Conversation

15-25: mostly learn generically from generic famous books 25-32: mostly learn from introspection and weird/obscure books/writings that somehow “spoke” to me in a unique way 32-40: mostly learned from experiences and older people 1:1 40+: mostly learning from <40 people 1:1
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I’ve learned almost nothing from people who were formally my teachers, except for 3 (all in grad school). Doesn’t mean they were bad. Others seemed to learn from shared teachers a lot more. Mostly they were good for accountability/testing.
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Mostly I learn from people who don’t even realize I’m learning from them. And mostly it’s because they are transparently modeling some effective pattern of metacognition I can copy. Not expertise/talents. I learn nothing from other people’s expertise or talents.
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As I tweeted elsewhere recently, in a narrow sense of expertise and skill development I actually stopped learning entirely at ~25
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Heh, I should make thus list at least privately to figure out *what* I’ve been learning, which is entirely illegible except through the lens of who I’m learning it from.
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Poll: Should I publish a ribbonfarm 42 under 42 list?
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Weird thing is in the case of younger people they often seem unaware that they’re thinking in interestingly different ways and I’m almost a bit wary of pointing it out in case it makes them self-conscious and trips them up. It’s happened to me in the past.
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OTOH, I appreciate when folk told me that my perspective was aberrant and valuable. Sometimes I’d sit on “common sense” ideas that were apparently only common in my head.
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This actually just happened to me. I'm working with someone in his 70s; it did trip me up for a while. Always better to just nod, go with it, and probe the interesting dimensions.
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If someone thinks differently then just tell them those thoughts are good and valuable and unique and that they can go even further than they are today.