Such one-liners have the potential of leading us in the wrong direction if we are not careful. It’s been a common trend nowadays to have thousands upon thousands of blog posts advertising that a seemingly difficult task (learning to program, learning to play music, loosing a lot of weight) is incredibly easy to master in just a few days / few weeks if you just read “these 7 amazing tricks which will blow your mind”!
This seems to be a desire in most people’s minds: instead of recognizing in which area you have better affinity and in which you have less, and then investing a lot of effort in the area you have better chances to become good in, the temptation is there to believe that the world is at your fingertips and you could easily learn to do anything you wanted, if you just knew some “insider secrets”. This is why there is such a big market for such one-liners.
It might be harsh to say, but for me this seems like the remnants of a shamanistic culture, where people have the power fantasies that if they just learned a few magic phrases from the shaman / a guru, they will be capable of doing magic without expending any significant effort.
I would much sooner trust a scientific article relying on experiments and surveys, than sensationalist blog posts with nice-sounding one-liners, who claim that you can become instantly better at your chosen profession just by reading a few hints. Unless those hints are nothing more than to choose an area you have the better affinity to, and practice, practice, practice and practice.
people have the power fantasies that if they just learned a few magic phrases from the shaman / a guru, they will be capable of doing magic without expending any significant effort.
That’s exactly what “expecting short inferential distances” means in this context. Well, there are two options: either this, or assuming that the job also needs some “mysterious essence” you just have to be born with.
Such one-liners have the potential of leading us in the wrong direction if we are not careful. It’s been a common trend nowadays to have thousands upon thousands of blog posts advertising that a seemingly difficult task (learning to program, learning to play music, loosing a lot of weight) is incredibly easy to master in just a few days / few weeks if you just read “these 7 amazing tricks which will blow your mind”!
This seems to be a desire in most people’s minds: instead of recognizing in which area you have better affinity and in which you have less, and then investing a lot of effort in the area you have better chances to become good in, the temptation is there to believe that the world is at your fingertips and you could easily learn to do anything you wanted, if you just knew some “insider secrets”. This is why there is such a big market for such one-liners.
It might be harsh to say, but for me this seems like the remnants of a shamanistic culture, where people have the power fantasies that if they just learned a few magic phrases from the shaman / a guru, they will be capable of doing magic without expending any significant effort.
I would much sooner trust a scientific article relying on experiments and surveys, than sensationalist blog posts with nice-sounding one-liners, who claim that you can become instantly better at your chosen profession just by reading a few hints. Unless those hints are nothing more than to choose an area you have the better affinity to, and practice, practice, practice and practice.
That’s exactly what “expecting short inferential distances” means in this context. Well, there are two options: either this, or assuming that the job also needs some “mysterious essence” you just have to be born with.
Many people believe that ability to learn programming is both highly innate (unchangeable) and highly variable.