Difficulty doesn't exist

There are four traditional tournament criteria: difficulty, execution, creativity and presentation. Recently, effectiveness and construction have joined the party and others have been further subdivided. Almost 20 years have passed since nhk_9's article on the Troposphere about how a pen spinning tournament should be organized where he wondered about tournament criteria and if it even made sense in the first place to give numerical scores to combos. I feel like that question is today as relevant as ever.

There are two opposing views. Some people feel like the ever-changing criteria and apparent subjectivity is just a consequence of our lack of understanding. If we really understood pen spinning then we would have clear definitions of all criteria and we would more or less agree with respect to tournament judgements. Other people feel like the criteria are inherently subjective and no matter how much our understanding increases, there will never be objective and clear definitions. In case that nobody else is with me on that last view, let me try to convince you.

Creativity is the most objective criteria. The less people that have done the same thing, the more creative that you are. We could even think of a hypothetical robot that has seen all pen spinning videos and can give a 100% objective creativity score by comparing a combo to its complete database. Presentation has some objective parts (it's not good if we can't see the pen, or if it isn't centered on the frame) but many subjective parts (what angle is better? 4:3 or 16:9? backgrounds that enhance visibility aren't always the same as backgrounds that look good) .

What about execution? Well, Padrace wrote just recently a fantastic article about tension and release that could make us think that we all agree on it, but the fact is that many of those points are related to our current era and to our level of exposure to pen spinning. People who have been exposed to less combos vastly prefer smooth combos, with no acceleration whatsoever. I also know experienced spinners who don't like sharpness, or who don't like the use of long mods even if they are used sensibly by a very proficient spinner. Execution is all about standing out: we like acceleration because perfectly smooth combos aren't rare at all to us. And when being "smooth", further effects are sought after in order to stand out (e.g. nk, area). Padrace's article is the closest we have now to a full definition of "good execution" and yet it's not objective: it's tied to our current context, to the spinners that are popular now and to the trends that are used nowadays to stand out.

There is a lot of overlap between the criteria. Maybe that's an indication that we're using too many terms. It can be argued that execution fully overlaps with difficulty, creativity and construction. That is; there is no aspect of execution that doesn't increase/decrease the difficulty of a combo, that isn't used to set the spinner apart from its peers or to contribute to the construction of the combo. If this is true, then I can see the creativity part of execution being objective, while the other two aren't.

This was a long introduction to what I really wanted to rant about: difficulty doesn't exist. Difficulty is such an absurdly subjective criteria that I can even argue that x10 of a trick isn't any more difficult than x2, depending on the definition of difficulty that we choose. So let's start!

Trick affinities

This is something that i.suk mentions a lot, how playing to your affinities is important in pen spinning. An affinity can be defined as how efficient it is to pursue a certain style of tricks, how high or low is the effort to results ratio. In my case, I have a very low affinity towards power tricks. It took me a lot of time to get just a few spider spins, or 10 busts. When I am asked to evaluate how difficult a power combo is, I have to judge based on what other people think, because for me it's just off the scales. On the other hand, I often give lower difficulty scores to fc combos compared to other spinners and judges.

 To overcome this, we need to believe in some kind of objective classification to which nobody can directly access, and that we can only study through our affinity-distorted views, debate and discussion. I wonder what Kant thinks about it...

Margin of error & prerequisites

One of the most solid definitions of difficulty is the one called margin of error. Less margin of error means that the precision required for our movements to do the trick is higher, and thus its difficulty is higher. While it sounds good in theory, it's hard to quantify. How big is the space of all possible movements, and how can we define it so that measuring volumes in that space is equal to measuring difficulty without a prior definition of difficulty?.

The margin of error definition also leaves out other factors. When trying to beat a continuous record, the difficulty of the repetition #1000 isn't the same as the #2, and yet the margin of error is the same. I don't think that I have more chances to fail a side sonic 23-12 than a sonic 23-12, and yet the side sonic can be said to be more difficult since it has sonic as its prerequisite. On the other hand, i.suk's spider spin difficulty tier list is usually considered more or less correct, and yet the previous levels aren't prerequisites to do the more difficult variations.

Luck

Even when considering margin of error as a part (and not the totality) of difficulty, and disregarding all other problems, that is still not objective.

Consider my second trick in this video. It has a very slim margin of error, and yet I wouldn't say it's difficult. It's more probable for the mod to fall in just the right position by luck than by my own skills, so to catch that trick on video I just tried a bunch of times until I got it. If I wanted to use it as a finisher for my combo, it would just take a bunch of tries until one fell in the right place. Some may consider that difficult, but to me that's just tedious, since my skill didn't increase. Maybe pulling a SSS rank character is difficult and we need to say that gacha games are skill based after all!

Density vs endurance

My (not so) favorite debate. Density consists on increasing the overall difficulty by increasing the difficulty of each individual trick + the way in which they are connected (removing filler) while endurance consists on increasing the overall difficulty by increasing the length of the combo. 

I agree that filler does indeed reduce the overall difficulty. Consider this: a combo is made of 3 parts. A spinner may be able to do each one separately, so connecting them with filler just becomes a matter of luck (he can keep trying and he will eventually get a good take). But if all three are connected without filler, then the spinner may be unable to do them all without increasing his skill level. This, again, sounds good in theory (and is used a lot in practice to evaluate combos in tournaments) but it brings us back to the original problem: what is the difficulty of a trick? what may be filler for one spinner, may not be for another. 

Overlap with execution

I have already commented on the overlap between execution and difficulty: it requires more skill to do a combo with good execution. Conversely, the execution which requires more skill to do is considered better. Additionally, poorly executed combos in the realm of tech seem more difficult, especially when that spinner has already done combos with better execution.

Overlap with creativity

I don't think this was enough, so let me punch difficulty one last time. When a trick hasn't been done yet, but someone has thought about it, its difficulty can be thought too high or impossible. It was fun to read Hideaki's diary where he said things like TA rev may be impossible (around 1990 IIRC) or many reverse tricks in Pentix' trick name table, which hadn't been done yet. Even today, the difficulty of tricks which haven't been done previously is greatly exaggerated. On the contrary, once many people master a trick, its perceived difficulty decreases (see: Drowsy's NGO), which is why many experienced spinners don't do tutorials of the tricks they use.

Conclusion

Paraphrasing what fel2fram once said, 

"The essence of pen spinning is the existence of fingercrossing. The absence of fingercrossing would mean that our fingers would be 5 flying sausages controllable by thought. Maybe Hexbinmos' 3-dimensional notation is the best after all."

Well that has nothing to do with the current topic, although it's pretty funny. I'm sure that fel2fram said something sensible about difficulty at some point, so consider that being quoted instead. In any case, difficulty makes no fucking sense, nor half of the other tournament criteria. They are a necessary evil for judges not to be lazy but ultimately, we should be wary about their indisputable subjectiveness. Focusing solely on the pursue of difficulty is focusing in something that doesn't exist.