First, saturate by getting a diverse set of instructions from
different sources. Then, distill by identifying what all or
most of them have in common.
Distillation may be relatively simple for recipes, but in general it could be extremely difficult. Effectively having to come up with either a common language for all the ways of conceptualising the subject matter, or some sort of universal translation mechanism, which are notoriously difficult types of tasks.
Or perhaps not. Maybe you don’t need a perfect means of distillation, just something rough but useful. It’s hard to know just from recipes example.
(when I say ‘some sort of universal translation mechanism’ what i mean is, something that applies to all the different sets of instructions for performing that task, not something that applies to any instructions for any possible task)
This may be another situation in which background knowledge is important. Let’s take another example besides food; say I’m learning to play the piano. Trying out several different methods could trip me up if one relies on solfège, one relies on note letter names, two use staff notation (one starting the introductory lesson in treble clef and one in bass), and one does everything by showing pictures of a pianist’s hands on the keyboard. It would be important to know how all of those ways of representing notes correspond to each other, so they can be interpreted in whatever way is most accessible. That, however, is propositional knowledge, much easier to come by.
Distillation may be relatively simple for recipes, but in general it could be extremely difficult. Effectively having to come up with either a common language for all the ways of conceptualising the subject matter, or some sort of universal translation mechanism, which are notoriously difficult types of tasks.
Or perhaps not. Maybe you don’t need a perfect means of distillation, just something rough but useful. It’s hard to know just from recipes example.
(when I say ‘some sort of universal translation mechanism’ what i mean is, something that applies to all the different sets of instructions for performing that task, not something that applies to any instructions for any possible task)
This may be another situation in which background knowledge is important. Let’s take another example besides food; say I’m learning to play the piano. Trying out several different methods could trip me up if one relies on solfège, one relies on note letter names, two use staff notation (one starting the introductory lesson in treble clef and one in bass), and one does everything by showing pictures of a pianist’s hands on the keyboard. It would be important to know how all of those ways of representing notes correspond to each other, so they can be interpreted in whatever way is most accessible. That, however, is propositional knowledge, much easier to come by.