Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice • Hacker News Board

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#91

Post by sitkack » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #89

The John Boyd example is super interesting. My understanding is that he essentially built a framework for thinking about dogfighting, the OODA loop. Very similar to how the author put kids on tiny bicycles. You can't tell someone what to think, but you can _design a system_ that makes it so that they think about the right thing at the right time.

This is how we "teleport" thought from one person to another, we have to replay the same series of events that enable them to have the same thought patterns. Communicating and educating is basically replaying the stage for the same thoughts to form.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#92

Post by undershirt » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

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…

I like your choice of phrasing on “impression”. I think it captures what is meant by embodiment, that the knowledge is in the body, so you can get at it by imitating the whole of a person.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#93

Post by travisjungroth » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #77

corporateslave5 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never become exceptional this way. And if you run into situations you’ve never seen before, it’s harder to react competently. With coding, if you only ever use a style you copy, then everything looks like it could be solved in that way. This works and may help you up the corporate ladder. But it will never produce massively positive results

I wonder if the OP post has more to do with nerves/confidence than learning. By imagining he was Sean, he felt confident and the naturally performed better at the job at hand. To answer your point, there are times in the "learning curve" you need to get used to doing something, and then times to become exceptional. Compare learning to drive to formula 1. And commongcog has an article for that: https://commoncog.com/b…

Yeah, I think there are issues that fall away when you stop trying to be good and just embrace pretending to be good. Confidence is one of those. I also think a lot about evaluative mindsets versus learning mindsets. Copying puts me in learning mode.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#94

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

thisisbrians wrote: post #17

I kinda think he's talking about intuition. It's the non-verbal understanding that underpins mastery in any domain. If deliberate practice is the means, then tacit knowledge is the end.

[deleted]

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#95

Post by travisjungroth » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

undershirt wrote: post #92

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…

I like your choice of phrasing on “impression”. I think it captures what is meant by embodiment, that the knowledge is in the body, so you can get at it by imitating the whole of a person.

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

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#96

Post by sojournerc » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

>> The process of learning tacit knowledge looks something like the following: you find a master, you work under them for a few years, and you learn the ropes through emulation, feedback, and osmosis — not through deliberate practice.

I feel fortunate to have stumbled into an organization where this was the case as a junior engineer. The company wasn't ever wildly successful, but I feel lucky to have worked with very smart people when I was very green, and couldn't make heads or tails anything.

Patience was certainly needed on their part I'm sure, and such frustration is likely what leads people to become pedagogical at times.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#97

Post by dmurray » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

travisjungroth wrote: post #95

undershirt wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your choice of phrasing on “impression”. I think it captures what is meant by embodiment, that the knowledge is in the body, so you can get at it by imitating the whole of a person.

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

Some people who learn to speak foreign languages fast seem to do this. They copy a native speaker exaggeratedly, almost to the point of parody. And of course young children learn in the same way, by imitating everything rather than trying to filter for the "relevant" bits and imitating those. Most of us are too self-conscious to do this properly though.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#98

Post by mattkrause » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:05 PM UTC

Kednicma wrote: post #28

mattkrause wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only knowledge that is tacit for the typical person is the knowledge of how to move muscles. Thats's not really true. If you are a native English speaker, it might surprise you to learn that English adjectives have a default order. We normally say "the big red ball" but "the red big ball" sounds decidedly odd unless there's an explicit contrast ("No, not the blue one. I want the red big ball"). This is apparently t…

This knowledge that you are discussing is quite interesting, but not tacit: You had no problem explaining it to me in words alone. Moreover, it can all be operationalized; physics in particular is well-operationalized and usually evaluated numerically. I gather that part of the tacit-knowledge movement is to talk about knowledge that cannot be put into words. The example of how to move a muscle is extremely instructi…

The adjective case might be debatable, since it's usually learned implicitly but could be taught.

Intuitive physics may be a stronger example: the point is that it's not "real" physics where you numerically evaluate the statics and centers of mass. It's a set of heuristics that let you rapidly (and not always successfully) determine if a pile of books is stable, using some internal model of the world.

Ditto for sensory input. You have all these built-in principles (or priors or biases) that have evolved over millions of years to help you make sense of ambiguous or impoverished sensory input. These are also mostly implicit.

We can certainly name these effects talk /about/ them, and even probe them with careful experiments....but we can do that to bike-riding too.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#99

Post by travisjungroth » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:05 PM UTC

corporateslave5 wrote: post #53

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…

You never become exceptional this way. And if you run into situations you’ve never seen before, it’s harder to react competently. With coding, if you only ever use a style you copy, then everything looks like it could be solved in that way. This works and may help you up the corporate ladder. But it will never produce massively positive results

This method won’t get you exceptional on its own. That’s for sure.

I’m not saying to pick one person and blindly follow them forever. It’s just a really fast way to get competent. I used the same technique to learn programming, scuba diving and sales. After you get the super basics down, find more teachers to copy and start even thinking for yourself a bit more.

It will take you surprisingly far, though. One thing I didn’t mention is it’s good for getting the most out of people who are master practitioners but not great teachers. Rather than ask them to take their skills and package them up for you, you just look over and make a copy for yourself.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#100

Post by travisjungroth » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:11 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #97

travisjungroth wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Some people who learn to speak foreign languages fast seem to do this. They copy a native speaker exaggeratedly, almost to the point of parody. And of course young children learn in the same way, by imitating everything rather than trying to filter for the "relevant" bits and imitating those. Most of us are too self-conscious to do this properly though.

lol this is me with Spanish. I say common phrases with all the details right, so people think I know more than I do. I actually speak better than I understand.