[MUD-Dev] Learning

[Todd Lair]

[On 06/01/97 Adam Wiggins <nightfall at inficad.com> said]

>> In that case perhaps juggling is a wrong example. I still belief you can
>> learn only so much of something by just doing it. You make far better,
>> and bigger, progress when you have somebody around explaining how to do
>> it (and why, and showing you).

>I totally agree with the second part of this statement, but I still have
>a pretty major problem with the first.
>Almost everything I 'know' how to do is entirely self-taught.  This
>includes programming, various muscial instruments (primary being
>drumkit), juggling, drawing, and most all the sports I'm descent at
>(crosscountry and downhill skiing, volleyball, raquetball).
>I don't want to say that I didn't have any help.  In most cases I got
>pointers from friends or read books on the subject; but in almost all
>cases, I had no one I'd refer to as my teacher.  I just started doing
>something, and eventually got good at it.  Instruction is valuable - it
>can get you thinking in ways that you might not of yourself - but the
>thought that you just can't learn something past a certain point without
>having someone take your hand and guide you through it step by step is
>pretty far off base, at least by my experience.  Maybe brain surgery or
>something - but as I said, all of our skills are much simpler than that,
>so I don't consider this an issue.

I think the point that's trying to get made is you are unable to learn
anything from simply doing it.  You both seem to be saying the same thing
but from different angles.

If I locked a fully developed person with reasonable coordination in a
room with three balls, they will not be able to juggle those balls with
any amount proficiency without any outside intervention.  In fact, a clean
subject--someone who knows nothing of juggling at all--could probably
spend a lifetime in that room without figuring it out.

We as a race progress very slowly even with massive amounts of exposure,
teaching, books, socializing.. and such.  It took us practically *forever*
before we figured out that we could stay in one place, put a seed in a
ground, and have something to eat if we cared for what came of it.   Most
of us simply take what others have done and add small, almost
insignificant, advances to it.  The brilliant few of us make somewhat
significant advances based on other's work.

We need books, we need others, we need teachers.  No one has taught
themselves jack.


-------------------------------------------------
tlair at mailzone.com
-------------------------------------------------