I’m still not convinced that drawing has any real relevance to rationality. To me drawing seems to mostly involve unconscious motor learning that does not generalize much to other domains. For most rationality related purposes I don’t see any major difference from other motor-based, practice-requiring skills such as juggling, playing golf, playing an instrument or patting-your-head-while-rubbing-your-stomach.
Sure, in some sense you will have to “see reality, as it truly is”, and sure “your model of reality will be flawed, and you’ll need to fix it”, but I think this is in a sense that is only trivially analogous to what we usually talk about when we talk rationality, and I think the same statements could be made about the other motor skills mentioned above. When you practice these kinds of skills some parts of your brain/body do develop better models of reality, but it doesn’t seem like those parts are particularly conscious or that what these parts have learned will benefit other parts much.
I don’t know much about the neuroscience of learning, but my own experience with these kinds of skills is that you simply get better by repeated practice and that the underlying basis for the improvement is highly unconscious and hidden away somewhere in the structure of whatever neural systems deal with these kind of motor activities. Your muscle memory is developing a better model of reality, but your muscle memory is probably very disconnected from whatever parts of your brain deal with rationality in the traditional LW sense (which of course is not necessarily conscious). Placing drawing in the same bucket as “grokking quantum physics or abandoning a religion” seems very far-fetched to me. My guess is that the underlying cognitive structures are very different.
I edited the article to explain what I meant a little better, and sound a little less grandiose. (I’m not entirely sure it’s better this way—I have the old article saved, anyone who read both articles, let me know what you think of the difference). I think I may have implied a particular kind of “relevance” that I didn’t intend to. Let me know if you still disagree. Also let me know if the disagreement stems from me misusing the word rationality, or from you disbelieving that drawing will have the effect that I say it will.
I think it’s very easy to learn to draw without having the skills generalize, but I do think certain skills can generalize if you approach them in a certain way. (I’m trying to work out a testable prediction that would settle this, but I don’t think we have very good tests that measure the relevant things in the first place)
I’m still not convinced that drawing has any real relevance to rationality. To me drawing seems to mostly involve unconscious motor learning that does not generalize much to other domains. For most rationality related purposes I don’t see any major difference from other motor-based, practice-requiring skills such as juggling, playing golf, playing an instrument or patting-your-head-while-rubbing-your-stomach.
Sure, in some sense you will have to “see reality, as it truly is”, and sure “your model of reality will be flawed, and you’ll need to fix it”, but I think this is in a sense that is only trivially analogous to what we usually talk about when we talk rationality, and I think the same statements could be made about the other motor skills mentioned above. When you practice these kinds of skills some parts of your brain/body do develop better models of reality, but it doesn’t seem like those parts are particularly conscious or that what these parts have learned will benefit other parts much.
I don’t know much about the neuroscience of learning, but my own experience with these kinds of skills is that you simply get better by repeated practice and that the underlying basis for the improvement is highly unconscious and hidden away somewhere in the structure of whatever neural systems deal with these kind of motor activities. Your muscle memory is developing a better model of reality, but your muscle memory is probably very disconnected from whatever parts of your brain deal with rationality in the traditional LW sense (which of course is not necessarily conscious). Placing drawing in the same bucket as “grokking quantum physics or abandoning a religion” seems very far-fetched to me. My guess is that the underlying cognitive structures are very different.
I edited the article to explain what I meant a little better, and sound a little less grandiose. (I’m not entirely sure it’s better this way—I have the old article saved, anyone who read both articles, let me know what you think of the difference). I think I may have implied a particular kind of “relevance” that I didn’t intend to. Let me know if you still disagree. Also let me know if the disagreement stems from me misusing the word rationality, or from you disbelieving that drawing will have the effect that I say it will.
I think it’s very easy to learn to draw without having the skills generalize, but I do think certain skills can generalize if you approach them in a certain way. (I’m trying to work out a testable prediction that would settle this, but I don’t think we have very good tests that measure the relevant things in the first place)