The Shadow Scholar

I did it partly for the money, and partly for the sake of helping someone who would probably not have a chance to improve their life (via education). We remain good friends to this day - she called just before I read your comment.

" They're stupid because you provided them absolutely no incentive not to be."

There are some people who, irrespective of the work they put in, who will never be able to learn somethings. I used to think that people were just lazy, but then I realized that many things are beyond most people. Don't believe for a second that one day, everyone will be smart, uber-rational and we'll all live in some Randian, Galt-led utopia.

Deep, critical thinking is not possible for most people. Through no fault of their own, they simply lack the mental hardware. I recognize that this view is very un-PC, but if mind is a function of matter as I believe, some people, regardless of what they do, will never be able to reason at a high level.

The logical question then, is this: How moral is it to help someone game the system? I wouldn't feel good helping an incompetent med student or civil engineer, but what about some mid-level paper pusher? But then again, if I'm willing to make exceptions, that puts me on the slippery slope: where, exactly, do I draw the line?

I'm sorry, but I don't have easy answers. Thanks for your comment, though.

There is a certain degree of faith needed to want to make progress toward some distant and difficult goal. If you don't believe the rewards are going to be there when you complete the journey, there is really no point in even starting down.

The two rewards I can immediately think of with respect to learning are: the ability to approach the problems you find in life with a deeper and more enlightened understanding, and as a result are in a better position to generate a lot of value for humanity; and the feeling of satisfaction from having gained understanding into something that isn't trivial. You have to believe one or both of these things will happen before you start, otherwise you'd being doing something difficult for no reason at all.

The reason why it seems beyond my comprehension, and perhaps the reason why it feels beyond your comprehension as well, is that there are people who don't believe this. They think that there is no sense of enlightenment at the end of learning, or that this sense of enlightenment isn't worth the effort. They think that whatever they end up learning will be of no practical value, and that it is only practical things that hold value to people in general.

They believe, quite honestly, that learning will get them right back to where they are now, except for the practical value of the sheet of paper they receive at the end.

In short, I think people, if they ever had it, have lost the faith. It doesn't matter what you learn, so you should make the process of running in circles on as flat a plot of ground as possible.

The difference, at least for me, is that I haven't yet lost the faith. I see value in learning, both in an intrinsic sense of accomplishment, and a societal effect of being able to make a bigger impact on things people use. The positive feedback loop is there now; unfortunately, it has been with me for so long, I can't actually recall what got it started.

If the positive feedback loop doesn't start though, the lack of it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You end up in social groups where learning is discouraged, and where things that are practical now are much more valued. Once you fall in with the social group that fits your point of view, it takes quite a revelation to reach escape velocity from the same.

So, this comes down to yet another question, which I still don't know the answer to: how do you motivate people to take an example as part of a more fundamental truth, rather than an exception that proves their point of view? I wonder if it involves forcefully weaning them from the teat they've discovered the more intelligent amongst us are willing to provide and for far less of a cost than the value people get out of it.

I really wonder, as I did in another comment on this article, how much of this is really a product of past behaviors of those of us who love to learn. It seems as though we thought positive reinforcement is the answer; maybe we should revisit that.

I can't claim to be an expert on education, but we can all speak from experience. Being currently in the educational system, I honestly think it's about inspiration vs. motivation. The current system is fairly good at motivating students, but this is on a superficial level - grades, getting into a good college/job, or the threat of failure. In general, though, I can't say that I've really been inspired to learn, apart from a few teachers whom I deeply respect. The crucial difference between the 2 - motivation only works as long as the motivator is there, and people have no problem with cheating. Inspiration is what drives people, and what education is missing.

So where does inspiration come from? Both internally and externally - the intrinsic value or joy of learning, and being able to apply what we learn to life. I think there are 2 places where real improvement could be seen:

TL;DR - In short, I think we need to develop internal inspiration when students are young, and then tie that into external inspiration as we get older.

1. Childhood education - Learning is something that really needs to be made fun, and internalized. I think that this is where most people gain an initial passion for learning. There is an intrinsic joy to truly learning something or solving a problem, but we need to teach perseverance - there was some study which showed that, given an impossible problem, U.S. students spent far less time on it than some students from other countries. Anecdotally, though, we tend to give up too easily; most of the rewards are from completion, but we never get there in the first place. We need to show our kids both the value in challenging yourself and also the value in the end result. I think a large part of this comes from parents and your home environment, rather than formalized education.

2. Middle/HS - Most of us have that one teacher that really inspired us. I think we need to look for teachers that may not be great at teaching, but rather are visionaries and are able to inspire. In the end, all of us learn in different ways, and arguably a lot of it is done outside of the classroom. Especially given the problem of limited time, teachers need to in inspire students first, and teach second - if a student wants to learn, they will, regardless of their resources or environment. Granted, that's hyperbole, but think about the lengths you go to if you really want to do something. The best teachers are the ones that are truly passionate about what they teach, and are able to impart that on the students. We need to show students that what they are learning has real value, and can be applied to whatever the student is interested in.

So, what are our metrics. As a few examples:

1. The graduation rate of the student body. 2. Standardized test scores. 3. Rates of subsequent employment after graduation. 4. Salary of subsequent employment. 5. The relative prestige of the employing companies.

What we are measuring here is the rate by which people default, and with the expressed goal that we maximize these. What we actually want to end up maximizing is a meta-level or two up from these metrics, but what we've come up with so far is measuring a set of consequences that might kind of indicate that we are maximizing what we actually want. Of course, we forget that these implications only go one way. What we may end up maximizing might have the same symptoms as our goal.

The other question really becomes how you develop a metric to gauge "curiosity". It's really quite subjective, but it is something we would have to do if we'd want to maximize it to any appreciable degree.

Here's my thoughts about this. In the large, it just isn't possible. Psychological motivation is not a multiple-choice test. In order to know someone is curious, you have to expose them to situations that will bring that sort of curiosity out. What you'd need to do is observe and interact with someone, and gauge their reaction to stimuli that would bring about curiosity.

But even then, once you start measuring it, how do you maximize it within a collective? Is it even possible to change the frame of mind of a collective of people? There are 25 of them with a frame of mind they come into the school system with from their parents, and there is one of you telling them that their collective sense of reality isn't the only perspective available. False consciousness is hard enough to overcome one-on-one.

I really think it has to be a grassroots process, if it is going to work at all. You need to convince your friends who don't already believe it that it is worth having faith in continuous learning as a net benefit to one's life. Then they can pass this frame of mind down to their children, who will hopefully become numerous enough eventually that the positive feedback loop starts.

How to do that is left as an exercise to the reader; I've made a difference in the perspectives of a few people, but I have no idea which argument or combination of arguments I made worked. I don't think I could know, to be honest.

But then again, if I'm willing to make exceptions, that puts me on the slippery slope: where, exactly, do I draw the line?

You won't know until later where the line ought to be, which makes it tricky to draw one ahead of time. I worry though, not because of the morality of your actions, but because of the moral hazard they generate. You allow them to graft your abilities onto themselves, and they are put into a position where they are expected to have those abilities themselves. This is scary, because incompetence doesn't just cause damage in catastrophic, discrete instances, such as a building falling down or a bridge failing. The damage of continuous incompetence multiplying on itself can be just as catastrophic in the end. Bare in mind, our present financial catastrophe was not the result of a single isolated incident of incompetence; it took thousands of incompetent people and the better part of a decade.