The Lesson to Unlearn • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#361

Post by robocat » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #5

I never cared about grades, but I was never very good or very bad. Just slightly above average In academia, having good grades is sometimes helpful to climb the ladder. Not all people can study medicine. Not all people can get a master degree. Often these gigs are given to the best students only, but sometimes you can circumvent the grading issue by waiting longer, going to the military, be friends with a prof. or wo…

> Not all people can study medicine

I think you are falling for the fallacy that the essay is trying to expose?

Surely those that pass medicine are those that are good at medicine exams. Plenty of people would make great doctors that don’t due to the exam system, not due to a lack of capability.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#362

Post by taeric » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #358

taeric wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels wrong. You can say that two larger things attract each other more than smaller things. Especially as they get closer to each other. Catch, of course, is all things on the earth are in the noise range compared to, you know, the earth. If you are talking about gravity and acceleration on the earth, you are talking about 9.8 m/s^2. Pretty much period. And yes, there are terminal velocities that impact maximum…

It's correct. Terminal velocity is irrelevant here; it's true outside the atmosphere too. I really am talking about force and acceleration. It's clear that there's more force on a heavier object. How much force do you have to apply to counteract a bucket full of rocks from falling to the ground, vs. an empty bucket? Your arm is certainly applying more force to the former. So then the question becomes Why doesn't the…

Ah, I see what I screwed up. I was sloppy and saying force, but really only talking about acceleration.

So yeah, that makes sense.

Similarly, I only mentioned terminal velocity because I said faster. Which could apply there. But my point was focused on acceleration of falling objects. I get that there are a lot of ways to muddy that discussion. As exemplified by my postings. :).

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#363

Post by eloff » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

What if we moved to pass/fail grading?

Every assignment and test is just marked pass or fail. Realistically tempered by what percentage you're allowed to fail for the class, e.g. 40% for university calculus - no different than grading on a curve today.

Fail any N assignments/tests and fail the course. Maybe some are weighted to count extra, e.g. Final project, midterm, final exam.

This is really not much different than the current system, but if you stop caring about the difference between C and A, students can either slack off or focus more on learning (if the subject is interesting).

Nobody cares about your grades after your first job anyway. I had nearly a perfect GPA in college, and it was a terrible waste of time in hindsight. If I'd spent more time socializing maybe I would have made some lifelong contacts that would have benefited my career or become co-founders with me.

I've always thought to tell my hypothetical kids to not sweat the grades and remember that the benefit of university is really the friends (and sometimes life partner) who you meet there. It's total shit when it comes to learning stuff. A self motivated person can learn more in a year than a 4 year degree. Somewhat depends on the subject though - I wouldn't want a self taught doctor who didn't do the practical parts of the education.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#364

Post by pavlov » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #299

burlesona wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a hiring manager at a big company, I can tell you this is just as frustrating for me as it is for candidates. I hate “leet code” and frankly find algorithmic interviews to be very low signal compared to more practical, open-ended, domain-specific problems. I will say though, the problem is one of “standardization” across an organization where it’s too big for everyone to fit in a room. Suppose you give each tea…

I was a hiring manager at a big company for years. We never did coding tests, and I like to think that I made good choices every time. I kept a high-functioning team together, under fairly humble pay, and stressful, sometimes demoralizing, conditions, for decades. I'm mediocre, at best, at these tests. I don't come from a traditional CS background (started as an EE). I tend to take unusual, hybrid approaches to solvi…

I've often wondered as well why tech companies seem to go out of their way to ignore portfolios. First I thought it's a misguided but honest attempt to make the process look more like a blind meritocracy, to basically turn the interview into a modern version of the Imperial Examination of ancient China.

Then I read "Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder, a book that documents the design process of a minicomputer in the late '70s. The idolized manager of that project wants to hire young engineers fresh out of school so that he can mold them according to his wishes and have them working all-nighters. If that's your hiring principle, you're not going to get anyone with portfolios.

So I suspect it's an industry sickness that's been turned into a virtue over time.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#365

Post by _7fvc » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

I feel like Paul Graham is unlearning his own experience. Maybe, he's at the top of the game and tries to figure out why it's messed up. Life is full of hacks. People hack stuff: school, test, career. The site we're on now called itself Hacker News. I suppose Paul Graham gave it the name.

When I was in school, I did all kinds of hacks. I didn't graduate high school in the US. I took the GED to go to college. I did challenge tests to skip classes and save money. I got to know people who collected old tests. They trade old tests with me for homework help. Everyone graduated, got jobs, and continued their life hacks.

The focus on learning and doing is important. As long as we're delivering, we can hack some stuff. The philosophy debate between Kant and Locke will never end. There's a balance for each person. We need to discover it ourselves.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#366

Post by choppaface » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

“But you can't blame teachers if their tests are hackable. Their job is to teach, not to create unhackable tests. The real problem is grades, or more precisely, that grades have been overloaded.”

Two important things here: * Grade inflation makes for happier students and counterbalances the value of test hacking. Today there are very few schools that don’t do grade inflation. Without considering grade inflation, much of this essay is simply Graham entertaining his own nostalgia. (I’m not necessarily a proponent of inflation but it’s a key phenomena missing from the essay).

* Good teachers hold lots of office hours and give good feedback through those offerings. Email support is also a lot more popular today. You can also play games like test corrections, rough drafts, etc. Students don’t learn well without feedback, and most teachers who don’t invest in it won’t succeed today. This focus towards feedback in modern teaching is at odds with the education community profiled in this essay.

If there’s one lesson to un-learn, it’s to forget about giving attention to non-constructive papers that lack evidence. While this essay gives a thorough criticism of tests, it offers no concrete alternative. And it offers no grounding for the claimed ‘good’ student who ‘focuses on valuable learning.’ Graham, like any other VC, seeks to upwell sentiment in the interest of controlling it (e.g. creating an investment asset out of it). Reading this essay doesn’t teach you anything about hacking unless you recognize that the author is trying to hack you himself.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#367

Post by throwawaymath » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

mwfunk wrote: post #355

knzhou wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to try, because the alternative to standardized testing isn't some egalitarian utopia, it's nepotism.

Yeah. I love HN and many of the thoughts expressed on it, but if there's one thing that always jumps out at me as being an incredibly widely held cognitive bias in the tech community, it's a tendency to view certain things in a very black and white, binary fashion, and to treat certain very complicated, messy problems with lots of social nuances as if they were simple problems, if only everyone could be rational abou…

This is an excellent observation.

The problem isn't hyperrationality per se; it's a lack of intellectual humility and self-awareness. The behavior you're talking about arises when someone looks at a problem, immediately wants to fix it and makes snap judgements to figure out how to do so. Instead, they should dispassionately consider 1) whether the problem is fixable in any meaningful sense, and 2) whether they have the requisite experience, skill and insight to solve it in five minutes of thought.

You could further distill this idea with the observation that a lot of people consider things too systematically, rather than holistically. "First principles" thinking is a powerful drug, which appears to crack open the world and solve every problem. But no problem-solving paradigm can deconstruct away unknown unknowns or inexperience.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#368

Post by kaens » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #156

jtbayly wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every free (as in speech) program is written by somebody that said that. But they are generally not entrepreneurs. The entrepreneur is by definition somebody that cares about money.

What matters is not whether one starts a company, but why . A company is a way to get money and manpower to help one realize their goals. The important question is, what are their goals? Making money? Or building a product? Unfortunately, most companies are about the former (despite what their marketing copy says).

Pretty hard for companies to not skew very heavily towards being about making money when people require money for food, shelter, and healthcare (at least in the states).

Unless the people involved are in a financial state where they are not dependent on revenue from the company, or we divorce survival from capital, I doubt it's really possible for "not making money" to disappear as a terrifying core motivator for every business and every employed person regardless of whether their marketing copies are disingenuous.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#369

Post by kart23 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #112

manmal wrote: post #20

My wife and I are contemplating unschooling our kids. The longer our son is in primary school, the more we see the deterioration of his willingness to learn anything school-related. He hates homework (as do most kids), and this is even more painful to see given that it has been shown that homework is essentially useless for learning performance. He still likes to write and do math, but as long as he is in school, we…

> Gates, ... - all were not in a conventional school wikipedia said he went to a regular private school then went to Harvard which sounds pretty conventional. Yeah he didn't finish, but worry about that later.

Theres truth to the OPs statement. Some online sources say gates attended Montessori for elementary but it's not conclusive. Brin and page for sure attended Montessori. Bezos as well. I went to a Montessori until 5th grade and honestly didnt think it was anything special. Probably because they mixed a lot of traditional school elements in as well.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#370

Post by mavhc » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #354

burlesona wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a hiring manager at a big company, I can tell you this is just as frustrating for me as it is for candidates. I hate “leet code” and frankly find algorithmic interviews to be very low signal compared to more practical, open-ended, domain-specific problems. I will say though, the problem is one of “standardization” across an organization where it’s too big for everyone to fit in a room. Suppose you give each tea…

If you can't stop bad people from accumulating, you will have a problem no matter how selective is your hiring process.

Can't you just unhire them?