[runawaybottle]

Because he might be one of those people where life didn’t hand him shit. In other words, he fought against competition at every step of the game, so he seriously considers the nature of competition and the implications.

It’s like a rich person that grew up poor, they are constantly saving money. Of course they don’t really have to at this point, but that was their experience. All Jet Li might know is competition (just off the top of my head, he is under the shadow of Bruce Lee, similar to Jackie Chan, and the whole Hong Kong scene is second to America).

He respects his experience.

[frutiger]

> It’s like a rich person that grew up poor, they are constantly saving money. Of course they don’t really have to at this point, but that was their experience.

Is the implication that people don't learn new things from new situations/environments and are forever stuck modeling the world the way they did when they were young teenagers/adults?

[amanaplanacanal]

People certainly learn new things, but habits are a real thing. It's a natural tendency to keep doing what you are already doing, sometimes even if there are terrible consequences. See cigarette addicts for an example.

[frutiger]

> but habits are a real thing

I wouldn’t disagree, but I would question how widely applicable this is across cultures and socio-economic strata.

In particular it would be interesting to compare the commonly accepted folk wisdom (e.g. “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”) with a more objective analysis (if such a thing exists).

[runawaybottle]

Depends on how strong the systemic models were from the past. Thorough experience dealing with, say, people and how they interact competitively, will have a outsized reverberation later in life. You never ever want to be wrong about people.

A soda drinking habit you can’t kick? You’ll mostly kick it once you get serious. The other stuff is probably going to take life changing events to alter.