Theory vs practice

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jacob
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Theory vs practice

Post by jacob »

I submit that much of the disagreement on whether the forums have too much theory or too much practice is but a matter of where people currently are in their journey and only seeing their own perspective (and demanding that others should have or at least tolerate the same perspective without being too annoying while presenting another perspective). I made a little diagram to illustrate what I mean. (Inspired by https://www.amazon.com/Budo-Mind-Body-T ... 834805731/ PS This book is worth reading even if you don't do martial arts. )
Image

The y-axis shows skill level. Think of this as analogous to school grades or karate belts. Or ignore the grades for a something more informal e.g. shelves, boxes, cabinets, tables, chairs, ... that gets increasingly complex (putting existing skills together in new ways).

The x-axis shows skill experience. This is how much one has practiced those skills. E.g. cumulative count of practicing push ups or uppercuts... or how many TPS reports filed, lines of code written, ...

The curve itself is your journey in time. It might be unusual to think of the time variable being part of the curve but just think of yourself as moving along the curve at a steady pace as the clock ticks. If you're moving rightwards, you're practicing. If you're moving upwards, you're theorizing. In reality you're not doing either one or the other exclusively, but you do tend to lean, and these leans change over time. However, allowing for this on the graph would reduce the clarity of the point I'm making.

Everybody has a different journey and thus a different curve.

What generally happens is that you're happily following a given structure (skeleton) and practicing what you know (adding meat) as you happily or unhappily go along. Now there may come a point, where your boss tells you: Look drone, you've been filing TPS reports for 5 years now. I think it's time you start filing TPS-II reports as well. You need to get acquainted with this new system. Alternatively, you may decide for yourself that all this practicing of jabs, upper cuts, and crosses is getting boring and thinking about turning them into combinations. Heck, you might even wonder if practicing one style forever is the way to go as a martial artist. You're becoming aware of the box you're in and you want to break out of it!

(Note that many never become aware. Also note that people who have become aware might not necessarily want to leave their comfort zone.)

Leaving requires a new framework and so it requires figuring out a new way of putting existing knowledge together (meat on the skeleton); alternatively speculating what kind of skeleton is possible? (E.g. proposing that kicks are possible analogous to how punches were possible).

However, theorizing also reaches diminishing returns. Without experience, it eventually becomes impossible to figure out what the next thing may be. This is why if one can not get a black belt in karate from reading a book. Yet, nor can one get a black belt by jumping around imitating an expert as seen on a movie.

FWIW, I noticed that the ERE WLs actually posses much of this structure already in an extremely generalized form, so I conveniently labelled the diagram. Overall, even WLs require lots of practice, whereas odd WLs require lots of thinking. There you have it.

I'm hoping that especially the WL5-6 and WL6-7 efforts will get some insight from this and realize that the reason one gets stuck is in thinking that the way forward is "more practice" if one is already practicing (a WL6-7 problem)---nope, it's time to start drawing reverse fishbone diagrams and WOGs. Alternatively believing the answer is "more theory" (like better spreadsheets or a good book) if one is already theorizing (a WL5-6 problem)---nope, it's time to pick up some practical skills.

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grundomatic
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Re: Theory vs practice

Post by grundomatic »

Super useful, Jacob. Exactly what I needed. Time to work on, or I should probably say practice, some skills.

jacob
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Re: Theory vs practice

Post by jacob »

In case it wasn't clear from the above, I see the latest forum conflict ( viewtopic.php?t=12595 ) as being a conflict between the horizontal and the vertical. . Not much different than in 2016.

Some hints,
Don't make it personal.
You'll both need each other, eventually.

avalok
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Re: Theory vs practice

Post by avalok »

This is fantastic, thank you Jacob. Agree with grundomatic that this is just the pointer I needed. Quite the realisation that I have been stuck theorising when what is required next is praxis.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: Theory vs practice

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

This reminds me exactly what learning a creative skill is like. Let's take drawing. Your ability to draw is actually two things: your ability to judge art (theory) and your technical skills (practice). As you learn to draw, you'll end up growing both of these skills. However, it's very common for your ability to judge to outpace your technical ability at some point. When this happens, you become convinced everything you draw is of poor quality suddenly. This can famously lead to artist block. But it's not that you are bad at drawing, it's that you have gained more insight into what makes a piece of art work and can see shortcomings you were blinded by before. The key to move forward is to go learn a new technique (practice) to make up for the hole you are suddenly able to see.

Thus it's important to constantly get exposed to new theory and other artists and put in the studio hours when you are drawing. Studio hours with no theory leads you to just practicing the stuff you are already good at and theory without studio hours makes you feel like you're failing.

I've noticed I have a tendency to feel like I'm "failing" ERE when my understanding of it outpaces my practice, but in actuality, I'm way "better" at ERE now than I was five years ago. It's just I'm able to see the next step on the journey now and so feel like I'm behind. This seems to be decently common.

avalok
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Re: Theory vs practice

Post by avalok »

AE that is really interesting. It explains a lot.
AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:23 pm
I've noticed I have a tendency to feel like I'm "failing" ERE when my understanding of it outpaces my practice, but in actuality, I'm way "better" at ERE now than I was five years ago. It's just I'm able to see the next step on the journey now and so feel like I'm behind. This seems to be decently common.
This is both a blessing and a curse. Depending on one's point in the cycle, reading other journals can be either inspirational or disheartening. I guess seeing this step, that of being suddenly aware of what comes next, as a healthy part of the process helps to allow oneself to undergo it. I suppose that what adds to the sense of "failure" is that as someone progresses through the WLs, the people they interact with on the forum the most will change, as they are necessarily pulled to those nearer their level. This means there are always a set of others to look up to (or, depending on how you feel about it; make you look rubbish).

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Re: Theory vs practice

Post by WFJ »

I would add a Z axis to represent time. The theory vs practice debate is highly dependent from a cross-sectional and longitudinal perspective.

In investing, would you rather have no theoretical understanding and be rich and or a have beautiful/robust theory but broke?

Know how to do theory, but in real life, prefer to be healthy, wealthy and ERE in practice. IMHO, ERE theory is a hammer looking for a nail; spend less, earn more, work longer, those are the variables to measure.

IlliniDave
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Re: Theory vs practice

Post by IlliniDave »

I'm used to thinking in terms of domains where almost all skill is derived from practice and theory is mostly a language. I'll have to ponder that chart some. Maybe I'm taking it too literally or misunderstanding what is meant by skill.

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Re: Theory vs practice

Post by jacob »

IlliniDave wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:37 pm
I'm used to thinking in terms of domains where almost all skill is derived from practice and theory is mostly a language. I'll have to ponder that chart some. Maybe I'm taking it too literally or misunderstanding what is meant by skill.
I might be presuming too much, but it's my impression that engineers are used to [thinking about] theory as something [a framework] that is being handed down from a book, paper, teacher, ... something that is learned once and then subsequently practiced [to make "real things"]. Whereas in science (to a scientist), theory is a living object that grows (in understanding) as it is being thought about and experimented on. A scientist would only "practice" once (=enough) to verify and validate the theory before creating more theory.

What the diagram is aiming at is the need to follow science with engineering... and follow that with more science for the next step ... and follow that with engineering... and so on.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: Theory vs practice

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

This might be too abstract, but the way I understand theory is as a set of mini-paradigms. Paradigms are required to give structure to knowledge. So take learning math for example. You learn algebra, which is a paradigm, and then when you are exposed to linear algebra, your paradigm shifts to be able to encompass greater information. Likewise, a skill like cooking may have one paradigm (cook by following recipes) that shifts to a more complex paradigm with practice (cook using random ingredients based on technique).

If you are primarily a hands on learner, you may not recognize a paradigm shift is happening when you upgrade your skills. Ie, I doubt "mom's cooking" was ever formulated in these terms. But if you are able to consciously learn paradigms instead of hoping your current one randomly upgrades itself, you will learn faster.

Of course, paradigms are an abstraction. You do need to put into practice what you're learning or else you're not really making any use of it. That's why studying exercise science might end up being useless if you never go running.

But this is why, at a high level, that staircase happens. You reach the current limits of your current understanding/skill and you need to reform your working paradigm to make gains.

IlliniDave
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Re: Theory vs practice

Post by IlliniDave »

jacob wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:53 pm
I might be presuming too much, but it's my impression that engineers are used to [thinking about] theory as something [a framework] that is being handed down from a book, paper, teacher, ... something that is learned once and then subsequently practiced ...
What the diagram is aiming at is the need to follow science with engineering... and follow that with more science for the next step ... and follow that with engineering... and so on.
Keeping in mind this a perspective from a N=1 sample of engineers. I always looked at it as theory describes how things work and engineering puts that knowledge to use (in simple terms). But it's really more complicated than that. Engineering has it's own PhDs who have developed a body of what is called engineering theory (systems theory is considered an engineering theory, I believe).

Engineering vs science isn't really what I was thinking, but even there an engineering student comes out of school with some amount of theoretical knowledge from physics, mathematics, and "engineering theory" but very little actual real world skill. Skill grows with practice, mentorship, making mistakes, etc. Additional theoretical knowledge can affect the rate of skill growth (the slope) and it's direction (solve problems a different way).

When I encountered the graph I tried to think of it in terms of creative endeavors: in part fiction writing because a new MMG on that topic just launched, and in part guitar because it's something I've pursued more consistently. In those realms you have the 10,000 hours thing at work. In both cases you can become versed in all the theory but until you start putting words on the page or fretting then striking the strings you have no skill, just knowledge. If I apply my first-blush interpretation of the graph someone like Stevie Ray Vaughn would only have the most rudimentary skill level. But in reality he's widely considered among the most versatile and technically skilled blues guitarist who ever lived. Any other "art" has similar phenomena.

I'm not sure that either theoretical physics/engineering or music theory/performer or literary theory/writer are great comparisons for what you are developing here. I thought about the chart some more and if the y-axis was titled something like "skill growth rate" and the x-axis measured something that correlated to progress along the 10,000 hours (skill experience might be fine) then it would make more intuitive sense to me in that bits of new theoretical knowledge would tend to affect/jump the rate of change of skill. But again, I'm fairly sure I'm misreading/misunderstanding the nature of the skill in question.

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Re: Theory vs practice

Post by Scott 2 »

This is a good chart.
jacob wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 8:06 am
If you're moving rightwards, you're practicing. If you're moving upwards, you're theorizing. In reality you're not doing either one or the other exclusively, but you do tend to lean, and these leans change over time. However, allowing for this on the graph would reduce the clarity of the point I'm making.
This note makes the chart work for me. I wanted to highlight it. Well done.

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