4 ms·

Everybody is self-taught. If you went to university (for example), the professor was there to set the curriculum and force you to study (things that otherwise y

Everybody is self-taught. If you went to university (for example), the professor was there to set the curriculum and force you to study (things that otherwise you didn't know were important or didn't want to pick on your own). Teachers helping with a student's question is a very small fraction of learning. We learnt x because we practiced x ourselves.

coldtea 2y ago
>the professor was there to set the curriculum and force you to study (things that otherwise you didn't know were important or didn't want to pick on your own That's what it means to NOT be self-taught. That you got an organized overview of a subject in a systematic manner. What was the expectation otherwise? That somehow another person instilled all your knowledge directly into your brain?
- voisin 2y ago
  > What was the expectation otherwise? That somehow another person instilled all your knowledge directly into your brain? Perhaps close instruction and observation and correction? More like an apprenticeship, or the way your parents may have taught you how to ride a bike or use utensils etc etc, which differs markedly from a professor speaking to a large group and leaving the struggle and attempt to master a subject to the independent study of the pupil.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >Perhaps close instruction and observation and correction? You have lectures (with questions and discussion), labs, assignments and corrections, and so on. Obviously the lectures and such are not one on one, but given to the class you're in. It would be expensive and require dozens of different professors just for one person to cover all study subjects with a degree. Also a lot of it concerns learning about stuff you were pointed to by reading the relevant material, so it's can't be done similarly to the one to one teaching a tacticle thing, like how to handle glass blowing to get into the guild, or how to ride a bike. Still, regardless of what it contains, the difference between self-studying or not is that in the latter you are given a systematic, organized, curriculum to follow. And it's the quite common idiosyncratic mix-and-match, and jumping from subject to subject, and often lacking foundational knowledge in base areas, that academics look down on those who "self-studied". Or course if someone studied by themselves in an equally systematic and organized way as a university curriculum, coverting the same bases and expanding in a similar way, they'd not really be "self-studied" in the spirit of the term, just nominally. But traditionally that was hard or impossible - and in any case, very rare (the other kind of haphazard self-studied person was far more common). Now with the internet and easy access to information, it's somewhat easier, what you need is heavy discipline.
throw__away7391 2y ago
It is not unlike like hiring a personal trainer, you are still the one who needs to do the work.
ensignavenger 2y ago
The difference is that some folks require having a instructor/coach/mentor motivating and guiding their study more than other folks. Of course it is a continuum and can vary based on the topic.
jhbadger 2y ago
And the ultimate university degree, the PhD, is all about learning how to learn. It's unlikely that you will continue to work on the project you did your dissertation on where you spent 3 to 6 years becoming an expert on in grad school. The point wasn't getting the knowledge, it was developing the skills to get up to speed on a new topic quickly.
- grugagag 2y ago
  Does it really deliver on that though?
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    Well, you are required to learn about some largish thing that nobody could teach you because nobody knew. I don't know if it teaches self-learning, but it surely ensures you know it.
  - jhbadger 2y ago
    Yes. While movies often talk about people "with two PhDs" (and yes, there are a few people who do that for some strange reason), a PhD prepares you to change fields dramatically without any additional formal training. Much of molecular biology in the 1950s was created by physicists who decided to become biologists and who learned genetics and biochemistry and then created a new branch of biology. While not as dramatically, I myself have changed research topics several times since getting my PhD 25 years ago.
- squircle 2y ago
  > The point wasn't getting the knowledge, it was developing the skills to get up to speed on a new topic quickly. Well, then how do we qualify "this", and help future expert-generalists immediately find a niche and start pursuing meaningful work? (Not that "work" is the end-all, because we hopefully work-to-live and not the other way around.)

coldtea 2y ago

>the professor was there to set the curriculum and force you to study (things that otherwise you didn't know were important or didn't want to pick on your own That's what it means to NOT be self-taught. That you got an organized overview of a subject in a systematic manner. What was the expectation otherwise? That somehow another person instilled all your knowledge directly into your brain?

voisin 2y ago
> What was the expectation otherwise? That somehow another person instilled all your knowledge directly into your brain? Perhaps close instruction and observation and correction? More like an apprenticeship, or the way your parents may have taught you how to ride a bike or use utensils etc etc, which differs markedly from a professor speaking to a large group and leaving the struggle and attempt to master a subject to the independent study of the pupil.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >Perhaps close instruction and observation and correction? You have lectures (with questions and discussion), labs, assignments and corrections, and so on. Obviously the lectures and such are not one on one, but given to the class you're in. It would be expensive and require dozens of different professors just for one person to cover all study subjects with a degree. Also a lot of it concerns learning about stuff you were pointed to by reading the relevant material, so it's can't be done similarly to the one to one teaching a tacticle thing, like how to handle glass blowing to get into the guild, or how to ride a bike. Still, regardless of what it contains, the difference between self-studying or not is that in the latter you are given a systematic, organized, curriculum to follow. And it's the quite common idiosyncratic mix-and-match, and jumping from subject to subject, and often lacking foundational knowledge in base areas, that academics look down on those who "self-studied". Or course if someone studied by themselves in an equally systematic and organized way as a university curriculum, coverting the same bases and expanding in a similar way, they'd not really be "self-studied" in the spirit of the term, just nominally. But traditionally that was hard or impossible - and in any case, very rare (the other kind of haphazard self-studied person was far more common). Now with the internet and easy access to information, it's somewhat easier, what you need is heavy discipline.

throw__away7391 2y ago

It is not unlike like hiring a personal trainer, you are still the one who needs to do the work.

ensignavenger 2y ago

The difference is that some folks require having a instructor/coach/mentor motivating and guiding their study more than other folks. Of course it is a continuum and can vary based on the topic.

jhbadger 2y ago

And the ultimate university degree, the PhD, is all about learning how to learn. It's unlikely that you will continue to work on the project you did your dissertation on where you spent 3 to 6 years becoming an expert on in grad school. The point wasn't getting the knowledge, it was developing the skills to get up to speed on a new topic quickly.

grugagag 2y ago
Does it really deliver on that though?
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Well, you are required to learn about some largish thing that nobody could teach you because nobody knew. I don't know if it teaches self-learning, but it surely ensures you know it.
- jhbadger 2y ago
  Yes. While movies often talk about people "with two PhDs" (and yes, there are a few people who do that for some strange reason), a PhD prepares you to change fields dramatically without any additional formal training. Much of molecular biology in the 1950s was created by physicists who decided to become biologists and who learned genetics and biochemistry and then created a new branch of biology. While not as dramatically, I myself have changed research topics several times since getting my PhD 25 years ago.
squircle 2y ago
> The point wasn't getting the knowledge, it was developing the skills to get up to speed on a new topic quickly. Well, then how do we qualify "this", and help future expert-generalists immediately find a niche and start pursuing meaningful work? (Not that "work" is the end-all, because we hopefully work-to-live and not the other way around.)