I’m not sure you’ve described a different mistake than Eliezer has?
Certainly, a student with a sufficiently incomplete understanding of heat conduction is going to have lots of lines of thought that terminate in question marks. The thesis of the post, as I read it, is that we want to be able to recognize when our thoughts terminate in question marks, rather than assuming we’re doing something valid because our words sound like things the professor might say.
Yeah, that’s fair, although it sounds like the student he’s quoting did understand that.
I’m just saying that “guessing the teacher’s password” isn’t usually a fair way to view what’s going in in cases like this. “Building up a concept map of connections between related concepts” is probably more accurate, and that really is a vital part of the learning process, it’s not a bad thing at all.
I’m not sure you’ve described a different mistake than Eliezer has?
Certainly, a student with a sufficiently incomplete understanding of heat conduction is going to have lots of lines of thought that terminate in question marks. The thesis of the post, as I read it, is that we want to be able to recognize when our thoughts terminate in question marks, rather than assuming we’re doing something valid because our words sound like things the professor might say.
Yeah, that’s fair, although it sounds like the student he’s quoting did understand that.
I’m just saying that “guessing the teacher’s password” isn’t usually a fair way to view what’s going in in cases like this. “Building up a concept map of connections between related concepts” is probably more accurate, and that really is a vital part of the learning process, it’s not a bad thing at all.