Yeah, no. I can see not providing examples of everything you talked about, and generally not following your own preferred method to the letter. But the picture Misha has given me of DI would have told you to provide clear positive and negative examples of something within about the first full screen of text. I think I looked at three screens’ worth before giving up.
The reason I did not, rightly or wrongly, was because you have to start off doing this by showing how it applies in the most basic context, like in the AthabascaU module.
This results in a very technical analysis of something that initially seems trivial and pointlessly detailed, and unrelated to the amazing-looking results from studies like Project Follow-Through (which, remember, the meta-analysis says are representative).
I remember glazing over that section in the AthabascaU module myself the first time I read it. And several times after that. Only my emotional experience with the Michel Thomas lessons made me keep focusing on it until it clicked. Way later.
Now, many people on LW surely have much quicker intelligences for such things than I do.
But see the last paragraph of this comment from prase, in which he, at least, is having the same ‘this seems trivial and pointlessly detailed’ reaction after reading the AthabascaU module.
Why was he sticking with it? I believe because he had heard my emotional enthusiasm, and wanted to find out if I was just a crank, or if there was actually a rational reason for all that gushing “this thing is important!”
I believe that in the future, when detailed knowledge of DI has become a common thing on LW among people who never read my original post, some of those people will go back and read it, and go, “Huh? Makes perfect sense to me!” making it an excellent case study of how someone can have read Eliezer’s “Expecting Short Inferential Distances”, marked it in their mind as very true and very useful, studied DI theory, and still had to go and run smack into the brick wall, knowing explicitly that that was what they were doing, before truly emotionally understanding that, yes, it actually does apply to them.
Anecdotally, this post interested me in direct instruction; none of yours did. Going back and looking, I finally found (16 paragraphs into the “quick sketch of the basic theory” section, and 7 pages of text into the post) a sentence that hinted at the intriguing description in this post: “This is why I say that a huge part of the basics of DI is ‘guided-induction’ (my term, not used in the field).”
Remember that, inductively, every sentence I read without knowing what I’m reading about or becoming interested lowers my belief that I will eventually find out what I’m reading about and become interested. The “show, don’t tell” maxim in writing helps to defend against results like 7 pages of sharing your enthusiasm before giving any clue as to what distinguishes the subject of your enthusiasm from the closest 100 enthusiasm-gathering subjects.
At this point, I have nothing more detailed to respond to that than, “I am now extremely aware of that, but thank you for telling me again, because the extra repetition couldn’t hurt my chances of remembering to thoroughly apply it in the future.”
Oh no, I know DAMN well I could’ve done WAY better if I’d been less stupid in the first place! Although if I had to communicate with my past self, I think the best thing I could have told him would be just to put a note at the beginning of the original post saying explicitly that it was a draft with many, many problems, but that I was pretty damn sure DI was a super-important topic to bring to the attention of LW, so if anyone would be so super-cool nice as to give me some feedback on how to make it more presentable...
There’s no way I could communicate the things I’ve learned so far to him more effectively than his resulting experience would teach him.
Yeah, no. I can see not providing examples of everything you talked about, and generally not following your own preferred method to the letter. But the picture Misha has given me of DI would have told you to provide clear positive and negative examples of something within about the first full screen of text. I think I looked at three screens’ worth before giving up.
Indeed.
The reason I did not, rightly or wrongly, was because you have to start off doing this by showing how it applies in the most basic context, like in the AthabascaU module.
This results in a very technical analysis of something that initially seems trivial and pointlessly detailed, and unrelated to the amazing-looking results from studies like Project Follow-Through (which, remember, the meta-analysis says are representative).
I remember glazing over that section in the AthabascaU module myself the first time I read it. And several times after that. Only my emotional experience with the Michel Thomas lessons made me keep focusing on it until it clicked. Way later.
Now, many people on LW surely have much quicker intelligences for such things than I do.
But see the last paragraph of this comment from prase, in which he, at least, is having the same ‘this seems trivial and pointlessly detailed’ reaction after reading the AthabascaU module.
Why was he sticking with it? I believe because he had heard my emotional enthusiasm, and wanted to find out if I was just a crank, or if there was actually a rational reason for all that gushing “this thing is important!”
I believe that in the future, when detailed knowledge of DI has become a common thing on LW among people who never read my original post, some of those people will go back and read it, and go, “Huh? Makes perfect sense to me!” making it an excellent case study of how someone can have read Eliezer’s “Expecting Short Inferential Distances”, marked it in their mind as very true and very useful, studied DI theory, and still had to go and run smack into the brick wall, knowing explicitly that that was what they were doing, before truly emotionally understanding that, yes, it actually does apply to them.
Anecdotally, this post interested me in direct instruction; none of yours did. Going back and looking, I finally found (16 paragraphs into the “quick sketch of the basic theory” section, and 7 pages of text into the post) a sentence that hinted at the intriguing description in this post: “This is why I say that a huge part of the basics of DI is ‘guided-induction’ (my term, not used in the field).”
Remember that, inductively, every sentence I read without knowing what I’m reading about or becoming interested lowers my belief that I will eventually find out what I’m reading about and become interested. The “show, don’t tell” maxim in writing helps to defend against results like 7 pages of sharing your enthusiasm before giving any clue as to what distinguishes the subject of your enthusiasm from the closest 100 enthusiasm-gathering subjects.
At this point, I have nothing more detailed to respond to that than, “I am now extremely aware of that, but thank you for telling me again, because the extra repetition couldn’t hurt my chances of remembering to thoroughly apply it in the future.”
Sorry to f5 it, then—I just got the impression you were thinking inferential distance was the main problem.
Oh no, I know DAMN well I could’ve done WAY better if I’d been less stupid in the first place! Although if I had to communicate with my past self, I think the best thing I could have told him would be just to put a note at the beginning of the original post saying explicitly that it was a draft with many, many problems, but that I was pretty damn sure DI was a super-important topic to bring to the attention of LW, so if anyone would be so super-cool nice as to give me some feedback on how to make it more presentable...
There’s no way I could communicate the things I’ve learned so far to him more effectively than his resulting experience would teach him.
Uh, does this seem like an interesting idea?