I have concluded over the last year that mentorship is extremely important for learning to do good conceptual reasoning.* Someone who’s sufficiently good at conceptual reasoning themselves can give rapid feedback on the specific mistakes you’re making (and often the reasons why you’re making them); also, skill at this varies by orders of magnitude.
Basically, it’s the classic finding that Nobel prizewinners did their PhDs under former prizewinners at wildly disproportionate rates, applied to a domain where success is much less legible.
* Context: my rough estimate is that I’ve both given and received more mentorship about doing good conceptual reasoning over the last year than the rest of my life combined.
I have concluded over the last year that mentorship is extremely important for learning to do good conceptual reasoning.* Someone who’s sufficiently good at conceptual reasoning themselves can give rapid feedback on the specific mistakes you’re making (and often the reasons why you’re making them); also, skill at this varies by orders of magnitude.
Basically, it’s the classic finding that Nobel prizewinners did their PhDs under former prizewinners at wildly disproportionate rates, applied to a domain where success is much less legible.
* Context: my rough estimate is that I’ve both given and received more mentorship about doing good conceptual reasoning over the last year than the rest of my life combined.