nr378Why the most valuable things you know are things you cannot say
https://deadneurons.substack.com/p/why-the-most-valuable-things-you
I would call the difference intuitive knowledge versus rational knowledge.
I've never seen the word calibration used this way:
different modes of learning. The first is instruction: the transfer of explicit models, rules, and relationships from one person to another through language. The second is calibration: the development of internal models through repeated exposure to feedback in a specific environment. Judgement is learnable through calibration. It is not transmissible through instruction.
Unfortunately the word "intuition" has been debased.
Intuition is just our brains' amazing pattern recognition ability at work.
You raise an interesting question. How do we keep the meanings of words from diverging so dramatically and so rapidly?
A little bit is natural and expected, but this kind of change in meaning feels like a consequence of a culture that in the last decade has accelerated the practice of re-framing specific words and concepts as something that's "actually a positive" or "actually quite negative if you think about it".
Part of this is a result of our (in the US) culture wars and hijacking of popular terms, but it's also a symptom of social media culture that's always seeking a hot take and creators who are looking to distinguish themselves with (what seems to me) clever re-framing.
The result is a culture that is increasingly fragmented and in which a word can have dramatically different meaning and insinuations depending on it's use in certain social groups or intellectual cliques.
It increasingly feels like I need to download a massive amount of linguistic context before I step into the world of a niche online community because their tight-knit dialogues and shared experiences have now re-framed a word or concept that was largely understood to mean something else.
> How do we keep the meanings of words from diverging so dramatically and so rapidly?
We don’t engage. It’s the only shot we have.
There was a useful article at 404 Media recently about our failure to prevent those on the extreme edges of culture from normalizing their language and behavior: We Have Learned Nothing About Amplifying Morons[0]. See the article, but essentially by engaging we cede ground. Sorta like how both-sides journalism gives space to anti-science nuts and lets them spread falsehoods.
0. https://www.404media.co/we-have-learned-nothing-about-amplif...
It's always been like this, just on a smaller scale. Every time you join a group, some people can read the room, learning and sensing the cultural implications, while others step in all the landmines and don't even hear the explosions. How do you do this? Not sure how to explain it, mostly calibration through experience!
Not being self-centered is helpful.
I believe the author was arguing that “calibration” is also rational but it cannot be transmitted. You cannot learn it from reading or following a framework. Books and frameworks are too lossy. The author cited the example of doctors in their residency as an example of this second mode of learning. They are learning from hands on experience what other doctors had also learned before. With residency there are others who oversee the residents.
You're arguing against something I wasn't trying to imply.
Choosing a good abstract dichotomy is hard (mine is also faulty, as you have noted).
They chose "instruction" versus "calibration" which I feel is a terrible splitting plane (muddying whatever they are trying to articulate).
I have been fascinated listening to a smart nursing friend of mine explain some of the intuitions they learnt through observation (not explicitly taught). I believe they had an outlier skill for noticing patterns. They might have been able to teach the patterns they saw, but they probably couldn't teach the skill of discovering patterns ≈intelligence.
I think intuition is what is developed through calibration, so I personally like the word calibration.
Intuition and other forms of knowledge are stock quantities while calibration and instructions are types of flows which change the stock. I'd love to know if there a better word for learning through trial and evaluation than calibration.
> better word for learning through trial and evaluation than calibration
How about training. Implies practicality. You can be trained or do your own training. Avoids the bad academic/factual associations of "teaching".
Calibration makes some sense to people that work with tools, but the word is a poor metaphor for honing our intuitions.
It is quite amazing how little of what we do or know is actually explicitly taught. I learnt the most in the sandpit.
Or maybe inductive vs deductive reasoning
Language changes though . He's directionally correct about calibration. People have some intuition about how something works, and then calibrate this tgrough feedback.
I think despite the presentation this has some good ideas in it:
1. Formally calling out a concept for judgment-based skills that cannot be easily taught. I think everybody understands this, but having a word for this would be useful.
2. Opening up the conversation on the topic of which types of skills can/should be codified and how.
That said, everything else in the article is suss. "Dimensionality" is largely a distraction to try to sound smart, most of the claims in the article are unwarranted (e.g. processes & checklists can be great, even for disciplines with true experts like airline pilots).
For example saying that skill learning cannot be accelerated is just patently false in many domains -- take something like learning chess. If you have a coach and other tools you'll learn a LOT faster. But certainly I've worked places that wished they could automate away reliance on experts because it gives organization power to a few non-management individuals.
I believe what is missed here is that the brain assimilate things outside of it (not in the physical sense of course). Use a hammer for some time and the brain start to dedicate some networks to simulate the hammer internally and to integrate the hammer as parte of your body. The brain starts using the hammer in the same way it uses your hand. It becomes part of what the higher level processes use to read from and to manifest into the world.
Nothing new here, this is called tool embodiment. A little time after assimilation, you stop consciously thinking about the tool. You are the hammer, the hammer is you.
So what is being missed here is that the brain operates on, well, mental constructs. Ideas and ways of thinking. But those are not the world or the brain, those are tools.
The higher level processes into your mind use ways of thinking the same way it uses the body. Its unconscious (because it has been doing this for enough time) and automatic. The brain just gets guided by the tools. It wants to hammer that nail.
So, what does it have to do with crossing the street and not being able to transmit this knowledge?
You can’t transmit the incorporation. You can describe how to do things, how to think about things, but you can’t reconnect other people’s neurons to establish a way of thinking or a tool as part of the brain image of the self. Yet.
You can’t teach a baby how to embody his spine. You can’t teach someone how to become his thoughts. But you can’t certainly guide then on the use and this usage will build the neural networks. Once established, they’ll get it.
When I was 17 I was hired by a startup to write a book. The end product was a complete disaster (don't hire a 17 year old to write a book, also don't enter into contracts with 17 year old high school students w/o informing parents.)
The book was on 3d modeling in Rhino 3d. I was really good at Rhino3d at that time, to the extent that using it felt like a natural extension of my hands. IMHO every other 3d modeling program has a trash UI compared to the absolutely amazing UI that Rhinoceros 3d has.
I had to learn how to translate my absolute love of Rhino3D onto a page and explain it to other people. It was hard. It made my brain work in ways it was not used to, but it was an incredibly valuable experience.
The only remaining copy of the book sits behind me on a bit rotted CDR.
I have had 3 types of math teachers in life. American teachers, who generally teach rules from a book according to a curriculum. Russian teachers, who have a passion and a love for the field and who teach how to intuitive the answer to math problems first before going all in on the formulas. And East Asian math teachers who show off the beauty of the equations themselves.
I had one math teacher who couldn't speak English. He didn't need to, he had an incredible ability to communicate math through pure equations. It was lovely, one of the best math classes I've ever had. Math was truly used as a universal language.
I had another teacher (Russian) who got so excited solving equations and explaining DiffEq that he'd break his chalk in half and he'd go diving under desks to pick up the pieces.
But it is artists who are some of the best at transmitting intuitive knowledge. They have centuries of best practices of how to train students to rewrite their brains to literally see the world differently. (And yes a lot of it does involve drawing boring still lives of fruit bowls! But, hey, it works)
>IMHO every other 3d modeling program has a trash UI compared to the absolutely amazing UI that Rhinoceros 3d has.
It's not just you. There is something about it that is qualitatively different.
And this is also why all institutions rot over time. When the original experts and founders are gone, only the codified superficial knowledge remains. The result is bureaucracy coasting on the resources and reputation built by the original founders. Works until it encounters real problems that are not solved by superficial rules.
Right.. Countless times I see people struggle with something then complain about the fact that nobody wrote anything down ahead to hand hold them through the problem. As if the old experts would've known to write that. And often times they did write stuff, but it either wasn't read or it ran into this issue of instruction being incapable of transmitting everything you actually need.