[HN Gopher] We Learn Faster When We Aren't Told What Choices to ...
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We Learn Faster When We Aren't Told What Choices to Make
Author : headalgorithm
Score : 348 points
Date : 2020-10-01 11:42 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| 7373737373 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| Hated school until I decided to go back. When that happened, I
| started getting straight As
| LordFast wrote:
| People have to understand the "why" behind the education before
| they can be fully engaged with the material that others have
| constructed in the aid of learning.
|
| I believe education should be a life-long thing. Citizens
| should be allowed, and even encouraged to seek out educational
| programs when they feel like they need it, instead of society
| telling everyone when and where they must complete which
| programs before they are "certified". To take it one step
| further, I believe this type of forced certification process
| only helps create the ever-expanding footprint of idiocy we see
| in our world today.
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| Poverty can be a very strong incentive
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Here's how I want to learn something new: Give me a pre-made path
| to completion, allow me to experience the destination. Be
| available to answer questions about changes I might want to make;
| be knowledgeable enough to answer honestly about how my new
| choices might cause me problems later, and be willing to allow me
| to experience those problems first hand.
|
| How many times have I attempted to do something with web frontend
| that starts as a pre-made path, but then when I deviate slightly
| and break something, no one understands the breakage. I got off
| The One Path and now it's my problem. Very simple things like "I
| chose $TOOL to solve $PROBLEM because
| $TECHNICAL_REASON_OR_PERSONAL_PREFERENCE" would go a long way.
| michael_j_ward wrote:
| I've thought that wiki-style tutorials where you can branch and
| ask questions at specific decision points solve this.
|
| Lot's of effort goes into one-off tutorials. This is great but
| those go stale and are scattered throughout the internet.
|
| A wiki-style site to aggregate those that allows the community
| to maintain them and enrich them with Q&A and alternative
| implementations would be amazing.
| shaded-enmity wrote:
| How much are you willing to pay for those answers? What you're
| describing sounds similar to interactive courses and 1:1
| couching.
| trey-jones wrote:
| The headline seems like the most obvious thing in the world to
| me. I'm glad it's proved by science, but I have never been able
| to find my way home without Google, if Google told me how to get
| here, or if my friend in the passenger seat did the navigating.
|
| As a parent, if I only do things for my kids instead of watching
| them do it themselves, then I will always be the one doing.
| stanmancan wrote:
| Totally. Just recently I started showing my kid how to get
| somewhere they goes often. I lead the way the first 5 times and
| the 6th made them lead. They had no clue where to go, so
| instead I made them guess and if they were wrong I would
| correct them. 7th day they took me on their own without any
| assistance.
|
| I only did this because of what you said; anytime I rely on
| Google Maps to get me somewhere, I never really know where to
| go until I find my own way there.
|
| I think it's similar to how teaching something makes you
| understand it better.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You can get the same effect much less painfully by having
| your kid go there themselves, without you.
|
| When I was learning to drive, my dad was remarkably disturbed
| that, despite never having had to go anywhere myself, I
| didn't know how to go anywhere. So he made me try to find my
| way home while he sat in the passenger seat watching. In a
| totally predictable development, I ran a red light under
| stress and got a ticket, months before even getting a
| driver's license.
| reificator wrote:
| > _I have never been able to find my way home without Google,
| if Google told me how to get here, or if my friend in the
| passenger seat did the navigating._
|
| Are you able to say "I came from the west, I'm going to go west
| until I find a road I'm familiar with, and then follow that to
| an area I'm familiar with, and then get home from there"?
|
| I can understand not being able to find a place you've been
| before if you weren't navigating the first time, but to find it
| difficult to get back home seems very alien to me. But then I
| don't use a GPS very often.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| What if you go west and the road bends north and you don't
| see a familiar road?
|
| At some point you may go too far west and then going west
| makes your situation worse.
| reificator wrote:
| No I'm not saying to blindly go where no man has gone
| before.
|
| Just... just give it a try. I think you'll surprise
| yourself. Besides, having a GPS in your pocket at all times
| makes it _safer_ to get lost than it was in the Rand
| McNally days.
| trey-jones wrote:
| For your original question, I guess it's a little bit
| hyperbolic to say that I can't find my way home. I like
| to think that my sense of direction is fine. It would be
| more accurate to say that I can't find my way to an
| unfamiliar place a second time, if I didn't manage my own
| navigation the first time.
| reificator wrote:
| Yeah, that I totally get. I just wasn't sure if you were
| being literal about the other part, which would seem
| really weird to me.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't understand your point. I never use a GPS to
| navigate, and I've gotten plenty lost. Six months ago,
| while aimlessly exploring westward on my motorcycle to
| get some air at the beginning of quarantine I went down a
| road I was familiar with a different segment of. I did
| not realize the road went through some strange twists
| (with no exit) where I got on it this time, and by the
| time I was able to get off of it, I was completely
| disoriented. My attempts to correct got me even more
| disoriented, to the point where I was relying on the sun
| so I would at least know the cardinal direction I was
| heading in. My original thinking that getting my bearings
| would be trivial caused me to make quick decisions that
| left me so confused that I couldn't even retrace my route
| back to the road that originally discombobulated me. I
| didn't want to ask for directions because I was afraid of
| the virus. I ended up pulling into a hardware store's
| parking lot, and _calling my mother who lives in a
| different state_ asking her to google map the hardware
| store by name so she could point me back in the direction
| of the city where I live. I had managed to get over an
| hour away from my house, meaning that almost every
| decision I made was wrong.
|
| I can't say it wasn't a nice ride, though. But my point
| is that people are not homing pigeons. I'm very good at
| navigating generally, but a couple of bad decisions can
| compound. That's how people get lost in the woods. If
| your commute is complicated, the way you actually end up
| memorizing it is by screwing it up a bunch of times.
| garden_hermit wrote:
| Not the OP, but I grew up in a mountainous Appalachian town.
| I always thought I was terrible at navigating, until I moved
| to a Midwestern town with a grid layout. Suddenly, I'm pretty
| good!
|
| In my hometown, it was incredibly difficult for me to make a
| mental map--a westward turn on an unknown road could very
| easily have you going East! The road layouts were haphazard
| and organic, something I love when walking, but much more
| stressful when driving across the rural sprawl. I basically
| only drove between places that I'd already been, and relied
| on a GPS for anything else.
| reificator wrote:
| Thank you, that's exactly the kind of perspective I was
| hoping to receive.
|
| That makes a lot of sense.
| Frost1x wrote:
| These navigating skills are something you typically develop
| when either navigating yourself or using a static/printed
| map. You learn how things are relatively positioned to one
| another and spatial relations, relative directions, absolute
| directions and so forth. These are sometimes referred to as
| 'cognitive artifacts' -- skills you've developed or inherited
| from some device where the information/knowledge and
| techniques somewhat been embedded in the system and your
| brain sort of develops these as base skills. Those devices
| often instill many years of knowledge and evolved over time
| give you the best ways of navigating yourself, from
| generations of other navigators.
|
| When you use a modern GPS navigation system does all of these
| processes for you (albeit a bit differently because computer
| mapping typically navigates a bit differently than your brain
| would navigate). I now have literal verbal directions when I
| should turn left. I have no idea what's around me or what I
| should expect to see in terms of global landmarks or
| reference points. I rarely even pay attention to the position
| of the sun. I have no relative or absolute orientations I'm
| keeping track of, I only have decision points on a network
| where something tells me which branch to take when I come
| upon it--highly localized. Much of the useful cognitive
| artifacts from a standard map are completely lost in these
| contexts. You never needed to develop the skills and therefor
| never did.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I grew up well before the GPS age so it also seems foreign
| to me that there are people who can't navigate without one.
| I generally know to a pretty good degree of accuracy the
| cardinal directions (N,S,E,W) and if I've been somewhere
| once I can generally find it again. It would be interesting
| to do brain scans on people of different ages while they're
| doing spatial navigation to see the differences in the
| brains of those who grew up with GPS vs those who didn't.
| Loughla wrote:
| > if I only do things for my kids instead of watching them do
| it themselves, then I will always be the one doing.
|
| Honestly, if I had a dollar for every time a student (this is a
| college) who was unable to function in a classroom or public
| space, because their parents either bulldozed every obstacle,
| or (and this happens more than you'd think) did their actual
| homework for them starting at an early age, I'd have like $200.
|
| I know it doesn't sound like a lot.
|
| But, there are a number of parents who prescribe to the
| parenting tradition of - the child should never meet an
| obstacle, for fear of their self-esteem. This includes
| homework, negative feedback, or any extra-curricular the child
| is not immediately amazing at.
|
| By the time these kids get to me, they are literally unable to
| function as adults in a public space.
| ekanes wrote:
| > the child should never meet an obstacle, for fear of their
| self-esteem
|
| Right, and this does exactly the opposite! Self-esteem is
| built ONLY by meeting obstacles and overcoming them.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The brain might have a specific mechanism for remembering
| decisions, and what decisions were made.
| ZacharyPitts wrote:
| Every experienced old person ever trying to tell their teenagers
| about mistakes that could be made. It is quite difficult to get
| it through to the teenager.
|
| Experience at life comes through living, and making the same
| mistakes others have made.
| tolbish wrote:
| Sometimes people _actually do_ learn from others. Not everyone
| needs to be told "Refrain from X" to be able to make the
| connection that X is a poor life choice.
|
| We should be focusing on what factors set people apart in this
| way, rather than making blanket statements. That way we can
| learn from those who know how to learn.
| chrismeller wrote:
| This is actually something that has really, really annoyed me on
| the job lately.
|
| A company I worked for had what I will call a "monkeys at
| typewriters" attitude. That, given requirements and (a ton of)
| restraints, their idiot monkeys could produce the code equivalent
| of Shakespeare. Perhaps not surprisingly, they never accomplished
| anything, despite having dozens of developers making a lot of
| money, and are now out of business.
|
| Now we could argue all day about markets and business moves, but
| I will practically guarantee you that the real reason is this
| attitude towards employees (and not just in IT - CSRs had to
| schedule their bathroom breaks, which I see as the non-tech
| equivalent). When you provide that many restrictions on people
| they rise to exactly that lowest common denominator and never,
| ever, any further. If by chance they learn a new skill, they
| immediately leave for a better job that at least let's them wield
| that new skill.
|
| On the other hand, if you give employees something to try and
| accomplish, along with the freedom to ask questions, make
| mistakes, and ask for a review from a senior... yes, they F up
| from time to time, but they also grow and learn. In the end you
| have a better employee who is more able to handle any situation
| thrown at them, rather than simply being able to take Tab A and
| insert it into Slot B.
|
| This is equivalent to university professors getting the tenure
| track to me. Aside from the whole "never get fired" part, tenure
| is supposedly about giving them freedom to move, explore, learn,
| and yes, eventually teach others what they have learned.
| yboris wrote:
| My favorite concept on this topic is CAR (Competence, Autonomy,
| Relatedness) from Self-determination theory [0]
|
| Giving people these at their job provides great satisfaction
| and better performance:
|
| - _Competence_ : using your abilities at a task, experiencing
| mastery
|
| - _Autonomy_ : having the ability to make decisions about the
| task
|
| - _Relatedness_ : understanding how the task relates to
| something bigger that helps others
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory
| M0T0K0 wrote:
| This was exactly why I left my lucrative property and casualty
| insurance CSR job a few years ago despite making 26.00/ an
| hour. I was a CSR who while newly licensed, was also forced to
| do rote busy work for my superior instead of stretching my legs
| with billings and developing my own book of business, and
| really getting to know the claims process on my end.
|
| I was expected to sit all day at my desk sans bathroom / coffee
| breaks, and never deviate from the set list of tasks to deal
| with re: mailing, endorsements to policies, follow-ups on
| mortgagee changes, etc. But when they finally let me attempt to
| do billings, I didn't truly understand the process after months
| of being forced to do mindless shit work, and of course messed
| something up.
|
| And then when you fail one time, they justified further
| restricting you despite the "issue" being A.) instantly
| fixable, B.) not dealing with much money in policies (such as
| misc. articles), and C.) Never being pushed or expected to
| perform on your own by your own boss, who at this point was
| more interested in me organizing their decades old folders of
| policies to be digitally scanned.
|
| When I was told I would need another designation (CISR) to be
| "taken seriously", which would've involved another year of
| classes in addition to busy work, I said fuck all of that and
| went back to college within a years time.
| bourgwaletariat wrote:
| I am fighting this. I was given requirements to implement fraud
| and I said no. They gave it to a contractor. I said roll it
| back. They said no. I reported it up. They constructively
| dismissed me. I continued to report it up to the most sr.
| lawyer in the organization. They retaliated.
|
| So I reported it to government agencies and am waiting on a
| response.
|
| We are the ones who are doing these things. Us. The engineers.
| We have a responsibility to the people.
|
| We are derelict in our duty.
|
| We have to stop writing the code that is destroying the world.
| We have to hold our employers accountable.
|
| We are the only ones who can stop this.
|
| Sit. on. your. hands.
|
| Stop destroying people's minds and lives with your code.
|
| YOU are doing it.
|
| YOU. The people who work at facebook and google and ad networks
| and content farms and high frequency traders and weapons
| manufacturers and climate changing organizations.
|
| It's _us_. We are the engineers. We are the ones with the
| power.
|
| It's up to us. The world is dying because of us.
|
| It's not the business people making the profits. They aren't
| doing it. WE are.
| geebee wrote:
| I agree with what you're encouraging people to do, and I
| admire people who do the right thing, even when there's a
| cost.
|
| However, I believe that you're calling on engineers to act as
| professionals without the professional standing that empowers
| workers to act like a professional. For instance, consider
| this:
|
| https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibili.
| ..
|
| (d) A lawyer shall not practice with or in the form of a
| professional corporation or association authorized to
| practice law for a profit, if: (3) a nonlawyer has the right
| to direct or control the professional judgment of a lawyer.
|
| In general, this means that 1) lawyers don't report to non-
| lawyers, and 2) non-lawyers can be imprisoned for practicing
| law without a license. That gives lawyers both a professional
| obligation and a professional power to meet that obligation.
|
| Now, I have misgivings about the kind of cartel-building we
| often see in the ABA, AMA, and so forth. But the truth is,
| engineers, in the way you're using the term (unlicensed
| software engineers) don't have any particular standing as
| professionals. There are benefits to this, in that we can be
| considered mere employees if our employers do something
| dastardly and we went along with it - there are limits to
| what a mere employee can go along with under the defense of
| following orders, but there's no malpractice. But the flip
| side is that we aren't empowered to hold the line the way
| licensed professionals are.
|
| That makes your willingness to stand up all the more
| impressive and commendable, but I can't really agree that
| software "engineers" have the kind of power you're
| describing, and it's built into the system that way (I put
| "engineers" that in quotes because in the context of this
| discussion, licensed PE holders do have more power, but not
| in the world of software).
| dantheman wrote:
| How did these lawyer 'standards' hold John Yoo to account?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo
|
| These are merely cartels to restrict competition.
| twunde wrote:
| John Yoo is somewhat an unusual case, and he was held to
| account to some degree. If you read the Office of
| Professional Responsibility Report section in that
| wikipage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo#Office_of
| _Professiona... you'll see that he had to go through
| debarment hearings and was almost disbarred.
|
| A better example of these legal standards holding lawyers
| to account is Prenda Law:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law
| [deleted]
| gabereiser wrote:
| cheers! I've been saying this for a decade. What's really
| _really_ hard is getting people to put ethics ahead of self,
| ahead of their paycheck and livelihood. Like the OP mentions,
| they likely just give it to a contractor (or outsource the
| entire project). We should be making technology for the
| betterment of man. Even reinventing the wheel to tackle
| shortcomings in markets and fixing fraud, not creating it. If
| there 's an unfair advantage, we, engineers, need to make it
| fair.
|
| I learned to code because the grandfathers of the web decided
| to share their knowledge for free.
|
| I landed my first job because someone decided to take me
| under their wing and teach me more.
|
| I too, was asked to design and build a high frequency trading
| system that was designed to be fraudulent by default. I
| decided to walk away. I focus my career on solving mankind
| problems. Whether it's travel waste, roofing waste, energy
| waste or optimizations, solutions for reducing energy
| consumption via optimal cloud architectures, and designing
| scale system on as little footprint (carbon included) as
| possible. I'm against cryptocurrencies requiring so much
| energy to mine. It's killing our planet. We need to find a
| better way. Time based auto-token so long as you are able to
| capture the packet? I don't know... But we, humans, need to
| find sustainable ways to keep our machines and our society
| moving forward.
|
| I will never write code that gives an organization an unfair
| advantage over others or is fraud or "shady". I have no
| problem walking away, conscience clean. I can always get
| another job. Yes, some may end up implementing it anyway.
| Some would say "What about patents?" etc etc. A free market
| should be a fair market, otherwise it isn't free.
| mushbino wrote:
| In this regard, I often think this is where a union or guild
| or something along those lines would be helpful. I've studied
| labor history extensively so I'm familiar with all of the
| downsides to a union. Some sort of collectivisation is needed
| to have support and collective input in cases such as this.
| The ones building it should have a voice.
|
| A single engineer putting their foot down is brave, but
| thousands putting their collective feet down can change the
| world.
| closeparen wrote:
| How often are unions used to enforce political/ethical
| stances about management's treatment of third parties,
| rather than workers? I hadn't really considered altruistic
| uses of collective bargaining power.
| dantheman wrote:
| Yeah, it's great when police unions fight against reducing
| sentences.
|
| We are in positions of privilege; we should build
| funds/organizations to protect and help whistleblowers;
| help them find jobs, have a fund to support them -- we
| don't need a union for this.
| bourgwaletariat wrote:
| Well, here I am. Whistleblowing. Unemployed. Nothing and
| no one to support me. Suffering from C-PTSD every day.
| Unable to sleep at night, because I may be _murdered_ for
| reporting a potential billion-dollar money laundering
| scheme. Fearing to even write this, but I feel
| _compelled_ to, because I have _nothing_ else.
|
| I've gone _days_ without sleep. Woken up afraid for my
| life. My future. Knowing I may never work again. I may
| never be employed again. I may be on the street.
| Homeless. Unable to trust _anyone ever again_.
|
| There's no one.
|
| No one.
|
| Do you understand that?
|
| I'd happily have a union to protect me right now. My life
| may be over because there isn't one.
|
| What about people who want to do the right thing and so
| they are crushed by evil?
|
| Do you know how much literature there is out there about
| blowing the whistle? Do you know how many people are in
| prison right now for it? Being tortured every day. Julian
| Assange. Chelsea Manning. Karen Silkwood was poisoned and
| probably murdered and she was a leader _in_ a union.
|
| What about them? Who is protecting them? Who protected
| them? No one. They are going to live a life of torture
| and die in prison because of the _truth_.
|
| Who is protecting the _truth_? Who is enabling the truth
| to _exist_?
|
| I spoke up and had to do it, I had to, I couldn't not do
| it, despite the very real threat that I might be
| _murdered_ in my sleep. I can 't stand to see this
| happening around me every day. I can't do it anymore.
|
| I don't think people really know. I don't think you
| really know. This isn't a _movie_ to me.
| RonanTheGrey wrote:
| Every once in a very great while, I see a reason for hope.
|
| Thank you anonymous stranger for being one of those great
| whiles.
| LordFast wrote:
| Bravo. Welcome. Keep up the good work, brother.
| bourgwaletariat wrote:
| Thank you. It means more than you know. Everyone here,
| thank you.
| duxup wrote:
| With a just a few years of experience I consider myself a bit
| of a noob developer in a small shop.
|
| I'm given the opportunity to say "I'm trying something new, but
| dorked up and this will take longer". It's not limitless and
| sometimes I end up playing catch up... but IMO it has paid off
| a lot in my confidence and skills.
|
| It has been a great experience. Being able to make a real
| change that actually impacts the product lets me see the
| results, good and bad.
|
| The real power is rewriting something, finding out why things
| are the way they are, failing to make it better ... and then
| that combo really informs the final result that is almost
| always way better.
|
| I'm a college football fan and a head coach PJ Fleck talks a
| lot about failure and how he wants his guys to go out on the
| field, try, and fail. Making choices and failure to him is 100%
| a part of the process to getting better, not just as a part of
| "that's what happens" but it is both expected and embraced.
|
| It also reminds me of when I used to have interns sit next to
| me. The vast majority we'd give simple tasks to and the
| outcomes I didn't really care about as much as the effort. Most
| folks really floundered without being told what exactly to do,
| it was disappointing.
|
| One day a high achiever intern comes in along with a guy who
| was "a problem" according to the professor.
|
| Both did great, and IMO difference between everyone else and
| those two wasn't any technical skills or etc... they were
| fearless. They tried things others wouldn't, they'd dork it up,
| but they also (to some extent) didn't worry about the results
| and thus learned super fast. In the end they were the only two
| we ever actually offered jobs to.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Oh I wish I had more points for this...
| [deleted]
| greggeter wrote:
| Funny -- we're governed better for the same reason.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _For example, when freely choosing between the two options,
| people learned more quickly from the symbols associated with
| greater reward than those associated with punishment, which
| removed points. Though that finding resembled a positivity bias,
| this interpretation was ruled out by trials that demonstrated
| participants could also learn from negative outcomes._ "
|
| So, a positivity bias implies that one _cannot_ learn from
| negative outcomes?
|
| " _But there was more to it. The experiments also included
| "forced choice" trials in which the computer told participants
| which option to select. Here, though the subjects still pressed
| keys to make the instructed choices, confirmation bias
| disappeared, with both positive and negative outcomes weighted
| equally during learning._ "
|
| Yes, confirmation bias disappears when _it 's not your decision
| that is being confirmed._
| morla23 wrote:
| kinda reminds me the policy gradidnt methods
| carlmr wrote:
| >The experiments also included "forced choice" trials in which
| the computer told participants which option to select. Here,
| though the subjects still pressed keys to make the instructed
| choices
|
| So was the choice forced? Or could they click another choice
| themselves? It's not quite clear from this wording. In the former
| case, there's no incentive to learn anything, since you can't
| change the outcome.
| mercora wrote:
| When trying to teach somebody how to do X i always avoid telling
| what exactly to do. instead i try to hint at my reasoning without
| giving the conclusion. otherwise i would probably just teach them
| to ask me what to do.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > To help individuals with delusions, the current findings
| suggest, it may be more effective to examine their sense of
| control and choices than to try to convince them with
| contradictory evidence--which, over and over, has not been shown
| to work.
|
| Oh god. If that's true, you can't possibly do this at scale like
| you'd need for coronavirus things or global warming. I'm sure we
| all have delusions about something at some level. That's why
| trust in public institutions is critical and those institutions
| need to be above reproach in their conduct. That doesn't mean no
| bad conduct but an evidence-based belief that bad conduct is
| identified and punished. That could explain why American society
| has been crumbling. It's taken a beating on the trust aspect by
| abuses from those in power for a long time. More importantly
| there haven't really been meaningful reforms to address that
| abuse which has eroded the trust that was built up for so long.
| The "small government" movement has taken a long time but it's
| finally winning in America because it identified trust as the
| weak point & systematically kept attacking it & used media to
| amplify the fight. A countermovement did not form in time so here
| we are with so many decades of damage. I'm not sure if it's
| possible to rebuild that at this point.
| dpflan wrote:
| "For example, maybe voluntary mask-wearing should be encouraged
| and coupled with rewards for choosing to put on a face covering
| and occasional punishments for not doing so."
|
| We have seen mask non-compliance fines go into effect, but
| perhaps there needs to be mask compliance rewards. I frequent a
| coffee shop that has been providing a mask-discount since
| March.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Maybe we just need more masks that stop viruses but let the
| coffee get through.
| vmception wrote:
| These days I tell confrontational anti-mask people, in this
| order
|
| "My mask is for just in case I need to go into a shop"
|
| "I like the fashion accessory, this mask was personalized"
|
| "yeah you got me, I don't actually care about these rights
| being curbed, go away"
| galuggus wrote:
| > To help individuals with delusions, the current findings
| suggest, it may be more effective to examine their sense of
| control and choices than to try to convince them with
| contradictory evidence--which, over and over, has not been
| shown to work.
|
| The psychiatrist Milton Ericsson, when treating a delusional
| patient who thought he was Jesus, said 'your a carpenter right?
| Could you make me some furniture?'
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Funny joke but Jesus wants actually known for his carpentry
| ability. He seems to have abandoned that career for godhood.
| galuggus wrote:
| The patient actually started work as a carpenter
| logicslave12 wrote:
| Small government is winning because big government is filled
| with crooks
| vlovich123 wrote:
| So now the crooks are out of government swindling you through
| the market in a way you don't even see? Or are you saying
| people's propensity for taking advantage & criminality only
| happens in the context of government? Or are you saying that
| government crooks are more efficient at swindling larger
| amounts than the private market offers?
| hnracer wrote:
| Small government and big government are both filled with
| crooks and self-serving bureaucrats. The main difference is
| that a small government can do less damage and extracts
| less from the economy.
| User23 wrote:
| Trillions are at stake over who controls the federal
| government, or even pieces of it. There's a reason why
| nobody spends $100 million a year to lobby Google but they
| do the government. The biggest crooks go where the biggest
| opportunity is, that's all.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| If I gave you $10 you could manage it just fine I presume
| by yourself. If I gave you $100 trillion, wouldn't you
| hire people to manage it for you & make sure it didn't
| get stolen from you? At a minimum, you'd pay for some
| physical security from anyone trying to take your riches,
| right?
| jrumbut wrote:
| Is that true? Google is never approached by sales people?
| Never threatened by lawyers? Never protested by
| activists? Never receives petitions or gets unsolicited
| advice from thinktanks?
|
| I don't know about $100 million but they get their fair
| share of what is essentially lobbying I'm sure.
| hnracer wrote:
| I think Trump and the divisions in the US are a symptom of the
| wokeness that sprung up in the mid 2010s, and that wokeness
| came from the humanities departments in US colleges who
| proselytized to and converted a large swathe of millennial
| graduates. Now a large proportion of the population doesn't
| care who they elect as long as they aren't towing the
| politically correct line which is being forced upon them by US
| cultural institutions (primarily media and entertainment, who
| were capture by recent woke graduates)
|
| Source: (1) people I know who are Republicans, (2) check out
| any right media outlet and the primary outrage is wokeness.
| username90 wrote:
| > trust in public institutions is critical
|
| Distrust in public institutions is why we no longer live under
| despots. You need a balance.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Distrust in public institutions is why we no longer live
| under despots. You need a balance.
|
| People don't mainly trust despots, rather they fear them.
| Though they may foolishly trust the "image" of the despot
| when they simultaneously fear the actual apparatus that he
| created to maintain control.
| username90 wrote:
| A fraction of people still blindly trust despots. The
| larger that fraction is the harder it is to topple the
| despot. If everyone was like that then the despot would
| never get toppled.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Under despots, states are not public institutions, but rather
| private.
| username90 wrote:
| To add, Democracy is more or less built around having half of
| all politicians actively working to reduce trust in the
| current government. That is intended.
|
| I think the problem in USA has more to do with how easily
| people are swayed by emotional arguments. It is so easy for
| politicians there to cause people to lose trust in a
| candidate just by attacking unrelated things about them.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I think the problem in USA has more to do with how easily
| people are swayed by emotional arguments. It is so easy for
| politicians there to cause people to lose trust in a
| candidate just by attacking unrelated things about them.
|
| In my personal opinion as an American, I feel we've
| backslid a bit since ~2010. At that point, it seemed like
| any nearly argument could be won by invoking science (even
| where it wasn't applicable, such as metaphysical arguments
| about religion), and now science is merely one of "many
| Ways of Knowing" and perhaps a racist one at that. We've
| never had a complete trust in science, mind you, but even
| on the far right people wouldn't attack the very idea of
| science and objectivity (even if they had paranoid ideas
| about conspiracies in the science community and so on). I'm
| not sure the cause, but it concerns me deeply.
| etripe wrote:
| > The "small government" movement has taken a long time but
| it's finally winning in America
|
| From the outside looking in, it's either:
|
| * the "small government" movement, which only wants to keep big
| government small if it's filled by the other side of the aisle
| and grow it otherwise, or
|
| * the "less regulation is more profits" movement
|
| Both variants are ultimately corrupt to the bone.
|
| Real small government voices don't seem to be present or
| growing in Washington. Then again, I don't follow your news as
| closely as you might.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Small government is nearly impossible to get from big
| government because the only way to change government is to
| get into it, and once you are in it big government is good
| for you.
|
| The best we can hope for is a revolution followed by a small
| government that grows slowly.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| How are you defining "grows slowly vs grows quickly"?. What
| is the ideal rate of growth?
|
| The executive branch by itself has grown from 699 to 2079
| since 1940 to 2014 [1]. That's a growth of just under 3x.
| By comparison, US population has grown from 132 million to
| 318 million in that time period according to Google. A
| growth of ~2.5x. The US GDP has grown by 14x in that time
| period [2]. Just to imagine that size, the US economy today
| is larger than the world economy in 1940 (now sure there's
| some inflation along with that so the numbers aren't
| strictly comparable.
|
| However, if you look at the total federal government size
| itself, it appears to haven't really changed since 1984 [3]
| so this growth in the executive branch is just shifting
| employees around. The government hasn't been growing since
| the 80s.
|
| So I'll reask my question. What level of growth is
| acceptable? Why has 0 growth in 40 years still not been
| enough to achieve the "ideal" "small government size"?
|
| [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-
| analysis-docu... [2] https://www.thebalance.com/us-gdp-by-
| year-3305543 [3] https://www.volckeralliance.org/true-size-
| government
| [deleted]
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Also the basic premise of the argument doesn't even hold
| AFAICT. The size of government since 1984 has shrunk from
| 9.7 million to 9.1 million in 2015. So the government has
| shrunk despite supposedly being in the era of big
| government. This is despite a growth of nearly 100 million
| people in the US.
| luckydata wrote:
| This article was really difficult to read.
| ncfausti wrote:
| I'm wondering if this is the reason why when given assignments in
| class , if there are some directions on how to solve the problem
| (or some starter code), I usually have a harder time coming up
| with the solution.
|
| It feels like I'm severely constrained into thinking through what
| the person who came up with the instructions/code was trying to
| do and work within those boundaries, as opposed to freely
| thinking about how I would solve it.
| mettamage wrote:
| I always had this with math, we always needed to do algebra,
| whereas I was much more interested in trial and error
| solutions.
|
| I mean I get it now, but at the same time, I think leaving 25
| to 50% of all assignments to clever guesswork would've
| motivated me more, while still learning algebra.
| andrewljohnson wrote:
| Knowing this makes parenting a hell of a lot more fun.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| Wouldn't teaching by _socratic method_ - asking them questions -
| be a great solution to this concern? It 's almost the opposite of
| telling people what to do. I say almost because the questions
| typically try to point in a specific direction.
| tombert wrote:
| I'm not a psychologist, and this is anecdata so take what I say
| with a _huge_ grain of salt, but I kind of feel like my life is
| sort of a testament to this.
|
| I'm just old enough to where my high school didn't have any kind
| of computer-science course, but I learned programming on my own
| as a kid because I thought it was fun. At that time, it always
| was a quick way to get most adults to think you're some kind
| genius :). I dropped out of college after ~2 years, in no small
| part because I've never liked being _told_ what I need to learn,
| but because I had already taught myself programming, I was able
| to find work.
|
| I've tried to keep this mentality up throughout my all my life.
| It drives my wife crazy, but I'm constantly buying compsci or
| math books to try and learn a bit more and get just a little
| better at the _theory_ of compsci, and hopefully becoming a
| better engineer in the process. I have no idea if I 'm better
| than the "average" programmer, whatever that means, but I have
| managed to get good enough to where people ask me compsci theory
| questions at work, which is somewhat validating.
| wefarrell wrote:
| This is something I learned in my on and off side career as a
| sailing instructor.
|
| I used to start off as a navigator and walk people through a
| course, telling them exactly where to tack for an ideal path.
| Then I started setting buoys and letting them figure it out for
| themselves. Buoys start out perpendicular to the wind, which is
| not terribly challenging. When students do well enough and gained
| enough confidence I set them in line with the wind, which is
| _incredibly_ difficult for someone new.
|
| I give them hints pointers, but I never make the decisions for
| them. Without fail, everyone screws up the upwind and downwind
| buoys on the first lap but they eventually make it around.
| Gradually they screw up less and less and start to get it.
| teachrdan wrote:
| The secret to teaching well isn't to tell students what they
| should know, but to create an environment where students can't
| help but to learn what they should know. This is a perfect
| example.
| heimatau wrote:
| I actually disagree with this headline.
|
| It depends on the type of work. For example, learning 2+2=4,
| would be difficult to figure out on your own. Learning how to
| install plumbing into a building....umm...no.
|
| For certain fundamental concepts, this is not the way to learn.
| It might be the way to internalize ideas but not have the correct
| framework for a given task.
|
| As one becomes a highly skilled worker, creativity becomes
| paramount and it's through experimentation that one, whom has
| mastery, can decide what solution works best or not. This can't
| be taught in an explicit education but through a level of
| competence.
|
| Maybe the article qualifies this but...I suspect not in a clear
| way (click bait and...laziness).
| chaostheory wrote:
| I agree and I feel it's due to the Paradox of Choice.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
| heimatau wrote:
| Interesting connection. What are your thoughts on connecting
| these two together?
| arolihas wrote:
| It seems like you haven't read the article at all. I recommend
| you do so, it goes in a different direction than you may have
| surmised from the headline
| heimatau wrote:
| > key from article "Here, though the subjects still pressed
| keys to make the instructed choices, confirmation bias
| disappeared, with both positive and negative outcomes
| weighted equally during learning."
|
| >> arolihas said: Here, though the subjects still pressed
| keys to make the instructed choices, confirmation bias
| disappeared, with both positive and negative outcomes
| weighted equally during learning.
|
| I appreciate the recommend but...I'm still coming to the same
| conclusion. Humans are not robots. We need to have a full
| conceptual framework about ideas for them to scale and
| through the scientific method and trial/error we've learned
| quiet a deal on how to mentally model the world.
|
| My conclusion lines up with this statement.
|
| > ""Feeling as though you are the architect of the outcomes
| you experience is powerful and certainly would lead you to
| strengthen beliefs about those contingencies much more
| strongly"
|
| To also add more meat to my initial argument, read below.
|
| >"This insight could also help explain delusional thinking,
| in which false beliefs remain impenetrable to contrary
| evidence. An outsize feeling of control may contribute to an
| unflagging adherence to an erroneous belief."
|
| This is also hinting at some disgusting thought processes in
| the author (not of the study but of the SA author). Assuming
| 'contrary evidence' is rigorous enough is a very deceptive
| thought; as author states, delusional. Sure, the desire of
| someone is a very important factor but...when 'truth' can't
| be reduced nor conceptually described, I say it's not really
| truth. It's a guess without evidence, re:Feynman. This
| typically is _not_ a quick process.
|
| If I have a poor (not scalable/error prone), then it was
| helpful at some point, to criticize my incorrect framework,
| without finding the ability to quantify aspects of it (as per
| the study, show benefits/punishments). Then how can one
| deduce that Newtonian physics is incorrect? The replacement
| framework needs to answer more questions than the previous
| one and help create similar factors to the situation in this
| study. Too much assumption is coming from the SA author.
|
| Trusting a 'forced' choice is how we all learn but we're also
| given feedback on what the decisions mean (the two choices
| aren't equal choices like the study has). If I use a diffeq
| to describe the properties of a wave, I'm closer to truth. If
| I use a linear equation, I'm not correct. There is no in
| between. To get to the 'truth' one needs to have a correct
| framework. Rote is how we learn until we've reached the
| limits of the existing framework. Rewarding incentives help
| provide positive feedback loops. As for 'force' being
| something negative, this is a terrible conclusion to what was
| experimented.
|
| Therefore, I stand firmly behind my initial claims. Laziness
| on their parts.
|
| P.S. > SA author writes: when maybe something about choice or
| an inflated sense of control pushes people toward delusions.
|
| It is so difficult to realize that their 'delusion' is
| helpful for their given individual purpose.
|
| > would be how beliefs are updated in a person with delusions
| and whether this process differs when choices are forced or
| made freely.
|
| Are they seriously asking this? Really. I'm dumbfounded at
| why people think in these terms. It's truly seeds of
| authoritarianism.
|
| > The latter individuals' sense of control, also called
| agency, was equally diminished in both free-choice and
| forced-choice situations.
|
| Because confidence is a major factor in how humans make
| decisions.
|
| > There's this general sense that the rules don't apply
| anymore, and that is really unmooring for people and can lead
| to unpredictable, irrational behavior, - Corlett
|
| Umm. Y'all really need to stop watching the news. This is
| such a broad assumption that is surprising for a person
| talking about delusional thinking, to be saying.
|
| > For example, maybe voluntary mask-wearing should be
| encouraged and coupled with rewards for choosing to put on a
| face covering and occasional punishments for not doing so.
|
| Glimmer of hope here when people think about policy assuming
| the freedom of choice.
|
| > "Even when the stakes are so high, you may think humans
| would behave rationally," he says. "But that's far from
| clear."
|
| Smh. Thanks for ending the article that confirms that even
| the scientist has a delusional thought process. Can we
| quantify rational? Seriously. I haven't seen much about this
| and if there is, you'd think the researcher would have some
| notes about it since it's critical to their framework and
| conclusion.
| elpakal wrote:
| This is truly fascinating. I'm raising two kids right now and I'm
| constantly battling myself over how much to let them learn on
| their own or just do cause Dad says. Obviously some things they
| can't learn on their own (don't jump off the building just trust
| me), but in terms of following their own dreams or interests this
| is fascinating to think about.
| crusso wrote:
| This effect is obvious for anyone who navigated before and after
| the age of personal GPS.
|
| When you engage in the decision-making process, you learn. When
| you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn.
| emteycz wrote:
| I disagree. I can generally drive a moderately long route (100
| km) by myself after 3-5 times with GPS. I might never learn it
| without a GPS that I can see during the way.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| How many turns / complexity is there's though? Arguably 2
| miles in London is harder than 100 miles in Arkansas due to
| the sheer cognitive load.
| astura wrote:
| Agreed, I can navigate to anywhere in my town without an
| issue, I haven't used a GPS to navigate within town in years
| (basically, since I moved here). When I first moved here I
| used GPS to get around because I moved here by myself and had
| never been here before. If I "wasn't learning" when using the
| GPS then I'd still need it to get around, but I found I only
| really needed it for a week or so.
|
| Of course, many people use GPS when they don't care about
| learning how to get somewhere, they just wanna get there,
| thus the use case is different.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| To play devils advocate, have you ever tried pulling out a
| map, planning your route, and then driving it?
|
| I'm going to assume not based on your response since you'd
| likely learn the route after 1 or occasionally 2 times of
| doing that.
|
| I say that because I work in an area where GPS directions are
| usually useless and often have to find my way to a new
| location based on directions, or by planning my route ahead
| of time. It works really well.
| gopalv wrote:
| This isn't obvious for those of us from a pre-device era.
|
| Particularly the device isn't something you bought, but instead
| built a "device internally", whether that's a fast-lookup or a
| turn by turn reckoning.
|
| > When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't
| learn.
|
| My entire history with Calculus is basically "Here's a bunch of
| random formulae to memorize" and I could do that very very
| efficiently.
|
| The goal was speed of solving a problem when learning
| Mathematics, but then you get to Physics classes full of
| problems without actual equations provided and then your memory
| just gives up throwing possibilities.
|
| But once a crutch works, it works again. Unfortunately, the
| crutch only takes you to the bottom of the hill, no more.
|
| And then suddenly, you're in a crowd of people who have made
| mistakes, recognize mistakes made and correct mistakes instead
| without an instructor. Sort of like swimming out to the ocean
| with water wings on and suddenly they start to deflate.
|
| That's when this starts to look like a fatal error rather than
| an easily recoverable one & even if you survive it, you're
| stuck with a permanent impostor syndrome.
| atak1 wrote:
| Totally agree with the premise, but to be specific: you don't
| learn about navigation.
|
| This does mean you have headspace to perhaps enjoy the scenery,
| or learn about other subjects via audiobook. IMO it winds up
| being a trade-off instead of a net loss.
| reactor4 wrote:
| Not really because what you would have learned is that it's
| better to plot your route beforehand thus freeing your mind
| to listen to your audiobook.
| xondono wrote:
| A lot of "obvious" psychological results have proven very hard
| to replicate.
| warent wrote:
| This is very relevant to my personal experience.
|
| I've always had a very, very poor sense of direction. Even if I
| I've been down a road countless times, if I approach it from a
| different direction I can easily become lost and turned around,
| so I've just relied on my gps to get me anywhere.
|
| This is something I always figured must be due to something
| with how my brain is structured. Just a reality of how I've
| developed.
|
| Then one day I travelled to cuba on a whim. Spent a week there
| with no phone service. Within just a few days, I had most of
| Havana memorized and could easily navigate it without a map,
| even intuit where I was by the position of the sun. It's like I
| unlocked a new super power I never had.
|
| Then it hit me... the reason my sense of direction has always
| been so poor is because I offload that part of my brain onto
| machines.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| This particular GPS example is slightly flawed. If you MRI
| cab drivers their brains are slightly different.
| Evolutionarily it makes sense why direction would be
| particularly important.
|
| My dad drove a cab in grad school to pay the bills, and even
| now his sense of direction (which should be relatively close
| since we share genetics) is relatively absurd; stuff like "I
| drove past this place 7 years ago I remembered it was a left
| turn here".
|
| So we might be slightly off track with the GPS example.
| godelski wrote:
| Do we have MRIs of cab drivers before they became a driver?
| We need to decouple if that's a learned skill or not.
| Certainly there is some spectrum in native ability but it
| would make sense for the vast majority of people to have
| the basic ability but that they never hone the skill. There
| are people that are never about to write, but for practical
| purposes we expect everyone to be able to do it (after
| being taught).
|
| I think a lot of people attribute to "natural ability" what
| is often learned because many times it isn't obvious how
| those skills were learned. It's obvious everyone went to
| school to learn to read and write, it's not obvious a child
| learned navigation because their favorite game growing up
| was hide and seek.
| kiba wrote:
| It's a learned skill.
|
| London cab drivers are famed for "The Knowledge". You can
| see the physical change in the hippocampus from the MRIs.
| However, the physical changes also seems to negatively
| impact some of their cognitive skills, so there's
| tradeoff.
| ford_o wrote:
| Source? What cognitive skills are impacted?
| kyuudou wrote:
| On top of what texasbigdata said, try searching for
| "london" "the knowledge". The non-linear way London's
| street system has evolved over the centuries has lent to
| some very unusual ways of getting around town that
| Uber/Lyft/GPS haven't really been able to supplant yet.
| The guys who test for "The Knowledge" have to do years of
| research, physically driving the best routes from major
| locations in great detail.
|
| This research, whether they pass or not, results in
| marked growth in temporal and visuo-spatial parts of the
| brain.
|
| It's one of my favorite subjects being a bit of a
| geography geek myself.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| The first result on google for "London cab mri" is a
| paper with 922 citations....this is not witchcraft.
| chewxy wrote:
| https://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/4398
|
| I think they also studied former cab drivers and found
| the structures to have shrunken compared to current cab
| drivers but still more pronounced vs non can drivers. I
| can't seem to find the source but I seem to recall this
| from a Stan Dehaene book
| spdionis wrote:
| Similarly, if I go to some new place with a friend or a group
| where I'm not the one leading, I would never remember the
| road. Even after multiple trips.
|
| If I go by myself even once, I will always remember how to
| get there.
|
| This phenomen is quite common and pretty straightforward if
| you think about it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm really tired of people who claim the result of a
| psychological study is "obvious".
|
| No, it isn't obvious at all and your example doesn't even
| correspond to the paper in any way. [1]
|
| With GPS, it's easy to simply not pay attention. And if you're
| not even paying equal attention, then you're not even trying to
| learn. _But_ that 's _not even what the study 's about_.
|
| The study is about people _actively_ trying to learn, first of
| all. It 's about the rates of people who are trying to _solve_
| something from _trial and error_ , not people trying to
| _memorize_ a route they research or look up or are told.
|
| But the study is specifically about discovering that _choice
| confirmation bias_ appears to lead to _higher learning rates_ ,
| which is _entirely_ non-obvious. In layman 's terms, why would
| "assuming I'm right" lead to _better_ learning outcomes?
| Traditionally, common sense tells us that prejudice or bias
| leads to _worse_ learning outcomes.
|
| So this is actually a quite interesting, non-obvious result.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0919-5
| ksk wrote:
| There are also a group of people who take a simple study
| model, and apply it to anything and everything in their lives
| - that's about as anti-science as you can get. Maybe I'm more
| sensitive to this behavior since I spend a lot of time
| evaluating research papers for work, whereas the average
| person might just read a headline or two in a journal.
|
| I'm sure folks mean well but it stems from this thinking that
| science is some kind of truth generator. It simply isn't, its
| a method of investigating the natural world. Only when enough
| people independently verify your result, will you get
| _closer_ to what could be defined as objectively true. And
| even after verification, there could still be huge gaps in
| our understanding of a natural phenomenon. There is no
| guarantee that one group of researchers is going to present a
| complete picture. It may take many researchers studying the
| same topic over many decades to reach a scientific consensus.
| Until then, its simply an idea/ideas - which could be
| interesting to think about by itself - but its not
| incontrovertible truth.
| Swizec wrote:
| Assuming you're right lets you shoot yourself in the foot and
| learn. Without assuming you ask for guidance and do the right
| thing.
|
| And you lack the visceral experience _why_ it's the right
| choice.
|
| A kid that grabs a hot stove will never try again. A kid who
| listens to their mom will.
| Stupulous wrote:
| If you're right, you already have mental systems in place
| to produce the right answer. If you're wrong, the feedback
| will help your systems self-correct.
|
| If you ask for help, you're using someone else's systems,
| and whether they're right or wrong carries very little
| weight about how you should be approaching things. You're
| not producing a system, you're adding an item to a lookup
| table that you might someday use to build a coherent
| approach.
|
| 'Fire is hot' is a good entry for a lookup table, but you
| also need to develop a general model of where potential
| dangers are and that you should approach them with caution.
| There is no number of entries that equal that system.
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| Thank you for this comment. I see "its obvious" here and on
| reddit all the time with scientific papers and you eloquently
| addressed why its so wrong to say.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Colloquially, "this will be obvious to anyone who X" means
| "you will already have strong belief values for this based on
| evidence gained through X". I wouldn't sweat it.
|
| As you can imagine, sometimes this ends up declaring the
| obviousness of things that are untrue.
|
| For instance, it's obvious to anyone who has walked in a
| stiff breeze that it is impossible to sail faster than the
| wind :)
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Haven't finished reading the paper yet, but it is not
| entirely obvious that when participants are being directed on
| how to choose, they are paying as much attention as when they
| have to choose for themselves. That seems like a possible
| confound.
|
| And the GPS analogy also suggested itself to me.
|
| In fact, when the GPS gives me bad advice and I turn the
| wrong way, I seemed to have learned more from that too...
| ConradKilroy wrote:
| "I'm really tired of people who claim the result of a
| psychological study is "obvious".
|
| Thank you crazygringo2 for saying this.
|
| "Obvious" is my most disliked word. Its reserved for 'expert'
| people (gatekeepers) who forgot what its like to be a
| beginner.
|
| "People aren't dumb, its just that the world is a complicated
| place." -Professor Richard Thaler, thought leader of
| Behavioral Economics, 2017 Nobel Prize winner
| thrav wrote:
| At the same time, in a big enough forum, there will always be
| many people who have already intuited what most psychological
| scientific studies are about, and had it confirmed by their
| own experience many times over.
|
| I'm equally irritated when people label an idea invalid until
| it's been scientifically confirmed and peer reviewed. Science
| is often about confirmation, not about creation. Many people
| are likely to have realized something long before a team of
| scientists got funded, figured out how to test the idea,
| analyzed results, wrote papers, published, and _officially_
| confirmed it.
| godelski wrote:
| Often people will learn something and then that thing will
| become intuitive even though it wasn't before. As an
| example, we've all had that calculus teacher that thought
| everything was obvious and students were dumb (or
| programming). Most of us struggle and THEN it becomes
| obvious. In fact, on a forum like this you might see people
| respond that they didn't struggle and it was intuitive and
| we won't know if that's real or if they struggled and just
| forgot (which our brain does a lot).
| boxed wrote:
| Sure. But it's often that people "know" something that is
| false. The expression "like pulling a band-aid" is a great
| example. It's what doctors and nurses believe to the degree
| that they willingly torture their patients because they
| believe honestly they are reducing total suffering. But
| they are wrong.
|
| Source: the work of Dan Ariely. His Ted talk is a good
| introduction.
| thrav wrote:
| Sure. But you won't see anyone commenting about that. I'm
| only saying some people will in fact intuit a thing and
| be right, and we should hardly admonish them for doing
| so.
|
| The higher rated their comment is, the more other people
| likely intuited the same.
|
| It's almost a decent measure of how obvious the thing
| being proven actually was -- assuming you could baseline
| it and compare it to others in a meaningful way.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Some people who accumulated various good intuitions over
| decades created a bow, an iron plow and knew planets from
| stars.
|
| Some people who started validating their intuitions with
| real measurements gave us steel ships, cantilever bridges
| and moon rockets.
|
| These achievements were _not_ a result of majority of
| people having the same intuition.
| ksk wrote:
| >Many people are likely to have realized something long
| before a team of scientists got funded, figured out how to
| test the idea, analyzed results, wrote papers, published,
| and officially confirmed it.
|
| Can you expand on that? Who are these many people? Any
| examples? Lay people who have nothing to do with the field,
| simply intuiting results without doing the work to
| carefully rule out external factors? Or people without
| scientific training performing science without realizing
| that what they're doing is science ?
| enominezerum wrote:
| That is the good ole "your just spewing anecdotes" attitude
| you find on the internet.
|
| At what point is a collection of anecdotes studied
| sufficiently by psychologists and sociologists to where it
| becomes a "created" idea?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You're right, for some things people will have already
| intuited it, and in a large enough group someone will have
| intuited pretty much everything. But many people will also
| have the wrong intuition.
|
| The danger here is if we find data that goes against our
| common sense, we have to really consider that data, not
| reject it and rely on our common sense only. Sometimes it's
| right, sometimes it's wrong. Having a study prove something
| by no means makes it definitive, but it does provide better
| evidence and lets us better know if our intuition aligns
| with reality.
| crusso wrote:
| _I 'm really tired of people who claim the result of a
| psychological study is "obvious"._
|
| Personally, I don't get too wound up on people's opinions on
| psychological studies. They're fun little conversation
| filler, but psychology isn't a science.[1]
|
| Plus, you make assumptions about what I'm saying is obvious
| and what the study actually showed. At first when I got a
| GPS, I even noticed the effect of not knowing where I was, so
| I even tried to pay attention in case I didn't want to use
| the GPS later. I noticed that even paying attention, trying
| to learn, you just don't engage the full set of neurons that
| you do when you're struggling to do something yourself. I
| still felt lost in situations where prior to a GPS I would
| have felt confident in my ability to navigate.
|
| How could the study show that people were trying to learn
| when they were being told what to do? You can't control for
| that or see into their heads to see if they're making the
| same efforts in the same ways.
|
| This study makes the same mistake of tons of psychological
| studies. It attempts to simplify mental processes or abstract
| them and then pretend that the simplification or abstraction
| stands in for some other mental process result.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2018/08/27/6422183...
| [deleted]
| kthxbye123 wrote:
| Bookmarking this comment for the classic 'arrogance and
| ignorance' HN combo on display.
| jandrese wrote:
| However, it's important to remember just how often people got
| lost in the age before Satellite Navigation. All the damn time
| they got turned around and lost. Even people who should have
| been professional navigators got lost. Kids today don't get the
| experience of missing the exit or making a wrong turn and
| discovering that your directions are suddenly useless.
|
| Are they dumber because they don't learn how to navigate by the
| seat of their pants? Maybe, but it's kind of like asking if
| they're dumber because they don't learn how to saddle their
| horse. The skillset is semi-obsolete in the modern world. They
| can save that space in their brain for something novel to the
| modern era, like which Roblox maps are the best or something.
| josefresco wrote:
| When you engage in the decision-making process, you learn, and
| sometimes get completely lost.
|
| When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't
| learn but you are never lost.
|
| I'm not disagreeing, just wondering which outcome people
| prefer.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I have a friend who always relies on not just phone maps, but
| also phone directions (turn left now), and gets helplessly
| lost downtown where GPS is unreliable. It's less binary than
| your breakdown.
| nubbins wrote:
| I used to use google maps as just a GPS rather than
| navigation instructions. I've since found it is most
| helpful to use navigation in major cities because the
| directions are so much more complicated and the
| consequences for a single wrong turn can be huge time in
| traffic.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure if having something or someone else
| manage the decision making process avoids getting lost. You
| may pass some responsibility for your journey (literally or
| metaphorically) off to something/someone else (the decision
| maker), but you absolutely can still get lost.
|
| For the GPS example, it's completely possible depending on
| the system to drift into an area without data access or
| precached maps. Your device you're reliant on could break.
| Addresses could be correct or mapping could be incorrect.
| Your device could lose power. You followed the directions
| from the decision and its "not your fault" but you are none-
| the-less, lost. Often in our society, when the decision maker
| is at fault, its those executing the decision who still takes
| responsibility and ultimately have to fix or deal with the
| decision, regardless of the quality of the decision.
|
| I conclude, it's far better to be part of the decision making
| process, even if you're just executing the result. Not only
| do you often have more context to better inform the decision
| making process, as the one executing the decision, you also
| have some say in the direction of your future.
| irishsultan wrote:
| > When you rely on something to make choices for you, you
| don't learn but you are never lost.
|
| Unless of course suddenly whatever you're relying on turns
| out to be unreliable.
| reificator wrote:
| > _When you rely on something to make choices for you, you
| don 't learn but you are never lost._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_GPS
|
| * https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/12/another_apple_maps_m
| e...
|
| Following the GPS will not get you lost in the vast majority
| of situations, unless you then lose signal or your GPS
| encounters a technical problem. However if it _does_ get you
| lost, you will be substantially more lost than if you had not
| relied on it.
|
| N.B. I'm only objecting to the finality of the statement, I
| don't think you're going to get lost in most cases with a
| GPS.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| This is very true and now I sometimes force myself to do things
| manually just so I can learn.
|
| I lived in Bombay for 10 years and I know the nook and corners,
| all the way from the sub-urban to the tip of the city. I'm
| super comfortable at anywhere in that city and know my bearing,
| stores, etc.
|
| Unfortunately, even thought I have been in Bangalore for an
| equal amount of time, I'm lost beyond my periphery. Even in
| places I know, I rely on the GPS just so I don't have to take
| judgement on the better route.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| "Choice tips the balance of learning: for the same action and
| outcome, the brain learns differently and more quickly from free
| choices than forced ones."
|
| This makes sense; you have to think through why you are making
| the choice you are making if it's a free choice- if it's a forced
| choice, you don't. You could, but why expend the effort if you
| don't have to?
| moultano wrote:
| Given the replication crisis, these are the kind of results that
| I reflexively don't believe anymore.
|
| Has anyone read any of the studies? What are n and p for these
| results? What's the effect size?
| xondono wrote:
| Same here. Statistically we have the odds in our favor.
|
| This study also has a lot of the particulars that went wrong
| with most studies, like having a lot of conditionals. Generally
| this means that this is an aggregation of several smaller
| studies.
|
| I will check the small print on this one before going with the
| "obvious" crowd.
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