[miyoji]

> If you start without instruction, you'll build bad habits that stay with you forever.

> Effort doesn’t equal improvement unless it's guided.

This obviously has to be false. Progress is made, people learn better ways to play golf and do all the other things. At the frontier, people simply MUST be doing self-guided experimentation and learning from objective results, and since this has always been true, there was once someone who could not play golf at all (because no one could) who figured out how to hit a ball with a club correctly on their own, without learning from anyone else, because that person was the first person who did it. Thus, self-guidance must be possible and self-improvement must also be.

> But if you repeat the same shitty swing for 10 years with no feedback, you’ll end up exactly where you started.

You always have feedback. If your ball doesn't go where you intended, your swing was bad in some way. If you keep doing the same thing without making adjustments based on measured outcomes, yeah, you won't improve. But you can try different things and figure out what works and what doesn't without ANY instruction or outside guidance.

[kyleblarson]

There are basically zero players on the PGA tour right now who were self taught. For the next generation of pros, if you are not a plus index player by the time you are around 13 you have no chance whatsoever.

[arkh]

> people simply MUST be doing self-guided experimentation

And self guided exploration is a skill in itself which you have to learn. You can experiment for years and get nothing of it because you don't even measure anything. You can find a local maximum and, not knowing the concept, never try something radically different.

[Cpoll]

I agree in principal, but: The people at the frontier aren't alone at the top of a mountain, they still have each other for guidance. The master that transcended limits while in isolation is a literary trope.

[miyoji]

This doesn't contradict my point at all, I agree entirely that people work with each other and it's a great way to learn. And obviously people aren't going to achieve what took tens of thousands of person-hours at the highest level in one lifetime on their own. One does need to stand on the shoulders of giants and all that.

But the OP was making a much stronger claim, that it is, in principle, impossible to learn anything on one's own, and that HAS to be wrong, for the reasons I listed.

[someone7x]

For what it’s worth that tracks with me experience in video games.

When I sat with 30 other testers for 6 days per week I achieved mastery I did not believe possible. Eventually I could cakewalk even the most difficult challenges in those games and I was generally recognized as a highly talented tester.

Meanwhile I’ve sunk more cumulative hours alone into Elden Ring and I have accepted I will never reach that same level of mastery.

It’s a humbling realization how much of my prior greatness was actually just my environment at the time.

[rokob]

I think with rowing in particular due to certain counter intuitive parts of the stroke you absolutely can get nothing out of years of self exploration.