A key part there is agentive intent. Pure passive observation lacks the information about which parts of the observed result were intended and expected (by the

A key part there is agentive intent. Pure passive observation lacks the information about which parts of the observed result were intended and expected (by the actor) and which are irrelevant noise or side-effects. In some sense the equivalent of looking at the data of a study and knowing which column represents the "intervention" and which column represents the outcome of intervention - as opposed to pure observation of those data points without knowing which is which. We can learn well from a demonstration, where someone else is acting and we correctly understand the intent and expected results (perhaps they've explicitly communicated that, perhaps we just know implicitly through our previous shared experience) and observe what happens. However, if we observe someone else - at an entirely different skill level - who is essentially testing a hypothesis (and we don't know that, we have no observation of the agent's internal) and getting useful data about where their world model diverges from reality, then it's not nearly as helpful for us to determine where our world model diverges from reality, that would require different actions and different data.