Yes, I agree that there's nothing with the mindset per se. It's the experiences and how we process them that make the difference.
In the case of the anecdotes George is talking about, what probably happens is that the people bring PAST experiences to the table, where they further inflame them with more training stress before being allowed to process what they already have accumulated. It's like offering water to someone. If you're talking about Phoenix on a hot day, that's a good thing. If you're talking about someone drowning, it's a pretty stupid thing to do.
Do you think, Rory and Paul, that "stress" is the generic factor here? There are many ways to generate stress, whether it be via bankruptcy while supporting a family or facing daily life-threatening situations. It's interesting reading about "stress innoculation" and the degree to which it is generalizeable. Apparently there is SOME specificity needed in scenario training. But then someone innoculated against stress in one venue finds it easier to get innoculated in the next, just like it's easier to learn a third language once you learn a second. Eventually you end up with the super-trained warrior.
An interesting aside here... Grossman noted that football players often did extremely poorly on their exams because they got stressed out and encountered mental blocks. They seemed to be even worse than "average" in the population. However there was one position whose players uniformly did extremely well on their tests irrespective of IQ...
Back to George's concern... You don't give a flu vaccine to an AIDs patient, do you?
- Bill
