“Learn from the best” vs “Don’t watch what others do”
(variations “steal the best ideas” “don’t reinvent the wheel”, “do it yourself” “be original”)
I’ve seen this conflict pop up both in the context of doing original research, and in making good art. On the art side, I’ve seen people warn me against watching too much magic, because then you start to sound and act just like everyone else.
Limits of Imagination
You have ideas about what is and isn’t possible. Sometimes watching other people is awesome, because they boost you imagination by expanding what you thought was possible. It seems like the limiting move here is to let other people defineyour sense of possibility, rather than augment it. Maybe a catch phrase might be “Always let people tell you what is possible. Don’t let them tell you what is impossible.”
How to actually learn from others
One important dynamic is different ways you can acquire knowledge, skill, style. People seem to agree that if you discover a proof yourself, write your own code, create your own script, it sticks a lot more than if you just do/use what someone else tells you. People warning against “steal from the best” could be worried about you getting the trappings of an idea but not the actually useful stuff (don’t cargo cult). People warning against “do it yourself” could be worried about you not being able to derive chemistry from scratch. David Chapman describes a nice interplay in upgrade your cargo cult for the win.
There’s a problem solving move like “look directly at what the problem is and dwell on it” (similar to hold off on proposing solutions). In my mind I stereotype experts and more well read people to be likely to propose solutions right away. An outsider has no frame for the problem, and thus is forced to think directly about it. Now that I think about it, it seems that the “look at the problem” move doesn’t have to be connected to your experience. You could put intentional effort into training this while still learning how people in a given field typically attack problems.
“Learn from the best” vs “Don’t watch what others do”
(variations “steal the best ideas” “don’t reinvent the wheel”, “do it yourself” “be original”)
I’ve seen this conflict pop up both in the context of doing original research, and in making good art. On the art side, I’ve seen people warn me against watching too much magic, because then you start to sound and act just like everyone else.
Limits of Imagination
You have ideas about what is and isn’t possible. Sometimes watching other people is awesome, because they boost you imagination by expanding what you thought was possible. It seems like the limiting move here is to let other people define your sense of possibility, rather than augment it. Maybe a catch phrase might be “Always let people tell you what is possible. Don’t let them tell you what is impossible.”
How to actually learn from others
One important dynamic is different ways you can acquire knowledge, skill, style. People seem to agree that if you discover a proof yourself, write your own code, create your own script, it sticks a lot more than if you just do/use what someone else tells you. People warning against “steal from the best” could be worried about you getting the trappings of an idea but not the actually useful stuff (don’t cargo cult). People warning against “do it yourself” could be worried about you not being able to derive chemistry from scratch. David Chapman describes a nice interplay in upgrade your cargo cult for the win.
There’s a problem solving move like “look directly at what the problem is and dwell on it” (similar to hold off on proposing solutions). In my mind I stereotype experts and more well read people to be likely to propose solutions right away. An outsider has no frame for the problem, and thus is forced to think directly about it. Now that I think about it, it seems that the “look at the problem” move doesn’t have to be connected to your experience. You could put intentional effort into training this while still learning how people in a given field typically attack problems.