I'm not sure this is really a bias. Maybe it's just that the cost of acquiring propositional knowledge has decreased more relative to the cost of acquiring procedural knowledge, in which case it's quite rational to accumulate more propositional knowledge. Emile made a similar point.
Also, I have an anecdotal example of propositional knowledge clearly beating procedural knowledge. I used to have shoulder pain from using computers too much. I visited a doctor and a physical therapist, and neither of them were able to help me. I ended up solving the problem myself after reading books about anatomy and physiology, and then doing Internet searches, which found a crucial piece of propositional knowledge that the doctor and therapist apparently weren't aware of.
About your digression, personally I've found that most of the propositional knowledge I've learned for fun has ended up being useful. Maybe that's just a coincidence, but there are also things I think would be useful for me to learn that aren't fun for me, so I think it's probably just that the value of propositional knowledge is pretty high in general.
BTW, if you have a lot more knowledge about programming than you need for your current work, why not look for a more challenging job or project?
BTW, if you have a lot more knowledge about programming than you need for your current work, why not look for a more challenging job or project?
My projects are challenging in other ways, programming just isn't the limiting factor any more.
Robin Hanson has repeatedly pointed out the difference between near and far modes of thinking, and Alicorn has repeatedly pointed out the difference between procedural and propositional knowledge. Just occurred to me that it's pretty much the same difference. I will now proceed to play some obvious riffs on the theme.
Do you ever feel yourself to be an expert on some topic just from reading about it a lot? Every young enthusiastic programmer just entering the workforce feels like that. (I certainly did.) Every wannabe entrepreneur who hangs out on Hacker News and has read enough Paul Graham essays feels they can take on the world by just applying those valuable insights. (I certainly did.) It's soooo fun to feel knowledgeable, maybe even project it outward by giving Internet advice to newbies. The public relations department of my brain doesn't seem to care that I have no actual experience: reading stuff is quite enough to change my self-image.
The problem is, excessively liking propositional knowledge over procedural is a bias that harms us every day. Though some information is directly useful, most of it is worthless. A couple days ago I had to give advice to a classmate of mine who wants to start his own "thing" but isn't sure. See, he has this theory that one should accumulate propositional knowledge until one reaches critical mass, at which point the successful venture happens by itself. Being the wise and experienced mentor that I am (hah... on my second "thing", without much success), I told him outright that his theory was bullshit. Propositional knowledge doesn't spontaneously turn into procedural.
(Digression: come to think, I'm not even sure why we need the kinds of propositional knowledge that we tend to accumulate. It reeks of a superstimulus. I know more about programming that I'll ever need for work or play, but don't remember the birthdays of all my acquaintances, which would obviously be more useful. Memorizing birthdays just isn't as exciting as reading about comonads or whatever.)
At this point I sincerely wish I had a recipe for overcoming this bias. Like pjeby, he always has a recipe. Well, I don't. Maybe perceiving the bias will turn out to be enough; maybe some kind of social software thing can help cure it on a mass scale, like meetup.com is trying to cure Bowling Alone; or maybe each of us will have to apply force, the oldskool way. It's too early to say.
Thank me for never mentioning the example of riding a bicycle.