Have you had any success learning the skill of unseeing?
Are you able to memorize things by using flashcards backwards (looking at the answer before the prompt) nearly as efficiently as using them the usual way?
Are you able to learn a technical concept from worked exercises nearly as well as by trying the exercises before looking at the solutions?
Given a set of brainteasers with solutions, can you accurately predict how many of them you would have been able to solve in 5 minutes if you had not seen the solutions?
A little? I would boldly guess I’m in the top 1% along this dimension, although I have not tested this in any formal way. I’m generally cautious about whether I have hindsight bias, which in itself probably puts me in the top 25% of the population, but of course this is common on LessWrong. Talking with other rationalists, I get the impression that I am uncommonly good at inhabiting previous mental states. To me it seems like the key thing is trying, but, it could just be some inborn capability or something. It helps a lot when you have more explicit models about how you think about specific things, obviously. But I also think there’s a Gendlin’s-focusing-type skill where you move around your felt senses into the previous configuration.
I would guess the flashcard test would be pretty bad.
I would guess the worked exercise test would be better.
I would guess brainteasers would be in the middle.
Very interesting. I would guess that to learn in the presence of spoilers, you’d need not only a good model of how you think, but also a way of updating the way you think according to the model’s recommendations. And I’d guess this is easiest in domains where your object-level thinking is deliberate rather than intuitive, which would explain why the flashcard task would be hardest for you.
When I read about a new math concept, I eventually get the sense that my understanding of it is “fake”, and I get “real” understanding by playing with the concept and getting surprised by its behavior. I assumed the surprise was essential for real understanding, but maybe it’s sufficient to track which thoughts are “real” vs. “fake” and replace the latter with the former.
Yeah, essentially what I’m arguing (poorly) in the OP is that “surprise is necessary for real understanding” is … well, not exactly wrong, but creating some cargo-cult behaviors which are not strictly necessary.
Taking the RL vs imitation idea from the OP, it’s like people have a concept of RL as an important type of learning, but it’s making them think that they have to stub their toe at some point, otherwise they’ll never learn to avoid furniture properly. You don’t necessarily have to personally stub your toe. Trying problems is a pretty good way to test how “fake” your understanding is if you’re unsure. But there are other ways to notice this, and other remedies. It seems to me that people put trial-and-error learning up on a bit of a pedestal when thinking about things like this.
Have you had any success learning the skill of unseeing?
Are you able to memorize things by using flashcards backwards (looking at the answer before the prompt) nearly as efficiently as using them the usual way?
Are you able to learn a technical concept from worked exercises nearly as well as by trying the exercises before looking at the solutions?
Given a set of brainteasers with solutions, can you accurately predict how many of them you would have been able to solve in 5 minutes if you had not seen the solutions?
A little? I would boldly guess I’m in the top 1% along this dimension, although I have not tested this in any formal way. I’m generally cautious about whether I have hindsight bias, which in itself probably puts me in the top 25% of the population, but of course this is common on LessWrong. Talking with other rationalists, I get the impression that I am uncommonly good at inhabiting previous mental states. To me it seems like the key thing is trying, but, it could just be some inborn capability or something. It helps a lot when you have more explicit models about how you think about specific things, obviously. But I also think there’s a Gendlin’s-focusing-type skill where you move around your felt senses into the previous configuration.
I would guess the flashcard test would be pretty bad.
I would guess the worked exercise test would be better.
I would guess brainteasers would be in the middle.
Very interesting. I would guess that to learn in the presence of spoilers, you’d need not only a good model of how you think, but also a way of updating the way you think according to the model’s recommendations. And I’d guess this is easiest in domains where your object-level thinking is deliberate rather than intuitive, which would explain why the flashcard task would be hardest for you.
When I read about a new math concept, I eventually get the sense that my understanding of it is “fake”, and I get “real” understanding by playing with the concept and getting surprised by its behavior. I assumed the surprise was essential for real understanding, but maybe it’s sufficient to track which thoughts are “real” vs. “fake” and replace the latter with the former.
Yeah, essentially what I’m arguing (poorly) in the OP is that “surprise is necessary for real understanding” is … well, not exactly wrong, but creating some cargo-cult behaviors which are not strictly necessary.
Taking the RL vs imitation idea from the OP, it’s like people have a concept of RL as an important type of learning, but it’s making them think that they have to stub their toe at some point, otherwise they’ll never learn to avoid furniture properly. You don’t necessarily have to personally stub your toe. Trying problems is a pretty good way to test how “fake” your understanding is if you’re unsure. But there are other ways to notice this, and other remedies. It seems to me that people put trial-and-error learning up on a bit of a pedestal when thinking about things like this.