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Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

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Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#111

Post by hliyan »

tener wrote: post #76

We have neural networks in our brains which for some reason cannot be trained without practice in real world. No amount of reading about riding will train those real-time feedback loops that operate on much lower latencies then you can formulate conscious thoughts. This is a limitation of our brains and not fundamental property of knowledge or information. In AI neural networks which can ride bikes or recognize objec…

Isn't what we call thinking simply an introspection layer on top of our neural network hardware? Sometimes I wonder whether the entirety of what we call the mind is just an epiphenomenon that attempts to explain the workings of our neural network after the fact.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#112

Post by nine_k »

travisjungroth wrote: post #48

I figured out something very similar in flight school. When I did my instrument rating, I realized my instructor, Sean, wasn’t perfect. No pilot is. But, I believed he could pass an instrument check ride. I could not. I decided that rather than figure out if everything he did was the best way or “worked for me”, I would just do my best Sean impression. I still had the opportunity to get even better by learning from o…

This is how small children learn. They copy first, understand later, sometimes very much later.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#114

Post by goatlover »

hliyan wrote: post #111
tener wrote: post #76

We have neural networks in our brains which for some reason cannot be trained without practice in real world. No amount of reading about riding will train those real-time feedback loops that operate on much lower latencies then you can formulate conscious thoughts. This is a limitation of our brains and not fundamental property of knowledge or information. In AI neural networks which can ride bikes or recognize objec…

Isn't what we call thinking simply an introspection layer on top of our neural network hardware? Sometimes I wonder whether the entirety of what we call the mind is just an epiphenomenon that attempts to explain the workings of our neural network after the fact .

If that were true, then cognitive behavior therapy and meditation would have no effect. It's more likely a feedback loop between introspection and the neural network. Sometimes you need the slow, deliberate planning that comes with conscious thought.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#115

Post by mcshaner1 »

shadowsun7 wrote: post #109
mcshaner1 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is room for nuance here. True deliberate practice is easiest to apply in those domains, but there are some lessons from Ericsson's work that can be applied using the NDM framework. I think the point that people miss often is that it is deliberate practice, not just practice. While we may not be able to practice like a potential chess grand master, we can deliberately challenge ourselves and look to lear…

In Peak, Ericsson seems to finally settle on one definition, which was what I used in the end. He calls what you just describe "not being able to deliberately practice like a grandmaster" a completely different thing — purposeful practice. There's a whole chapter in Peak where he tries to talk about what to do if you are in a field with badly developed pedagogical methods. It's basically a badly written copy of The P…

That makes sense, a couple of years ago there was a lot of misleading interpretations going around, precise definitions help clear things up. I read Peak a while back, and I must’ve forgot that distinction.

I found the Klein book you mentioned more useful than Ericsson’s as well, that Fadde/Klein paper I mentioned was also pretty helpful. I need to reread both, and put them into practice more than I have. I read too much, and I don’t get the tacit knowledge that comes from experience...

Another good book is Surpassing Ourselves by Bereiter and Scardamalia. They studied how students developed writing skill. Their definition of expertise is a bit different than Ericsson’s, but I think it is more useful.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#116

Post by obvthrowaway2 »

Tacit knowledge sounds like an untestable phenomenon, and simply lacking the words to describe certain neuromotor techniques doesn't mean that it cannot be communicated explicitly in theory. Perhaps in the future we'll have a way to stimulate the brain in exactly the right way in order to communicate how to keep your balance on (aka "ride") a bike.

Furthermore, articles that downplay the importance of practice, to me, seem like a bad idea. In my experience, people who claim a high level of general comprehension (but not technical) tend to lack the ability to implement any facet of their "tacit knowledge" at even a basic level.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#117

Post by barry-cotter »

jacobolus wrote: post #107
travisjungroth wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I think it’s much more effective to copy too much rather than too little.

A big problem is that novices don’t know which parts need to be copied and sometimes don’t even notice what they are missing, so without either (a) getting a decent amount of expert feedback or (b) extensively reasoning things out from first principles and then doing a lot of trial and error, it’s easy to copy extraneous elements or skip essential ones. A lot of methods and devices that we end up stuck with today in…

If you go from non-functional to functional with extraneous crap that’s a success. Unless you’re working at the forefront of research or at the absolute limits of your capabilities an explicit mental model of what you’re doing is of surprisingly little use. Even that exaggerates how useful it is. The huge majority of improvement is by trial and error, with shoddy and incomplete mental models.

Your last paragraph is just what happens when there’s no force demanding quality. If there’s not strong pressure to maintain or improve quality decline is inevitable.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#118

Post by deathanatos »

travisjungroth wrote: post #48

I figured out something very similar in flight school. When I did my instrument rating, I realized my instructor, Sean, wasn’t perfect. No pilot is. But, I believed he could pass an instrument check ride. I could not. I decided that rather than figure out if everything he did was the best way or “worked for me”, I would just do my best Sean impression. I still had the opportunity to get even better by learning from o…

Hmm. I think I have a similar story. I was a competitive ballroom dancer, and at one point, a fellow dancer was trying to teach me to have better frame. (Frame is some mix of good posture, being rigid but not stiff; the follower in a ballroom dance uses it to know where to go, and to know what the leader of the dance wants to do. Of course.) I don't think I really got it until at some point he led me (to demonstrate his frame, and how it should feel) and that was what really made it click for me. In an instant I was a better dancer, but I don't think words alone would have gotten us there. Imitating him made me better. (And he had to show me how to lead by making me follow him, and I definitely still have no real idea how to follow, so it was doubly impressive that he got the point across.)

And frame in general is one of those things that when instructors teach, is taught not only through verbal description, but through actual interaction with a person body. (E.g., we pair dancers off, and have them "move" each other using their frame.) And I don't think it could be adequately conveyed with only words, or, it's definitely much easier to demonstrate by physical contact. (And it's one of those things that instructors will critique from the very beginning until … well, if there is a point where one's frame is perfect, I've not hit it.)

The article also reminds me of when I was a TA for Computer Science. Some students need help, in the sense that they need some concept explained better, or they don't know what function or type to apply or don't know a particular data structure. But some students need help, in that they seem to lack something extremely fundamental; the closest I've come to it is that they lack the ability to establish a mental model of a program and how a computer might execute it that is coherent and consistent. (That is, they'll have some rules, but they're more like patches and bits of understanding and are sometimes even self-contradictory, because they the student are closer to grasping at straws than having some idea of what is actually going on.) Getting the student past that hurdle is something I struggled with as a TA. (I myself either picked it up so long ago I take it for granted, or it came naturally. But neither does any good when trying to teach it.) I feel like at some point I read a research paper that seemed to establish that this divide between CS students was the lack of a good coherent mental model, but I've since lost any reference to it.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#119

Post by shadowsun7 »

mcshaner1 wrote: post #115
shadowsun7 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Peak, Ericsson seems to finally settle on one definition, which was what I used in the end. He calls what you just describe "not being able to deliberately practice like a grandmaster" a completely different thing — purposeful practice. There's a whole chapter in Peak where he tries to talk about what to do if you are in a field with badly developed pedagogical methods. It's basically a badly written copy of The P…

That makes sense, a couple of years ago there was a lot of misleading interpretations going around, precise definitions help clear things up. I read Peak a while back, and I must’ve forgot that distinction. I found the Klein book you mentioned more useful than Ericsson’s as well, that Fadde/Klein paper I mentioned was also pretty helpful. I need to reread both, and put them into practice more than I have. I read too…

Thanks for the recommendations! Adding to my toread.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#120

Post by gen220 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #40

>>> He gave me a long explanation about software engineering principles. I waved him away and asked how he did it in five seconds. He said “Well, it just felt right. Ok, let’s go to lunch, you can fix it afterwards.” Yes. I do a lot of coding on feel, and just today was explaining why something could be done one of two ways but one was better. It took about 30 seconds for my concious brain to work out why it was, eve…

I totally agree with this. I think the best engineers are the ones with both a strong "feel", but also a keen ability to introspect, explain, and justify their instinct. The other key ingredient is knowing when to let your intuition run wild, and when to apply it like a seasoning.

On your side note: I also agree here, though the problem may be intractable, since really good managers are not always accustomed to explaining whence their intuition comes.

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