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.
Worthless to whom?
Passionate truth-seekers find enjoyment in their growing ability to see things as they are, in making the world make sense. It's an autotelic activity for them. If the value sought is simply to understand a phenomenon, it's not worthless.
Some people like watching TV; some people like reading about comonads. If you don't starve to death because of it, and if there is nothing else you'd rather be doing than the task in question, fine! Go for it.
Harm to whom?
The harm seems to appear when you have an objective goal, project or task which is important from the perspective of your utility function, and then you jeopardize deadline or quality by avoiding to follow the required steps to complete it.
You don't work objectively from the perspective of the end-product, consuming theory as necessary; instead, you diverge aimlessly. It may be a sign of risk-aversion and need for control — you can never screw up too much by reading books.
In any case, harm should be viewed in the light of your utility function.
fully agree with this.
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.