April 28, 2026 • 43 mins
In this episode we discuss training: what it can realistically achieve, why it often fails and how people actually become good at things.
The conversation begins with Aleph’s past experience delivering analytical training, and Nick’s frustration that training often strips away the excitement of discovery. The group explores whether people really learn best through formal instruction, or whether genuine understanding comes from practice, mistakes, motivation and real-world need.
Links:
Michael Polanyi's 'Tacit knowledge' - We know more than we can tell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello and welcome to theCognitive Engineering Podcast brought
to you by Aleph Insights andproduced by me, Fraser McGruer. I'm
here with Peter Coghill andNick Hare of Aleph Insights. On this
podcast we look at a widerange of topics from an analytical
viewpoint. And today we'rediscussing training. Nick, Training,
(00:24):
tell us.
Well, you may not be awarethat Aleph Insights is a company
used to deliver training usedto analytical methods and things.
Yeah, we used to. We actuallyhave a sort of training course which
is designed to give people aninsight into more the fundamentals
of analysis rather thanspecific techniques as such.
(00:46):
But I sense a, however coming.
Well, Elizabeth, this isn't an advert.
No, it's not. Don't get in touch.
We don't want to do it.
Get in touch and ask about itbecause we don't do it anymore. And
one of the reasons is that Ifound it a bit dispiriting because
I could never transfer topeople or I felt like, you know,
it was very difficult to getpeople to, to have the same sense
(01:09):
of kind of discovery, Isuppose, that I, that I had about
the things we were trying toget people to understand. So things
like uncertainty, people havea, have a, have an intuitive understanding
of uncertainty that is notvery coherent. And we want people
to think about whatuncertainty really is, fundamentally,
which is about information,and that's a better way of thinking
(01:31):
about uncertainty, forexample. But when you deliver it
in the form of a trainingcourse, even though, you know, you
have interesting exercises andyou have interesting discussions
about it, there is almost thissort of lack of motivation to see
why what we're trying to tellthem is something really, really
interesting is, is anyway, it.Comparing it to my own experiences
(01:52):
of being trained to do stuff,I, I get it. I. Because, you know,
I, I don't think, I don'tthink I've really learned things
from being trained to dostuff. I think I've learned nearly
all the stuff that I can dowell from trying to do it, you know,
from trying to. So, forexample, all of the things I'm good
(02:12):
at in terms of, you know, say,Python programming, which I'm not
claiming to be an expert on,but I'm, you know, I'm much better
than I was, say, five, sixyears ago. And a lot of that is just
having, wanting to do stuffwith it, you know, and then you come
across something you can't do,you work out to do it. You, you end
up being able to solve thoseproblems and, you know, and at the
end you actually have A prettygood understanding of what you're
(02:34):
doing. But then you take thatunderstanding that you've distilled
and you go, right, I've had tosolve all of these problems myself.
I've, I'm going to shortcutthat. I'm going to get this training
course put together which cutsout all of that. You're not going
to have to spe, you know, fiveyears making all of these mistakes
because I'm going to tell youhow to not make those mistakes in
(02:55):
the first place. And lo andbehold, it doesn't mean anything.
People don't get it. Theydon't, they haven't made those mistakes.
They don't really see why whatyou're saying is important. And so
yeah, that's my feeling is,well, maybe training is a waste of
time or is it, you know, whatthings can you train people to do?
What kinds of skills areamenable to training versus you know,
(03:18):
practicing, which I guess is aform of self training where you sort
of think, well, I'll tell youwhat, I'm going to try and I'm going
to try and do this to getbetter at it versus experience, which
is where you're getting betterat it because you're doing it, not
because you're trying to getbetter at it, but merely because
you are doing it to achievesome real world effect learning on
a job. Yeah, that's it.
(03:38):
So, yeah, no, great question,quick question about the people that
you would be training.Presumably these cohorts, would they
be lay people or would they be people?
No, they're generally peoplewho are doing analysis already.
This is really surprising thenbecause one would have thought that
they would have had thecuriosity to want to analyze better.
(03:59):
Right. If that's what they'realready doing.
I mean, but I think there's asense in which once you distill something
down to a set of key learningpoints and you go, we want you to
understand this and this andthis. It feels like it's a thing
on a page that someone fromsomewhere has, that just exists and,
(04:19):
and it hasn't got theexcitement of a genuine discovery.
And I suppose think aboutsomething like Newtonian mechanics,
which is really amazing, likefrom a world of not really having
any systematic way of thinkingabout physics, you know, the large
scale behavior of physicalobjects, suddenly you have like this
revolution. Newton comesalong, invents a few, kind of a small
(04:44):
number of laws that suddenlyexplain everything, suddenly explains
planets and birds and youknow, balls falling off a table and,
and you know, you learn it atSchool and it's like oh, it's a thing,
it's written down, I've got tolearn it. It's come from that process
of discovery is missingbecause you just are shortcutting
straight to the end point.And. And I feel like that is partly
(05:08):
the issue. It does it. I meanand you can be really interested
in physics but it. You arestill not seeing why. That's an exciting,
interesting thing to thing totry and understand.
I would suggest that that'spartly a fault of the way it's delivered
though. I think yeah, if youjust said here's, here's the Newton's
formula is just learn these.That's not very good. I think there
(05:31):
are ways of doing trainingthat lead you to lead you on a shortcutted
path journey to those. So Iremember doing physics at physics
A levels. I had a great, greatteacher and it was mostly experimentation
driven. So we'd each doexperiments using various different
equipment and we would sort ofend up deriving some fundamental
(05:54):
or ourselves from our results.So we'd go through the motions of
a well trodden experiment andit would lead us to a law of motion
or a law of optics or. So we'dsort of, we wouldn't just be given
the end, we'd be given ajourney to go on and that would lead
us to the end and that wouldsort of concrete our understanding
(06:16):
of how this law was found oran understanding of the law.
I mean. Can I posit something here?
So I think, yeah, I don'tthink it's. I think there's not necessarily.
That's necessarily a problemof the shortcutting bit. I think
it's how you do theshortcutting that's the. That makes
it good or not.
Okay. I mean there's somethingto suggest. I mean so maybe drawing
(06:38):
together what you're saying isit a mixture of like how stuff is
delivered, the training andthe quality of that and the content
of that. But also the fact isit doesn't matter how well something
is being delivered to me on Idon't know, quantum mechanics or
whatever. I'm never gonnareally get that great at it. Cause
part of the reason is I don'treally care about it sufficiently
(07:01):
and I'm probably not mentallyequipped to do anything with that
or motivated. It's never gonnawork on me. Right. So you've gotta
have an interest in that area.But it's gotta be even to be a good
trainee. Then it goes a littlebit deeper. Cause like you were saying
you were Training analysts ortrying to train analysts, but even
analysts didn't, you felt,didn't quite have that curiosity?
(07:22):
Well, it was the frustrationthat I could never communicate why
this thing was a really good,interesting way of looking at it.
And I think it's interestingyou mention actually, so this, what
is it that makes someone agood teacher? Because I think we're
touching on these two separatethings here. One is being able to
explain the concepts, but theother is making you interested in
(07:42):
it. And I think that that kindof motivation is absolutely necessary.
Right. If you, you can't trainsomeone to do something if they're
not interested in knowing howto do that thing.
And I think, I think ourexperience is slightly soured though,
because not disparaging ourprevious colleagues too much, but
(08:03):
a lot of people justfundamentally weren't interested
in what it was to be ananalyst. They didn't see their job,
they didn't see their job asbeing partly produce some output,
which is your analysis, butalso partly improve yourself so your
output gets better. They sawthat second part as being very much
(08:23):
not part of their job or notpart of being an analyst. They existed
in a world where analysis isreading loads of stuff, having a
think and then writing aboutit. And that was like, that was as
sort of as concrete as amethod as you could get.
And it's quite a finite world that.
(08:44):
Right.
It doesn't look beyond that tothe framework that you're using.
Whereas actually our argumentwas always, well, yes, that is fundamentally
the mechanics of what you do.But the way you think about it, there
are ways to improve that, topatch that with techniques, tools
and sort of approaches thatmake your output better, more robust.
(09:05):
But yeah, but I thinkfundamentally it comes down to a
lot of the analysts that weget aren't. There's no incentivate,
there's very little incentivefor doing it better and there's very
little kind of checking oflike, okay, so you're out this, you,
you wrote this paper sixmonths ago. Let's just check this
predictive paper six monthsago, let's check how much of what
(09:25):
you predicted came true. Andtherefore, you know, we'll pay you
more or less or we'll give yousome prize or we'll give you some
sort of incentive for doing itmore like that next time doesn't
exist. None of this sort ofincentives exist.
Well, quite.
But, but also, I don't think,I mean my, well, my subjective impression,
and I think this is backed upby the, by the research, is that
(09:46):
extrinsic Motivation isn't apatch really on intrinsic motivation
anyway. And it's like, youknow, this. This kind of. I suppose
another example would besomething like playing the piano,
something we try and getchildren to do. And you think, well,
you know, the thing thatdistinguishes people who end up being
good at music from people whodon't is. Is going to be partly about
(10:10):
being enthused by a teacher.You know, you got a good teacher
who kind of encourages you towant to do it. But actually, I mean,
in my case, what motivated mewas seeing someone play the piano,
actually an old lady at awedding playing Scott Joplin on the
piano. And I'd already spent afew years learning the piano, but.
But it was always a thing Iwas supposed to do. There was an
(10:31):
ought component to it, youknow, and. And I thought, hang on,
I want to be able to do that.And suddenly I had this motivation
to start to start learningagain. And I sort of think, well,
that extrinsic motivation,the, you know, you. Your mum to learn
the piano, or even you, well,you know, you might get a prize for
doing it. None of that reallyworks compared to, you know, wanting
(10:55):
to be good at something.
Quite.
And so, yeah, I don't know ifthat's true of all types of skill,.
But I think it's probably truebecause, I mean, we probably want
to move on to other stuff.Right. But before we do, I mean,
as you know, I do a little bitof teaching and I teach.
Aren't you a professor or something?
I'm not quite that. Yeah,pretty much. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly
(11:17):
that. But also what'sinteresting is I'm a little bit older
than the other people withwhom I work. And my view is essentially
I'm, you know, I'm afilmmaker, photographer first, and
then I teach as well. Right.Which. And that's not to say that
the teaching is not asimportant, but how I view teaching
(11:37):
is very much related to thefact that I practice this stuff as
well. Right. So what I'm notparticularly interested in is grades.
I'm not particularlyinterested in evaluations and these
kinds of things. I recognizethere's a place for it, and it's
a very systemized way ofteaching we have at the moment. And
I also recognise that the kidsneed to do that stuff. But the thing
(11:58):
for me that it always comesback to is you've got to enjoy doing
this stuff and always try andwork on projects that you enjoy,
because ultimately what thatmeans is the drive to improve just
comes from within.
Yeah, No, I think that's auseful way of framing it is go where
the energy is. That's go dothe things that you're intrinsically
motivated to do because it will.
Give you that competitiveadvantage. I feel.
(12:18):
Right.
Well, unless it's somethingthat has no economic value at all,
which is the unfortunate thing.
I mean, competitive advantageis actually not the right phrase
really. What I mean, it givesyou a bit of competitive edge.
Yes. I mean, I think the thingis, you know, in a sense that you're
born with a natural advantageif the things you want to do happen
also to be commerciallyviable, you know, and I think so.
I think things liketechnology, you know, computer programming,
(12:39):
when I was, when I was a kid,you know, in the 1980s and 1990s,
you could, a lot of peopletaught themselves how to do computer
programming. Some of thosepeople went on to become, you know,
tech guys and CTOs and, youknow, and, and found computer game
companies and all those kindsof things. And you think, well, you
know, there wasn't trainingcourses like there are now. And I,
I would suspect there's a muchhigher percentage of those self taught
(13:01):
programmers from the 80sbecoming successful computer engineers
than are all the countlesspeople going on now. We have computer
science degrees everywhere andwe have a massive throughput of people
learning programming, butthey're. Because that's where the
money is, not because they'redriven by this desire to make computers
do stuff.
(13:22):
Exactly.
And so I would think thepercentage of people going on to
become highly successfulpregnancies is much lower now in
terms of the. Probably theabsolute number is higher, but. Yeah.
So there we are.
I want to move us along, butjust before we do, to your point
there, I was recently offeredsome training at my work and I rejected
it, which everyone was quitesurprised at. And I was offered training
(13:44):
on.
Was it equality and diversitytraining? Nah, I'm already good at
that.
Got it.
No, it was after the fire.
It was on. Yeah, it was, itwas, you know, they said, Fraser,
after the incident, you haveto do this. No, it's on a bit of
software called After Effects,which is essentially a special effects
thing I'm going to call it.And I said, no, I don't want to do
(14:04):
that. And the reason why is Ihad training on that years ago and
I had like, like a week'sworth of training and then I forgot
everything. And the reason whyis one, I wasn't that I'm not that
interested in visual effectsand two, I didn't have the chance
to practice it. Okay. And sothe knowledge Just ebbed.
But also, you know that whenyou are suddenly presented with the
need to include a bigexplosion in a film you're making,
(14:26):
you will teach yourself how.
To do it, possibly, or getsomeone else to do it. However, something
that I do know reasonably wellis another software called Premiere
Pro, which is essentiallyvideo editing software. And I know
that pretty well. But how do Iknow it? Because 1. I mean, I essentially
taught it myself, all thoselearning of YouTube videos, etc.
But also I use it day in, dayout and have done for like 10 years
or so or more. So it kind of.Again, going back to your point about,
(14:49):
you know, and. But I'mmotivated to, because I really enjoy
it as well.
Or.
Anyway, where are we goingwith this? What do you want to move
on to?
I mean, there's lots ofinteresting ways you could take it.
I think it might be worththinking briefly about what training
is versus other things whichare to do with knowledge development,
like education and coaching. Iwas thinking you're picking your
(15:13):
example up, Fraser, of thesetools which you've been offered training
in. Given your level ofexperience, it sounds like training
course is not the right sortof thing. What you need is coaching.
So you're the package you'refamiliar with. You don't want to
go on an introductory courseor even an intermediate course on
it. I think what you want issomebody who can lead you through
(15:36):
didactically to. To improve.To take you to the next level on
what you do with that tool. Ieither sort of giving you things
to do and tips on how toimprove your workflow to make you
more efficient, or using moreof the features and everything else
in that tool to make yourproduct better. So it's like it's
not a sort of. It's not apredefined, static training course.
(16:01):
I think what it needs issomebody to sit on your shoulder
every now and again and say,what are you working on? How do you
go about doing that? Have youthought about this? Why you could
try doing it this way and giveyou a bit more kind of like bespoke
experience transfer ratherthan a sort of predetermined set
of outcomes?
(16:22):
Yeah, because I, and I thinkgoing back to what we were. What
we were talking about earlier,and the thing which is really undervalued
or at least not consideredthat we always think of teaching
and training as a transfer ofskills. But actually what I think
we all agreed on and what theevidence suggests is that is also
(16:42):
it's equally important totransfer motivation, that actually
what you really need to do ismake someone want to know this stuff
like that. Without thatthey're just gonna ignore it or forget
it. And so yeah, I feel to melike the interesting thing about
coaching is that you can takethe motivation for granted. Like
actually the job of a coach isto get someone who already wants
(17:04):
to be better and help them getbetter. And I sort of think actually
that is a totally differentkind of intervention really. And
I'm thinking like with my,I've got a piano teacher for example,
and she is, it doesn't have tomake me excited about playing the
piano because I might, I wantto know what specific things I need
(17:24):
to do to be better because I'mat the point where I can't identify
that myself. And, and that isactually a very different. Like when
she's, she also does childrenand you know, when she's teaching
a 8 year old it's going to bea totally different thing because
actually you're trying toencourage them. You should make them
excited about doing it.Probably much less focus on technique
and trying to get them to beperfect at stuff and more about getting
(17:47):
them to enjoy it.
Absolutely. And like there'sthat sort of first level, right?
Prior to all of this is well,what we're doing this for, what the
aims, right. Why do we want todo this? Right. The risk of saying
the obvious, right? And thatneeds to be established first. Again,
a bit like in the past when Ifirst started making films for clients
and they say we want to make afilm, I go, brilliant, let's go make
(18:07):
a film. Now if someone saysthat we want to make a film, the
first question, why do youwant to make a film? Because maybe
the film's not, you know,maybe you should be doing something
else instead, right? So it'sthat, well, you know, why are we
doing this? Look, but still,where are we going with this? What
do we want? Where have we gotto. So far we've talked about training,
what direction next?
(18:29):
Well, I naturally being me, Iwant to take it in a sort of systems
engineering direction and say,well, what is training doing and
viewing training as a, as atechnology, you know, what is it
doing? And therefore once wedefine what it's, what it's actually
doing, try to see if there areways, if there are factors in any
(18:53):
given training that you cantweak to maximize its efficiency
for any given topic or betweenany two different people or between
the circumstance where that,where that student is in their, in
their career, all these sortof, there must be factors which Govern
how good training is or howtraining needs to be designed for
(19:15):
that, for that givensituation. Fine, yeah. So viewing
training as a technology, Ithink what ultimately training is
doing, I'm thinking I'mtalking pure training now, not education,
not coaching. Think trainingcourse where your employer books
you on a training course fortwo weeks to go and learn how to
use CAD software or something.Its job is to try to bootstrap your
(19:38):
understanding of that thing,the topic, to a point. Where is it,
which is higher than where youare now. So if you're. If it's an
introductory training course,it's the first time you've possibly
ever seen the thing, touchedthe thing, and you're starting to
actually, you know, throughthat training course, hopefully there's
practical elements to it. Ifit's a practical thing, it's there
to get you starting to gothrough some of the basic mechanics
(20:01):
of using it, so you're atleast at a level that you can then
develop further and, or maybeeven start using it productively
to do a certain task. So whatyou're doing there is you're transferring
knowledge, or taking knowledgeout of somebody's head who's experienced
using it and putting it intosomebody who's inexperienced and
therefore getting them up toa. Bumping their, their competence
(20:25):
up in, in the topic. I thinkthat's a sort of a reasonably robust
definition of what trainingis. Now, the knowledge we're talking
about sort of famously comesin two very broad kinds. You have
explicit knowledge, which isstuff that can, can and is easy enough
to write down, and that willbe what the learning outcomes of
(20:47):
the training are. But thenyou've got this bigger, more amorphous,
very difficult to define setof knowledge, which is the tacit
knowledge. This is the stuffthat an experienced person has, but
often lacks any kind of tidy,introspective access to, to it.
And they may not even knowthat they're doing it.
(21:08):
They may not even know they'redoing it. So this is like, then this,
this is stuff that you can'tput in a training course, but it's
actually where most of thevalue comes from. But the training
course acts as a sort ofguardrail, handrail thing to help
you sort of a tree, like thestalks and branches of a tree that
you can then start to walkdown and put those tacit knowledge
(21:31):
leaves onto to develop yourunderstanding. So in a software package
kind of thing, it's like, thisis how you save a file, this is how
you start a project. This iswhat a project is in this context,
there's all this kind ofscaffolding stuff that might be abstract
and esoteric when you firstencounter it, but when you start
to practice it, you can thensay, ah, okay, now I understand.
(21:54):
What I can now sort of startpainting my own experience onto my
scaffold.
Yeah, it's almost like. I feellike where the value of those things
comes in is, is that they'retelling you what you can do with
something and not actuallynecessarily how best to do it. You
know, that actually how bestto do it is much harder to. To give
(22:15):
someone without them needingto achieve an effect, you know, without.
Without them having a projectthat they want to produce. It's very
difficult to show someone thebest way of doing something because
they don't know why you'd bedoing it in the first place. But
what they would like to knowis, well, there's this menu here,
and this is where you findthe, you know, the effects menu.
And this is. That's what alayer is. And if you want to add
a layer, you can do that overthere. And it's like, okay, right.
(22:37):
I've got a vague idea now ofwhere these bits are, but I'm not
at the moment, you know,they're not trying to teach me what
to do or why.
Well, also, I don't know ifthis is what you're getting into,
but again, I can't helpcomparing when I sort of teaching
what I do, which is that a lotof stuff. I just see my thing is
a sort of a simplificationprocess through my own experience.
(22:58):
Right. Because I pretty muchsay to all my students, especially
when it's with adult students,look, everything I'm about to tell
you, you can see this stuffonline, you can find it. Right? Okay,
there's no point. And if I'mtalking about, I don't know, composition,
go have a look, you'll find stuff.
Right.
There's no point me tellingyou about that. But what I can tell
you about is, from myexperience, what I think about this.
(23:19):
And I may be right or wrong,but this is what works now. It's
kind of a transfer.
I think that's a key part ofthe transfer, that a good training
course. So they've got likepurely vocational training. Like
if you imagine a factoryworker whose job it is to turn a
handle on a machine, thetraining is really just turn this
handle, push that button. Didit work? Yes. Repeat. It's kind of
like very. It's very, verymechanical. The training. A key output
(23:47):
of the training is that whatyou're, what sounds like you're trying
to do there is transfer someof your. The mortacity bits. And
I would class that as taste.So this is like, I, you know, I.
This.
I will show you how I use thissoftware to achieve this effect,
which I think has valuebecause of X, Y and Z. Now you have
your own tast, which you willdevelop. But I think that what. This
(24:11):
is kind of you saying whatgood looks like and what bad looks
like, because you. But that's,but that's sort of from. That's your
taste, and you're trying totransfer that to. To. To somebody
else. And I think that'sparticularly important. No, don't
go there. So what, what, what,what. What the training is trying
(24:33):
to do there is. It's trying tocompress knowledge that you've got
and transfer it to otherpeople. Problem with compression
is that it always risks loss.You know, you can't transfer that.
You can't take that wholething out and patch somebody's brain.
You're trying to compress itthrough the, through the materials
and through the dialogue.
Exactly. But the other thing,just to say, I don't know if weakness
(24:56):
is the word, but as you say,you know, the word taste implies
something quite personal. Andso I do always caveat it, say, look,
this is, for me, this is how Ido it. There might be better ways
to it. There probably are, butthis is how I do it. Where are we
going? Because I think we wantto talk about cultural stuff, but
I don't know if we. I don'tthink. Don't. If we've got time to
sort of talk about other kindsof learning. Nick, help me out.
(25:21):
Well, I don't know. I mean,we, you know, we've. I think we kind
of. I know it's all felt a bitabstract really, but I mean, I think,
you know, we. We've kind ofbeen focusing on skills on like,
how to do something, which.
Training, the word trainingimplies, does suggest.
Whereas I think education ismore about knowing that. It's like
(25:42):
knowing about things that aretrue. You're trying to get people
to know things, which is notnecessarily the same as doing stuff,
you know, but obviously thereis a big link between the two that
there's. It's quite difficultto, you know, to draw a sharp line
between those two. But no, Ijust thinking, I mean, in terms of,
like, obviously the fact thatwe're living in a world made of podcasts
(26:07):
and cameras and light switchesand not still trying to work out
how to Start a fire in a caveshows that we've very successfully
passed on, collectively, a lotof skill in terms of being able to
do stuff. Like, you can nowstart a fire using one of those.
(26:29):
Not in here.
No. Not a good idea. But, youknow, using one of 10 different technologies
you probably got at home, youcould get a fire going within about
10 minutes. You know, it's.It's. And yet you probably are much,
much less skilled at startingfires than a caveman would have been.
Right. So. And not only that,but you can do all sorts of other
(26:52):
things. You can put heating onand heat your house, or if it's more
the light you're after, youcan turn on a light switch. And we
can do all of these thingsvastly more effectively than our,
you know, ancestral forebears.Right. Despite the fact that we haven't
really inherited the skills.We, you and me, the kind of end users,
have not inherited any of theskills of being able to do any of
(27:14):
that. We've somehow been ableto pass on collective skills, the
collective how to do stuffwithout actually needing to train
people. Like, we don't startby saying, okay, welcome to your
new home, and before I showyou how to turn the boiler on, let's.
Let's work out to start a firewith a pair of sticks. We don't bother
with that anymore.
So what you're saying is we'vegot. The outcomes are much more accessible
(27:37):
than they were to the cavemanwithout the Necessarily pass. Without
the necessary.
Well, yes.
That we've somehow. We passedon the capability.
Yeah.
But we've done it throughtechnology rather than through training.
Right. And I guess, you know,we could start thinking about, well,
what actually, what does thatlook like? How can we embody something,
a set of skills or knowledgein a technology in such a way that
(28:00):
I can give that to you withoutneeding to bother with training.
Yeah. So I like.
I like.
I like the lens thattechnology is a sort of embodiment
of a load of cleverness.
Yeah.
Instead of having to hold thatall in your head, you can have this
widget that does a thing. Andloads of clever people have worked
out how to build a widget. Youjust need to push the button on the
(28:20):
widget.
Yeah. And it's almost like thetechnology to go right back to the
sort of first thing we weretalking about of like, I want to
make someone else have thataha moment that I had when I discovered
it, you know, and. Butactually, if I can get them to replicate
the effect without evenneeding to understand it, you know,
(28:41):
do. Do I need to worry aboutthat? And. And it sort of. I don't
know. Napier and thelogarithms, right? Logarithms are
flipping brilliant. You gettaught them at school. They seem
very boring. You don't knowwhy you're learning them. But actually,
you know, as a computationaltool, to be able to do, you know,
and especially because it wasanalog, it was little, actually,
literally numbers on sticksthat you kind of lined up next to
(29:03):
each other. Logarithms areabsolutely amazing. And. And part
of me thinks I really want toget people to understand why they're
so cool. You play with theslide rule, you're like, why are
the numbers like that?
Yeah, you can shift numbersinto a different domain, which makes
them easier to work with. Yes, yes.
But. But actually, you know,if I can just give you a calculator
(29:26):
and you can calculate stuff,then actually we've achieved all
of that without me evenneeding to teach you any of that
stuff. So, you know, that's.Is that better? Well, I mean, it's
certainly more effective.
But maybe what you're talkingabout there is. We're starting to
drift into this murky areabetween training and education, Right?
Because it seems to me thattraining part, potentially, maybe
(29:49):
a definition we could havethere, is the skills of how to do
something, and there's a kindof a. You operating in the area of
utility, maybe. Right. And sowhen technology comes along that
removes the need to do that,then, you know, the utility's gone.
It's there already.
Right.
However, what you're sayingis, when you're talking about logarithms,
is that there comes a pointwhere, okay, this stuff can be done
(30:13):
with a calculator, whatever itmight be. But, hey, guys, look at
this. Isn't this sort ofwider, wonderful beauty of discovery
and curiosity, which thatfeels to me like that's sort of getting
into more broader principlesof education. What do you reckon?
Or am I talking rubbish?
Except for, you know, theNapier's bones, which were a way
of embodying logarithms ineffectively a way of doing. Being
(30:34):
able to do calculation,calculation, complicated big calculations
with effectively numbers onsticks. That's. At one point in time,
that was state of the art,that was the calculators. You know,
you would have to learn how touse them because it was how to do
something. You know, it's away of doing calculations. Whereas
now you would be learning themas almost. Well, not quite historical
(30:57):
interest, because learning,Learning how they work gives you
an insight into what are butyou don't actually need to learn
them, understand them at all.You don't need to have heard of them.
And it's sort of like it's alearning. They're taught as a learning
aid. By using the physicalitem, you're like, I can now see
how this maps onto this moreabstract concept and you can then
(31:17):
start to think, oh, what otherabstract things can this, this approach.
So you've learned a meta skillthere of like how does, what else
does. What else can logs dothat beyond this example that we're
working on? So yeah, there's.Yeah, this is the blended line between
training and education, I think.
Are we about done or is theresomething you want to go into?
(31:39):
Well, the question is, are weactually. I mean, does technology
effectively end up making usall completely stupid? Is that you
know, where we're going? Imean, part one, you could argue that
the reason we bother witheducation is ultimately some sort
of how to. It's ultimatelybecause we think that this is going
to make you more effective.You know, knowing things, knowing
(32:00):
facts about the world, knowinga bit of history might make you more
effective, you know, being,being a modern day present.
I think there's value toeducation beyond being a functioning,
profitable member of society.Well, I'm just saying it's arguably
there's value in, in justenriching people for the sake of
doing that. That.
Well, yeah, okay.
I mean, it's nice to know stuff.
Obviously, I think that. Butactually, as it happens, that has
(32:24):
been really one of the onlyways we've been able to get people
to be able to do other stuff.Like, you know, write an essay, let's
say, you know, which, which isgood training for writing about things
in general. And a lot of jobsinvolve writing about stuff. So,
you know, we teach you to readsome history and then we teach you
how to write an essay and youget the hang of that and then you
become more functional and ifyou enjoy history, well, so much
(32:47):
the better. What I guess wehave gradually developed technology
to do to require less and lessunderstanding of us so that we can
just achieve the effect at thepush of a button. And I suppose the
thought would be, well, youknow, if we have LLMs that are now
doing that, you know, we'rekind of doing the, doing the writing
(33:08):
the essay for you. Can wecompletely give up in the same way
that GPS means that nobody hasa sense of, of direction anymore
and in a sense you don't needone. No one learns the, the actual
physical map. You just look atthe representation on your screen
and you follow theinstructions and it says go forward
and you go forward and youdon't really think about where you
(33:28):
are. Is this the end resultthat we pass down immense capability,
but we do it with requiringless and less understanding. Is that
the.
Well, I mean I think not inthe current paradigm. So I think
until we get the AGIs, whetheror not you think that's inevitable
or likely and very soon at themoment you need human taste to steer
(33:54):
the LLM to steer your AI inthe right direction so you can automate
things. So for example,experimentation and the LLM can do
much of the work, but to steerthe LLM into what to experiment on
is the key thing that thehuman experience gives. So LLMs are
(34:18):
naturally at the moment verygood comparative to other things.
At software engineering theycan given a given a spec for a functional.
For even larger parts ofsoftware they can write a pretty
good job, do a pretty good jobof that, of something that will work.
And the key thing though thatthey can't do is work out what to
(34:39):
do in the first place, what good.
Looks like, what the answer isto how should this behave? What,
what color should the buttonsbe? All of those sorts of. Yeah,
yeah.
So they, so they could keepgetting better as they are, but they,
the way that they work, theywon't necessarily be able to decide
what is a good idea to start with.
Yeah, no, quite, yeah.
(35:00):
I mean are we, but I mean arewe all. We're gradually, let's say
we gradually technology movesus further and further away from
the practicalities, the realworld things that you have to touch
and understand in theprocesses because things become more
and more like pulling a leveror pressing a button and, and the
(35:20):
actual mechanics of it. Wehave taken care of all of that. Right.
And I just wonder if, youknow, the future is inevitably that
we will be these sorts ofbutton pressing Eloy served by the
mechanical morlocks, you know,and, and you know what happens then
when it all goes wrong? Youknow, actually we just sit about
doing nothing. You know thatwe've transferred all of the knowledge
(35:45):
of humanity and as a resultnobody has to know how to do anything
or learn anything.
So yeah, nicely done.
The beautiful end point of allof this.
Well, nicely done becausethat's a beautiful segue into a question
I want to ask to finish thisoff on. Right. So the question is
this could go, you couldeither go backwards or forwards with
(36:08):
this. So what I was going tosay is what's a skill that you would
like to Know, talking aboutthis sort of departure from, you
know, the effects oftechnology, it sort of moves us away
from certain skills. Okay. Isthere a skill that you would like
to learn that is no longeravailable to us? So that being the
case, Nick, go for it. Haveyou got anything?
(36:29):
Yeah. Have you heard of dancing?
Yes.
I'm just, I've. I've got, I'vegot such a poor quality sense of.
Is it proprioception? Likewhere my body is at any given time
and you know, which I supposeyou might think, obviously I'm fingers,
no problem. I could play thepiano quite well. I'm alright. We're
playing a piano, my fingersknow what they're doing.
(36:50):
Right.
But the whole, my whole entirebody is just slumps, usually awkwardly
into some position. And Ithink I would like to learn to dance
properly now.
Is this a loss? Hold on. Butthis is a skill that you would like
that you don't have.
Yeah. Not saying it's a lost art.
Okay.
But I, you know, but at thesame time I sort of think, well,
if I had grown up in, youknow, a tribe in 10,000 BC, I would
(37:13):
probably be dancing a lot.He's doing a lot more dancing.
Less piano playing.
Yeah, less of that. But maybea bit of drumming. Maybe playing
a bone flute.
Yeah.
But probably much moredancing. And so I feel, you know,
I feel like society hasremoved my. The necessity to dance.
Will you say that? But goingback to this intrinsic versus extrinsic,
(37:34):
maybe it's better off that.Because maybe your value in the tribe.
Or maybe society is better offbecause Nick's not dancing.
Yeah, undoubtedly true.
Because if you were meant tobe a great dancer, you'd already
be.
I'd already be the Nijinsky ofNorth London.
Yeah. And. But you know, onthis sort of little flight of fancy.
I don't know, I think, youknow, if you, if we were in a tribe,
(37:56):
I think people wouldspecialize and there'd still be people
who like dancing being abigger cultural thing still doesn't
make them want to do itanymore. I think people were specialized
in a big people who are sortof naturally good at dancing. They
like doing it.
And then there's the bone flute.
And then there's a bone flute.Yeah. I think you'd be a bone flute
drummer guy and you'd be like.People would try and get you to dance.
(38:18):
You'd be like, oh no, I hate,I hate dancing. But I'm quite good
at the flute. Let me.
Yeah, it could be.
It makes me wonder like on Alittle sort of side sort of note
is, you know, it'd beinteresting. I'd like to know if
there's studies out therebetween, let's call it for a moment,
musicality, for example,versus measured against dancing ability.
Because one would expect thatpeople who are good at music. I've
(38:40):
seen you play the piano. Ithink you're fantastic. I mean, you'd
expect there to be a sort of apositive link, but, I mean, it appears
not. Right. But yeah, I'd liketo know about that.
Fraser.
What.
What skill?
I'm not sure yet.
Okay, we'll show it.
Peter, Peter, Peter.
Yeah.
There's a very, very specificskill I would like to.
Is it wheelies on a bmx?
(39:01):
No, it's not wheelies, it'sbunny hops.
On a mountain bike.
It's not far off, right? Imean, basically, yes is the answer.
It's basically a bunny hop,more or less.
Start.
No, it's not a wheelie per se.It's what's actually called a manual.
A wheelie is when your bum ison the seat. A manual is when you're
off the seat. I can. I canmanual. I cannot bunny hop. So bunny
hopping. So feeling his veryspecific skill. So. But it's kind
(39:26):
of like it's one of thosefundamental things in mountain biking
that lets unlocks a load ofother things like. Like jumping over
things safely, getting downbig drops and all sorts of, you know,
things that you want to do.So, I mean, I'm pretty fit at the
moment, reasonably athletic onthe bike. That's no longer my blocker.
(39:50):
My blocker is now being someof the technical skills, like bunny
hops.
Well, Peter, I've actuallyasked a friend of mine who's a very
talented choreographer to giveme some dancing lessons.
Okay. Yeah. So can they giveme mountain bike lessons?
No, but what I'm saying is ifI'm going to learn to dance. If you
learn to bunny hop.
Yes. Yeah. But luckily thisskill acquisition is within my reach.
(40:11):
There are lots of places I cango to get specific coaching on mountain
biking.
Yeah. I mean, this feels likeachievable. It's not a dream.
Yeah.
You know, Fraser, whatludicrous, unachievable skill dream
do you have?
Yeah. So in the spirit of theway you've answered the question,
I'm going to answer in thesame way, which is you actually didn't
answer the question that I wanted.
Right. You're going to say younever do that. I know.
(40:35):
Which, to be fair, I mean,you're due yeah, because what I wanted
to know is what's been lost,what sort of skills been lost, which
you would like. So I'm gonnaignore that and ask a different question
which I was thinking of, whichis what skill has been imparted to
you or you impart to others.That's kind of a favourite one. I'm
gonna answer that question andmy skill is this and it's one that
(40:55):
I impart to others.
Do you. Okay. You like tothink and it's to.
Do with photography in thesage guru.
Kind of role that you have.
Exactly.
Go on, hit us with your biglesson then.
Take the lens.
You've got a massive audiencenow so it's time to transfer that
as widely as possible.
Yeah. So if I'm able to upphotography and what we should be
(41:16):
looking to achieve, what we'relooking for to make a good photograph
or great photograph. What wemean by that is really simple, I
think. Any thoughts, any ideas?
Yeah. Basically a black andwhite photo of an old man close up.
That's. That's how. That'saward winning photos. He's got to
(41:37):
be really wrinkly.
Yeah.
Right.
It's really, really simple, Ithink. Light, it's just light.
Right.
Okay, so fairly fundamental.
Well, it's in the name, right.I mean it's light. You've got to
be looking at what the light's doing.
Well, have you seen that filmthe Fablemans which is about Steven
Spielberg? It's semi automatic.
I know of it, but I've not watched.
(41:58):
Well, there's this scene wherehe finally joins a studio and he
goes next door and it's JohnFord played by David lynch. And he
says basically if thehorizons. If the horizon's at the
top, that's good. If thehorizon's at the bottom, that's good.
If the horizon's in themiddle, it's fucking boring. And
it's like. That's actuallythis actually pretty good advice.
(42:22):
One third, two thirds.
Yeah, that's a whole frametype thing going on. But yeah, light.
Always be looking for thelight, I think.
I mean I get it, but what I.But I don't get it at the same time
it's like what does that meanthough, beyond turn the lights on
or make sure there is light?That doesn't transfer to me any sense.
He wants to sound mysteriousand good and he doesn't always.
(42:45):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I cananswer that but I'm not gonna answer
it now. But yeah, I'll sendyou a link, some of my lessons there
you go. All right, we'll stopthere. Yep, I enjoyed that. I thought
that was quite fun. So you'vebeen listening to the Cognitive Engineering
Podcast brought to you byAleph Insights and produced by me,
Fraser McGruer. If you haven'talready, please like and subscribe.
We try to release an episodeevery week or two. Until next time,
(43:12):
goodbye.
Hello and welcome to theCognitive Engineering Podcast brought
to you by Aleph Insights andproduced by me, Fraser McGruer. I'm
here with Peter Coghill andNick Hare of Aleph Insights. On this
podcast we look at a widerange of topics from an analytical
viewpoint. And today we'rediscussing training. Nick, Training,
(00:24):
tell us.
Well, you may not be awarethat Aleph Insights is a company
used to deliver training usedto analytical methods and things.
Yeah, we used to. We actuallyhave a sort of training course which
is designed to give people aninsight into more the fundamentals
of analysis rather thanspecific techniques as such.
(00:46):
But I sense a, however coming.
Well, Elizabeth, this isn't an advert.
No, it's not. Don't get in touch.
We don't want to do it.
Get in touch and ask about itbecause we don't do it anymore. And
one of the reasons is that Ifound it a bit dispiriting because
I could never transfer topeople or I felt like, you know,
it was very difficult to getpeople to, to have the same sense
(01:09):
of kind of discovery, Isuppose, that I, that I had about
the things we were trying toget people to understand. So things
like uncertainty, people havea, have a, have an intuitive understanding
of uncertainty that is notvery coherent. And we want people
to think about whatuncertainty really is, fundamentally,
which is about information,and that's a better way of thinking
(01:31):
about uncertainty, forexample. But when you deliver it
in the form of a trainingcourse, even though, you know, you
have interesting exercises andyou have interesting discussions
about it, there is almost thissort of lack of motivation to see
why what we're trying to tellthem is something really, really
interesting is, is anyway, it.Comparing it to my own experiences
(01:52):
of being trained to do stuff,I, I get it. I. Because, you know,
I, I don't think, I don'tthink I've really learned things
from being trained to dostuff. I think I've learned nearly
all the stuff that I can dowell from trying to do it, you know,
from trying to. So, forexample, all of the things I'm good
(02:12):
at in terms of, you know, say,Python programming, which I'm not
claiming to be an expert on,but I'm, you know, I'm much better
than I was, say, five, sixyears ago. And a lot of that is just
having, wanting to do stuffwith it, you know, and then you come
across something you can't do,you work out to do it. You, you end
up being able to solve thoseproblems and, you know, and at the
end you actually have A prettygood understanding of what you're
(02:34):
doing. But then you take thatunderstanding that you've distilled
and you go, right, I've had tosolve all of these problems myself.
I've, I'm going to shortcutthat. I'm going to get this training
course put together which cutsout all of that. You're not going
to have to spe, you know, fiveyears making all of these mistakes
because I'm going to tell youhow to not make those mistakes in
(02:55):
the first place. And lo andbehold, it doesn't mean anything.
People don't get it. Theydon't, they haven't made those mistakes.
They don't really see why whatyou're saying is important. And so
yeah, that's my feeling is,well, maybe training is a waste of
time or is it, you know, whatthings can you train people to do?
What kinds of skills areamenable to training versus you know,
(03:18):
practicing, which I guess is aform of self training where you sort
of think, well, I'll tell youwhat, I'm going to try and I'm going
to try and do this to getbetter at it versus experience, which
is where you're getting betterat it because you're doing it, not
because you're trying to getbetter at it, but merely because
you are doing it to achievesome real world effect learning on
a job. Yeah, that's it.
(03:38):
So, yeah, no, great question,quick question about the people that
you would be training.Presumably these cohorts, would they
be lay people or would they be people?
No, they're generally peoplewho are doing analysis already.
This is really surprising thenbecause one would have thought that
they would have had thecuriosity to want to analyze better.
(03:59):
Right. If that's what they'realready doing.
I mean, but I think there's asense in which once you distill something
down to a set of key learningpoints and you go, we want you to
understand this and this andthis. It feels like it's a thing
on a page that someone fromsomewhere has, that just exists and,
(04:19):
and it hasn't got theexcitement of a genuine discovery.
And I suppose think aboutsomething like Newtonian mechanics,
which is really amazing, likefrom a world of not really having
any systematic way of thinkingabout physics, you know, the large
scale behavior of physicalobjects, suddenly you have like this
revolution. Newton comesalong, invents a few, kind of a small
(04:44):
number of laws that suddenlyexplain everything, suddenly explains
planets and birds and youknow, balls falling off a table and,
and you know, you learn it atSchool and it's like oh, it's a thing,
it's written down, I've got tolearn it. It's come from that process
of discovery is missingbecause you just are shortcutting
straight to the end point.And. And I feel like that is partly
(05:08):
the issue. It does it. I meanand you can be really interested
in physics but it. You arestill not seeing why. That's an exciting,
interesting thing to thing totry and understand.
I would suggest that that'spartly a fault of the way it's delivered
though. I think yeah, if youjust said here's, here's the Newton's
formula is just learn these.That's not very good. I think there
(05:31):
are ways of doing trainingthat lead you to lead you on a shortcutted
path journey to those. So Iremember doing physics at physics
A levels. I had a great, greatteacher and it was mostly experimentation
driven. So we'd each doexperiments using various different
equipment and we would sort ofend up deriving some fundamental
(05:54):
or ourselves from our results.So we'd go through the motions of
a well trodden experiment andit would lead us to a law of motion
or a law of optics or. So we'dsort of, we wouldn't just be given
the end, we'd be given ajourney to go on and that would lead
us to the end and that wouldsort of concrete our understanding
(06:16):
of how this law was found oran understanding of the law.
I mean. Can I posit something here?
So I think, yeah, I don'tthink it's. I think there's not necessarily.
That's necessarily a problemof the shortcutting bit. I think
it's how you do theshortcutting that's the. That makes
it good or not.
Okay. I mean there's somethingto suggest. I mean so maybe drawing
(06:38):
together what you're saying isit a mixture of like how stuff is
delivered, the training andthe quality of that and the content
of that. But also the fact isit doesn't matter how well something
is being delivered to me on Idon't know, quantum mechanics or
whatever. I'm never gonnareally get that great at it. Cause
part of the reason is I don'treally care about it sufficiently
(07:01):
and I'm probably not mentallyequipped to do anything with that
or motivated. It's never gonnawork on me. Right. So you've gotta
have an interest in that area.But it's gotta be even to be a good
trainee. Then it goes a littlebit deeper. Cause like you were saying
you were Training analysts ortrying to train analysts, but even
analysts didn't, you felt,didn't quite have that curiosity?
(07:22):
Well, it was the frustrationthat I could never communicate why
this thing was a really good,interesting way of looking at it.
And I think it's interestingyou mention actually, so this, what
is it that makes someone agood teacher? Because I think we're
touching on these two separatethings here. One is being able to
explain the concepts, but theother is making you interested in
(07:42):
it. And I think that that kindof motivation is absolutely necessary.
Right. If you, you can't trainsomeone to do something if they're
not interested in knowing howto do that thing.
And I think, I think ourexperience is slightly soured though,
because not disparaging ourprevious colleagues too much, but
(08:03):
a lot of people justfundamentally weren't interested
in what it was to be ananalyst. They didn't see their job,
they didn't see their job asbeing partly produce some output,
which is your analysis, butalso partly improve yourself so your
output gets better. They sawthat second part as being very much
(08:23):
not part of their job or notpart of being an analyst. They existed
in a world where analysis isreading loads of stuff, having a
think and then writing aboutit. And that was like, that was as
sort of as concrete as amethod as you could get.
And it's quite a finite world that.
(08:44):
Right.
It doesn't look beyond that tothe framework that you're using.
Whereas actually our argumentwas always, well, yes, that is fundamentally
the mechanics of what you do.But the way you think about it, there
are ways to improve that, topatch that with techniques, tools
and sort of approaches thatmake your output better, more robust.
(09:05):
But yeah, but I thinkfundamentally it comes down to a
lot of the analysts that weget aren't. There's no incentivate,
there's very little incentivefor doing it better and there's very
little kind of checking oflike, okay, so you're out this, you,
you wrote this paper sixmonths ago. Let's just check this
predictive paper six monthsago, let's check how much of what
(09:25):
you predicted came true. Andtherefore, you know, we'll pay you
more or less or we'll give yousome prize or we'll give you some
sort of incentive for doing itmore like that next time doesn't
exist. None of this sort ofincentives exist.
Well, quite.
But, but also, I don't think,I mean my, well, my subjective impression,
and I think this is backed upby the, by the research, is that
(09:46):
extrinsic Motivation isn't apatch really on intrinsic motivation
anyway. And it's like, youknow, this. This kind of. I suppose
another example would besomething like playing the piano,
something we try and getchildren to do. And you think, well,
you know, the thing thatdistinguishes people who end up being
good at music from people whodon't is. Is going to be partly about
(10:10):
being enthused by a teacher.You know, you got a good teacher
who kind of encourages you towant to do it. But actually, I mean,
in my case, what motivated mewas seeing someone play the piano,
actually an old lady at awedding playing Scott Joplin on the
piano. And I'd already spent afew years learning the piano, but.
But it was always a thing Iwas supposed to do. There was an
(10:31):
ought component to it, youknow, and. And I thought, hang on,
I want to be able to do that.And suddenly I had this motivation
to start to start learningagain. And I sort of think, well,
that extrinsic motivation,the, you know, you. Your mum to learn
the piano, or even you, well,you know, you might get a prize for
doing it. None of that reallyworks compared to, you know, wanting
(10:55):
to be good at something.
Quite.
And so, yeah, I don't know ifthat's true of all types of skill,.
But I think it's probably truebecause, I mean, we probably want
to move on to other stuff.Right. But before we do, I mean,
as you know, I do a little bitof teaching and I teach.
Aren't you a professor or something?
I'm not quite that. Yeah,pretty much. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly
(11:17):
that. But also what'sinteresting is I'm a little bit older
than the other people withwhom I work. And my view is essentially
I'm, you know, I'm afilmmaker, photographer first, and
then I teach as well. Right.Which. And that's not to say that
the teaching is not asimportant, but how I view teaching
(11:37):
is very much related to thefact that I practice this stuff as
well. Right. So what I'm notparticularly interested in is grades.
I'm not particularlyinterested in evaluations and these
kinds of things. I recognizethere's a place for it, and it's
a very systemized way ofteaching we have at the moment. And
I also recognise that the kidsneed to do that stuff. But the thing
(11:58):
for me that it always comesback to is you've got to enjoy doing
this stuff and always try andwork on projects that you enjoy,
because ultimately what thatmeans is the drive to improve just
comes from within.
Yeah, No, I think that's auseful way of framing it is go where
the energy is. That's go dothe things that you're intrinsically
motivated to do because it will.
Give you that competitiveadvantage. I feel.
(12:18):
Right.
Well, unless it's somethingthat has no economic value at all,
which is the unfortunate thing.
I mean, competitive advantageis actually not the right phrase
really. What I mean, it givesyou a bit of competitive edge.
Yes. I mean, I think the thingis, you know, in a sense that you're
born with a natural advantageif the things you want to do happen
also to be commerciallyviable, you know, and I think so.
I think things liketechnology, you know, computer programming,
(12:39):
when I was, when I was a kid,you know, in the 1980s and 1990s,
you could, a lot of peopletaught themselves how to do computer
programming. Some of thosepeople went on to become, you know,
tech guys and CTOs and, youknow, and, and found computer game
companies and all those kindsof things. And you think, well, you
know, there wasn't trainingcourses like there are now. And I,
I would suspect there's a muchhigher percentage of those self taught
(13:01):
programmers from the 80sbecoming successful computer engineers
than are all the countlesspeople going on now. We have computer
science degrees everywhere andwe have a massive throughput of people
learning programming, butthey're. Because that's where the
money is, not because they'redriven by this desire to make computers
do stuff.
(13:22):
Exactly.
And so I would think thepercentage of people going on to
become highly successfulpregnancies is much lower now in
terms of the. Probably theabsolute number is higher, but. Yeah.
So there we are.
I want to move us along, butjust before we do, to your point
there, I was recently offeredsome training at my work and I rejected
it, which everyone was quitesurprised at. And I was offered training
(13:44):
on.
Was it equality and diversitytraining? Nah, I'm already good at
that.
Got it.
No, it was after the fire.
It was on. Yeah, it was, itwas, you know, they said, Fraser,
after the incident, you haveto do this. No, it's on a bit of
software called After Effects,which is essentially a special effects
thing I'm going to call it.And I said, no, I don't want to do
(14:04):
that. And the reason why is Ihad training on that years ago and
I had like, like a week'sworth of training and then I forgot
everything. And the reason whyis one, I wasn't that I'm not that
interested in visual effectsand two, I didn't have the chance
to practice it. Okay. And sothe knowledge Just ebbed.
But also, you know that whenyou are suddenly presented with the
need to include a bigexplosion in a film you're making,
(14:26):
you will teach yourself how.
To do it, possibly, or getsomeone else to do it. However, something
that I do know reasonably wellis another software called Premiere
Pro, which is essentiallyvideo editing software. And I know
that pretty well. But how do Iknow it? Because 1. I mean, I essentially
taught it myself, all thoselearning of YouTube videos, etc.
But also I use it day in, dayout and have done for like 10 years
or so or more. So it kind of.Again, going back to your point about,
(14:49):
you know, and. But I'mmotivated to, because I really enjoy
it as well.
Or.
Anyway, where are we goingwith this? What do you want to move
on to?
I mean, there's lots ofinteresting ways you could take it.
I think it might be worththinking briefly about what training
is versus other things whichare to do with knowledge development,
like education and coaching. Iwas thinking you're picking your
(15:13):
example up, Fraser, of thesetools which you've been offered training
in. Given your level ofexperience, it sounds like training
course is not the right sortof thing. What you need is coaching.
So you're the package you'refamiliar with. You don't want to
go on an introductory courseor even an intermediate course on
it. I think what you want issomebody who can lead you through
(15:36):
didactically to. To improve.To take you to the next level on
what you do with that tool. Ieither sort of giving you things
to do and tips on how toimprove your workflow to make you
more efficient, or using moreof the features and everything else
in that tool to make yourproduct better. So it's like it's
not a sort of. It's not apredefined, static training course.
(16:01):
I think what it needs issomebody to sit on your shoulder
every now and again and say,what are you working on? How do you
go about doing that? Have youthought about this? Why you could
try doing it this way and giveyou a bit more kind of like bespoke
experience transfer ratherthan a sort of predetermined set
of outcomes?
(16:22):
Yeah, because I, and I thinkgoing back to what we were. What
we were talking about earlier,and the thing which is really undervalued
or at least not consideredthat we always think of teaching
and training as a transfer ofskills. But actually what I think
we all agreed on and what theevidence suggests is that is also
(16:42):
it's equally important totransfer motivation, that actually
what you really need to do ismake someone want to know this stuff
like that. Without thatthey're just gonna ignore it or forget
it. And so yeah, I feel to melike the interesting thing about
coaching is that you can takethe motivation for granted. Like
actually the job of a coach isto get someone who already wants
(17:04):
to be better and help them getbetter. And I sort of think actually
that is a totally differentkind of intervention really. And
I'm thinking like with my,I've got a piano teacher for example,
and she is, it doesn't have tomake me excited about playing the
piano because I might, I wantto know what specific things I need
(17:24):
to do to be better because I'mat the point where I can't identify
that myself. And, and that isactually a very different. Like when
she's, she also does childrenand you know, when she's teaching
a 8 year old it's going to bea totally different thing because
actually you're trying toencourage them. You should make them
excited about doing it.Probably much less focus on technique
and trying to get them to beperfect at stuff and more about getting
(17:47):
them to enjoy it.
Absolutely. And like there'sthat sort of first level, right?
Prior to all of this is well,what we're doing this for, what the
aims, right. Why do we want todo this? Right. The risk of saying
the obvious, right? And thatneeds to be established first. Again,
a bit like in the past when Ifirst started making films for clients
and they say we want to make afilm, I go, brilliant, let's go make
(18:07):
a film. Now if someone saysthat we want to make a film, the
first question, why do youwant to make a film? Because maybe
the film's not, you know,maybe you should be doing something
else instead, right? So it'sthat, well, you know, why are we
doing this? Look, but still,where are we going with this? What
do we want? Where have we gotto. So far we've talked about training,
what direction next?
(18:29):
Well, I naturally being me, Iwant to take it in a sort of systems
engineering direction and say,well, what is training doing and
viewing training as a, as atechnology, you know, what is it
doing? And therefore once wedefine what it's, what it's actually
doing, try to see if there areways, if there are factors in any
(18:53):
given training that you cantweak to maximize its efficiency
for any given topic or betweenany two different people or between
the circumstance where that,where that student is in their, in
their career, all these sortof, there must be factors which Govern
how good training is or howtraining needs to be designed for
(19:15):
that, for that givensituation. Fine, yeah. So viewing
training as a technology, Ithink what ultimately training is
doing, I'm thinking I'mtalking pure training now, not education,
not coaching. Think trainingcourse where your employer books
you on a training course fortwo weeks to go and learn how to
use CAD software or something.Its job is to try to bootstrap your
(19:38):
understanding of that thing,the topic, to a point. Where is it,
which is higher than where youare now. So if you're. If it's an
introductory training course,it's the first time you've possibly
ever seen the thing, touchedthe thing, and you're starting to
actually, you know, throughthat training course, hopefully there's
practical elements to it. Ifit's a practical thing, it's there
to get you starting to gothrough some of the basic mechanics
(20:01):
of using it, so you're atleast at a level that you can then
develop further and, or maybeeven start using it productively
to do a certain task. So whatyou're doing there is you're transferring
knowledge, or taking knowledgeout of somebody's head who's experienced
using it and putting it intosomebody who's inexperienced and
therefore getting them up toa. Bumping their, their competence
(20:25):
up in, in the topic. I thinkthat's a sort of a reasonably robust
definition of what trainingis. Now, the knowledge we're talking
about sort of famously comesin two very broad kinds. You have
explicit knowledge, which isstuff that can, can and is easy enough
to write down, and that willbe what the learning outcomes of
(20:47):
the training are. But thenyou've got this bigger, more amorphous,
very difficult to define setof knowledge, which is the tacit
knowledge. This is the stuffthat an experienced person has, but
often lacks any kind of tidy,introspective access to, to it.
And they may not even knowthat they're doing it.
(21:08):
They may not even know they'redoing it. So this is like, then this,
this is stuff that you can'tput in a training course, but it's
actually where most of thevalue comes from. But the training
course acts as a sort ofguardrail, handrail thing to help
you sort of a tree, like thestalks and branches of a tree that
you can then start to walkdown and put those tacit knowledge
(21:31):
leaves onto to develop yourunderstanding. So in a software package
kind of thing, it's like, thisis how you save a file, this is how
you start a project. This iswhat a project is in this context,
there's all this kind ofscaffolding stuff that might be abstract
and esoteric when you firstencounter it, but when you start
to practice it, you can thensay, ah, okay, now I understand.
(21:54):
What I can now sort of startpainting my own experience onto my
scaffold.
Yeah, it's almost like. I feellike where the value of those things
comes in is, is that they'retelling you what you can do with
something and not actuallynecessarily how best to do it. You
know, that actually how bestto do it is much harder to. To give
(22:15):
someone without them needingto achieve an effect, you know, without.
Without them having a projectthat they want to produce. It's very
difficult to show someone thebest way of doing something because
they don't know why you'd bedoing it in the first place. But
what they would like to knowis, well, there's this menu here,
and this is where you findthe, you know, the effects menu.
And this is. That's what alayer is. And if you want to add
a layer, you can do that overthere. And it's like, okay, right.
(22:37):
I've got a vague idea now ofwhere these bits are, but I'm not
at the moment, you know,they're not trying to teach me what
to do or why.
Well, also, I don't know ifthis is what you're getting into,
but again, I can't helpcomparing when I sort of teaching
what I do, which is that a lotof stuff. I just see my thing is
a sort of a simplificationprocess through my own experience.
(22:58):
Right. Because I pretty muchsay to all my students, especially
when it's with adult students,look, everything I'm about to tell
you, you can see this stuffonline, you can find it. Right? Okay,
there's no point. And if I'mtalking about, I don't know, composition,
go have a look, you'll find stuff.
Right.
There's no point me tellingyou about that. But what I can tell
you about is, from myexperience, what I think about this.
(23:19):
And I may be right or wrong,but this is what works now. It's
kind of a transfer.
I think that's a key part ofthe transfer, that a good training
course. So they've got likepurely vocational training. Like
if you imagine a factoryworker whose job it is to turn a
handle on a machine, thetraining is really just turn this
handle, push that button. Didit work? Yes. Repeat. It's kind of
like very. It's very, verymechanical. The training. A key output
(23:47):
of the training is that whatyou're, what sounds like you're trying
to do there is transfer someof your. The mortacity bits. And
I would class that as taste.So this is like, I, you know, I.
This.
I will show you how I use thissoftware to achieve this effect,
which I think has valuebecause of X, Y and Z. Now you have
your own tast, which you willdevelop. But I think that what. This
(24:11):
is kind of you saying whatgood looks like and what bad looks
like, because you. But that's,but that's sort of from. That's your
taste, and you're trying totransfer that to. To. To somebody
else. And I think that'sparticularly important. No, don't
go there. So what, what, what,what. What the training is trying
(24:33):
to do there is. It's trying tocompress knowledge that you've got
and transfer it to otherpeople. Problem with compression
is that it always risks loss.You know, you can't transfer that.
You can't take that wholething out and patch somebody's brain.
You're trying to compress itthrough the, through the materials
and through the dialogue.
Exactly. But the other thing,just to say, I don't know if weakness
(24:56):
is the word, but as you say,you know, the word taste implies
something quite personal. Andso I do always caveat it, say, look,
this is, for me, this is how Ido it. There might be better ways
to it. There probably are, butthis is how I do it. Where are we
going? Because I think we wantto talk about cultural stuff, but
I don't know if we. I don'tthink. Don't. If we've got time to
sort of talk about other kindsof learning. Nick, help me out.
(25:21):
Well, I don't know. I mean,we, you know, we've. I think we kind
of. I know it's all felt a bitabstract really, but I mean, I think,
you know, we. We've kind ofbeen focusing on skills on like,
how to do something, which.
Training, the word trainingimplies, does suggest.
Whereas I think education ismore about knowing that. It's like
(25:42):
knowing about things that aretrue. You're trying to get people
to know things, which is notnecessarily the same as doing stuff,
you know, but obviously thereis a big link between the two that
there's. It's quite difficultto, you know, to draw a sharp line
between those two. But no, Ijust thinking, I mean, in terms of,
like, obviously the fact thatwe're living in a world made of podcasts
(26:07):
and cameras and light switchesand not still trying to work out
how to Start a fire in a caveshows that we've very successfully
passed on, collectively, a lotof skill in terms of being able to
do stuff. Like, you can nowstart a fire using one of those.
(26:29):
Not in here.
No. Not a good idea. But, youknow, using one of 10 different technologies
you probably got at home, youcould get a fire going within about
10 minutes. You know, it's.It's. And yet you probably are much,
much less skilled at startingfires than a caveman would have been.
Right. So. And not only that,but you can do all sorts of other
(26:52):
things. You can put heating onand heat your house, or if it's more
the light you're after, youcan turn on a light switch. And we
can do all of these thingsvastly more effectively than our,
you know, ancestral forebears.Right. Despite the fact that we haven't
really inherited the skills.We, you and me, the kind of end users,
have not inherited any of theskills of being able to do any of
(27:14):
that. We've somehow been ableto pass on collective skills, the
collective how to do stuffwithout actually needing to train
people. Like, we don't startby saying, okay, welcome to your
new home, and before I showyou how to turn the boiler on, let's.
Let's work out to start a firewith a pair of sticks. We don't bother
with that anymore.
So what you're saying is we'vegot. The outcomes are much more accessible
(27:37):
than they were to the cavemanwithout the Necessarily pass. Without
the necessary.
Well, yes.
That we've somehow. We passedon the capability.
Yeah.
But we've done it throughtechnology rather than through training.
Right. And I guess, you know,we could start thinking about, well,
what actually, what does thatlook like? How can we embody something,
a set of skills or knowledgein a technology in such a way that
(28:00):
I can give that to you withoutneeding to bother with training.
Yeah. So I like.
I like.
I like the lens thattechnology is a sort of embodiment
of a load of cleverness.
Yeah.
Instead of having to hold thatall in your head, you can have this
widget that does a thing. Andloads of clever people have worked
out how to build a widget. Youjust need to push the button on the
(28:20):
widget.
Yeah. And it's almost like thetechnology to go right back to the
sort of first thing we weretalking about of like, I want to
make someone else have thataha moment that I had when I discovered
it, you know, and. Butactually, if I can get them to replicate
the effect without evenneeding to understand it, you know,
(28:41):
do. Do I need to worry aboutthat? And. And it sort of. I don't
know. Napier and thelogarithms, right? Logarithms are
flipping brilliant. You gettaught them at school. They seem
very boring. You don't knowwhy you're learning them. But actually,
you know, as a computationaltool, to be able to do, you know,
and especially because it wasanalog, it was little, actually,
literally numbers on sticksthat you kind of lined up next to
(29:03):
each other. Logarithms areabsolutely amazing. And. And part
of me thinks I really want toget people to understand why they're
so cool. You play with theslide rule, you're like, why are
the numbers like that?
Yeah, you can shift numbersinto a different domain, which makes
them easier to work with. Yes, yes.
But. But actually, you know,if I can just give you a calculator
(29:26):
and you can calculate stuff,then actually we've achieved all
of that without me evenneeding to teach you any of that
stuff. So, you know, that's.Is that better? Well, I mean, it's
certainly more effective.
But maybe what you're talkingabout there is. We're starting to
drift into this murky areabetween training and education, Right?
Because it seems to me thattraining part, potentially, maybe
(29:49):
a definition we could havethere, is the skills of how to do
something, and there's a kindof a. You operating in the area of
utility, maybe. Right. And sowhen technology comes along that
removes the need to do that,then, you know, the utility's gone.
It's there already.
Right.
However, what you're sayingis, when you're talking about logarithms,
is that there comes a pointwhere, okay, this stuff can be done
(30:13):
with a calculator, whatever itmight be. But, hey, guys, look at
this. Isn't this sort ofwider, wonderful beauty of discovery
and curiosity, which thatfeels to me like that's sort of getting
into more broader principlesof education. What do you reckon?
Or am I talking rubbish?
Except for, you know, theNapier's bones, which were a way
of embodying logarithms ineffectively a way of doing. Being
(30:34):
able to do calculation,calculation, complicated big calculations
with effectively numbers onsticks. That's. At one point in time,
that was state of the art,that was the calculators. You know,
you would have to learn how touse them because it was how to do
something. You know, it's away of doing calculations. Whereas
now you would be learning themas almost. Well, not quite historical
(30:57):
interest, because learning,Learning how they work gives you
an insight into what are butyou don't actually need to learn
them, understand them at all.You don't need to have heard of them.
And it's sort of like it's alearning. They're taught as a learning
aid. By using the physicalitem, you're like, I can now see
how this maps onto this moreabstract concept and you can then
(31:17):
start to think, oh, what otherabstract things can this, this approach.
So you've learned a meta skillthere of like how does, what else
does. What else can logs dothat beyond this example that we're
working on? So yeah, there's.Yeah, this is the blended line between
training and education, I think.
Are we about done or is theresomething you want to go into?
(31:39):
Well, the question is, are weactually. I mean, does technology
effectively end up making usall completely stupid? Is that you
know, where we're going? Imean, part one, you could argue that
the reason we bother witheducation is ultimately some sort
of how to. It's ultimatelybecause we think that this is going
to make you more effective.You know, knowing things, knowing
(32:00):
facts about the world, knowinga bit of history might make you more
effective, you know, being,being a modern day present.
I think there's value toeducation beyond being a functioning,
profitable member of society.Well, I'm just saying it's arguably
there's value in, in justenriching people for the sake of
doing that. That.
Well, yeah, okay.
I mean, it's nice to know stuff.
Obviously, I think that. Butactually, as it happens, that has
(32:24):
been really one of the onlyways we've been able to get people
to be able to do other stuff.Like, you know, write an essay, let's
say, you know, which, which isgood training for writing about things
in general. And a lot of jobsinvolve writing about stuff. So,
you know, we teach you to readsome history and then we teach you
how to write an essay and youget the hang of that and then you
become more functional and ifyou enjoy history, well, so much
(32:47):
the better. What I guess wehave gradually developed technology
to do to require less and lessunderstanding of us so that we can
just achieve the effect at thepush of a button. And I suppose the
thought would be, well, youknow, if we have LLMs that are now
doing that, you know, we'rekind of doing the, doing the writing
(33:08):
the essay for you. Can wecompletely give up in the same way
that GPS means that nobody hasa sense of, of direction anymore
and in a sense you don't needone. No one learns the, the actual
physical map. You just look atthe representation on your screen
and you follow theinstructions and it says go forward
and you go forward and youdon't really think about where you
(33:28):
are. Is this the end resultthat we pass down immense capability,
but we do it with requiringless and less understanding. Is that
the.
Well, I mean I think not inthe current paradigm. So I think
until we get the AGIs, whetheror not you think that's inevitable
or likely and very soon at themoment you need human taste to steer
(33:54):
the LLM to steer your AI inthe right direction so you can automate
things. So for example,experimentation and the LLM can do
much of the work, but to steerthe LLM into what to experiment on
is the key thing that thehuman experience gives. So LLMs are
(34:18):
naturally at the moment verygood comparative to other things.
At software engineering theycan given a given a spec for a functional.
For even larger parts ofsoftware they can write a pretty
good job, do a pretty good jobof that, of something that will work.
And the key thing though thatthey can't do is work out what to
(34:39):
do in the first place, what good.
Looks like, what the answer isto how should this behave? What,
what color should the buttonsbe? All of those sorts of. Yeah,
yeah.
So they, so they could keepgetting better as they are, but they,
the way that they work, theywon't necessarily be able to decide
what is a good idea to start with.
Yeah, no, quite, yeah.
(35:00):
I mean are we, but I mean arewe all. We're gradually, let's say
we gradually technology movesus further and further away from
the practicalities, the realworld things that you have to touch
and understand in theprocesses because things become more
and more like pulling a leveror pressing a button and, and the
(35:20):
actual mechanics of it. Wehave taken care of all of that. Right.
And I just wonder if, youknow, the future is inevitably that
we will be these sorts ofbutton pressing Eloy served by the
mechanical morlocks, you know,and, and you know what happens then
when it all goes wrong? Youknow, actually we just sit about
doing nothing. You know thatwe've transferred all of the knowledge
(35:45):
of humanity and as a resultnobody has to know how to do anything
or learn anything.
So yeah, nicely done.
The beautiful end point of allof this.
Well, nicely done becausethat's a beautiful segue into a question
I want to ask to finish thisoff on. Right. So the question is
this could go, you couldeither go backwards or forwards with
(36:08):
this. So what I was going tosay is what's a skill that you would
like to Know, talking aboutthis sort of departure from, you
know, the effects oftechnology, it sort of moves us away
from certain skills. Okay. Isthere a skill that you would like
to learn that is no longeravailable to us? So that being the
case, Nick, go for it. Haveyou got anything?
(36:29):
Yeah. Have you heard of dancing?
Yes.
I'm just, I've. I've got, I'vegot such a poor quality sense of.
Is it proprioception? Likewhere my body is at any given time
and you know, which I supposeyou might think, obviously I'm fingers,
no problem. I could play thepiano quite well. I'm alright. We're
playing a piano, my fingersknow what they're doing.
(36:50):
Right.
But the whole, my whole entirebody is just slumps, usually awkwardly
into some position. And Ithink I would like to learn to dance
properly now.
Is this a loss? Hold on. Butthis is a skill that you would like
that you don't have.
Yeah. Not saying it's a lost art.
Okay.
But I, you know, but at thesame time I sort of think, well,
if I had grown up in, youknow, a tribe in 10,000 BC, I would
(37:13):
probably be dancing a lot.He's doing a lot more dancing.
Less piano playing.
Yeah, less of that. But maybea bit of drumming. Maybe playing
a bone flute.
Yeah.
But probably much moredancing. And so I feel, you know,
I feel like society hasremoved my. The necessity to dance.
Will you say that? But goingback to this intrinsic versus extrinsic,
(37:34):
maybe it's better off that.Because maybe your value in the tribe.
Or maybe society is better offbecause Nick's not dancing.
Yeah, undoubtedly true.
Because if you were meant tobe a great dancer, you'd already
be.
I'd already be the Nijinsky ofNorth London.
Yeah. And. But you know, onthis sort of little flight of fancy.
I don't know, I think, youknow, if you, if we were in a tribe,
(37:56):
I think people wouldspecialize and there'd still be people
who like dancing being abigger cultural thing still doesn't
make them want to do itanymore. I think people were specialized
in a big people who are sortof naturally good at dancing. They
like doing it.
And then there's the bone flute.
And then there's a bone flute.Yeah. I think you'd be a bone flute
drummer guy and you'd be like.People would try and get you to dance.
(38:18):
You'd be like, oh no, I hate,I hate dancing. But I'm quite good
at the flute. Let me.
Yeah, it could be.
It makes me wonder like on Alittle sort of side sort of note
is, you know, it'd beinteresting. I'd like to know if
there's studies out therebetween, let's call it for a moment,
musicality, for example,versus measured against dancing ability.
Because one would expect thatpeople who are good at music. I've
(38:40):
seen you play the piano. Ithink you're fantastic. I mean, you'd
expect there to be a sort of apositive link, but, I mean, it appears
not. Right. But yeah, I'd liketo know about that.
Fraser.
What.
What skill?
I'm not sure yet.
Okay, we'll show it.
Peter, Peter, Peter.
Yeah.
There's a very, very specificskill I would like to.
Is it wheelies on a bmx?
(39:01):
No, it's not wheelies, it'sbunny hops.
On a mountain bike.
It's not far off, right? Imean, basically, yes is the answer.
It's basically a bunny hop,more or less.
Start.
No, it's not a wheelie per se.It's what's actually called a manual.
A wheelie is when your bum ison the seat. A manual is when you're
off the seat. I can. I canmanual. I cannot bunny hop. So bunny
hopping. So feeling his veryspecific skill. So. But it's kind
(39:26):
of like it's one of thosefundamental things in mountain biking
that lets unlocks a load ofother things like. Like jumping over
things safely, getting downbig drops and all sorts of, you know,
things that you want to do.So, I mean, I'm pretty fit at the
moment, reasonably athletic onthe bike. That's no longer my blocker.
(39:50):
My blocker is now being someof the technical skills, like bunny
hops.
Well, Peter, I've actuallyasked a friend of mine who's a very
talented choreographer to giveme some dancing lessons.
Okay. Yeah. So can they giveme mountain bike lessons?
No, but what I'm saying is ifI'm going to learn to dance. If you
learn to bunny hop.
Yes. Yeah. But luckily thisskill acquisition is within my reach.
(40:11):
There are lots of places I cango to get specific coaching on mountain
biking.
Yeah. I mean, this feels likeachievable. It's not a dream.
Yeah.
You know, Fraser, whatludicrous, unachievable skill dream
do you have?
Yeah. So in the spirit of theway you've answered the question,
I'm going to answer in thesame way, which is you actually didn't
answer the question that I wanted.
Right. You're going to say younever do that. I know.
(40:35):
Which, to be fair, I mean,you're due yeah, because what I wanted
to know is what's been lost,what sort of skills been lost, which
you would like. So I'm gonnaignore that and ask a different question
which I was thinking of, whichis what skill has been imparted to
you or you impart to others.That's kind of a favourite one. I'm
gonna answer that question andmy skill is this and it's one that
(40:55):
I impart to others.
Do you. Okay. You like tothink and it's to.
Do with photography in thesage guru.
Kind of role that you have.
Exactly.
Go on, hit us with your biglesson then.
Take the lens.
You've got a massive audiencenow so it's time to transfer that
as widely as possible.
Yeah. So if I'm able to upphotography and what we should be
(41:16):
looking to achieve, what we'relooking for to make a good photograph
or great photograph. What wemean by that is really simple, I
think. Any thoughts, any ideas?
Yeah. Basically a black andwhite photo of an old man close up.
That's. That's how. That'saward winning photos. He's got to
(41:37):
be really wrinkly.
Yeah.
Right.
It's really, really simple, Ithink. Light, it's just light.
Right.
Okay, so fairly fundamental.
Well, it's in the name, right.I mean it's light. You've got to
be looking at what the light's doing.
Well, have you seen that filmthe Fablemans which is about Steven
Spielberg? It's semi automatic.
I know of it, but I've not watched.
(41:58):
Well, there's this scene wherehe finally joins a studio and he
goes next door and it's JohnFord played by David lynch. And he
says basically if thehorizons. If the horizon's at the
top, that's good. If thehorizon's at the bottom, that's good.
If the horizon's in themiddle, it's fucking boring. And
it's like. That's actuallythis actually pretty good advice.
(42:22):
One third, two thirds.
Yeah, that's a whole frametype thing going on. But yeah, light.
Always be looking for thelight, I think.
I mean I get it, but what I.But I don't get it at the same time
it's like what does that meanthough, beyond turn the lights on
or make sure there is light?That doesn't transfer to me any sense.
He wants to sound mysteriousand good and he doesn't always.
(42:45):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I cananswer that but I'm not gonna answer
it now. But yeah, I'll sendyou a link, some of my lessons there
you go. All right, we'll stopthere. Yep, I enjoyed that. I thought
that was quite fun. So you'vebeen listening to the Cognitive Engineering
Podcast brought to you byAleph Insights and produced by me,
Fraser McGruer. If you haven'talready, please like and subscribe.
We try to release an episodeevery week or two. Until next time,
(43:12):
goodbye.
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