Although you were focusing on learning skills, your language example made me think of social ramifications, and I wanted to say that I call things like this ‘preprocessing’ more generally. It’s sort of like a mental version of Crazy-Prepared. I think of writing as a form of it, and it’s one reason I’m glad that most LW users are very far from me in meatspace. I can’t imagine having to engage in person on a level that I sometimes must here. I think that there’s an experiential component and an innate component, like with most things, and Wei_Dai has brought up this difference in passing:
While I look forward to talking to Eliezer and you, I do have a concern, namely that I find Eliezer to be much better (either more natively talented, or more practiced, probably both) than I am at making arguments in real time, while I tend to be better able to hold my own in offline formats like email/blog discussions where I can take my time to figure out what points I want to make. So keep that in mind if the chat ends up being really one-sided.
Some people seem to be able to perform what I consider very complex tasks on a merely perceptual level, and I don’t feel like one of these people, so it really helps to do a bit of System 2 planning before situations where others could just go with the flow. I also find that it’s a way to make it easier to have more confidence and attention in social situations; you’re not worrying about non-social details.
Although you were focusing on learning skills, your language example made me think of social ramifications, and I wanted to say that I call things like this ‘preprocessing’ more generally. It’s sort of like a mental version of Crazy-Prepared. I think of writing as a form of it, and it’s one reason I’m glad that most LW users are very far from me in meatspace. I can’t imagine having to engage in person on a level that I sometimes must here. I think that there’s an experiential component and an innate component, like with most things, and Wei_Dai has brought up this difference in passing:
Some people seem to be able to perform what I consider very complex tasks on a merely perceptual level, and I don’t feel like one of these people, so it really helps to do a bit of System 2 planning before situations where others could just go with the flow. I also find that it’s a way to make it easier to have more confidence and attention in social situations; you’re not worrying about non-social details.