[tanylak]

I agree. The over reliance on technology is making us less aware of our innate abilities to reason things out.

Easy access to information might make us "smarter" in a sense that we know how to find this information. But let's face it, we don't actually know how to find stuff. Google does that.

We just type simple questions that any 10 year old can do.

[agumonkey]

Another point, I have diplomas, am patient, like precision... then I watched youtube videos about electronics, woodwork etc.. and I saw how things are done. I expected easy transfer, yet when I tried to do them I struggled.

The reading knowledge is not know-how.. these are two distinct categories. The web gives you metadata in a way.. but so far it seems only experience gives you know-how. You can see all the diagrams about how to cut wood straight .. but until you saw all the ways you can fail your edge, curve your blade .. it's not 'can do' knowledge, only potential.

And I found this in dev too.. I've done tutorials, moocs, books about non trivial stuff.. but making an app was a totally different kind of effort. It wasn't intellectually hard, just different and you don't know that until you do it. Like hundreds of stupid details to juggle and go around to finish something properly.

[082349872349872]

The gulf between theory and practice is larger in practice than in theory.

[tomcam]

Love it! I just googled that quote and you seem to have originated it. I have a little list of quotes and their authors. Do you mind revealing your name so I can attribute it? Or emailing me to the address in my profile?

[booleandilemma]

It's just a modification of this quote: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24320775/

[tomcam]

How did I miss that. Thank you very much

[agumonkey]

maybe we should rename some 'theory' classes as 'pretty ok approximation of future problems'

[carapace]

"Knowledge is only rumor until it's in the muscle." (I've heard that that is a New Guinea proverb but I don't know for sure.)

[simonh]

The more you learn, the more the surface area of your inquiry expands. Each answer Spurs several new questions. A 20 year old will have far more sophisticated questions they want to ask and problems they need to solve than they would have had at 10.