I generally like this sort of thing, as much for building community as anything else, and also for learning by teaching, but counterpoint: I have a dance teacher who runs a group dance lesson every week, and he goes out of his way to tell us not to teach each other in this way (e.g. he generally discourages us from giving each other feedback except in specific feedback exercises). I find it annoying, but I also see where he’s coming from: my sense is that he thinks we’ll give each other bad advice and reinforce bad habits, and he thinks he can do better by pointing out our bad habits himself.
A relevant feature of this domain is that it’s hard to tell when you’re dancing poorly in many ways—you might be doing flashy stuff that looks cool but trains bad habits that will screw you down the road—and part of the skill my teacher has is that he’s much better at diagnosing this sort of thing than we are. This is less relevant in domains with clearer and tighter feedback loops, although even in e.g. programming people have subtle opinions about style and how bad style can screw you down the road.
One way to say it is that there’s a separate ladder for ability to teach the thing. You can get to e.g. the postrigorous stage in mathematics and still be bad at teaching, which requires different skills, like the ability to model students and a sense of what their most likely struggles are with various topics.
[Note: I’m not sure if this was your concern—let me know if what I write below seems off the mark.]
The most accurate belief is rarely the best advice to give; there is a reason why these corrections tend to happen in a certain order. People holding the naive view need to hear the first correction, those who overcompensated need to hear the second correction. The technically most accurate view is the one that the fewest people need to hear.
I invoke this pattern to forestall a useless conversation about whose advice is objectively best.
In fact, I think it would be a good practice to always before giving advice, do your best to trace back to the naive view and count the reversals, and inform your reader on which level you are advising. (This is surprisingly doable if you bother to do it.)
In fact, I think it would be a good practice to always before giving advice, do your best to trace back to the naive view and count the reversals, and inform your reader on which level you are advising. (This is surprisingly doable if you bother to do it.)
I generally like this sort of thing, as much for building community as anything else, and also for learning by teaching, but counterpoint: I have a dance teacher who runs a group dance lesson every week, and he goes out of his way to tell us not to teach each other in this way (e.g. he generally discourages us from giving each other feedback except in specific feedback exercises). I find it annoying, but I also see where he’s coming from: my sense is that he thinks we’ll give each other bad advice and reinforce bad habits, and he thinks he can do better by pointing out our bad habits himself.
A relevant feature of this domain is that it’s hard to tell when you’re dancing poorly in many ways—you might be doing flashy stuff that looks cool but trains bad habits that will screw you down the road—and part of the skill my teacher has is that he’s much better at diagnosing this sort of thing than we are. This is less relevant in domains with clearer and tighter feedback loops, although even in e.g. programming people have subtle opinions about style and how bad style can screw you down the road.
One way to say it is that there’s a separate ladder for ability to teach the thing. You can get to e.g. the postrigorous stage in mathematics and still be bad at teaching, which requires different skills, like the ability to model students and a sense of what their most likely struggles are with various topics.
Here we go: the pattern of this conversation is “first correction, second correction, accurate belief” (see growth triplets).
Naive view: “learn from masters”
The OP is the first correction: “learn from people just above you”
Your comment is the second correction: “there are cases where teacher’s advice is better quality”
The accurate belief takes all of this into account: “it’s best learn from multiple people in a way that balances wisdom against accessibility”
I worry that some kind of fallacy of grey is going on here which loses despite being technically more accurate.
[Note: I’m not sure if this was your concern—let me know if what I write below seems off the mark.]
The most accurate belief is rarely the best advice to give; there is a reason why these corrections tend to happen in a certain order. People holding the naive view need to hear the first correction, those who overcompensated need to hear the second correction. The technically most accurate view is the one that the fewest people need to hear.
I invoke this pattern to forestall a useless conversation about whose advice is objectively best.
In fact, I think it would be a good practice to always before giving advice, do your best to trace back to the naive view and count the reversals, and inform your reader on which level you are advising. (This is surprisingly doable if you bother to do it.)
I quite like this.