[RT Wolf]

Sorry for the grave digging but I had some thoughts I wanted to share:

The point of setting goals is often to progressively calibrate and become the kind of person who achieves those goals consistently. For example, say I want to become healthy and I set the goal to excersize every day for 30 days. I may be able to do that for 30 days but I don't make enough changes to become the kind of person who excersizes every day, so that after the 30 days are up, I go back to not excersizing. On the other hand, a really successful calibration can lead to completely changing the way I see the world, so that I don't find fatty foods at all interesting. A big slice of chocolate cake just doesn't register a blip on my emotional radar. In fact, I start to desire healthy foods.

In Psychology (which I'm studying...for reals, like in a university and everything, goin to be published soon hopefully), there seem to be two predominant systems in the human mind, imaginatively called System 1 and System 2 (I prefer the labels "procedural" and "propositional" myself, so I'll be using these). The Propositional system is what we think of when we think of thinking: it's largely conscious, is often associated with words and language, slow but flexible. It's "know that", and it's a tiny part of our overall "us". Example is learning the names of all states. Procedural system is for dealing with skills: the kinds of things that you can't put into words effectively, the ineffable. Example is tying a shoelace or riding a bike. Procedural system is fast, but inflexible (which you need if you want to escape from a tiger). It's a "know that" system.

Try telling someone how to tie showlaces (without using hand gestures) step-by-step and they have to follow your instructions literally. So you'll say something like, "make a loop" and they'll make a giant loop and you'll say, "that's too big, make it smaller", then they make it tiny and so forth. The procedural and propositional systems don't always communicate so well (though mindfulness meditation seems to help improve their interactions).

Things handled by the propositional system are often memorized and then repeated enough that they become internalized enough to become "automatic", which means they've been taken up the procedural system.

Skills development resides in the procedural system. This post is about developing these ineffable skills, where you can get advice (which is usually useless), but ultimately you have to go out and learn for yourself by doing. Knowing the steps is way different from actually doing it. And yea, with procedural skills, there is a process of calibration, such as a just-born animal learning to walk stumbles a bunch and falls before eventually learning.

How you learn purely propositional skills such as symbolic logic is different (though this gets proceduralized a lot, too).

Also, that thing in the post about TKD style conflicting with Kempo is called just interference. A study was done on this very thing, using expert bridge players and novice bridge players and having them play against each other. Experts clobbered the novices in bridge, but then the experimenters with a perverse sense of humour gave them a game called "smidge" which is just slightly different from bridge. It was different enough that that experts' calibration was thrown off enough that the novices clobbered them. The novices were less automated and more propositional so they could be more propositional. That's one of the reasons you cross-train, to remain flexible.

Part of the reason why people ignored Steve's advice on blogging is cause the procedural and propositional systems aren't very good at talking to each other. Facts (realm of the propositional system) don't influence behaviour (procedural system). That said, you can calibrate them to talk to each other better...through mindfulness among other things.

Progressive calibration of procedural skills is FUN. Human beings seem wired to find this sort of improvement inherently interesting.

This dichotomy is also one of the reasons that straight women give terrible advice on meeting women. That's cause they don't have the calibration to do it cause they've never had to do it. So straight women look back in their heads and try to figure out what mighta worked for them, and/or mix that with what they've seen in movies and give you useless answers. Their propositional system doesn't really know what actually appealed the procedural system which governs arousal and sexual interest (ever made yourself sexually interested in someone? It sorta works by itself). The only useful advice I ever got from a woman was from a lesbian.