His story demonstrates the importance of choosing the right metrics for progress. From the story, we don’t know whether the golfer improved or not. As an aspiring x-rationalist, the lesson I draw is that when I take on the challenge of acquiring or improving a skill, I should calibrate my skill level, and compare my progress to an appropriate (and hopefully increasing) measuring stick. As a rank beginner, you don’t learn anything by finding out that you lose to a pro by 30 strokes. After taking the class, you may lose by 25 or 35 strokes and you won’t be able to tell whether you’ve improved.
In golf, you can use the course as your metric. Is your score improving compared to par? In other endeavors, the metrics may be harder to find. But you seldom want to compare yourself to the top 1% when you’re starting out.
It’s also a question of how long you must practice and how slow it takes to make progress. To get good at golf and anything else you need weeks, months, years of practice. I suspect the same applies to rationality.
His words are justified if most pros never took any lessons of this particular kind.
His story demonstrates the importance of choosing the right metrics for progress. From the story, we don’t know whether the golfer improved or not. As an aspiring x-rationalist, the lesson I draw is that when I take on the challenge of acquiring or improving a skill, I should calibrate my skill level, and compare my progress to an appropriate (and hopefully increasing) measuring stick. As a rank beginner, you don’t learn anything by finding out that you lose to a pro by 30 strokes. After taking the class, you may lose by 25 or 35 strokes and you won’t be able to tell whether you’ve improved.
In golf, you can use the course as your metric. Is your score improving compared to par? In other endeavors, the metrics may be harder to find. But you seldom want to compare yourself to the top 1% when you’re starting out.
It’s also a question of how long you must practice and how slow it takes to make progress. To get good at golf and anything else you need weeks, months, years of practice. I suspect the same applies to rationality.