Extended shower thought: Fish would be bad swimming instructors

Obligatory epistemic status: Speculative and hard to test but falls out an as implication under current worldmodel.

Just a shower thought I've had on my mind for a while:

Fish would be bad swimming instructors (for humans).

This remains true even after adjusting for/overcoming the differences in body types and ability to speak your language.

What do I mean? Well, to be sure, fish are good at swimming. And normally, that's what's you want in a swimming instructor...

...but not here. While fish are good at swimming, they have always been good at swimming. They were deft swimmers before they reached any point of being able to reflect on their selves or what they are doing. They have no appreciation for what it's like not to be a good swimmer.

What does "learning swimming" involve (for humans)?

Fish, being fish, never had to make the transition from being a natural biped to one that has repurposed its body for motion in water, which is what humans have to go through to "learn swimming". They never had to start from a mentality that finds walking somewhat natural -- and swimming somewhat unnatural -- and then adjusts its appendage motion in a way more suited to the latter.

We can imagine any kind of instruction session between fish and humans (as above, appropriately adjusted for language) to be fraught with peril. The fish might try to point out deficiencies that hold back the human. But it has never had to think about such deficiencies, because it has never needed to distinguish between the right way and the wrong way.  It was always just "the way" that came instinctually.

The fish might nearly lash out, frustrated that the human attempts an obviously ineffective means of water locomotion. But it has no idea why those flawed attempts are wrong. They just feel wrong.

The fish will happily demonstrate the "right way", just by doing it. But identifying the difference between its "right way" and "what humans do" would be a learning experience in itself, something it has no natural advantage in, as it was never part of the fish's "learning process for swimming".

The converse is true -- humans would be bad at teaching fish to walk (with the appropriate apparatus) or otherwise move on land. (But note the parallel isn't perfect as humans generally do have to struggle and learn how to walk, but not in any way that involves formal instruction.)

Implications for human-human interaction

So far, this insight feels (and, well, is) just idle speculation. But there are implications for ordinary life.

There will be times when someone is a "natural" at some skill. They're good at it. And that is their only teaching qualification. And they try to teach a non-natural that skill. They are then bad at teaching. The missing piece is the learner's mind is very different from what the natural is capable of filling in. Such a teacher will constantly show them how to do it "right" but not be able to identify the difference between what they're doing and what the learner is -- except by drawing on some kind of unrelated, general intelligence.

(I won't give any specific examples of such a skill, because those become contentious issues in their own right and detract from the general point. But I've definitely been on both sides -- learning from someone who has no understanding why they're good at it, and grasping to communicate something I do without ever thinking about it.)

You can also run into this problem when you become skilled at something. You can sometimes assimilate the skill so well that you are effectively a natural, by forgetting the whole process by which you learned it. You may lose the perspective you had as a beginner and are no longer able to relate to them.

Part of why I enjoy teaching what I know is that I seem unusually resistant to this process, and have vivid memories of the hurdles I overcame as a newbie.

Inflationary product debasement turns tragic

Previously, I had highlighted the problems in inflation measures that don't take into account when a product is debased in order to hide its true cost. Well, another case of that has come up in the news: the FDA melamine regulations permitting trace amounts of the stuff in baby formula. From the beginning:

This weekend, I saw a news story on TV where a doctor was explaining that, while melamine is most likely safe in these trace amounts, it "has no business being in baby formula" because there's no benefit to the baby, there's a risk of harm, and you just don't need it to make formula.

My immediate reaction was: Okay, if it's so bad, there must be some reason producers would want to include it. After all, businesses don't e.g. pollute just for fun; they do it because that improves product quality and/or cost -- er, at least it appears that way to the most highly-visible parties.

As the story continued, the doctor answered my question by saying that it's included in order to fool the tests used to determine protein content. I don't remember the channel, but I found a San Francisco Gate story substantiating that claim:

Melamine contamination became major news when it was discovered that China was adding it to milk to disguise test results that measure protein levels. Since the chemical was found in infant formula in September, it has sickened some 50,000 Chinese infants and killed 4.

So there's our answer! They use melamine instead of the good stuff in order to pass some protein measurement test. And they only use melamine because it's cheaper, or else what's the point? But, that test has a "blind spot" that will give a "pass" rating to baby formula that only achieved that rating by compromising the "design constraints" of baby formula! So it fits into my template of "compensate for inflation by debasing the product instead of raising the price".

Now, it certainly doesn't take a bout of inflation to make people try to get "something for nothing". But it's a very plausible suspect for why it wasn't tried before.

Of course this is not to take away from the culpability of those who conjure up such unethical policies. And, to some extent, you have to understand the position they're in: when consumers reward those who can keep the visible price low, while ignoring the other costs thereby incurred ... well, don't be surprised when they're all too willing to oblige :-/

Yes I'm still around

And, inspired from a different context, I drew this comic about the current credit crisis corruption.