Learn only those that you can learn quickly (and wait until you have accumulated enough knowledge of related gears).
It’s not about what you can learn quickly, it’s about only learning the ones that you’ll use constantly (related to your field of interest and the important problems you’re working on).
I tried to view it not as a black and white but as a trade-off based on effort/cost. That’s why I though brought in the cost of learning the gears. Maybe it’s non-linear? Anyway if you think my synthesis has failed what would you say is the trad-off?
The trade off is between likelihood of use, utility of that use, and cost of learning the model. I’m making a fairly bold claim here, which is that most of the time, unless it’s your primary field or your important problems you’re working on, it’s not worth the effort.
I’m purposefully being a bit “unnuanced” in this speech to play devil’s advocate, and you adding nuance takes away from some of the bold claims I’m trying to make. I just realized I don’t know: is “synthesis” supposed to be “synthesis of this article” or “synthesis of the two viewpoints? If the former, I resent you adding nuance to my sledgehammer :D
I also think that “degrees of gears” is doing the same thing of adding nuance. I’m claiming that instead of learning ANY of the gears, you should instead learn the inputs and outputs.
If you were intentionally bold, which I like as a didactic technique, I’m sorry to have messed with it ;-) And no worries about the hammer: I have enough armor.
I meant it as synthesis of two viewpoints.
I agree that learning what the possibly hidden gears process is important. Esp. the distribution of inputs in practice. But I do’t think gears and input/output can be clearly separated. The understand the input structure you have to understand some of the gears. Life is a messy graph.
It’s not about what you can learn quickly, it’s about only learning the ones that you’ll use constantly (related to your field of interest and the important problems you’re working on).
I tried to view it not as a black and white but as a trade-off based on effort/cost. That’s why I though brought in the cost of learning the gears. Maybe it’s non-linear? Anyway if you think my synthesis has failed what would you say is the trad-off?
The trade off is between likelihood of use, utility of that use, and cost of learning the model. I’m making a fairly bold claim here, which is that most of the time, unless it’s your primary field or your important problems you’re working on, it’s not worth the effort.
I’m purposefully being a bit “unnuanced” in this speech to play devil’s advocate, and you adding nuance takes away from some of the bold claims I’m trying to make. I just realized I don’t know: is “synthesis” supposed to be “synthesis of this article” or “synthesis of the two viewpoints? If the former, I resent you adding nuance to my sledgehammer :D
I also think that “degrees of gears” is doing the same thing of adding nuance. I’m claiming that instead of learning ANY of the gears, you should instead learn the inputs and outputs.
Thanks for the clarification.
If you were intentionally bold, which I like as a didactic technique, I’m sorry to have messed with it ;-) And no worries about the hammer: I have enough armor.
I meant it as synthesis of two viewpoints.
I agree that learning what the possibly hidden gears process is important. Esp. the distribution of inputs in practice. But I do’t think gears and input/output can be clearly separated. The understand the input structure you have to understand some of the gears. Life is a messy graph.