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<h1 id="post-title">Techniques - Neuroscience</h1>
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<p><strong>Entry question</strong>: Why do we keep falling into the Technique Trap? Why don’t we just guide ourselves by empirical evidence?</p>
<hr />
<p><strong>Raw Notes</strong></p>
<h2 id="technique-is-in-your-head">Technique is in your head</h2>
<p>What is a technique? It seems like it is just a plan with a bunch of actions.</p>
<p>However, it is actually a bunch of circuits in your head that allow you to produce the right response in the appropriate situations. There is no such thing as a technique itself. There are a bunch of actions that will increase performance and if you have build up circuits the right way in your brain, you will be able to do those actions more correctly.</p>
<p>Like, playing the keyboard. The actions are a bunch of keypresses at the right moments, as dictated by the song. As a beginner, you might be able to press a few keys, but probably at the wrong moments. As you get better - as you build up the circuits in your head - you will be able to hit more of the right keys at the right moments.</p>
<p>There is no such thing as a “perfect” keyboard-playing technique. Your performance is determined by the keys (actually, by how good the music sounds to listeners) and the better your performance, the more you are said to have learnt that “technique”.</p>
<p>But, what about the books on keyboard-playing? Or the videos about it? Or the one-on-one coaching? They aren’t the techniques themselves. They are simply things that <em>help</em> you build up the circuits that will increase your performance.</p>
<p>All the books, blog posts, videos, and demonstrations are just aids to make you develop the circuits better. Reading a book on the topic of keyboard-playing may do nothing to increase your keyboard-playing performance.</p>
<p>It is by taking the right actions and thinking the right thoughts that we build up our neural circuits (a bit of an oversimplification, but essentially right, I think).</p>
<p>The books and blogs and stuff help us take the right actions. They might describe the kinds of actions that people have found helpful in building up the circuits for increasing performance. They might warn you of common mistakes that have decreased performance.</p>
<p>Building circuits takes action (and thought and attention). Simply studying these resources will not build up your circuits and, thus, will not increase your performance.</p>
<p><strong>Failure Mode</strong>: We consume various learning aids (books, blogs, videos, coaching) and expect to have learnt the technique (i.e., built up the neural circuits).</p>
<p>Yes, there can be cases where you have already built circuits for most of the building blocks and all you need is a new way of putting them together. In that case, just hearing the instructions can be enough to make you gain performance.</p>
<p>But, in a scenario where you haven’t had much direct experience, simply reading the instructions doesn’t do anything for you. You’re trying to work with building blocks that aren’t there!</p>
<h2 id="complex-scenarios">Complex scenarios</h2>
<p>For any decent endeavour, you will have a lot of variables in the environment and a lot of different values that they can take.</p>
<p>For playing a tennis backhand, you would have to take into account the distance at which the ball pitched in front of you (if it did), the speed of the ball, the direction in which it is going, the distance from your left hand, your current speed, the other player’s location, whether you want to attack or just defend, and so on. Each of these factors can take on several fine-grained values - hitting a ball coming at 100kph is different from a ball at 80kph; a ball at waist height is different from a ball almost hitting the ground.</p>
<p>When you put them all together, you get a combinatorial explosion of states. You (or rather, the circuits in your head) need to be capable of giving a response to each of these states so as to have good performance (hitting a backhand that eludes your opponent, for example).</p>
<p>The trouble is that even similar-looking states may require wildly different responses. You have to train your mind to be able to handle all of those cases. What I’m trying to say is, it’s usually not going to happen by just reading 1500 words on a blog.</p>
<p>“Learning a technique” = building up neural circuits capable of responding to different configurations well enough to get a high performance score.</p>
<p>You may not be able to respond to all the states, but you should be good enough at most of them.</p>
<h2 id="instructions-for-a-technique">Instructions for a Technique</h2>
<p>What do those Instructions contain (be it in books, blogs, videos, coaching, etc.)?</p>
<p>I think they describe certain states and tell you what to do in response.</p>
<p>Who writes these Instructions? Usually, people who either have high performance in that area themselves or the researchers who have studied that area.</p>
<p>They <em>think</em> that if you follow these Instructions (i.e., in scenario X, do action Y), you will be able to get high performance. Why do they believe that?</p>
<p>It’s because they have observed themselves or some expert performers and noticed these patterns.</p>
<p>However, they can’t transmit the whole set of rules they <em>actually</em> use in their brain when working in that area. They can only write down the stuff they observe consciously. In their rules they might recommend doing something when you see certain variables at certain values. But, perhaps, unconsciously, they are judging based on some more variables that they fail to mention.</p>
<p>They only way to know if their instructions really are useful is by… you guessed it… testing it out empirically on a lot of new learners and seeing if they get the good performance promised.</p>
<p>In other words, they can’t transmit the whole set of rules they’re actually using because our current communication mediums don’t allow that much information and because they can’t read their own brains accurately. They will be unaware of much of their actual algorithm and won’t be able to transmit it accurately in any case.</p>
<h2 id="instructions-arent-enough">Instructions aren’t enough</h2>
<p>If instructions for a technique can’t capture the precise rules for getting high performance, then how in heavens does anybody ever build up their performance (i.e., learn the technique)?</p>
<p>There is something complex enough to capture all of the possible states and give you detailed information about what will happen in response to every possible action you use.</p>
<p>There is?! What is this miraculous gift?</p>
<p><strong>Answer</strong>: Reality.</p>
<p>Reality, the father of empirical evidence, is the only thing capable of telling you all the answers you want. All you have to do is ask.</p>
<p>The way all our brains build up circuits for high performance is by first trying out some action in a scenario. If we get the desired results, we accept that rule. Then, we try out something else in a different scenario. If that works, we accept that rule too. If that doesn’t work, our brain eventually learns that that rule sucks and tries out something else.</p>
<p>In this way, by trying out lots of different things in lots of different scenarios, our brain builds up beautiful circuits that give us high performance.</p>
<p>Instructions aren’t enough. We <em>need</em> empirical evidence to build up accurate circuits that give high performance.</p>
<h2 id="consuming-the-instructions-naive-realism-all-the-way-down">Consuming the Instructions: Naive Realism all the way down</h2>
<p>You pick up a learning resource - maybe a book, a blog post, or a lecture video, or an demonstration video.</p>
<p>We saw that this is itself an inaccurate representation of the actual algorithms used by the experts.</p>
<p>As we saw, Instructions aren’t enough. We need to try out our initial version of the technique and see what works and what doesn’t. There are too many inaccurate translations between the technique in some expert’s head and the technique that we “learn” from their instructions. We have to let Reality tell us how much our version of the technique sucks so that we can fix it.</p>
<hr />
<p>What would a sample Instruction look like?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Technique X: First, do A. Then, do B. Finally, do C.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That is out there in reality. How does it look when we represent it in our mind?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Technique “X”: First, do “A”. Then, do “B”. Finally, do “C”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In our interpretation of the Technique, we substitute whatever feels right to us for the actual elements of the Technique. And we aren’t even aware that we’re doing it.</p>
<p>Naive Realism strikes us at every level of the process.</p>
<hr />
<p><strong>Example</strong>: “Deliberate Practice”</p>
<p>For Deliberate Practice, they say you must get practice activities designed by an expert, repeat it a lot, and then get accurate feedback (among other things).</p>
<p>How do we interpret that in our minds?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>get practice activities designed by an expert</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But, in our mind, this becomes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>get “practice activities” designed by an “expert”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In an ideal world, there would be an empirical test (maybe a Measurement tool or a set of criteria) that tells you whether something is a practice activity or not. Alas! This isn’t that world. So, you’re free to pass in anything that <em>feels</em> to your mind as a “practice activity”. Seriously, what does your mind know about “practice activities”? Unless you’ve been hanging around other people doing practice (i.e., getting empirical evidence about practice activities), you’ll just have some vague ideas that have little or no relation to actual practice activities.</p>
<p>How do you recognize an expert? Ideally, you’d ask for empirical proof of performance - maybe their history as a performer or as a coach. But, that’s not happening. So, you can get taken in by anybody who <em>seems</em> to you to be an expert. In fact, by bending the rules a bit and touting your “expertise” in studying various things about the field, you can pass yourself off as an expert. You only have to convince yourself, and you are on your side.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>repeat it a lot</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In our mind, this becomes</p>
<blockquote>
<p>repeat it till it <em>feels</em> like a lot</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How much is “a lot”? Well, in the initial stages, even doing a little of the hard activities can be tiring or boring. Easy to call it a day then.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>get accurate feedback</p>
</blockquote>
<p>becomes</p>
<blockquote>
<p>get what <em>feels</em> like accurate feedback</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Plausible mental dialogue: “Well, this isn’t cricket or football. I can’t get accurate feedback from a coach or something. But, I know this field pretty well. So, I guess I will be able to detect when I make a mistake. Duh! Mistakes are obvious. Right? So, yeah, I can judge myself.”</p>
<hr />
<p>When you put it all together, the end result is a far cry from the original technique. It has almost nothing to do with Deliberate Practice itself.</p>
<p>When you do see somebody doing actual Deliberate Practice, the difference will be stark. You will know instantly that what you’ve been doing doesn’t resemble it in any way.</p>
<hr />
<h2 id="many-a-slip-between-the-cup-and-the-lip">Many a slip between the cup and the lip</h2>
<p>When we say we “have the technique” with us, what we <em>actually</em> have is our hazy interpretation of someone’s inaccurate representation of their mental rules for getting high performance. But, we <em>think</em> we have the technique itself and all the glorious benefits that come with it! We are going to be rich!</p>
<p>That’s the Naive Realism double whammy: we have a piss-poor version of someone’s actual technique but we think we have their full technique.</p>
<p>So, we don’t feel the need to subject our techniques to empirical tests. Why bother? We have got the technique with us. It’s all fine.</p>
<p>It doesn’t have to be black and white either. You may inadvertently try out your version of the technique on a few test cases or use it in real life and thus come to know whether you were right about those rules. However, for the rest of the rules that you learnt, you would still have an inaccurate idea of what it takes to get high performance. But, you’ll never feel like you have a wrong or untested understanding. You will believe that you have understood the whole technique well.</p>
<p>In the end, when we just “learn” from instructions, we just have a largely untested version of what we think will give us high performance. But, we think it <em>will</em> give us high performance, and are dismayed when Reality eventually proves it to be otherwise.</p>
<h2 id="technique-x-vs-technique-x">“Technique X” vs Technique X</h2>
<p>It’s one thing to “know the theory”. It’s another to be able to execute it. Execution requires that you have a rich knowledge of the different situations and the things you need to do in each of them.</p>
<p>When we just learn about the technique, our model isn’t rich enough to capture all the important details. We <em>think</em> we get it, but we really don’t. The only way to load our mind with all the actual details is to actually <em>do it</em> and make ourselves realize what it feels like at every step. That way we will be able to do it in the future.</p>
<p>The mediums in which people communicate techniques aren’t rich enough to transfer all the actual details of the technique. In text, it’s just “do this; then do that”. In speech, it’s the same thing, a bit less detailed, and a bit more of feelings and inflection. In video, it’s a bit better, I guess. You can see what’s happening and that helps you build up the circuits for the action.</p>
<p>The richest medium of all is direct action. Way more information passing into your brain. You get to see exactly what is happening at each moment, and how it feels, and what a mistake looks like, and what the correct action looks like.</p>
<p>So, it isn’t about Foo, it’s about what you <em>think</em> is Foo, i.e., “Foo”.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Can I do “Foo”?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is worst when it involves some procedure that you aren’t familiar with - stuff that you haven’t seen or done before. You will just substitute “Foo” for whatever action seems right to your mind and judge yourself based on that.</p>
<h2 id="technique-is-in-our-head">Technique is in our head</h2>
<p>The procedure for a technique will be made up of applications of other techniques.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Technique = Pattern of behaviour that increases performance empirically.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, a technique isn’t made up of words. It’s a bunch of actions. It’s most accurately represented in our neural circuits. It’s the memory of thousands of instances of the Technique etched into our brains to provide an appropriate action response in the right situation.</p>
<p>If you wanted to know the exact form of a technique - all the details about what to do when, in response to which stimuli and so on - you’d have to look into the brain of a person who has learnt that technique. To know the exact details of a backhand, you would look into Federer’s brain (in this case, you’d find out about Federer’s backhand technique).</p>
<p>But, how do we communicate our techniques? In words. Or through speech and images and video. But, those can’t capture the full details of the technique.</p>
<p>So, we convert Technique in our Head to Technique in Words. We lose much of the data that we use to execute the Technique. That’s fine. Our purpose is to communicate - send some symbols to the receiver so that he can use them to construct the Technique in his own Head. As long as that is done reasonably well, we’re ok with it.</p>
<p>The point is, you cannot transfer what’s in your head to another person’s head just by talking about it or writing about it or shooting a video of you doing it. All that helps, but it doesn’t capture all the details in your head. If, someday, we perfect reading and writing from brains, then we can indeed fulfill the Matrix fantasy of downloading any skill you want, on demand. We would read skills from experts and install them in our brain. But, that isn’t happening here.</p>
<p>It’s fine, because the receiver - say, your friend John - can take the rudimentary description of the technique you passed him and then go out there and execute his interpretation of it in many different scenarios. His brain will then build up a map of the technique, based on the actions he took and the responses he got. So, if he misunderstood one action and did something else, his brain would note that it did not work, and update his map of the technique. In the end, if he gets most of the same practice examples you got, he would end up with a Technique in his Head similar to yours.</p>
<p>That’s the best case. And, notice that it worked because he had a <em>lot</em> of empirical examples on which to test his version of your Technique (call it John’s-Technique-X). Let’s call your Technique as Fred’s-Technique-X (forgot to mention it, your name is Fred here). No matter how good your description of Fred’s-Technique-X was, John would still have to build up John’s-Technique-X by trying out each part of his technique on empirical examples.</p>
<h1 id="its-not-the-spoon-that-bends">It’s not the Spoon that bends</h1>
<p>Whoa! Just realized it. There’s no such thing called a Technique. It’s just <a href>Mind Projection Fallacy</a>! All you have are circuits of neurons in your brain that lets you take actions in scenarios relating to domain X. Like your backhand-playing circuits let you hit a backhand from different locations on the tennis court, etc.</p>
<p>If there is no such neatly-packaged thing called a technique, what does it mean to “teach” someone a technique?</p>
<p>Let’s break it down.</p>
<hr />
<p>In your head, you (Fred) have a bunch of circuits that let you get good performance in some specific scenarios X (like being able to hit a large percentage of tennis balls that appear to the your non-racket holding side). As a <em>label</em>, we’ll call this set of circuits as “Technique X” (like a “backhand”).</p>
<p>[Keep in mind that there is no universal <em>thing</em> called a backhand. Hitting balls that come on your left side if you’re a right-handed player is generally called a backhand.</p>
<p>Anyway, f*ck this. I’m not teaching the whole topic of Mind Projection Fallacy and names vs anticipated consequences in this essay. More on that later.]</p>
<p>For now, what we need to know is that Fred has a bunch of circuits that let him get good performance in specific scenarios (as measured by some Performance Measurement tool). We will call that bunch of circuits as Fred’s-Technique-X.</p>
<p>Also, in general, we don’t come with circuits meant for specific tasks from birth. We build up the circuits by taking actions and getting responses from the world, which causes the brain to change its neural circuitry.</p>
<p>Now, Fred wants to teach John how to get similar performance in those scenarios.</p>
<p>Can he just tell him? Nope. That doesn’t work.</p>
<p>For John to be able to do those actions that Fred does in the scenarios, he needs to have a bunch of circuits in <em>his</em> head that let him execute those actions in response to the appropriate stimuli.</p>
<p><strong>Problem Statement for Fred</strong>: Make John have a bunch of circuits that let him take the appropriate actions in each scenario so that he too gets a good level of performance (as measured by the same Performance Measurement tool).</p>
<p>How can Fred make this happen?</p>
<p>Ignoring individual differences in brain development, we can assume that if John does all of the things that Fred did, he would end up a circuit similar to that of Fred. i.e., he would be able to get the same level of performance.</p>
<p>Ok. So, Fred simply has to tell him all the things he did. However, this not only involves external stimuli, but also internal things like attention, level of excitement, intensity, etc. Doing the same thing without paying much attention isn’t going to lead to the same brain changes.</p>
<p>In any case, that path also seems inefficient. John would have to repeat all of the mistakes Fred made. Can’t we learn from other people’s mistakes?</p>
<p>That’s what communication is for.</p>
<p>If it is Thought and Action that help build up the circuits in your brain, then if Fred can convey to John the Thoughts and Actions he should take, then John can do those things and end up with the neural circuits.</p>
<p>(Of course, this is an oversimplification. There are lots of other factors involved - attention, motivation, genetics, etc. probably all matter.)</p>
<p>Ok. So, that sounds like a winner. Fred can simply communicate to John all the Thoughts and Actions he had used to build up his circuits.</p>
<p>What’s the catch?</p>
<p>Fred might not remember all the Thoughts he had and the Actions he took. And, even if he did, he might not know what effects each of them had. This is the human brain we’re talking about! You don’t have free access to the knowledge in your head. You don’t see or feel the circuits building up in your head.</p>
<p>He might swear by some actions that don’t actually do anything for building up his circuits and increasing performance. And he might be ignoring some things he does regularly that actually played a huge part in increasing his performance.</p>
<hr />
<p>The Problem Statement is this:</p>
<p>Fred’s-Technique-X (in his head) -> some notes or speech or video (The Instructions)</p>
<p>The Instructions -> John receives them -> uses them to build up a circuit in his head (John’s-Technique-X)</p>
<p>John’s-Technique-X should give him good performance</p>
<hr />
<p>I think the circuits for one large technique will use circuits that are from smaller techniques.</p>
<p>So, if a technique C involves doing A and then B, then I guess it basically involves the circuits for A and B.</p>
<p>This way, if John knows how to do A and B, then we can teach him how to do C by telling him to do A and then B.</p>
<p>I think the languages we use have been useful to us because they reflect the nature of our circuits and how they are put together to form bigger circuits.</p>
<hr />
<p>Anyway, my point is the Instructions we have for the technique (which are NOT the Techniques themselves - the techniques only live in our brains) should be such that a person who follows them should end up building a circuit in his head that gives him good performance in that area.</p>
<p>If that doesn’t happen, it’s the fault of the Instructions.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t think Instructions (in the form of the written word, a speech, or videos) aren’t rich enough to help a person build up an accurate, performance-giving circuit. If we tried to put in all the information, it would bloat up really fast, and even if that were fine, we can’t look into our brain with any kind of accuracy.</p>
<p>I think the only way to get rich detailed information is by taking action and asking Reality to give us empirical evidence.</p>
<p><strong>Upshot</strong>: You can only say you have the ability to execute a technique when you have a circuit for it in your brain. In essence, when you can get the necessary performance in the specific situations.</p>
<p><strong>The Real Point</strong>: Wait. The real point is that there are various lossy transformations from a person writing Instructions for getting performance and you following those Instructions and becoming capable of getting that performance.</p>
<p>However, if the technique has been empirically tested, that means the Instructions are informative enough to allow people to build up the circuits necessary and get good performance.</p>
<p>This is assuming you had long-term holistic interventions, and not just experiments that tested a small slice of the technique. The former would require you to actually understand the Instructions and build up good circuits.</p>
<p>Anyway, that doesn’t happen for most techniques.</p>
<h1 id="mapping-back-and-forth">Mapping back and forth</h1>
<p><strong>The Actual Point</strong>: If you pass on a lossy set of Instructions to him, i.e., stuff you <em>think</em> will help him build up his circuits, then he will build up his interpretation of the Technique (John’s-Technique-X). Now, that is two steps away from your Technique (Fred’s-Technique-X) and there are bound to be changes in performance. So, he may not be able to get good performance.</p>
<p>The <em>only</em> way he can fix his Technique is by testing it out on empirical problems and updating his Technique. Slowly, he’ll get better and better performance.</p>
<p>If the Technique is pretty simple and builds up on other techniques that he already knows, then both transmitting and receiving should be lossless, and he should be able to get performance similar to yours in no time.</p>
<p>However, if the Technique is pretty complicated and/or novel, there will be a lack of performance (usually. though, he might get lucky and end up with better performance) and he would need empirical problems to improve his Technique.</p>
<p>In the interpretation process, there can be trouble if he confuses your Technique A1 for some Technique he knows A2. For you the word “Technique A” stands for Technique A1, but for him, it stands for Technique A2.</p>
<p>So, you must choose good, commonly understood words for techniques when you’re mapping your techniques to words. And, he must make sure to map the words back to the right techniques in his head.</p>
<p>Worst, because of Naive Realism, you will think that you have conveyed your thoughts correctly, and he will think he has understood your instructions correctly. You won’t feel like checking whether you have <em>actually</em> done your job correctly. This is the catch.</p>
<h1 id="old-execute-notes-continued">Old Execute notes continued</h1>
<h2 id="i-think-i-can-do-it">I think I can do it!</h2>
<p>“think I can” is because of Cached Thoughts - remedy is empirical evidence. [Why? Why do these Cached Thoughts come about? Memory Loss - we forget how to do a skill, but the Cached Thought remains. This is for stuff we’ve done before.</p>
<p>Hmmm… Maybe, for stuff we haven’t done before, we just replace it with something we have done and think that they’re sort of similar? Optimism? Planning Fallacy? We just assume the best of our abilities? Confidence / Self-esteem at the moment?</p>
<p>Or, do we think we can’t do it? Am I just making stuff up here? Just say, “I don’t know”.]</p>
<hr />
<p>What do we think Technique X is?</p>
<p>All we know about Technique X is what we learned from its book / TED Talk / blog posts / Youtube videos.</p>
<p>For most techniques, it’s mostly just words that we read or heard.</p>
<p>Let’s take a simplified example. Assume Technique X consists only of three simple steps.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Technique X = First, do Foo. Then, do Bar. Finally, do Baz.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In short:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Technique X = Foo; Bar; Baz.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, when you ask your mind, “Can I do Technique X?”, what you’re asking is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Can I do Foo? Can I do Bar? Can I do Baz?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I think you will believe you can do Technique X if and only if you get yes for all the three parts.</p>
<p>However, you aren’t looking at whether you can <em>actually</em> do Foo, or Bar, or Baz. You are looking at whether you <em>think</em> you can do those things.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do I <em>feel</em> like I can do Foo?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If, at some earlier point, you had tested yourself for whether you can do Foo, maybe as part of some other activity, then your mind should remember that you are capable of doing it and therefore, answer “yes” to the question. And if you had failed recently at doing Foo, your mind should answer “no”.</p>
<p>However, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. Your mind can remember “yes” for actions that it has never done before or even failed at in the past, just because it seems to you that you can do it, for whatever reasons (*cough* Heuristics and Biases *cough*).</p>
<p>And, if you’re feeling bad about yourself, it may even remember “no” for things you’ve done successfully in the past.</p>
<hr />
<h2 id="empty-labels-and-cached-thoughts">Empty Labels and Cached Thoughts</h2>
<p>And this is all assuming that you even bother dipping into the procedure of the technique.</p>
<p>Most of the time, I guess what happens is that we learn about the procedure from the book or blog or TED talk and evaluate it in our mind. “Can we do this?”, we ask ourselves. The answer comes back, “yes”. It feels like we can.</p>
<p>So, we store the answer in our head, “I can do Technique X”.</p>
<p>Months later, we may have forgotten every single detail about the workings of the technique. We may not even remember where we learnt it from. But, we <em>will</em> remember the stored answer - “I can do Technique X”.</p>
<p>That is what fools us. We just accept the labels that our mind stores. A “yes” from our mind needn’t mean we can actually do it. It’s just something that was written down in our memory a long time and is now out of date. This is called a Cached Thought. It may or may not be accurate, but you will think it is. [^cached-thought]</p>
<p>And, suppose there is a new Technique Y that involves using Technique X in one of its steps. When evaluating Technique Y, we will ask ourselves “Can I do Technique X?”. And the Cached Answer for that was “yes”. So, we will go ahead and finish evaluating Technique Y as “Yes We Can!”.</p>
<p>All this while, nothing is really doable. We can’t do Technique X, but we think we can. We can’t do Technique Y, but we think we can.</p>
<p>Our knowledge is hierarchically organized. So, we probably build up procedures for Techniques using smaller Techniques. This means that if you have some fundamental misconception - Cached Thought about some basic Technique A that says you can do it when you can’t - all the other Techniques hierarchically built on top of it are going to end up having wrong answers stored. It will all just be a house of cards, ready to collapse under the weakest of empirical tests.</p>
<h2 id="finally">Finally</h2>
<p>You should check both correctly, the other 3 combinations are wrong.</p>
<h2 id="execution-and-empirical-evidence">Execution and Empirical Evidence</h2>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Attempt #1</strong>: Do I <em>feel</em> like I can do “Foo”?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If you get empirical evidence about “Foo”, you will get the right answer stored in your mind. You won’t believe you can do it when you can’t (or vice-versa).</p>
<p>So, that transforms the question into:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Attempt #2</strong>: Can I do “Foo”?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That doesn’t solve the problem, though. “Foo” can be different from Foo. To remedy this, you seek feedback that tells you whether you’re actually doing what the Technique needs you to. You may ask some coach to observe you while you do the task, or you may record yourself, or you may use some Measurement tool to make sure you’re following the steps given in the Technique, and not some steps you concocted in your mind.</p>
<p>That makes it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Can I do Foo?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Which is the question we want to answer. Now, we will have honest answers in our head about whether or not we can execute a Technique. If we check ourselves empirically like this for the different parts of the Technique, we will get the benefits as advertised.</p>
<h2 id="predictions-about-execution">Predictions about Execution</h2>
<p>So, we think understand how to execute the procedure, but we actually don’t.</p>
<p>TODO</p>
<p>We confuse learning about the technique with actually being able to execute the technique.</p>
<p><strong>Prediction</strong>: When you tell someone about the procedure behind a technique and when they understand how it helps to achieve the result you want, they will <em>believe</em> that they can execute the technique in a given situation.</p>
<p>Example: When someone watches a TED talk about some ideas or techniques. Or, when someone reads some blog posts about some ideas or techniques.</p>
<p>Once they can see how it works, once it makes sense to them, they will believe they can execute it too.</p>
<p>In other words, when they think it makes sense, they will believe they can execute the technique.</p>
<p><strong>Prediction</strong>: They <em>won’t</em> be able to execute the technique.</p>
<p>They will probably fail miserably. They will just get stuck and not know how to get themselves out.</p>
<p>I think <em>this</em> is the root cause of our misery regarding techniques.</p>
<hr />
<p><strong>Prediction</strong>: If there is a salient test (in-your-face, hard-to-cheat empirical tests), then you probably won’t end up having false beliefs about the technique.</p>
<p>This will prevent you from having out-of-date Cached Thoughts.</p>
<p><strong>Prediction</strong>: If there isn’t a salient test, all bets are off.</p>
<p>Maybe you will have false beliefs, maybe you won’t. I don’t know right now. I suspect that you will probably end up fooling yourself.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Easiest person to fool - Feynman]</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="confidence-boss.-confidence.">Confidence, Boss. Confidence.</h2>
<p><strong>Prediction</strong>: It depends on what your mind has marked for “Can I do this?”. So, people who are low on confidence may say no even when they are capable of doing things.</p>
<p>Example: Me when I see high-flying people doing stuff - swimming maybe or some other activity. I just give up.</p>
<p>This seems to be a unique prediction, right?</p>
<div class="info">Created: May 15, 2015</div>
<div class="info">Last modified: September 28, 2019</div>
<div class="info">Status: finished</div>
<div class="info"><b>Tags</b>: Naive Realism, techniques</div>
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