Personally I suspect that the bathwater only really gets dirty when you are teaching something that is essentially useless in modern society, like martial arts or literary criticism. Most people who study, say, engineering don’t do so in the hopes of becoming teachers of engineering.
Now you might say that this is because teachers of engineering are expected to also do research, but firstly that doesn’t explain the disparity between fields, and secondly, I don’t think that the example of tertiary education is one to aspire to in this way. I seem to recall you are an autodidact, so you may not have the same trained gut reaction I do, but I have seen too many people who did not have the skill of teaching but were good researchers teaching horribly, and I remember one heartbreaking example of an excellent teacher denied tenure because the administrators felt his research was not up to snuff too well, to want to optimize rationality teachers on any basis other than their ability to teach rationality.
Martial arts seem to get an unreasonably bad rep on LW. It’s at least as useful as painting or writing fiction, and I consider those to be fine personal development endeavours.
While I think martial arts are pretty useful by hobby standards (although their usefulness is broad enough that they might not be optimal for specialists in several fields), several historical and cultural factors in their practice have combined to create an unusually fertile environment for certain kinds of irrationality.
First, they’re hard to verify: what works in point sparring might not work in full-contact sparring, and neither one builds quite the same skillset that’s useful for, say, security work, or for street-level self-defense, or for warfare. It’s difficult to model most of the final applications, both because they entail an unacceptably high risk of serious injury in training and because they involve psychological factors that don’t generally kick in on the mat.
Second, they’re all facets of a field that’s too broad to master in its entirety in a human lifetime. A serious amateur student can, over several years, develop a good working knowledge of grappling, or of aikido-style body dynamics, or empty-hand striking, or one or two weapons. The same student cannot build all of the above up to an acceptable level of competence: even becoming sort of okay at the entire spectrum of combat is a full-time job. (Many martial arts claim to cover all aspects of fighting, but they’re wrong.)
Despite this, though, almost every martial art claims to do the best job of teaching practical fighting for some value of “practical”, and every martial art takes a lot of pride in its techniques. As a consequence, there’s a lot of posturing going on between nearly incommensurate systems. There have been various attempts at comparing them anyway (MMA is the most popular modern framework): they’re better than nothing, but in practice usually come out too context-dependent to be very useful from a research perspective.
On top of that, there’s a tradition of secrecy, especially in older systems (koryu, in Japanese martial arts parlance). Until well after WWII, it was uncommon for any system to open its doors to ethnic outsiders, often even to familial outsiders. Until the Eighties it was uncommon for systems to welcome cross-training in their students. Many still require instructors to have trained in only the system they teach. This is intended to prevent memetic cross-contamination but in practice serves to foster the wide range of biases that come with isolation and hierarchy: you can make almost anything work on your own students, as Eliezer’s memorable example about ki powers demonstrates. (If you’re feeling uncharitable, you could probably make an analogy here to the common cultic practice of isolation.)
Finally, a lot of selection pressure’s eased off the martial arts in the modern era. During the Sengoku era, for example, Japanese martial arts were clannish and highly secretive, but it didn’t matter too much: two hundred years of warfare made it very clear which taught viable techniques, if only by extinguishing poorer schools. Most other martial cultures were in a position to gain similar feedback, if less intensely. In the 20th century, though, martial arts grew more or less disconnected from martial applications: most militaries still teach simplified systems, but martial arts skill rarely decides engagements, and when it does it’s in a narrower range of situations. Same goes for all the civilian jobs where martial arts are useful: there’s feedback, but it’s narrow, uncommon, and hyperspecialized.
I think there are ways around all of these problems, but no arts that I know of have done a very good job of engaging them systematically (though at least the more modern intersectional martial arts are trying—JKD comes to mind). This actually wouldn’t be a bad exercise in large-scale instrumental optimization, except that it requires a pool of talent that at present doesn’t exist in any organized way.
(Disclaimer: as is probably obvious by now, I am a martial artist.)
You could say much the same about painting/dancing/cooking/writing: There are many different sub-arts; it’s hard to master all of them; practitioners can become unduly wedded to a single style; there are examples of styles that have “gone bonkers”; there are many factors in place that hurt the rationality of practitioners.
These are all valid concerns, but I don’t think they’re particularly problematic within martial arts in comparison to other hobbies.
You could say point 2 about those, but points 1 and 3 stand.
If you are half-way decent at painting/dancing/cooking/writing and think you’re pretty good, it is unlikely to get your face stove in the first time you try it seriously. This leads to your getting feedback and improving. You can watch serious, nothing-held-back demonstrations as public performances (or to take home and study, in the case of writing) for a nominal fee.
Really? I’ve always thought the opposite; that there’s a common sense on this site that martial arts are a discipline worthy of taking seriously and investing far more attention in than I would have thought they merited with respect to their applications to rationality. I may be very interested in martial arts, but in most of my social outlets I don’t have nearly as much of a sense of it being a shared interest.
Painting and writing fiction produce items that can then be enjoyed by many other people who are neither writers nor painters. Martial arts produces almost nothing, aside from an occasional sports event.
Personally I suspect that the bathwater only really gets dirty when you are teaching something that is essentially useless in modern society, like martial arts or literary criticism. Most people who study, say, engineering don’t do so in the hopes of becoming teachers of engineering.
Fair point. But this depends on things starting out healthy so that they stay healthy.
Personally I suspect that the bathwater only really gets dirty when you are teaching something that is essentially useless in modern society, like martial arts or literary criticism. Most people who study, say, engineering don’t do so in the hopes of becoming teachers of engineering.
Now you might say that this is because teachers of engineering are expected to also do research, but firstly that doesn’t explain the disparity between fields, and secondly, I don’t think that the example of tertiary education is one to aspire to in this way. I seem to recall you are an autodidact, so you may not have the same trained gut reaction I do, but I have seen too many people who did not have the skill of teaching but were good researchers teaching horribly, and I remember one heartbreaking example of an excellent teacher denied tenure because the administrators felt his research was not up to snuff too well, to want to optimize rationality teachers on any basis other than their ability to teach rationality.
Martial arts seem to get an unreasonably bad rep on LW. It’s at least as useful as painting or writing fiction, and I consider those to be fine personal development endeavours.
While I think martial arts are pretty useful by hobby standards (although their usefulness is broad enough that they might not be optimal for specialists in several fields), several historical and cultural factors in their practice have combined to create an unusually fertile environment for certain kinds of irrationality.
First, they’re hard to verify: what works in point sparring might not work in full-contact sparring, and neither one builds quite the same skillset that’s useful for, say, security work, or for street-level self-defense, or for warfare. It’s difficult to model most of the final applications, both because they entail an unacceptably high risk of serious injury in training and because they involve psychological factors that don’t generally kick in on the mat.
Second, they’re all facets of a field that’s too broad to master in its entirety in a human lifetime. A serious amateur student can, over several years, develop a good working knowledge of grappling, or of aikido-style body dynamics, or empty-hand striking, or one or two weapons. The same student cannot build all of the above up to an acceptable level of competence: even becoming sort of okay at the entire spectrum of combat is a full-time job. (Many martial arts claim to cover all aspects of fighting, but they’re wrong.)
Despite this, though, almost every martial art claims to do the best job of teaching practical fighting for some value of “practical”, and every martial art takes a lot of pride in its techniques. As a consequence, there’s a lot of posturing going on between nearly incommensurate systems. There have been various attempts at comparing them anyway (MMA is the most popular modern framework): they’re better than nothing, but in practice usually come out too context-dependent to be very useful from a research perspective.
On top of that, there’s a tradition of secrecy, especially in older systems (koryu, in Japanese martial arts parlance). Until well after WWII, it was uncommon for any system to open its doors to ethnic outsiders, often even to familial outsiders. Until the Eighties it was uncommon for systems to welcome cross-training in their students. Many still require instructors to have trained in only the system they teach. This is intended to prevent memetic cross-contamination but in practice serves to foster the wide range of biases that come with isolation and hierarchy: you can make almost anything work on your own students, as Eliezer’s memorable example about ki powers demonstrates. (If you’re feeling uncharitable, you could probably make an analogy here to the common cultic practice of isolation.)
Finally, a lot of selection pressure’s eased off the martial arts in the modern era. During the Sengoku era, for example, Japanese martial arts were clannish and highly secretive, but it didn’t matter too much: two hundred years of warfare made it very clear which taught viable techniques, if only by extinguishing poorer schools. Most other martial cultures were in a position to gain similar feedback, if less intensely. In the 20th century, though, martial arts grew more or less disconnected from martial applications: most militaries still teach simplified systems, but martial arts skill rarely decides engagements, and when it does it’s in a narrower range of situations. Same goes for all the civilian jobs where martial arts are useful: there’s feedback, but it’s narrow, uncommon, and hyperspecialized.
I think there are ways around all of these problems, but no arts that I know of have done a very good job of engaging them systematically (though at least the more modern intersectional martial arts are trying—JKD comes to mind). This actually wouldn’t be a bad exercise in large-scale instrumental optimization, except that it requires a pool of talent that at present doesn’t exist in any organized way.
(Disclaimer: as is probably obvious by now, I am a martial artist.)
Thanks for a thoughtful reply!
You could say much the same about painting/dancing/cooking/writing: There are many different sub-arts; it’s hard to master all of them; practitioners can become unduly wedded to a single style; there are examples of styles that have “gone bonkers”; there are many factors in place that hurt the rationality of practitioners.
These are all valid concerns, but I don’t think they’re particularly problematic within martial arts in comparison to other hobbies.
You could say point 2 about those, but points 1 and 3 stand.
If you are half-way decent at painting/dancing/cooking/writing and think you’re pretty good, it is unlikely to get your face stove in the first time you try it seriously. This leads to your getting feedback and improving. You can watch serious, nothing-held-back demonstrations as public performances (or to take home and study, in the case of writing) for a nominal fee.
Really? I’ve always thought the opposite; that there’s a common sense on this site that martial arts are a discipline worthy of taking seriously and investing far more attention in than I would have thought they merited with respect to their applications to rationality. I may be very interested in martial arts, but in most of my social outlets I don’t have nearly as much of a sense of it being a shared interest.
Painting and writing fiction produce items that can then be enjoyed by many other people who are neither writers nor painters. Martial arts produces almost nothing, aside from an occasional sports event.
Fair point. But this depends on things starting out healthy so that they stay healthy.