Older than the dog

[ In Iteration, I wrote about the mistake of demanding painting lessons from van Gogh. This essay tugs upon on the same thread. ]There's an old saying that in order to teach a dog, you just have to be smarter than the dog. As with most proverbs, I think there's some truth there, but it's not that simple.If the path is straight, to lead the dog, you just have to be ahead of the dog.If the path is non-linear, mentorship from someone just ahead of you might help, but also might lead you on unnecessary detours.As far as I can tell, approximately nobody's development follows a straight line toward a destination.Even with simple skills, like, say, swimming a certain distance faster, following the advice of someone better than you might have suboptimal results. Because it's possible to "improve" using naïve optimization that makes you better in the short run, but worse in the long run. A slightly more advanced student might try to improve the floundering student's back crawl, since that's…