If tutors really do reliably produce two-sigma learning gains, then why aren't most top achievers the product of tutors? Yes, they're expensive, but perhaps "only" 2-3x private school; there are a lot of wealthy parents. Diminishing returns for high achievers?
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most top researchers I know effectively had a tutor even if it wasn’t named that eg close academic advisor
personally I’ve explicitly had a string of 1-1 ~fulltime mentors going back consistently to when I was 11, although none of them thought they were “tutors”
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at least in my case there is a 0% chance anything good I’ve done I could have done without the tutors. If you put them all in a blender you get me, it’s just very easy to see the lineage
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Right, I feel similarly. There's a big difference between mentor and tutor though! The former implies much more self-direction, right?
… wait, you've had *full-time* mentors since you were 11?! What do you mean by full-time?
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I can’t be super open about it all for legal reasons, but 10-14 I was apprentice to someone who ran a high end web application dev shop, and he guided me basically hourly on how to improve for years. Took embarrassing and free jobs at start but eventually was managing people
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By full time I just mean 40+ hours a week. I worked after school every day (didn’t care about grades) and all weekend and constantly in the summer. If I could do it again I would have just dropped out of school it was nothing in comparison
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On the mentor tutor distinction I think what matters most of the speed of feedback loop. Getting feedback once an hour or so is extremely different than daily or weekly. Maybe the word apprenticeship is better, as it signals the kind of close hands-on experience I think is best
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This hits hard! It's been many years since I've gotten consistent hour-scale feedback on anything. It seems very hard to have a cycle that tight in research: don't you often have to go away and think deeply for a while in order to produce something worth giving feedback about?
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Oh yeah I don’t mean literally every hour. Maybe a better heuristic on average more than once a day + hourly if you want it? I usually spend two months alone per year, one in a new country and one in a place I know well. Need it for thinking broadly and zooming out
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