Thank you very much for the IM convo you had with me resolving all those confusions I had about how I had miscommunicated various points. I just thought I should post this comment before I go and use what you gave me to write a much better clarification post for discussion, since the comment was almost done when you IM’d me.
I hope that report doesn’t read too similarly to my posts! I only did the quickest skim of the “what is DI” section, but it seems to be like an abridgement of “Rubric for Identifying Authentic Direct Instruction Programs” (prologue here ) that’s even more abridged than my treatment of Theory of Instruction.
I wouldn’t even try to communicate DI theory across a large inferential distance (unless the audience already had a positive impression of it from personal experiences teaching from DI programs after failing with low performing kids, to make them patient).
But with LW, I figured that after showing the experimental evidence of effectiveness (in the way teachers who had previously been failures became successful after they started using DI programs), to convince some LW people to study the theory themselves, they would find it much easier to understand because of their prior understanding of concepts like extensional/intensional definitions, ‘looking into the dark’, and thingspace.
For instance, when studying the theory behind the design of templates for teaching ‘noun’ concepts (or ‘multi-dimensional non-comparatives’), any LWer should go, “Ohhh, this is taking the basics of what Eliezer was talking about with the example of the ‘bird-cluster’ in ‘thingspace’, and applying it make sure you’re giving enough information to someone else who doesn’t already know what the label ‘bird’ refers to that they can find the cluster!”
And of course as we discussed by IM, the way that “logically faultless communication” relates to the “2-4-6 game” and is “logically faultless” in the same way Bayes is the logically faultless way of doing induction yourself, but that doesn’t guarantee that a particular user won’t misapply it. But if they do misapply it, someone who knows how to apply it correctly can figure out exactly how the mistake-maker must change to become correct.
But yeah, I’ll go get on that clarification post for discussion now.
Thank you very much for the IM convo you had with me resolving all those confusions I had about how I had miscommunicated various points. I just thought I should post this comment before I go and use what you gave me to write a much better clarification post for discussion, since the comment was almost done when you IM’d me.
I hope that report doesn’t read too similarly to my posts! I only did the quickest skim of the “what is DI” section, but it seems to be like an abridgement of “Rubric for Identifying Authentic Direct Instruction Programs” (prologue here ) that’s even more abridged than my treatment of Theory of Instruction.
I wouldn’t even try to communicate DI theory across a large inferential distance (unless the audience already had a positive impression of it from personal experiences teaching from DI programs after failing with low performing kids, to make them patient).
But with LW, I figured that after showing the experimental evidence of effectiveness (in the way teachers who had previously been failures became successful after they started using DI programs), to convince some LW people to study the theory themselves, they would find it much easier to understand because of their prior understanding of concepts like extensional/intensional definitions, ‘looking into the dark’, and thingspace.
For instance, when studying the theory behind the design of templates for teaching ‘noun’ concepts (or ‘multi-dimensional non-comparatives’), any LWer should go, “Ohhh, this is taking the basics of what Eliezer was talking about with the example of the ‘bird-cluster’ in ‘thingspace’, and applying it make sure you’re giving enough information to someone else who doesn’t already know what the label ‘bird’ refers to that they can find the cluster!”
And of course as we discussed by IM, the way that “logically faultless communication” relates to the “2-4-6 game” and is “logically faultless” in the same way Bayes is the logically faultless way of doing induction yourself, but that doesn’t guarantee that a particular user won’t misapply it. But if they do misapply it, someone who knows how to apply it correctly can figure out exactly how the mistake-maker must change to become correct.
But yeah, I’ll go get on that clarification post for discussion now.
Thanks again!