An Interview with the Founder of Shinjido Budo

Shinjido inventor Danny Da Costa says:

Shinjido literally means Danny’s Way, a label given by one of my students to the variety of techniques that I have developed for martial art. I attempt to find the easiest solution to a problem either in attack or defence. My work is based on sound principles and the techniques serve to demonstrate the principles. I have applied this approach to judo starting from the premise that our sport is fighting within specific rules and limitations…

James Barton’s Virtuous Science of Self-Defense

James Barton writes in,

I thought that you might be interested in the alternative martial art that I am developing. It is quite unusual and has a strong focus on character improvement. I would value your questions, comments and criticisms.

Readers, I encourage you to visit the Virtue Science website, read some of James’ material, and formulate your own opinions before proceeding to my commentary below.

Read This Before You Invent a New Martial Arts Style

Rex Kwon Do

The skills that engender competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills necessary to evaluate competence in that domain—one’s own or anyone else’s. Because of this, incompetent individuals lack what cognitive psychologists variously term metacognition, metacomprehension, or self-monitoring skills. These terms refer to the ability to know how well one is performing, when one is likely to be accurate in judgment, and when one is likely to be in error.

Several lines of research are consistent with the notion that incompetent individuals lack the metacognitive skills necessary for accurate self-assessment. Work on the nature of expertise, for instance, has revealed that novices possess poorer metacognitive skills than do experts. In physics, novices are less accurate than experts in judging the difficulty of physics problems. In chess, novices are less calibrated than experts about how many times they need to see a given chessboard position before they are able to reproduce it correctly. In tennis, novices are less likely than experts to successfully gauge whether specific play attempts were successful.

We propose that those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.

~ From “Unskilled and Unaware” by Justin Kruger and David Dunning

Learning a martial art is inevitably a process of trial and error. To a limited degree, we are all inventors of our own unique style of martial arts.

Master Rex

Some ambitious individuals choose to go further. Rather than building on the experiential framework provided by a living martial arts expert, these innovators attempt to create a superior new system from first principles.

Is it harmless creative expression, or dangerous folly?