I guess it’s similar to learning by watching masters on YouTube - I’m convinced that passively watching them causes the illusion in the viewer that they are also capable of the same, but if they were to actually try they miss all the little details and experience that makes their performance possible. Watching a chess GM play, for example, can make you feel like you understand what’s happening but if you don’t actually learn and get experience you’re still going to get beat all the time by people, even beginners, who did. But as long as you never test this, you get to live with the self-satisfaction of having “mastered” something yourself.
Of course, nothing wrong with watching and appreciating a master at work. It’s just when this is sold as the illusion of education passively absorbed through a screen that I think it can be harmful. Or at least a waste of time.
It gets very real very quickly with skateboarding. You can watch all the YouTube and Instagram you want about how to do an Ollie or a kickflip in 30s; now go out and try.
The learning is in the failing; the satisfaction of landing it is in the journey that put you there.
Of course, nothing wrong with watching and appreciating a master at work. It’s just when this is sold as the illusion of education passively absorbed through a screen that I think it can be harmful. Or at least a waste of time.