What is potential? There are at least three values

The world contains a huge number of unexplored opportunities. Especially large-scale and unpredictable Nassem Taleb calls "black swans". Black hints at a negative overtones, but in reality there are also positive situations. For example, winning the lottery or the unexpected popularity of a new business niche. In these cases, talk about the potential. But this concept is complex and multifaceted. What is potential?

Sell the probability!

The first meaning of this word is the possibility, hidden for the time being. Psychologists talk a lot about the potential. But coaches generally turned human potential into an expensive commodity. And it sells well, although in this niche all the places are not occupied yet. However, the manifestation of the potential is a gainful business. Not strength and intellect increase human potential, but a constant application of effort.

Specificity of the potential

We are all used to looking up at chess players, considering their abilities as special. However, an experiment was conducted: first the players and non-players were asked to memorize the position of the figures that is encountered in the game. Naturally, the chessplayers reproduced it irreproachably. But when they suggested remembering the arbitrary position of the figures, professional players and non-players remember the order equally badly. All human skills are very specific and poorly transferred from one activity to another. What is potential? This is an activity-generated opportunity.

Conditional calculations

The second is related to economic geography. For example, in the complex concept of "country potential" is meant a conditionally measurable quantity. Usually it is calculated on the basis of natural and human resources, as well as the demand for goods and services in the world market. What is the potential for economists? This is a hypothetical assessment of the country's capabilities. And clever states put first of all on human potential. If human resources are used well, then a country that is not rich in material resources becomes successful, for example, Japan or Singapore.

Moral Motivation

Of course, the country's potential is directly related to the mentality. It is impossible to make Russians work the same way as residents of all the famous eastern countries. Even the cult of labor, which for decades was propagated by the ideologists of socialism, could not inculcate a love of work. The very word "labor", generally neutral, because of the propaganda has become many unpleasant. I think that a Russian person is able to work "from the heart" only in connection with moral values. We work for our family, for people we love, for our home. And not for the sake of incomprehensible and alien ideals, somebody's norms of working out. We, the former inhabitants of the Union, are ready to do much to protect our family from unsettledness and uncertainty in the future.

The terms of the electric field

In the third sense, potential is the concept of physical science. The work of external forces on the transfer of a unit of charge. Usually the words "tension" and "potential" in science are used side by side, in any textbook they will be almost together. The tension depends on the potential, only with the opposite sign. To understand the equation of tension, you need the initial knowledge of higher mathematics. What is the potential in the third sense? A completely definite physical concept ... This is still far from the meaning of human capabilities.