Do you know what the differences are between the 2 questions "Are you a good cook?" and "Rate your cooking skill on a scale from 0 to 100?"
The first difference is that the former is more popular. People like to ask questions like "Do you play sports?" or "Do you go to gyms?" because they are easy to ask and answer.
The second difference is that, although popular, the former question is not very helpful. If you are a good cook, answering "yes" does not really show how good you are. The same goes for "no". And if you are average, neither "yes" nor "no" shows your exact ability.
Although you can elaborate on how good/average/bad you are, this question still has a huge impact on your elaboration, which will still only focus on how really a good/average/bad cook you are instead of pinpointing your exact ability.
While the first question only gives you 2 choices, the latter gives you 100. Okay, not really 100, as you can't pinpoint your exact ability like 32/100 or 57/100 on a scale of 100 (unless you take cooking tests, which give you the exact point), but it helps you assess possible ranges like "20 - 35" or "40 - 65" on a scale of 100, which is already better than just labeling things as good/bad
But, really, what is a scale? First, let's talk about the scale (without the assessment range)
When someone asks you to rate anything on a scale of 0 to 100, it's obvious that 0 is the min and 100 is the max of that thing. So when you are asked to rate your cooking skill on a scale from 0 to 100, 0 means the worst possible cooking skill, and 100 means the best possible cooking you can imagine.
But how do you define the min, the "worst possible cooking skill"? Does that point to a person who doesn't know how to cook, or does that point to one who can cook, but his dishes are disgusting? The same applies to the max.
How we define things is different for each of us. We prefer to have our own definitions for everything, even though we always have the choice to standardize our definitions. And because of that, the definitions of min and max and everything between those two are subjective. Each of us has our own definitions of the worst, the best, and the average. Scales are subjective, and they represent how we perceive the world.
Next, let's talk about the ranges.
If scales represent how we perceive the world, then ranges represent how we compare our abilities to others in that world.
Let's say your cooking skills range is 40-65. That means your real ability is in this range (like 57/100), or your skill varies from 40 to 65, depending on the situation. The more uncertain you are about your ability (maybe because you just don't think much about it or the scope of skill you are trying to assess is too broad), the wider the range will be.
Suppose there are 2 people: A and B. A and B are equal in skills, so they have the same range.
But because B watched more cooking tutorials and knows what the top chefs can do, his scale is longer.
A and B have the same skills, but since B already saw so many who can cook are better than him, he may feel less confident when he compares his skills to theirs.
Because ranges are proxies for how we compare subjectively our ability to others, our confidence is also subjective. That's why we see the dumbest brag, while the smartest are silent.
Keep zooming into this cooking skill scale, and surprisingly, what we see are, again, scales. But smaller ones.
Your understanding of something is built up by your knowledge of other sub-areas of it. Many times, I realize how I am actually worse or better at something just by realizing that I forgot to include a crucial factor while I assess my skill. The more sub-scales and sub-ranges you can find, the better your understanding.
Other smaller scales of the cooking skill can be:
The "How good you are when you cook alone/not alone" scale
The "What are your bake/roast/fry/boil/grill skills" scale
Even the tiny scales, like "knife skill", have minor scales:
How well do you use big or small knives?
How carefully do you work with sharp things?
How much do you know about your current knives?
Although your assessment is more accurate with each sub-scale you can find, trying to find ALL sub-scales is impossible. Actually, it's not even necessary. Some sub-scales are always more important than others, so instead of trying to find all sub-scales, you just need to find the most crucial ones. For example, although knowing how to prevent crying while slicing onions is useful, not knowing it does not make you a worse cook. Compared to the "not cry when slice onion" trick, learning how to use a knife or have good taste is more important.
So, the big scales are built by the smaller scales. If you think about it, it sounds exactly like the 2048 game: we build the big blocks by combining smaller blocks: two 2s make a 4, two 4s make an 8, etc.
But unlike the 2048 game, where the smallest element (the number 2 block) just keeps spawning, how do we find the ranges of the tiniest scales, which don't have any tinier scales because they are already the tiniest?
A scale expresses our perception of a topic, so to form a scale for a topic, we need to have some perception about that topic first. And it's through learning that we build up our perception. As we learn, we build fundamental understandings and form the core beliefs that keep changing, morphing into many shapes, growing or shrinking, and at one point, we will begin to be able to differentiate what's good and bad; we start having opinions, we begin to try to make assessments, which leads to the birth of our scales.
As scales evolve, they will be longer, stretching left and right. The longer they are, the more we understand about the world.
For example, for each Youtube video you watch the top chefs cooking, the right side stretch.
Whenever you are exposed to bad cooking, the left side stretches.
Even watching an average person cook more can stretch your scale from the middle.
So that's how scales formed. How do ranges form? Ranges are formed and growed when we practice and then compare the result to our scales. The better we are at something, the further the range will move to the right (0-10 -> 10-20 -> 20-30). There are also times when the range moves to the left. For example, it's when our performance is worse than the last time, and the reason we did it well was just because of luck. Although the direction of the movement may change, the position of the range will be more accurate the more we practice.
The evolution of a scale can also impact its range. But that expansion does not affect our skills. It affects how we perceive our skills (the range). You can see that from the above example of 2 people having the same range but different scales. This means your confidence may even go down when your range doesn't slide to the right at the same speed your scale stretches.
This is rare, but there are also cases in which the evolution of a range can impact its scale. Two possible cases are when we see too few or when there are too few things for us to see.
Let's start with the first case. The most common way to learn anything is to learn the theory first, then practice later. However, some people (including me) prefer to skip the theory and immediately jump into the practice. Instead of learning how people are doing it and following their way, I like to do it my way, realizing how suck I am, come back to observe how others are doing it, then use that knowledge to improve my own style.
The cons are that it takes more time + I can not go far without the theories + it's harder to discuss or work with others about that area because my understanding of it is not standardized but pure self-discovery. The pros are that it's more fun to learn this way + you can discover things that a traditional learner may not see + when you are stuck because of the lack of theory, you will have more motivation to learn theory.
It's like intentionally blindfolding myself to all the great discoveries and proven knowledge from our whole human history, just to discover it all from the beginning. Doing this means I deliberately make my scale short, and the only way it can stretch is when I learn something new by myself.
At the start, before I had any practice, my scale was intentionally made short
But as I practice and improve my skills, my range slides to the right, which also stretches my scale longer
And longer
Another case when the movement of a range can stretch its scale is when you don't even have the choice to stretch or not stretch the scale by learning theories first, because there are no available theories for you to learn about that industry. Maybe the industry has not yet been explored because it's too complex or not rewarding enough. If you want to be a pioneer in a fledgling industry (let's say you want to make flying cars), the only way to learn about it is to do the R&D yourself.
At first, what people know about flying cars (people's scale) and what you know about flying cars (your scale) and how to make it (your range) are the same: nearly nothing
.
But after you research and discover some possible ways to make flying cars and you can build one that can fly, your range slides to the right, which also stretch your scale:
This also changes how people think of flying cars: this is possible!
In conclusion, there are many ways to grow your scales and ranges. Growing scales help you learn, and growing ranges make you better and more self-aware.
Most of the time, this growing process happens without your notice. You just live, and you just ... change. You change, and the way you see yourself changes. The world changes, and how you interpret the world also changes.
But there are times when, despite you and the world changing, the way you see yourself and everything around you stays the same. This is when your beliefs become obsolete. Maybe you are just too busy to notice or simply don't care.
It's okay not to always be up-to-date on everything. I mean, who has time for that? But for the most important aspects in your life, it's worth doing some re-assess once in a while. And when you do that, instead of labeling yourself as good/average/bad, you can try to use, you know what I am going to say: Scales.