How many apprentices did this guy managed to put through the pipeline before his career was over? It always shocks me how low this number tends to be for highly skilled craftsmen. They spend their century maintaining/creating some of the best work on the planet but when they disappear, unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears as quickly as it was gained, and it's sad to observe every single time.
It's sad but at the same time there is a sort of optimization that tends to occur each time the magic trick is rediscovered.
Often it is not possible to separate the technique from the man. Things like riding a bike or flying a helicopter come to mind. A lot of what makes a master good cannot be written down anywhere. There isn't anything tangible to actually lose.
How would you write a document that describes to someone how to ride a bike or dig holes efficiently? You could explain the principles and general ideas, but the apprentice is going to need to get scraped up a bit before they actually learn anything that matters. The apprentice willing to suffer repeated failure is where most of the heavy lifting occurs. The master is mostly a backstop to keep the apprentice alive.
> How would you write a document that describes to someone how to ride a bike or dig holes efficiently?
You don't. You put these people together for some years to work on stuff together, and a small percentage of this "intangible" feelings, knowledge and experiences you cannot write down somehow magically passes over to the other person.
Of course, the apprentice will still require their own repeated failures and uphill battle even getting close, but having someone who mastered the craft near you as you go through this, makes the whole process a hell of a lot faster.
Often it is not possible to separate the technique from the man. Things like riding a bike or flying a helicopter come to mind. A lot of what makes a master good cannot be written down anywhere. There isn't anything tangible to actually lose.
How would you write a document that describes to someone how to ride a bike or dig holes efficiently? You could explain the principles and general ideas, but the apprentice is going to need to get scraped up a bit before they actually learn anything that matters. The apprentice willing to suffer repeated failure is where most of the heavy lifting occurs. The master is mostly a backstop to keep the apprentice alive.
You don't. You put these people together for some years to work on stuff together, and a small percentage of this "intangible" feelings, knowledge and experiences you cannot write down somehow magically passes over to the other person.
Of course, the apprentice will still require their own repeated failures and uphill battle even getting close, but having someone who mastered the craft near you as you go through this, makes the whole process a hell of a lot faster.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/29/us/azriel-al-blackman-dea... | https://archive.today/dmcaA
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/105781-lo...
https://www.local591.com/docs/Al%20Blackman%20Passing.pdf