me right after I posted it that I should have used a three-dimensional object as an example instead, which I suppose you think is less fictional than a 2-dimensional one. How about 4 dimensional objects: are they more or less fictional than 3 dimensional objects? Is three-dimensional space the only space in which factual objects exist?
The idea of "three-dimensional space" is a metaphor created by a particular branch of mathematics.
And let me be more explicit regarding "fictional" (since I don't know if it came across last attempt). CoG's, numbers, euclidean space, and the property of being purple are all "fictional", but all of them are things that can be (and are!) still said to exist. It's just that they aren't what we may have once thought they were: they don't exist in a organism-independent, objective sense.
In reply to: In reply to: But I dispute that more homogeneous implies more useful. Then not only are you nuts, you contradict your own point about the desirability of grading all power-endurance climbs, roped or unroped, on the same scale.
That sentence was ambiguous, sorry. What I dispute is: "for all grading systems x and y, (x is more homogeneous than y) implies (x is more useful than y)". The falsehood of that is totally compatible with my desire regarding power-endurance climbs. Again: my programme here is that we would do just as well (in terms of observable utility) to have a single grading scale for all safe rock climbs. (Having a single grading scale for all climbs would still conveniently result in rating all power-endurance climbs on the same scale.)
Oh: and I would love to (and was expecting/hoping to) hear you are not meaning to claim the proposition above (preferably immediately preceding a more nuanced argument than you have presented thus far).
In reply to: In reply to: In fact, I think that is provably not the case, and I think I already showed how: the most "homogeneous" possible use of climbing rating scales would be if we had one rating system per route per climber. No, that is not the most homogeneous scale. It's not a scale at all. If you have no variability among the things being rated you can't have a scale.
Ok fine: take every pair of non-identical routes and make one scale per pair per climber. (Then proceed with the same argument.)
In reply to: Now, if you can identify difficulty characteristics of climbs, and rate them on separate scales, you have more information about the climb. This should be obvious. If you know the endurance difficulty of the route and the power difficulty of the route, for instance, you have more information about the route than if you have a single number representing its difficulty.
Correct. My whole argument is that this additional information is not desirable. If I want a text description of the route, I can read a text description of the route. But if I want an overall subjective measurement of how hard something was, I don't want to search through a maze of redundant versions of "on a scale of 1 to infinity, how hard was that?", some versions of which ostensibly require intricate knowledge of both the physiology of energy metabolism and (to add insult to injury) post-5th grade statistics. Sheesh!
Now, the sad thing is that your (vapory) proposal doesn't even seem to have any suggestions about how to handle many extremely common types of routes: many routes place demands on more than one energy-production system in the climber's forearms. Many routes contain sections separated by no hands rests which require completely different movement skills or types of fitness.
So, how about before we go any further you pin yourself down to something concrete. Can you answer the following questions (with appropriate rationale)?
How many rating systems do you think we need?
Given any climb, what is a decision procedure that I can use to determine which of your rating systems should be used? (If you can't answer this, I'm going to disqualify your opinion as being completely incoherent.)
(Origin from below) Do you agree or disagree that the status quo is "successful" under the criteria I gave earlier?
In reply to: Comparing the difficulty of a short powerful problem with a long endurance one is absurd. Does it make any sense to say that Route 1 is harder than Route 2 because Route 1 requires more power than Route 2 requires endurance?
It makes sense. We talk about it all the time. We also frequently say things like Route 1 is harder than Route 2 because it requires crimping that is more difficult than the easy dyno on Route 2.
Again: what this "means" in some objective and scientific sense, I don't know. But regardless of that: it certainly means something in everyday parlance, and it certainly has a number of real-world uses. (Which I've already listed.)
In reply to: But if you had separate power and endurance ratings for each problem, then you would actually have a way of comparing the difficulty of the two problems. Which route was harder or easier for you would depend on how good you are at power and endurance problems.
This is not an advantage that your system has over the status quo: we have already agreed that contextual clues can supply this information. (And furthermore, you can just read the text under the rating in the guidebook if you need more detail.)
In reply to: But now the fucking scale makes sense. Look at how dividing the scale into two dimensions reduces the so-called subjectivity of the rating systems. An endurance climber and a power climber should be in much closer agreement on their ratings on the 2-dimensional scale than on their 1-dimensional difficult scale.
Um. Power-endurance?
In reply to: When it comes right down to it, you are arguing that more detail gives you less useful information, which on its face is false.
Except that it's true! More information is not always better. The utility of ratings comes from their inhabiting a "sweet spot" on information content. (And as mentioned, extra information is also transmitted through contextual clues and other out-of-band sources.)
If you really think that we don't have enough information, maybe you could start by showing in what way grading scales fail to do something they should do, and then demonstrate how more information would actually solve the problem (and how it would do it better than reverting to plain English descriptions)?
In reply to: In reply to: You haven't given me enough information to answer these questions; it's very possible that I'm wasting some time by arguing against irrelevant bogeymen. On the other hand, if you find trouble answering these sorts of questions yourself, maybe you need to think about your position a little more carefully: the status quo (or a single universal rating system) both can handle these types of climbs successfully (under the criteria I gave earlier) without any trouble. Really, how? And don't say "because it does," or that "it must because that's the way it's done."
But it does. It's observable. How these systems are being (or could be) used (and the benefits that are or are not derived from them) is the whole issue here. (And I just added a question to my list above.)
The status quo handles problems like that because somehow it makes intuitive sense to us to subjectively compare the difficulty of extremely dissimilar movement. Why does this make sense to us? I don't know.
In reply to: Which is harder, a two-move V5 or a 100-foot 5.11c? V5 is supposed to be harder than 11c, right? All the ratings comparison charts say so. But I know a whole lot of V5 boulderers that wouldn't make it half-way up the 11c, for purely physical reasons (forget the potection). And so, how do you compare the difficulty of these two routes?
You compare them by realizing that the V5 boulderer can do a large number of 5.12 routes (e.g. bolted one move wonders) despite his inability on this particular 5.11c. Similarly, we might see a climber who can do this long 11c flail horribly on short 11c. More commonly, you might find said 11c climber has great local endurance, but doesn't understand how to climb routes that consist of many short bouldery sections separated by no-hands rests (a very common type of climb), and so falls off power-endurance 10b's by accidently turning them into local endurance 12b's. All of this type of context can add up to a reasonably clear picture. It is not nearly as problematic in practice as you seem to think.
(This post was edited by fracture on Mar 26, 2007, 8:05 AM)
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jt512
Mar 26, 2007, 6:32 PM
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fracture wrote: jt512 wrote: In reply to: Ok. So, how does the difficulty differ, then? (Again, the set of energy-production systems that may be used is not different.) Short boulder problems tend to emphasize power, whereas long traversing problems and routes tend to emphasize endurance. But who cares how they tend to differ?
Anyone who cares to draw a conclusion. This is a very basic concept, with universal applicability. Want to determine whether drug A is better than drug B? The most important thing you have to know is what it's effect is on average. Want to know whether to call or raise at in response to a bet? The main (only?) thing you have to know is which is better on average. I figured out the perfect compromise for you: take a stats class on a pass-fail basis.
Jay
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chainsaw
Mar 26, 2007, 8:29 PM
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Hey, I'm sure you guys are having fun debating rating scales and their faults and merits, but seriously, give it a rest. This thread is titled BEST BOULDERER EVER and that should be the content of your posts, if you want to engage in the ridiculous debate of which came first the chicken or the egg take it to another thread, I am just sick of reading and skimming by all of your bullshit. We have more important things to discuss here, such as how much money Curt is going to have to pay me after I school his ass on some old-timey slabs at his home area. BUGGER OFF NOW, YA HEAR!
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diophantus
Mar 26, 2007, 9:05 PM
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chainsaw wrote: Hey, I'm sure you guys are having fun debating rating scales and their faults and merits, but seriously, give it a rest. This thread is titled BEST BOULDERER EVER and that should be the content of your posts, if you want to engage in the ridiculous debate of which came first the chicken or the egg take it to another thread, I am just sick of reading and skimming by all of your bullshit. We have more important things to discuss here, such as how much money Curt is going to have to pay me after I school his ass on some old-timey slabs at his home area. BUGGER OFF NOW, YA HEAR!
Hey, I'm sure you guys are having fun debating which one of you climbs V5 better, but seriously, give it a rest. This thread is titled BEST BOULDERER EVER and that should be the content of your posts, if you want to engage in the ridiculous debate of which V5 is harder take it to another thread, I am just sick of reading and skimming by all of your bullshit. We have more important things to discuss here, such as how money the pro climbers are. BUGGER OFF NOW, YA HEAR!
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sevrdhed
Mar 26, 2007, 9:11 PM
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Holy shit. I just browsed through the last 2 pages of this thread, not even really reading it, and I've gotta say...
I thought I had a lot of free time to kill on the internet, but you guys are blowing me right out of the water. I mean, you've got a whole doctorate thesis already written here! WTF ever happened to the old standby of "Grades are dumb, STFU n00b". Seriously, didn't you guys notice that the original post on here was from the biggest troll on this site?
In fact, that's how this thread should die. Grades are dumb, now STFU you n00bs. There, now someone lock this shit.
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chainsaw
Mar 26, 2007, 10:16 PM
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diophantus wrote: chainsaw wrote: Hey, I'm sure you guys are having fun debating rating scales and their faults and merits, but seriously, give it a rest. This thread is titled BEST BOULDERER EVER and that should be the content of your posts, if you want to engage in the ridiculous debate of which came first the chicken or the egg take it to another thread, I am just sick of reading and skimming by all of your bullshit. We have more important things to discuss here, such as how much money Curt is going to have to pay me after I school his ass on some old-timey slabs at his home area. BUGGER OFF NOW, YA HEAR! Hey, I'm sure you guys are having fun debating which one of you climbs V5 better, but seriously, give it a rest. This thread is titled BEST BOULDERER EVER and that should be the content of your posts, if you want to engage in the ridiculous debate of which V5 is harder take it to another thread, I am just sick of reading and skimming by all of your bullshit. We have more important things to discuss here, such as how money the pro climbers are. BUGGER OFF NOW, YA HEAR!
Can't think of much to say on your own huh? I guess you thought that was pretty clever, but it wasn't. The thing is, for you that are slower than most, Curt and I are just engaging in the age-old past times of shit talking and posturing, while these other guys are actually serious with their great grade debate. But I'll indulge you. I climb V5 or better or 5.12 or is it E6 6b or wait is it 27 or is it the difference between font traverse 6c or font boulder 6c or that ridiculous german system or whatever the fuck they use in Poland or C4 or B3, or if it is a traverse then give it a route grade if it is over 10 moves but if it comes out of a cave then give it a route grade with a boulder grade for the crux but if you are short then its V12 and if you are tall it is V9 but for women its V11 or maybe a route grade of 5.13 cuz women are lighter and can hang on stronger and for kids we should make a new scale that is k1-k15 and if your kid is climbing k15 then its like climbing a V0 unless it is a traverse because then its better to give it a route grade like 5.12c or d but you could give it a slash grade like 12c/d but I'm not sure about slash grades and how come anything under 5.10 doesn't get the a,b,c,or d ratings like that is not fair but there are + and - grades for 5.9 but you never hear of a 5.6+ or - and why not are there not 5.6s that are easy and hard and how come there are so few 5.1s in the world and you never even hear of 5.0s anymore and why do people use the 5 part of the grade shouldn't we just get rid of that part because no one uses it anyway and when will we ever go to 6.1 is that the same as 5.18 or harder . . . . ok, even though I have so much more to say bout this I will stop now because I have to get back to work, m'kay?
Oh and by the way, STFU
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diophantus
Mar 26, 2007, 10:26 PM
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chainsaw wrote: diophantus wrote: chainsaw wrote: Hey, I'm sure you guys are having fun debating rating scales and their faults and merits, but seriously, give it a rest. This thread is titled BEST BOULDERER EVER and that should be the content of your posts, if you want to engage in the ridiculous debate of which came first the chicken or the egg take it to another thread, I am just sick of reading and skimming by all of your bullshit. We have more important things to discuss here, such as how much money Curt is going to have to pay me after I school his ass on some old-timey slabs at his home area. BUGGER OFF NOW, YA HEAR! Hey, I'm sure you guys are having fun debating which one of you climbs V5 better, but seriously, give it a rest. This thread is titled BEST BOULDERER EVER and that should be the content of your posts, if you want to engage in the ridiculous debate of which V5 is harder take it to another thread, I am just sick of reading and skimming by all of your bullshit. We have more important things to discuss here, such as how money the pro climbers are. BUGGER OFF NOW, YA HEAR! Can't think of much to say on your own huh? I guess you thought that was pretty clever, but it wasn't. The thing is, for you that are slower than most, Curt and I are just engaging in the age-old past times of shit talking and posturing, while these other guys are actually serious with their great grade debate. But I'll indulge you. I climb V5 or better or 5.12 or is it E6 6b or wait is it 27 or is it the difference between font traverse 6c or font boulder 6c or that ridiculous german system or whatever the fuck they use in Poland or C4 or B3, or if it is a traverse then give it a route grade if it is over 10 moves but if it comes out of a cave then give it a route grade with a boulder grade for the crux but if you are short then its V12 and if you are tall it is V9 but for women its V11 or maybe a route grade of 5.13 cuz women are lighter and can hang on stronger and for kids we should make a new scale that is k1-k15 and if your kid is climbing k15 then its like climbing a V0 unless it is a traverse because then its better to give it a route grade like 5.12c or d but you could give it a slash grade like 12c/d but I'm not sure about slash grades and how come anything under 5.10 doesn't get the a,b,c,or d ratings like that is not fair but there are + and - grades for 5.9 but you never hear of a 5.6+ or - and why not are there not 5.6s that are easy and hard and how come there are so few 5.1s in the world and you never even hear of 5.0s anymore and why do people use the 5 part of the grade shouldn't we just get rid of that part because no one uses it anyway and when will we ever go to 6.1 is that the same as 5.18 or harder . . . . ok, even though I have so much more to say bout this I will stop now because I have to get back to work, m'kay? Oh and by the way, STFU
Looks like I hit a nerve there... Don't have a stroke, your mindless spray is just as annoying as debates about rating scales. Unless you think you're special, does your mommy tell you you're special?
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fracture
Mar 27, 2007, 12:12 AM
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jt512 wrote: fracture wrote: jt512 wrote: In reply to: Ok. So, how does the difficulty differ, then? (Again, the set of energy-production systems that may be used is not different.) Short boulder problems tend to emphasize power, whereas long traversing problems and routes tend to emphasize endurance. But who cares how they tend to differ? Anyone who cares to draw a conclusion. This is a very basic concept, with universal applicability. Want to determine whether drug A is better than drug B? The most important thing you have to know is what it's effect is on average. ...
We want to know whether one rating system or many is more useful. In answering this question, the relevant information is about how people actually use rating systems, or how they would use them under other hypothetical circumstances. You have not managed to ground your concern about these tendencies in the types of difficulty on routes vs. boulder problems to these pragmatic concerns. So I don't understand why you think they matter.
But as I mentioned (in two consecutive posts, now), I also don't really understand what your proposed changes exactly are, since you've been refusing to make it explicit. (Cf. the list of unanswered direct questions in my last post.)
In reply to: I figured out the perfect compromise for you: take a stats class on a pass-fail basis.
Har.
(This post was edited by fracture on Mar 27, 2007, 12:15 AM)
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Tylershort
Mar 27, 2007, 1:01 AM
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You guys sound like a bunch of old people bickering
just climb
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curt
Mar 27, 2007, 1:50 AM
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chainsaw wrote: ...Can't think of much to say on your own huh? I guess you thought that was pretty clever, but it wasn't. The thing is, for you that are slower than most, Curt and I are just engaging in the age-old past times of shit talking and posturing, while these other guys are actually serious with their great grade debate...
Amen. I'm still gonna take your money though. Bring it; remember it's gotta be cash.
Curt
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jt512
Mar 27, 2007, 2:28 AM
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fracture wrote: So. Now that I've managed to frame this as "either you agree numbers are inherently metaphorical, or you've got a fundamentally pre-Darwinian worldview", you can consider yourself amply licensed to sling further flames about my lack of coffee.
I guess I'm pre-Darwinian, then, because I think, for instance, that there were 8 planets revolving around the sun long before Darwin or any other human being existed to count them.
In reply to: And let me be more explicit regarding "fictional" (since I don't know if it came across last attempt). CoG's, numbers, euclidean space, and the property of being purple are all "fictional", but all of them are things that can be (and are!) still said to exist. It's just that they aren't what we may have once thought they were: they don't exist in a organism-independent, objective sense.
I don't know dude: COG, the balance point of an object, seems pretty "organism-independent." Every object has a balance point.
Jay
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miavzero
Mar 27, 2007, 3:14 AM
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excuse me for being a simpleton, but why can't we just be satisfied with the rating systems that we have?
Is it really that intolerable to face the fact that we cannot always do climbs of comparable number/letter ratings?
What kind of point are all of you talking heads trying to make?
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jt512
Mar 27, 2007, 3:30 AM
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miavzero wrote: excuse me for being a simpleton, but why can't we just be satisfied with the rating systems that we have? Is it really that intolerable to face the fact that we cannot always do climbs of comparable number/letter ratings? What kind of point are all of you talking heads trying to make?
My point was only that it would make more sense to rate long, traversing boulder problems on the YDS scale than the V-scale, because, in terms of difficulty, a long, traversing bouldering problem will likely have more in common with a sport route than a short boulder problem. The reason that this simple and obvious point has become so confusing is that fracture has somehow reasoned:
That this implies that the current rating systems have no utility.
That more accurate information about a route's difficulty is less useful than less accurate information.
That reclassifying long boulder problems to the YDS scale increases the number of scales.
That increasing the number of scales is wrong because, in theory, you could increase the number to infinity
Some other weird conclusions that I can't think of off the top of my head.
Jay
(This post was edited by jt512 on Mar 27, 2007, 5:09 AM)
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miavzero
Mar 27, 2007, 3:39 AM
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I guess I'm just a little goofy, because I don't think that my feelings would be hurt if I regularly climbed 2-6 move V10s, but flailed on twenty move V5 traverses.
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diophantus
Mar 27, 2007, 3:48 PM
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jt512 wrote: miavzero wrote: excuse me for being a simpleton, but why can't we just be satisfied with the rating systems that we have? Is it really that intolerable to face the fact that we cannot always do climbs of comparable number/letter ratings? What kind of point are all of you talking heads trying to make? My point was only that it would make more sense to rate long, traversing boulder problems on the YDS scale than the V-scale, because, in terms of difficulty, a long, traversing bouldering problem will likely have more in common with a sport route than a short boulder problem. The reason that this simple and obvious point has become so confusing is that fracture has somehow reasoned: That this implies that the current rating systems have no utility. That more accurate information about a route's difficulty is less useful than less accurate information. That reclassifying long boulder problems to the YDS scale increases the number of scales. That increasing the number of scales is wrong because, in theory, you could increase the number to infinity Some other weird conclusions that I can't think of off the top of my head. Jay
I think, at least from what I can tell, one of the points fracture was/is trying to make is that in the domain of sport climbing the type of routes vary so much that a 5.12 endurance climb is not comparable to a 5.12 power endurance climb (and please correct me if I'm wrong). I would agree with that as much as I agree that a 5 move v5 is not really comparable to a 100 foot v5 traverse.
So it seems like he is arguing that if you change the rating of boulder traverses you should also change the the rating of endurance climbs to reflect that they are different that power-endurance because they also are dissimilar. And in theory you could keep dividing climbs into different sets with different rating systems and in the end no routes/problems would be comparable because each set/(rating system) would only have 1 member.
All in all I don't think it really matters, I've seen plenty of power-endurance climbs described with the YDS and V scale, e.g. 40 feet 5.11b with v6 crux finishing with 30 feet 5.11a. In a way I prefer that, because it better describes what is going on than just calling the route 5.12b. Climbing 70 feet of 5.11 with a 4 move v6 in the middle is much different (and in my opinion easier) than 100 feet of consistent 5.12 climbing.
Not that I care, just throwing some fuel on the fire. I'm sure neither of you will hesitate to tell me I'm wrong, and hey, that's something you both can agree on...
(This post was edited by diophantus on Mar 27, 2007, 3:54 PM)
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jt512
Mar 27, 2007, 4:41 PM
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diophantus wrote: jt512 wrote: miavzero wrote: excuse me for being a simpleton, but why can't we just be satisfied with the rating systems that we have? Is it really that intolerable to face the fact that we cannot always do climbs of comparable number/letter ratings? What kind of point are all of you talking heads trying to make? My point was only that it would make more sense to rate long, traversing boulder problems on the YDS scale than the V-scale, because, in terms of difficulty, a long, traversing bouldering problem will likely have more in common with a sport route than a short boulder problem. The reason that this simple and obvious point has become so confusing is that fracture has somehow reasoned: That this implies that the current rating systems have no utility. That more accurate information about a route's difficulty is less useful than less accurate information. That reclassifying long boulder problems to the YDS scale increases the number of scales. That increasing the number of scales is wrong because, in theory, you could increase the number to infinity Some other weird conclusions that I can't think of off the top of my head. Jay I think, at least from what I can tell, one of the points fracture was/is trying to make is that in the domain of sport climbing the type of routes vary so much that a 5.12 endurance climb is not comparable to a 5.12 power endurance climb (and please correct me if I'm wrong). I would agree with that as much as I agree that a 5 move v5 is not really comparable to a 100 foot v5 traverse. So it seems like he is arguing that if you change the rating of boulder traverses you should also change the the rating of endurance climbs to reflect that they are different that power-endurance because they also are dissimilar.
Which doesn't follow.
In reply to: And in theory you could keep dividing climbs into different sets with different rating systems...
You could do that, too. But then again you could not. So that doesn't follow either.
Jay
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lodi5onu
Mar 27, 2007, 7:35 PM
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it's either sharma, graham, nicole, woods or somebody who pulls harder problems than any of the above mentioned
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dhaulagiri
Mar 27, 2007, 9:02 PM
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lodi5onu wrote: it's either sharma, graham, nicole, woods or somebody who pulls harder problems than any of the above mentioned
please try to stay on topic and only discuss the nuances of completely arbitrary and non-binding grading scales...thanks
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nuts_r_us
Mar 27, 2007, 9:11 PM
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dlintz wrote: Fuckin' true. Putting on the harness, tying knots....I'm way too lazy for that shit. d.
Yup. Or more accurately, way too selfish. No way on earth I am wasting my valuable time belaying some looser who is hangdogging up what would be my warmup if I wasn't too selfish to rope up.
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fracture
Mar 29, 2007, 1:14 AM
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jt512 wrote: fracture wrote: So. Now that I've managed to frame this as "either you agree numbers are inherently metaphorical, or you've got a fundamentally pre-Darwinian worldview", you can consider yourself amply licensed to sling further flames about my lack of coffee. I guess I'm pre-Darwinian, then, because I think, for instance, that there were 8 planets revolving around the sun long before Darwin or any other human being existed to count them.
Is that one supposed to be a joke? 
In reply to: In reply to: And let me be more explicit regarding "fictional" (since I don't know if it came across last attempt). CoG's, numbers, euclidean space, and the property of being purple are all "fictional", but all of them are things that can be (and are!) still said to exist. It's just that they aren't what we may have once thought they were: they don't exist in a organism-independent, objective sense. I don't know dude: COG, the balance point of an object, seems pretty "organism-independent." Every object has a balance point.
The entire concept of an "object" is organism-relative. Organisms with complex nervous systems often model their environment by dividing it into "objects" (sometimes in multiple ways) because it is useful to do so; what granularity of this division is maximally useful is going to depend on the details of the organism (it's size, method of locomotion, primary sense-organs, what it eats, what eats it, and any number of other details).
When you look at a field full of trees, you intuitively see and reason about a bunch of separate objects. When you drink a glass of water, you don't. Things seem the way they seem because we evolved to think about them that way. Other organisms (including hypothetical ones that never have existed and never will) with different priorities could find it useful to look at and think about these things differently than we do: prior to the evolution of minds, there would have been no basis for talking about "objects" (or anyone to talk about it with, for that matter).
(This all is very similar to the story on color, by the way.)
(This post was edited by fracture on Mar 29, 2007, 3:15 AM)
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fracture
Mar 29, 2007, 1:30 AM
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jt512 wrote: miavzero wrote: excuse me for being a simpleton, but why can't we just be satisfied with the rating systems that we have? Is it really that intolerable to face the fact that we cannot always do climbs of comparable number/letter ratings? What kind of point are all of you talking heads trying to make? My point was only that it would make more sense to rate long, traversing boulder problems on the YDS scale than the V-scale, because, in terms of difficulty, a long, traversing bouldering problem will likely have more in common with a sport route than a short boulder problem.
You seem to have missed that this is area-relative. In my area, it is flat false. In many areas, it is only slightly/technically true: yes, it is probably "more likely", but I dispute that it is frequently to a very large degree, since routes (even long ones!) with primarily power and power-endurance challenges are very common.
In reply to: The reason that this simple and obvious point has become so confusing is that fracture has somehow reasoned: [..] That more accurate information about a route's difficulty is less useful than less accurate information.
Information relevant to the route's difficulty that I think would not be useful to have in the route's rating includes: wall angle(s), hold type(s), energy-production system(s) used, longest possible fall distance, difficulty of each clip, number of moves, height of wall, enumeration of any jamming-techniques required, number of dynos, number of figure fours, number of drop knees, ....
Now, tell me you don't agree with at least some of that. More information is not always better, and you have yet to give an argument about why you think the alleged additional information provided by your proposal* provides an increase in the utility of these systems.
* Which, by the way, is still somewhat unclear. The post I'm replying to seems to suggest that you are (to my astonishment!) only saying that long boulder problems should be re-rated. If this is true, unfortunately it would appear that you are arguing for an application of these scales that remains arbitrarily dependent on the protection-system, which I'm afraid you won't ever get me on board with (in the context of gymnastic climbing).
(This post was edited by fracture on Mar 29, 2007, 3:14 AM)
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jt512
Mar 29, 2007, 5:22 AM
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fracture wrote: jt512 wrote: fracture wrote: So. Now that I've managed to frame this as "either you agree numbers are inherently metaphorical, or you've got a fundamentally pre-Darwinian worldview", you can consider yourself amply licensed to sling further flames about my lack of coffee. I guess I'm pre-Darwinian, then, because I think, for instance, that there were 8 planets revolving around the sun long before Darwin or any other human being existed to count them. Is that one supposed to be a joke?
I was just joking, but seriously.
The universe is inherently quantitative. When elements burn they give off radiation at specific wavelengths. Gravity is proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance between objects. Light travels at a specific speed c.
In reply to: In reply to: In reply to: And let me be more explicit regarding "fictional" (since I don't know if it came across last attempt). CoG's, numbers, euclidean space, and the property of being purple are all "fictional", but all of them are things that can be (and are!) still said to exist. It's just that they aren't what we may have once thought they were: they don't exist in a organism-independent, objective sense. I don't know dude: COG, the balance point of an object, seems pretty "organism-independent." Every object has a balance point. The entire concept of an "object" is organism-relative.
What a load of philosophical bullshit. Do you deny that the moon exists?
In reply to: Organisms with complex nervous systems often model their environment by dividing it into "objects" (sometimes in multiple ways) because it is useful to do so; what granularity of this division is maximally useful is going to depend on the details of the organism
But regardless, all those divisions actually exist, whether they are useful to any organism, or not. Planets are composed of compounds, which are composed of elements, which are composed of atoms, which are composed of subatomic particles. At least that's our understanding of it. Undoubtedly there is more to learn.
In reply to: When you look at a field full of trees, you intuitively see and reason about a bunch of separate objects. When you drink a glass of water, you don't.
So what? The world exists regardless of what any of us happens to be thinking about at any particular moment. When I look at a glass of water, I'm not thinking about the individual water molecules or the hydrogen bonds that between them, but so what, they're there.
In reply to: Things seem the way they seem because we evolved to think about them that way.
Ridiculous. Tell that to Hawking.
Jay
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annak
Mar 29, 2007, 5:44 AM
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I sense a lack of education here; really, fracture, you speak like some english lit major, or worse. The Universe is not only quantifiable and obeys rigorous laws, which are expressed in numbers, as Jay alluded to, it also has a multitude of scales. For example, the Sun is heavier than the Earth; nothing travels faster than the speed of light; energy-mass is constant; and the entropy of the Universe increases for any spontaneous process. The latter naturally sets us with a time scale: we can unambiguously say whether event A happened before or after event B, based on whether the entropy of the Universe increased or decreased from A to B, and it has nothing "organism specificity"; it's all physics, man.
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