First, you make a mental model. Then, you test it.
If you don't test it then you don't know if it works, and you can't improve on it.
Knowledge is derived from experience.
If you don't test it then you don't know if it works, and you can't improve on it.
Knowledge is derived from experience.
Except that isn't how that really works right? A mental model explains part of the reasoning that led to an outcome but never all. After all, the map is not the territory. A mental model is grounded in trivial assumptions. Ultimately, your brain produces inferences in a way that is incredibly hard to couple to a specific logical processes. There has been a lot of research on how experts think and reason and none of it is compatible with having a mental model whatsoever.
I'm a constructivist so I'm under no assumption that we have access to the territory at all except modulated by our subjective perception.
Observation is a type of experience.
I do agree that observation is a type of experience, but a model that is meant to guide action (basically any useful model) needs to be tested in action. I can't learn to juggle only by watching other people juggle. I can only develop a hypothesis about how one juggles, but to test (and refine) it is to try the hypothesis out.
> a model that is meant to guide action (basically any useful model) needs to be tested in action
No, it doesn't. For example, the vast majority of work on modeling the stock market is done on machines completely sandboxed from any ability to make trades and are owned by companies who will never make a trade themselves but instead return an API response with a yes/no. Whether that is fed directly into some sort of automated action is largely irrelevant as the ability for an individual trade to cause a measurable impact on the market is negligible until it isn't. So, these systems are built separate from the system they model and learn entirely through observation.
tl;dr: weather forecasting models don't have an action to take and also can't influence their system. And yet they learn and grow more accurate.
If you require actual experience or direct observation to learn, then you're not using your brain to its full potential.
Would a child who has never experienced the human body's pain response be able to infer the causal connection between the heat of a stove and the response after touching it?
Arguably, language is a tool that allows us to generalize the direct experience of other agents. It is unclear if it is possible to remove direct interaction from a learning system and still reach the same level of understanding.