While there _is_ a technique taboo and I agree with your general observations, I think that there are a number of things going on here simultaneously that boil down to more than just a taboo on the idea that skill is a trainable attribute. For instance:
1. Many activities that appear to have taboos against training skills are just reflective of people who who are _optimizing something else_. In particular, enjoyment.
But when traditional colleges supply the labor force for a professional trade outside of academia, that’s when discussion of skill (especially rote learning) becomes taboo[1]. College students learn everything about their trade except how to do it. Then we maintain a collective silence concerning technique.
This collective skill silence isn’t necessarily a taboo—it might just be that the kind of people who choose their fields for non-practical reasons (ie not to develop professional skills) don’t really care about development their own skills that much. Instead of optimizing productive capabilities (ie skills), they might be trying to optimize consumptive capabilities (ie the ability to enjoy English literature or appreciate art or what-have-you). To elaborate:
An English major teaches you how to talk about novels, not how to write one.
This is true but, if you want to learn how to write, don’t pick the major that helps you appreciate English literature. Instead, pick the major that helps you write. If you want to write a novel (fictional), writing majors[1] are a good move—one of my friends has done this and has reams of pages of her own work. If you want to write a novel (non-fictional), you might want to try majoring directly in something like history since that directly gives you experience writing about history. On the other hand, if you want to increase your capacity to appreciate English literature, be an English major.
“Getting better at drawing” is off-topic at my weekly local drawing club too. I’ve literally never heard it discussed.
As someone who briefly ran at art club back in the day, consider that the people showing up actually might not care that much about being good at drawing; they might just enjoy it and care about the activity.
2. In competitive contexts, people don’t want to optimize their skills because it turns the situation into a race-to-the-bottom. If you’re at work and one person is actively trying to upskill, that person is putting pressure on you to do something you’d prefer not to in order to stay competitive. An extreme example of this is anti-social punishment (punishing people for being altruistic because it might create a norm where you have to be more altruistic).
This is a taboo against upskilling but it’s not about the people at the top trying to maintain a social order; it’s the people at the bottom trying to make sure they have the slack to stay where they are without losing their place.
3. In case there are many people are optimizing for enjoyment rather than upskilling (meditation is a good example of this) and there is some intructor managing the activity, the instructor is not under much pressure to have strong expertise. As long as instructors are good enough to lead the activity and ensure that people optimizing enjoyment find it valuable, they’ve done their job. Everyone goes home at the end of the day.
However, asking an instructor for advice on how to upskill puts responsibility onto the instructor.
If the instructor gives you bad advice and you implement it with intent to upskill, the instructor has harmed you. Proper form prevents poor performance but improper form promotes it.
If the instructor cannot give you good advice, you have harmed the instructor’s reputation. In this case, the instructor deserves that reputation hit but it’s still an incentive for them to oppose up-skilling.
The kind of dynamic between upskillers and enjoyment-optimizers also creates interesting situations. For instance, when I used to do Tae Kwon Do, there was a core of people dedicated to the practice (and would give you as much feedback and practice opportunities as you wanted) and a larger cloud of people just there to get their weekly exercise (and didn’t care very much about upskilling). Going from one group to the other dramatically changes the conversation about skill.
While there _is_ a technique taboo and I agree with your general observations, I think that there are a number of things going on here simultaneously that boil down to more than just a taboo on the idea that skill is a trainable attribute. For instance:
1. Many activities that appear to have taboos against training skills are just reflective of people who who are _optimizing something else_. In particular, enjoyment.
This collective skill silence isn’t necessarily a taboo—it might just be that the kind of people who choose their fields for non-practical reasons (ie not to develop professional skills) don’t really care about development their own skills that much. Instead of optimizing productive capabilities (ie skills), they might be trying to optimize consumptive capabilities (ie the ability to enjoy English literature or appreciate art or what-have-you). To elaborate:
This is true but, if you want to learn how to write, don’t pick the major that helps you appreciate English literature. Instead, pick the major that helps you write. If you want to write a novel (fictional), writing majors[1] are a good move—one of my friends has done this and has reams of pages of her own work. If you want to write a novel (non-fictional), you might want to try majoring directly in something like history since that directly gives you experience writing about history. On the other hand, if you want to increase your capacity to appreciate English literature, be an English major.
As someone who briefly ran at art club back in the day, consider that the people showing up actually might not care that much about being good at drawing; they might just enjoy it and care about the activity.
2. In competitive contexts, people don’t want to optimize their skills because it turns the situation into a race-to-the-bottom. If you’re at work and one person is actively trying to upskill, that person is putting pressure on you to do something you’d prefer not to in order to stay competitive. An extreme example of this is anti-social punishment (punishing people for being altruistic because it might create a norm where you have to be more altruistic).
This is a taboo against upskilling but it’s not about the people at the top trying to maintain a social order; it’s the people at the bottom trying to make sure they have the slack to stay where they are without losing their place.
3. In case there are many people are optimizing for enjoyment rather than upskilling (meditation is a good example of this) and there is some intructor managing the activity, the instructor is not under much pressure to have strong expertise. As long as instructors are good enough to lead the activity and ensure that people optimizing enjoyment find it valuable, they’ve done their job. Everyone goes home at the end of the day.
However, asking an instructor for advice on how to upskill puts responsibility onto the instructor.
If the instructor gives you bad advice and you implement it with intent to upskill, the instructor has harmed you. Proper form prevents poor performance but improper form promotes it.
If the instructor cannot give you good advice, you have harmed the instructor’s reputation. In this case, the instructor deserves that reputation hit but it’s still an incentive for them to oppose up-skilling.
The kind of dynamic between upskillers and enjoyment-optimizers also creates interesting situations. For instance, when I used to do Tae Kwon Do, there was a core of people dedicated to the practice (and would give you as much feedback and practice opportunities as you wanted) and a larger cloud of people just there to get their weekly exercise (and didn’t care very much about upskilling). Going from one group to the other dramatically changes the conversation about skill.