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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Mandatory Secret Identities - Less Wrong
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Is the point about respect for instructors supposed to generalize to instructors of disciplines other than rationality?
If so, what do you make of Nadia Boulanger? Her accomplishments as a musician (or otherwise) are unimpressive relative to those of her students and peers, and yet she is regarded as one of the greatest music teachers ever, and is accorded correspondingly deep respect by music historians, composers, etc. Are they all wrong to respect her so much, or does it not apply to music or this case?
It seems to me that a better formula for determining respect would somehow reflect the respect given to her students which they say is significantly due to her influence as a teacher. For example, if Aaron Copland singles her out as an amazing teacher who profoundly affected his musical life & education, then she deserves some of the respect given to him. And likewise for her many other students who went on to do great things.
There seems to be an implicit underlying belief in this post that teaching is not (or should not be) an end in and of itself, or at least not a worthy one. I think Boulanger and teachers of her caliber show that that's just not the case.
I was thinking about that - a clause for respecting teachers with great students, should they have them. It still gives people the right incentives.
You've got things the wrong way round. It is the quality of the teacher's students that tell us whether we wish to study under her. The teachers own achievements are a proxy which we resort to because we need to decide now, we cannot wait to see the longer term effects on last years students.
Another proxy is the success of the teacher in getting her students through examinations. This is a proxy because we don't really want the certificate, we what the achievement that we think it heralds. We can assess the strength of this proxy checking whether success in the examinations really does herald success in real life.
I agree with the conclusion of the original post but find the argument for it defective. The key omission is that we don't have a tradition of rationality dojo's, so we do not yet have access to records of whose pupils went on to greatness. Nor do we have records that would validate an examination system.
Notice that the problems of timing are inherent. The first pupils, who went on to real world success, prove their teachers skill in an obvious way, but how did they choose their teacher? Presumably they took a risk, relying on a proxy that was available in time for the forced choice they faced.
Yes, precisely. The issue isn't how we can become a better teacher, or find one to study under. The first question, that MUST be asked before all others, is: what does it mean to be a good teacher, and how can we define the relevant differences between teachers?
Once that question has an answer, we can begin searching for ways to make ourselves better match that defined meaning, or in signal traits in others that indicate they're likely to match that definition well.
Concepts like "has students that will accomplish great things" aren't useful for a variety of reasons. And once someone has developed a reputation for being a great teacher, they're likely to attract students with a lot of potential (assuming there are working metrics for potential that are actually consulted, as opposed to rich people simply buying a place for their talentless children). The reputation alone would result in the teacher's students doing better than most.
Evaluating the teacher requires that we have some way of determining, or at least guessing, what a student's performance would have been without the teaching.
Isn't teaching itself a skill? So what that she was a bad musician, she was obviously a first rate teacher (independent of the subject that she taught).
As long as we determine how much of their students' success is attributable to the teacher, it seems reasonable. It seems we could make those sorts of judgments by: