Here’s the thing though. When someone asks a vague question like “how do I learn music”, to me that means they’re not trying. Otherwise they’d have specific questions, like what’s that chord in a given song, or how to pick across strings, or how to improve timing on the kick drum. If you have no such questions, just a vague “how to get better at social”, you need to start trying and getting more specific questions, not reading ahead.
A more charitable interpretation is that they are trying to assume less, going a little more meta and explaining the general problem, instead of focusing on specifics that they thing are important, but might not really be.
A failure mode when people don’t try to do this is the user that asks a software developer to “just add a button that allows me to autofill this form”, when maybe there’s an automation that renders the form totally unnecessary.
The reason I was not so specific is because my two overarching problems are themselves very wide: (1) having less than optimal impulse control resulting in sometimes making poor social decisions without prior thought and control, and (2) not possessing sufficient data on social knowledge/skills to know what to do in a variety of situations.
I am not yet at a stage where I could say exactly what it is that I need to learn, so I am looking for a wide variety of avenues to start down. Once I’ve made a solid start, I will be able to actually see the specific questions.
Well, someone who never learned music surely doesn’t have enough knowledge/skills on what to do in a band, and will perform terribly on stage. Their problems, as you say, are wide. And yet, if such a person goes around asking “where do I start learning music”, I just know that they’re not that into the whole idea. If they were, they would’ve picked up a guitar and be playing already.
Which, as a matter of fact, I have been doing. But when I started learning guitar, I did not already know to ask “what exercises can I do to strengthen my hand so I can play barre chords better”. I started with “where do I begin”, and went from there. As I played more and more, I begun to see the things I needed to know in order to improve. The same follows here.
Here’s the thing though. When someone asks a vague question like “how do I learn music”, to me that means they’re not trying. Otherwise they’d have specific questions, like what’s that chord in a given song, or how to pick across strings, or how to improve timing on the kick drum. If you have no such questions, just a vague “how to get better at social”, you need to start trying and getting more specific questions, not reading ahead.
A more charitable interpretation is that they are trying to assume less, going a little more meta and explaining the general problem, instead of focusing on specifics that they thing are important, but might not really be.
A failure mode when people don’t try to do this is the user that asks a software developer to “just add a button that allows me to autofill this form”, when maybe there’s an automation that renders the form totally unnecessary.
The reason I was not so specific is because my two overarching problems are themselves very wide: (1) having less than optimal impulse control resulting in sometimes making poor social decisions without prior thought and control, and (2) not possessing sufficient data on social knowledge/skills to know what to do in a variety of situations.
I am not yet at a stage where I could say exactly what it is that I need to learn, so I am looking for a wide variety of avenues to start down. Once I’ve made a solid start, I will be able to actually see the specific questions.
Well, someone who never learned music surely doesn’t have enough knowledge/skills on what to do in a band, and will perform terribly on stage. Their problems, as you say, are wide. And yet, if such a person goes around asking “where do I start learning music”, I just know that they’re not that into the whole idea. If they were, they would’ve picked up a guitar and be playing already.
Which, as a matter of fact, I have been doing. But when I started learning guitar, I did not already know to ask “what exercises can I do to strengthen my hand so I can play barre chords better”. I started with “where do I begin”, and went from there. As I played more and more, I begun to see the things I needed to know in order to improve. The same follows here.