Am I interpreting you correctly that you are not denying that some skills can only be learned by practicing the skill (rather than by reading about or observing the skill) but are saying that verbal or written instruction is just as effective as an aid to practice as demonstration if done well?
I’m still a bit skeptical about this claim. When I was learning to snowboard for example it was clear that some instructors were better able to verbalize certain key information (keep your weight on your front foot, turn your body first and let the board follow rather than trying to turn the board, etc.) but I don’t think the verbal instructions would have been nearly as effective if they were not accompanied by physical demonstrations.
It’s possible that a sufficiently good instructor could communicate just as effectively through purely verbal instruction but I’m not sure such an instructor exists. The fact that this is a rare skill also seems relevant even if it is possible—there are many more instructors who can be effective if they are allowed to combine verbal instruction with physical demonstrations.
Good points, but keep in mind snowboarding instructors aren’t optimizing the same thing that a rationalist (in their capacity as a rationalist) is optimizing. If you just want to make money, quickly, and churn out good snowboarders, then use the best tools available to you—you have no reason to convert the instruction into words where you don’t have to.
But if you’re approaching this as a rationalist, who wants to open the black box and understand why certain things work, then it is a tremendously useful exercise to try to verbalize it, and identify the most important things people need to know—knowledge that can allow them to leapfrog a few steps in learning, even and especially if they can’t reach the Holy Grail of full transmission of the understanding.
And I’d say (despite the first paragraph in this comment) that it’s a good thing to do anyway. I suspect that people’s inability to explain things stems in large part from a lack of trying—specifically, a lack of trying to understand what mental processes are going on in side of them that allows a skill to work like it does. They fail to imagine what it is like not to have this skill and assume certain things are easy or obvious which really aren’t.
To more directly answer your question, yes, I think verbal instruction, if it understands the epistemic state of the student, can replace a lot of what normally takes practice to learn. There are things you can say that get someone in just the right mindset to bypass a huge number of errors that are normally learned hands-on.
My main point, though, is that people severely overestimate the extent of their knowledge which can’t be articulated, because the incentives for such a self-assessment are very high. Most people would do well to avoid appeals to tacit knowledge, an instead introspect on their knowledge so as to gain a deeper understanding of how it works, labeling knowledge as “tacit” only as a last resort.
It’s possible that a sufficiently good instructor could communicate just as effectively through purely verbal instruction but I’m not sure such an instructor exists.
I would suspect this has more to do with the skill of the student in translating verbal descriptions into motions. You can perfectly understand a series of motions to be executed under various conditions, without having the motor skill to assess the conditions and execute them perfectly in real-time.
Am I interpreting you correctly that you are not denying that some skills can only be learned by practicing the skill (rather than by reading about or observing the skill) but are saying that verbal or written instruction is just as effective as an aid to practice as demonstration if done well?
I’m still a bit skeptical about this claim. When I was learning to snowboard for example it was clear that some instructors were better able to verbalize certain key information (keep your weight on your front foot, turn your body first and let the board follow rather than trying to turn the board, etc.) but I don’t think the verbal instructions would have been nearly as effective if they were not accompanied by physical demonstrations.
It’s possible that a sufficiently good instructor could communicate just as effectively through purely verbal instruction but I’m not sure such an instructor exists. The fact that this is a rare skill also seems relevant even if it is possible—there are many more instructors who can be effective if they are allowed to combine verbal instruction with physical demonstrations.
Good points, but keep in mind snowboarding instructors aren’t optimizing the same thing that a rationalist (in their capacity as a rationalist) is optimizing. If you just want to make money, quickly, and churn out good snowboarders, then use the best tools available to you—you have no reason to convert the instruction into words where you don’t have to.
But if you’re approaching this as a rationalist, who wants to open the black box and understand why certain things work, then it is a tremendously useful exercise to try to verbalize it, and identify the most important things people need to know—knowledge that can allow them to leapfrog a few steps in learning, even and especially if they can’t reach the Holy Grail of full transmission of the understanding.
And I’d say (despite the first paragraph in this comment) that it’s a good thing to do anyway. I suspect that people’s inability to explain things stems in large part from a lack of trying—specifically, a lack of trying to understand what mental processes are going on in side of them that allows a skill to work like it does. They fail to imagine what it is like not to have this skill and assume certain things are easy or obvious which really aren’t.
To more directly answer your question, yes, I think verbal instruction, if it understands the epistemic state of the student, can replace a lot of what normally takes practice to learn. There are things you can say that get someone in just the right mindset to bypass a huge number of errors that are normally learned hands-on.
My main point, though, is that people severely overestimate the extent of their knowledge which can’t be articulated, because the incentives for such a self-assessment are very high. Most people would do well to avoid appeals to tacit knowledge, an instead introspect on their knowledge so as to gain a deeper understanding of how it works, labeling knowledge as “tacit” only as a last resort.
I would suspect this has more to do with the skill of the student in translating verbal descriptions into motions. You can perfectly understand a series of motions to be executed under various conditions, without having the motor skill to assess the conditions and execute them perfectly in real-time.