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Comment by dukeofdoom | Hacker News Reader

That's cool, but wasn't the Renaissance having masters teach kids from very early age their art intensively every day. Youtube is a poor substitute for that kind of learning, since most videos don't go into in-depth and don't provide critical feedback to the pupil.

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>Youtube is a poor substitute for that kind of learning, since most videos don't go into in-depth and don't provide critical feedback to the pupil.

I agree with the latter point but not the former. Many, many YouTube videos on many, many subjects are sufficiently in-depth. I remodeled my garage and built my home office in it largely with knowledge I learned from builders and tradesmen on YouTube. Practices like drywalling, installing and leveling doors, sealing concrete, changing light switches and receptacles, and doing trimwork are some of the things that I knew nothing about and then learned how to do well enough for me to WFH at the start of the pandemic.

In the world of music, and especially hip hop, production and mastering YouTube is perhaps the best school on the planet. The amount of knowledge being uploaded and viewed daily is absolutely a world wonder.

And while YouTube authors and creators aren't able to give critical feedback directly from their channels, usually, some do[1][2][3]... and even if they didn't, it's not like there is a shortage of places on the internet to get critique on your art.

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1. Deadmau5 reviewing a track submission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY76tO4qe8Q

2. Well-known hip hop producer Kenny Beats holds beat battles on his Twitch, this video is from a contestant who regularly enters the contests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djLT5OQbHpw

3. Music reviewer Anthony Fantano routinely does amateur track reviews with his fans and followers on Twitch, live: https://twitter.com/theneedledrop/status/1405171034538582017 (Sorry, no VODs on his Twitch that I can see... which is common for music-centric channels unfortunately)

I've never heard of learning directly off masters as being part of the Renaissance? People have been learning directly since ancient times but it doesn't scale.

In fact I'll go as far as to say a requirement for masters to teach students is an inhibitor to widespread learning and the invention of the printing press is what allowed us to avoid this. Similar to the revolution that the internet is creating.

I'm not disagreeing with you totally. Just want to point out that learning from a master, has a lot of benefits that you are overlooking. It's not necessarily about the absolute number of people that learn some skill at some novice level. The Renaissance, especially painting, was about having elite level of skill. That kind of skill needs to be taught intensively from early age, and get feedback when you are doing things wrong. Often with self directed learning the problem is "you don't know what you don't know". And you get stuck too often. For example, if you want to be an elite soccer player, ideally you will start at a very young age, and you will need a coach to give feedback and other players to play again at increasing competitiveness you can practice against. You can't get to elite level from watching youtube alone. In fact, the role of the coach in some ways is to filter out the people that are not making progress due to even things as unfair as natural physical ability. Selecting for those players and letting them pass on through the club system is how we arrive at someone as skilled as Ronaldo.

The vast majority of us aren't learning from masters; we learn who moderately qualified teachers who do what they can.

Nothing from what I learned in Uni prepared me to actually be a software engineer, yet here I am (as well as most of us who are reading this, I assume).

The world's progress doesn't depend on a few exceptional people, but it does require a competent majority.

Now that you mention it, it is kind of strange that Renaissance is capitalized in the title of the HN submission, when it isn't in the article. Oh well.

When I think of an artistic renaissance (lower-case), I think of emerging from a fallow period into a new, productive, innovative period. The article makes the case that this is what happened in Argentina as a result of these netbooks. I can't say if that's true or not, but the word choice is reasonable to me.

> it is kind of strange that Renaissance is capitalized

Autocorrect.

You have to work with what you have.

And while I am unaware of the music scene of YT, you can get access to world-class tutorials in CS topics- from MIT, Stanford, etc. They are as good as any.

And, yes, critical feedback is very important, but while you cannot properly substitute the feedback you get at unis, you can learn to live with and benefit from internet forums, groups, subreddits, etc.

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