[user deactivated]

If progress in climbing (as in progress in general) is measured on a horizontal axis, and the grade of a climb is part of that progress then the measurement of it can only exist in the past or future. When a climb or climber is reported as ‘9a+ for X’ or ‘bold ascent for Y’ or even if a future grade is sold to you e.g ‘train your max hangs and achieve 8b’ or you need ‘ancap’ before ‘aeropow’ or even practice ‘flow’ to conquer your fear. The climber has bought into or been sold an image of themselves, or even is selling an image of themselves to others. To be the ‘best’ in whatever way relies on the failure of others for success. When I watched free solo I was surprised to find the opposite of what I expected, a man determined to push barriers driven by ideas of success and failure which had been instilled since childhood by a particular parenting style. There was no choice in his decision to solo free rider it was preprogrammed.
I wonder what it would be like to do away with grades and paying attention to the reporting of these things? To ignore the horizontal axis and focus on the vertical instead. In this sense when you are hanging two crimps on a climb (say 8a) on the horizontal you have set out on an 8a with the intention of getting to the top of an 8a. On the vertical you are hanging to crimps on a wall,those two handholds and the experience of holding them are not ‘8a’ and in that sense do not symbolise success or failure and the personal experiences that go with those ideas. I wonder if this is where the deeply experienced dissatisfaction comes from as we attach meaning that isn’t there to others perceived successes and failures, which is fertilised by the manure of climbing press and self reporting. I quite like the summing up line of this poem-

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

In my beginning is my end.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

TS Elliot

[Fiend]

(this may or may not be an at all relevant answer, I just wanted to post it)

P.S. I like grades as a theoretically informative estimation of likely challenge - very useful. And as a topic of debate. As trophies to collect.....less so.

[SamT]

I wonder what it would be like to do away with grades and paying attention to the reporting of these things? To ignore the horizontal axis and focus on the vertical instead. In this sense when you are hanging two crimps on a climb (say 8a) on the horizontal you have set out on an 8a with the intention of getting to the top of an 8a. On the vertical you are hanging to crimps on a wall,those two handholds and the experience of holding them are not ‘8a’ and in that sense do not symbolise success or failure and the personal experiences that go with those ideas. I wonder if this is where the deeply experienced dissatisfaction comes from as we attach meaning that isn’t there to others perceived successes and failures, which is fertilised by the manure of climbing press and self reporting.

But what about my ego... you're forgetting about my ego!

[user deactivated]

Nah, you can enjoy the fact that’s going nowhere for any of us!

Fiend, grades as informative theoreticaly but not in practice. The John Gill quote is great. The insta hive mind ego. Unconscious on a grand scale where everyone is role playing. Clearly shown by the Kinder shenanigans, he role played the joker, the media branded him the devil, and the insta public the saviours, now he’s resurrected as the saved. Don’t know why is sticks in my craw so much.

[monkoffunk]

I think I see your point with the grades thing, I reckon there is a middle ground to be had where grades are more a tool and the climbs speak for themselves. I think as a tool they are useful for targets and measuring (personal) progress too though. I know my goal to climb 8a has now crystallised on a single route that I want to do more for its own right now than for the number for sure.

I’m not quite sure I buy that success is dependant on the failure of others. Maybe yes in the specific case of being ‘the best’ but surely it isn’t many of us who are really desperate to be the best? (C.f Jerry Moffat and I know your opinion of him!)

At the level of non superlative mortals my friend Sam just climbed Fighting Torque super quick after figuring out the beta together, I’m very happy for him and it won’t effect how I feel about my success when I finally do it.

Do you really think Honnold had no choice in his actions? He has certainly been shaped by his experiences and biology, but surely he has free will in as much as any of us do (perhaps the bigger question). Either way I don’t think he was motivated by grades or being the best!

[ghisino]

Ok, well...
Let's consider the following scenarios:

-i want to find a piece of rock to spend a few sessions on (but eventually succeed).

-i am sore and need climbs that are interesting but not too intense

-i am bringing a newbie friend on a MP and need to choose an adequate one.

For all three scenarios grades are a big part of the information needed.

They inevitably become a measuring stick for ranking climbers instead of routes, but it's more because of human nature than because of grades per se

[Davo]

Interesting post Dan. I like reading your ideas. Mainly I agree with Monk that there is probably a happy medium/middle ground with grades. They do show progress and it feels nice to get better but clearly they aren't the most important thing. Personally I enjoy achieving a new grade (not that this happens pretty much ever!) but also as I have climbed for a fair while I rate the feeling of climbing well higher. In terms of being the best I think even in a competition setting, winning doesn't have to mean someone else failed. It could simply mean you and they performed to your best and your best was better but still they executed everything as well as they could have. This doesn't seem like failure to me. If you perform well for yourself and execute the things you have planned but still lose or for example don't complete a redpoint then this is not failure. To be fair given I fail most of the time in climbing I need to take this point of view!

Dave

[mrjonathanr]

Nice quote. You forgot:

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I suspect you know the next lines.

Edit: the next 2 lines, not just one

[petejh]

Two premises I don't agree with..

If progress in climbing (as in progress in general) is measured on a horizontal axis, and the grade of a climb is part of that progress then the measurement of it can only exist in the past or future.

What you're doing by saying this is viewing climbing progression in terms of Zeno's Paradox.

Calculus answered that question in the 17th century   
[One] of the paradoxes of Zeno is the "paradox of the arrow". Consider an arrow in its flight. At each point of its trajectory it is at rest because nothing can move during an "instant" - a time interval of length zero. Since the entire trajectory of the arrow is made up of points, or if you will, the time interval is a "sum" or a "union" of instants; it is claimed by this reasoning that it is logically impossible for the arrow to move at all. It is calculus which came to the rescue in the case of the arrow. The language of calculus is able to handle the notion of instant velocity at a given point as a derivative and the length of the travelled trajectory as an integral, the two fitting together in a beautiful way corresponding to the fundamental theorem of calculus. What is at the heart of the "resolution" of the paradox of the arrow is comparable to what is at the heart of integral calculus, namely to give a precise meaning to certain (uncountable) infinite sums of "infinitely small" addends. Again, we should certainly not view calculus as the "logical proof of" or the "reason for" the fact that it is possible for an arrow to move. It should rather be viewed as a consistent language representing a vast extension of every-day language which is able to cope with the notion of infinity at the same time it admirably fits the observed facts.
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Aubert_Zeno.html


Also..

To be the ‘best’ in whatever way relies on the failure of others for success.

This isn't true because it presumes 'success' can only be defined by being better than everyone else. But success isn't defined that way. 100 people can all be successful by all achieving their chosen goals, independently of the other 99 people.

[user deactivated]

Ghisno I agree with all your points and think grades in a totally informative sense do direct us in the way you mentioned. What I’m curious about is the idea that there is no such thing as ‘success or failure’ other than the one created by our ego unconsciously. In this way grades are meaningless and is only a concept devised to support our ego’s (which is no bad thing). In my experience grades do appear to be used as a measure of ‘success’ and there is nothing wrong with that, but there is a choice to recognise that this isn’t a ‘fact’ but a product of the unconscious. Maybe that is the happy middle ground Monk and Davo refer to. To enjoy ‘progression’ on those terms but recognise it’s relatively meaningless at the same time. I’m not sure calculus and the arrow has much to do with anything I said, apart from the idea of time. As far as I understand the arrow doesn’t experience consciousness or unconscious drives therefore doesn’t struggle with living in present or the desire to hit its target. Cheers for the links tho 👍

[user deactivated]

I don’t really ‘believe’ in free will Monk, and I thought free solo was a great example of that. A man driven in a very powerful way by unconscious drives so clear that everything about the film indicated he had no choice. He even seemed bewildered by it at times.

[moose]

Grade are useful but can become misused as a proxy for real insight, kinda like an example of Goodhart's law "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

[monkoffunk]

I don’t really ‘believe’ in free will Monk, and I thought free solo was a great example of that. A man driven in a very powerful way by unconscious drives so clear that everything about the film indicated he had no choice. He even seemed bewildered by it at times.

I can understand that.

[monkoffunk]

Grade are useful but can become misused as a proxy for real insight, kinda like an example of Goodhart's law "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

True. Can’t quite imagine a world without grades though. Can anyone invisage an alternative?

[tregiffian]

But what would you talk about in the pub? Anybody else remember `Exceptionally Severe`? A short-lived North Wales coinage.

[Smith42]

From Wiki;
The B system conceived by John Gill in the 1950s was a universal rating scheme for bouldering, having three categories: "B1" was defined as "... the highest level of difficulty in traditional roped climbing", "B2" was harder than B1, or "bouldering level", and the grade "B3" designated a route ascended only once, although tried by others on several occasions. When a B3 was ascended a second time, it was reclassified as a B2, or B1.

Gill's idea was to attract climbers to the "new" sport of bouldering, but discourage turning that sport into a numbers race.

His system depended heavily on traditional climbing standards, long before sport climbing came into existence. It was assumed that the scale would shift as traditional difficulty levels rose. Thus, e.g., a B1(1958) would be easier than a B1(1968).

Gill, ahead of his time in more ways than one.

[Smith42]

Interesting thread this, something I’ve been reflecting on this year partly because of my recent experiences I v started thinking of grades as personal to each individual. 

As an extension of Gills philosophy;

There are problems I can do first go or in a day.

There are problems I can only do after multiple days of effort.

There are problems that it is extremely unlikely I will ever climb.

Helps keep the ego out of the way.

[Rocksteady]

I've always felt that climbing was a great sport/hobby/pastime in terms of being yourself measured against the yardstick of the grade of an external thing, rather than yourself measured against other people. Most other sports I've done have been more competitive - the most obvious being MMA where generally it was only fun if you won and usually less painful. Climbing for me is a bit of an escape from the binary nature of other sports.

As such it's sort of irrelevant what grades other people are climbing, unless you let it bother you or define your own pursuit of progress.

Success is success climbing a climb. How you feel about it should be down to how much you enjoyed it, how difficult it was for you, how much you had to overcome to get up the climb. It's not success relative to others unless that's the way you judge yourself? I've had great days failing to redpoint climbs.

If you're talking about thoughts of success or failure crowding out the process of climbing and acting as mental inhibitors then I recognise this, and it's one of the challenges of focusing on the task in hand isn't it. I've experienced both: 'You're about to do your first 7c, don't blow it' runs through your head and builds tension. Also 'I'm feeling so pumped, there's no way I can do that next section, it's 7c, it's too hard'.

When grades become meaningless or false climbing can be very frustrating - indoor routes are like this when you're trying to warm up and find yourself boning down on a crimp getting pumped and thinking 'this can't be 6b?' Ditto the demoralisation when you're trying to find an amenable project within your usual grade boundary to work in a few goes and can't even do half the moves.

ghisino's post maybe says all of the above more succinctly and is more recognisable for me than the sort of media-fuelled ego-grade frenzy described in the OP.

[Paul B]

Grade are useful but can become misused as a proxy for real insight, kinda like an example of Goodhart's law "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

If only Dave MacLeod had been so concise in his Vlog!

[Nutty]

I wonder what it would be like to do away with grades and paying attention to the reporting of these things? To ignore the horizontal axis and focus on the vertical instead. In this sense when you are hanging two crimps on a climb (say 8a) on the horizontal you have set out on an 8a with the intention of getting to the top of an 8a. On the vertical you are hanging to crimps on a wall,those two handholds and the experience of holding them are not ‘8a’ and in that sense do not symbolise success or failure and the personal experiences that go with those ideas.

I'm lost, what are the units for the vertical axis?

[reeve]

I wonder what it would be like to do away with grades and paying attention to the reporting of these things? To ignore the horizontal axis and focus on the vertical instead. In this sense when you are hanging two crimps on a climb (say 8a) on the horizontal you have set out on an 8a with the intention of getting to the top of an 8a. On the vertical you are hanging to crimps on a wall,those two handholds and the experience of holding them are not ‘8a’ and in that sense do not symbolise success or failure and the personal experiences that go with those ideas.

I'm lost, what are the units for the vertical axis?

They are Cheatums - a measure of how aligned you are with being a #soulclimber 

[Stu Littlefair]

+1 for Rocksteady's reply.

One of the nicest things about climbing is the extent to which it is primarily a competition against yourself. This of course allows for a more friendly and half-serious competition between friends.

Arguably, this internal competition would be impossible without meaningful grades.

[user deactivated]

I wonder what it would be like to do away with grades and paying attention to the reporting of these things? To ignore the horizontal axis and focus on the vertical instead. In this sense when you are hanging two crimps on a climb (say 8a) on the horizontal you have set out on an 8a with the intention of getting to the top of an 8a. On the vertical you are hanging to crimps on a wall,those two handholds and the experience of holding them are not ‘8a’ and in that sense do not symbolise success or failure and the personal experiences that go with those ideas.

I'm lost, what are the units for the vertical axis?

They are Cheatums - a measure of how aligned you are with being a #soulclimber

Haha Soulclimber or Gradewhore. Interesting dichotomy. I’d say maybe (not entirely sure) being ‘alive’ is on the vertical axis. Immeasurable? Are you a closet soul climber too Reeve?

[reeve]

Are you a closet soul climber too Reeve?

On the surface I appear deep, but deep down I'm actually really shallow.

[Kingy]

I am reminded of the comment by the author of a past bouldering guides (I forget which one).

 'A guidebook without a graded list at the back is a shallow, meaningless thing'. Discuss....

Anyone remember which guide it was?