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Too Clever by Half

epsilontheory.com

201–210 of 261 posts

Re: Too Clever by Half

#201

Reminds me of when Andy Dufresne thought he was protecting himself when he told the warden he'd never tell anyone about cooking his books.

what scene in shawshank are you referring to

The scene where Andy Dufresne told the warden he'd never tell anyone about cooking his books

Re: Too Clever by Half

#202
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up The Marshmallow Test. If there was one thing I wish my parents had instilled in me, it's good study habits.

Wasn't that debunked? It's useful as a myth - "teach your kids patience", "don't go into the woods alone" - but it doesn't actually turn out to be true.

It wasn’t exactly debunked, but seems to measure something different to what they thought recently. So as a parent your takeaway should be to give your kid experiences of delayed gratification that actually pays off, and help them learn to identify which scenarios fit into this.

Re: Too Clever by Half

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern world works well for whom? Laughable.

When would you rather be alive? There are tons of problems with the world today and many that we can fix but aren't. But the idea that things are worse now than before is just not true.

I'm a white guy in American born to two college educated parents.

My life isn't representative of everyone on this planet. I won the birth lottery.

I'll pick the future, since it's a futile exercise.

Re: Too Clever by Half

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the rule makers in high schools are sometimes (often?) incredibly petty people with a very poor understanding of human psychology and communication, not tremendously much empathy for the students, and very little personal consequence when they make a mistake even if that has drastic consequences for the student (and as a result little time spent introspecting about their mistakes). I never got in…

It's not just kids, is it? This is pretty much the canonical and most self-preserving way of interacting with anyone who has power over you and is in a clear and present situation to apply it: school officials, police officers, appeal adjudicators at companies who you try to turn to if you think there's been some bureaucratic mistake, military personnel of a foreign power in your country for reasons beyond your contr…

Yes, I think you are right. In this sense, high school prepares children/teens for the real life really well. :-(

Re: Too Clever by Half

#205

Reminds me of when Andy Dufresne thought he was protecting himself when he told the warden he'd never tell anyone about cooking his books.

what scene in shawshank are you referring to

It's this scene (around the 3:55 mark in this clip):

https://youtu.be/_IrCgt-Bt1I?t=3m55s

Re: Too Clever by Half

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schools are really failing their students by not helping them realize just how difficult university and "real life" can be.

Actually university is fairly easy if you seize the learning opportunities that courses give you; many students attend neither lectures nor tutorials/exercises nor tutoriae and then complain how difficult it is to pass the exam . This still happens even though older semesters will tell any freshmen that they need to attend courses and do exercises to make it. What kinda works are mandatory exercises.

"university is fairly easy if you seize the learning opportunities that courses give you"

It might be "fairly easy" if you're lucky enough to have had a decent K-12 education, which is what prepares you to do what you say and do it effectively.

Far too many students graduate high school barely literate, without knowing how to learn, without sufficient direction or motivation. That's not to mention various emotional and psychological issues students might struggle with that keep them from applying themselves and making the most of their university education. It's also not to mention the fact that way too many students look at university as primarily a place to party, or to cheat their way to a degree.

Re: Too Clever by Half

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before I graduated, when I was interviewing for jobs, lots of companies wouldn't interview anyone with lower than a certain GPA. Google was the most notable one, although they've since gotten rid of that requirement since they found it has almost no correlation with your performance as an employee. Other larger companies that cared were Lutron, Epic, and a few more I don't really remember. I think Epic even asked me…

I've had one company so far ask me for transcripts, and this was after I had been working for several years. That should have been a huge red flag.

What did they want your transcripts for?

Re: Too Clever by Half

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point of what GP is saying. My interpretation was that rules are only an approximation for what the rulemakers actually care about, and if you understand that, optimizing for what they want and not what they say will be a lot better for you than doing what they say but not what they want.

I think you're missing his point here. Yes, those of us that question and break rules can optimize for what is actually desired vs what is 'proscribed' and have better outcomes. But many/most people rather just follow the rules/directions in the first place rather than break the rules or attempt to find optimal ways around them.

Riiiight, which is why many/most people drive the speed limit.

Re: Too Clever by Half

#209
post #14

I really enjoyed this article. Summary Coyotes are too clever because they know that people shaking jars full of coins can’t hurt them. Thus the animal control patrol has to get called and when they don’t shoo, the animal control person who loves animals has to shoot the coyote. Coyotes are winning the mini-game of each human interaction, but they are losing the meta-game of what society will do if coyotes aren’t sca…

The problem is that the rule makers in high schools are sometimes (often?) incredibly petty people with a very poor understanding of human psychology and communication, not tremendously much empathy for the students, and very little personal consequence when they make a mistake even if that has drastic consequences for the student (and as a result little time spent introspecting about their mistakes). I never got in…

Having been both a teacher and a student who chafed under the rules, I'd suggest that it's not quite that stark. The rule makers are people trying to maintain a learning environment that works for everybody under their care to make progress. You have to make split-second decisions to keep the dynamic productive, and there's not a lot of margin for error. In a perfect world, you'd have time to negotiate solutions with individual students. But in the real world, you have to negotiate collectively, and there are things you don't have the discretion to negotiate. So, this often takes the form of rules.

It's very much an art to do this effectively, without alienating your students. You have to be consistent, yet flexible. Thorough, yet empathetic. Fair, yet differentiated. It's a web of contradictions.

Re: Too Clever by Half

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I sometimes wonder if humans were smarter before civilization replaced evolution as the driving factor for intelligence. this is an odd proposition. evolution has not been replaced; rather, the evolutionary pressures have changed. in any case, civilization is not much more than 10,000 years old, which is pretty short in evolutionary timescales. and although we employ some measures (ie social services) to preven…

Well, if humans haven’t changed in 10,000 years then the author’s thought that domesticated animals are different is also false.

What are you basing that assertion on? For starters, animals had way more generations than humans in those 10,000 years - probably by an order of magnitude or 2 depending on the animal.
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