Comment by rafaelmn
6 days ago
That's based on a silly belief (that's becoming more obvious with AI, but is silly in general) : just because you can read about something it means you learned it.
Even if I gave you exact instructions on how to use even basic stuff like power tools - if you had no experience using stuff like grinders/saws/routers and I gave you full detailed instructions on how to do something non-trivial - you're more likely to cut off body parts than achieve what you intended. There's so much fundamental stuff that you must internalize subconsciously/through trial and error - before you can have enough mental capacity to think about the higher level objectives.
Actually AI demonstrates this perfectly - once they get RL harness for programming they start to get better at it. Without experimentation they can ingest all source code/tutorials/books in the world and still produce shit.
Aye, that's the kind of thing I had in mind for the difference between information and competency.
(It's also why I wrote that I know what a calutron is and not claimed that I could build one today; the "and a few years" was not decorative).