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cover of episode "What Are You Tracking In Your Head?" by John Wentworth

"What Are You Tracking In Your Head?" by John Wentworth

2022/7/2
logo of podcast LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

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https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bhLxWTkRc8GXunFcB/what-are-you-tracking-in-your-head)

A large chunk - plausibly the majority -  of real-world expertise seems to be in the form of illegible skills: skills/knowledge which are hard to transmit by direct explanation. They’re not necessarily things which a teacher would even notice enough to consider important - just background skills or knowledge which is so ingrained that it becomes invisible.

I’ve recently noticed a certain common type of illegible skill which I think might account for the majority of illegible-skill-value across a wide variety of domains.

Here are a few examples of the type of skill I have in mind: