I think you overestimate the ease it is to “jump to the meta-level” (ie, you want to learn about something, so you jump to learning how to learn) to people who were not pointed to do it—by reading Gödel, Escher, Bach, some of LW or anything like that. Someone genuinely curious about “what actually happened in ancient Rome” will read lots of books about it, will go to visit the ruins, go to museums, … but won’t spontaneously start asking about “decision theory” or about “what is the general process to resolve dispute between scholars ?” if not given strong hints that they should do it.
I don’t think I’m overestimating the ease; it’s difficult. And, yes, it generally requires some sort of outside input.
In practice, though, the reason people don’t do this isn’t because they couldn’t do it with, say, a year or four of consistent asking, receiving answers, evaluating those answers for whether they actually resolve their genuine curiosity, discarding those answers which don’t, and repeating the process.
The reason they don’t do it is because they settle for one of the answers they get early on, and stop asking.
I think you overestimate the ease it is to “jump to the meta-level” (ie, you want to learn about something, so you jump to learning how to learn) to people who were not pointed to do it—by reading Gödel, Escher, Bach, some of LW or anything like that. Someone genuinely curious about “what actually happened in ancient Rome” will read lots of books about it, will go to visit the ruins, go to museums, … but won’t spontaneously start asking about “decision theory” or about “what is the general process to resolve dispute between scholars ?” if not given strong hints that they should do it.
I don’t think I’m overestimating the ease; it’s difficult. And, yes, it generally requires some sort of outside input.
In practice, though, the reason people don’t do this isn’t because they couldn’t do it with, say, a year or four of consistent asking, receiving answers, evaluating those answers for whether they actually resolve their genuine curiosity, discarding those answers which don’t, and repeating the process.
The reason they don’t do it is because they settle for one of the answers they get early on, and stop asking.