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Do the Real Thing

scotthyoung.com

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Re: Do the Real Thing

#91

Post by ookdatnog »

travisjungroth wrote: post #40
ookdatnog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You want to start running? Put on some shoes and go for a run. I did that, went for a run every day, overexerted my ankle, couldn't walk normally for a week and couldn't run for weeks after that, and got out of the habit of running again for a very long time. Your advice might work in specific cases for specific people, but for others it might be harmful. It is, in my opinion, not advice fit for "broadcast": you ne…

Go for a run. One. Then you start doing the thinking cycle the comment I replied to was talking about. It shouldn’t even be a long one. I said “go run for a bit”. If it hurts at all, stop. Don’t do things that you think are dangerous. If you can’t run or aren’t sure if you should, then just walk. Maybe I should refine my advice to “do whatever is closest to the ultimate thing, that you can safely do right now”.

My core criticism is that the notion of "doing the real thing" is very poorly defined and can be easily misinterpreted. That makes this article potentially harmful advice to broadcast. Mind you, it might be good advice for specific people, where you know their circumstances very well and can clarify all the undefinedness, but it is too poorly defined to just send to unknown recipients who mentally fill in the blanks of the article in many, unknown ways.

Re: Do the Real Thing

#92

Post by [deleted] »

gridlockd wrote: post #44
hymnsfm wrote: post #35

Possibly an over-simplification. Take this example: I want to sight-sing hymns. I know a bit of music theory but it's been cobbled together over the past year in an haphazard fashion. I pick up a hymnal to sing the first hymn and immediately need to look up the key signature (I never memorized them). Then I see the hymn is 12/8 time and realize I only superficially covered rhythm and time signatures. I go on YouTube…

Have you considered that sight-singing anything is not the real thing? Singing is the real thing.

[deleted]

Re: Do the Real Thing

#94

Post by throw5399375930 »

This makes me think of all these people wasting all that time removing "blacklist" and "master" and all that stuff and patting themselves in the back for a job well done, instead of even thinking of doing anything real to fix the real problems with inequality and systemic racism :(

Re: Do the Real Thing

#95

Post by reaktivo »

throw5399375930 wrote: post #94

This makes me think of all these people wasting all that time removing "blacklist" and "master" and all that stuff and patting themselves in the back for a job well done, instead of even thinking of doing anything real to fix the real problems with inequality and systemic racism :(

It’s not as if people pick one or the other

Re: Do the Real Thing

#96

Post by throw10382 »

jchook wrote: post #66
kalonis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just watching someone doing the real thing is one of the most prominent strategies to avoid doing the real thing. It is not enough to watch someone very skilled do the real thing. You have to imitate them: Reading a lot of great novels will not make you a better writer. Instead write a story in the style of any writer you admire and you will learn a lot while still doing the real thing. The same is true for almost an…

Our brains have mirror neurons[1] that allow us to learn by watching. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

Mirror neuron mythos is ridiculous. They're just normal neurons, they just happen to fire in response to externally observed behaviour as well as personal behaviour.

They aren't magic, they can't actually mirror what's going on in another person's head or give you a high-resolution idea of how their brain works. They aren't even that good at mimicry unless you already have a pretty high-resolution understanding of what you're trying to improve. You can't learn to juggle by watching people juggle. You can't learn to play piano by watching people play piano. You might be able to improve those skills if you already have them and watch someone who's better, but it's limited and whether that's even osmotic mirror neuron activity is controversial.

Re: Do the Real Thing

#97

Post by throw10382 »

gitgud wrote: post #63
zomglings wrote: post #11

Definitely agree with the article, and would like to offer a useful supplement to "doing the real thing": "watch someone very skilled do the real thing". Watching a pro can really accelerate skill acquisition because it will expose you to high quality ideas that would have been difficult to develop on your own. Want to get better at Backgammon/Chess/Go? Play a lot of games (at various time controls). Yes. But also wa…

> Want to get better at programming? Write a lot of programs. Yes. But also read a lot of high quality code written by others. Well, do this in moderation, as reading "high quality code" can lead to a premature focus on code-quality. Most "high quality code" is the result of many iterations of ideas and use-cases. And trying to emulate that style can be counter-productive in many cases. I find going back in the histo…

And if you're a beginner, what you think is high-quality code is probably just wrong. You don't have the experience to differentiate. Over-abstracted code that is extremely visually clean at each of its 8 levels of indirection and is so perfectly cohesive that any modification would destroy the entire artwork looks great to most beginners.

Re: Do the Real Thing

#98

Post by throw10382 »

reaktivo wrote: post #95
throw5399375930 wrote: post #94

This makes me think of all these people wasting all that time removing "blacklist" and "master" and all that stuff and patting themselves in the back for a job well done, instead of even thinking of doing anything real to fix the real problems with inequality and systemic racism :(

It’s not as if people pick one or the other

I would argue people absolutely pick trivial, meaningless problems to avoid focussing on hard, meaningful problems.

Re: Do the Real Thing

#99

Post by top_kekeroni_m8 »

Kye wrote: post #16
zomglings wrote: post #11

Definitely agree with the article, and would like to offer a useful supplement to "doing the real thing": "watch someone very skilled do the real thing". Watching a pro can really accelerate skill acquisition because it will expose you to high quality ideas that would have been difficult to develop on your own. Want to get better at Backgammon/Chess/Go? Play a lot of games (at various time controls). Yes. But also wa…

Recent practical example: I had a lot of trouble picking which photographs out of 20-100 of a subject to use. Enough were sharp, well-composed, and properly exposed to make it near impossible to pick. I've been watching James Popsys' videos[1] lately. He doesn't take the greatest photos in the world from a technical standpoint, but there's a theme that runs through most of his videos and pictures: tell a story. It's…

Those are great pictures!

Re: Do the Real Thing

#100

Post by hejja »

to me, it feels overly optimistic in 2 ways.

1. it makes the assumption that failure is always positive

self improvement dogma: "fail faster, you learn from each failure"

peter thiel: "each failure is a tragedy, it is multivariate and therefore often too complex to truly learn from"

2. dunning kruger syndrome and learning something "the wrong way" is possible in more than one field.

Overall it was a nice read though

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