Teaching as learning

Does it make sense to get quite so much expertise at teaching as some bloggers/YouTubers out there, or is there a stopping point for me?

• Point: Teaching is learning. So as long as I want to learn a topic, there seems no natural stopping point for learning to teach it either. I mean, they're the same thing.

  • Interesting that we have a cultural meme that says something like "great persons do and the rest teach", not sure where I first heard that but I suspect it comes from econonomics – "if you know so much about economics why haven't you gotten rich off the stock market already?"

    On reflection, the case of econ professors that didn't get rich, seems to me neatly explained by the fact that the market is an anti-inductive environment. (I.e: when you discover a new exploitable fact about the market, everyone else soon discovers it too, and you can no longer profit off it, so it doesn't matter how much econ theory you learn, that knowledge won't ever let you do better than random chance on the modern market because it's full of agents that already have all the knowledge of econ theory.)

    But that's unique for economics. So this meme could be a wrong meme. We do have examples of people who were both great at something and great at teaching it, like Richard Feynman (1918–1988). Starting to teach something (even poorly) seems a valid way to start to learn the thing well (although you could get great at it other ways, like solving a personal problem, and wind up never teaching).

• Point: what I want to achieve depends on the topic. I don't really want to talk about React.js with people, so that feels more OK to just learn-by-tinkering instead of teaching. By contrast, rationality is a thing I want to talk about. The more of it I can explain, the more conversation about it I get to have.

Ok… so, per topic..

• Rationality
  • Q: To what extent do I want to learn it?
    • A: …No limit, as with any topic in the end. But there's a tradeoff – smth. else I want to do with my time on Earth?
      • A: You know, I think not really. Seems everything else I want to do is social or hedonic in nature, that I'd still do regardless of which life project I pick.
• Q: What do I want to achieve, by learning to teach it?
  • A: Be able to have deep conversations about it (& thereby learn more)

• A: Fight Anti-epistemology
• A: Bridge the apparent chasm some folk have placed between themselves and science
• Relationships
  • Q: To what extent do I want to learn it?
    • A: There's some limit. I'm kind of fine with the progress coming slow, as long as I'm up to facing each difficulty as they come.
  • Q: What do I want to achieve, by learning to teach it?
    • A: Bonding with & helping other people.
    • A: This field seems to unusually much tie together being able to talk about concepts, with using those concepts. So basically, a goal is success in my own relationships.
• #emacs
  • Q: To what extent do I want to learn it?
    • A: Enough to implement everything I envision that my computer should be able to do for me.
  • Q: What do I want to achieve, by learning to teach it?
    • A: Tend to its community (more contributors, higher-level discourse)
    • A: Fun

To learn better, teach better. And teaching better is not just a matter of absorbing material, there's a… side-game to which to pay attention also.

• What sorts of life-experiences to try to get?
  • Experience how belief-in-belief and other errors feel on the inside
  • Notice when my mind shoves something out of view, and write down how that felt
  • Face and disarm my own pleasant lies / cherished beliefs / ideas that must be protected
    • 2022-12-09 I seem to believe I'm not prone to pride or vanity at all. Two days ago, I got quite offended when [two friends] suggested that I don't listen to their photography advice because I'm proud, and I had to find any explanation that made it not so. I felt misunderstood, trapped, like when people act sure they've understood me, even though they haven't, and there's nothing I can do to change their mind. I'm still undecided as to what happened this time, but what matters is that G later suggested I have a blind spot and it's true that my self-image excludes pride as a possible explanation for anything I do. I find it unthinkable that I'd fall to such a vapid error as pride, therefore I assume that isn't it, but then I'm extra blind to it when it is.
• Collect metaphors
• Collect examples
• Collect idea-progressions
  • i.e. e.g. explain an idea using a simple case study or two that only partially capture the idea to begin with, then generalize & refine — avoid presenting the refined generalization first as a fait accompli.