91–100 of 244 posts
I think it is not just "semantics" to consider that for children the reward is simply the rush of playing instead of what the researchers design as the intended award. And frankly speaking this is not at all a surprising result. Children learn through playing and they very much enjoy that process.
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+100000 > Even if most students suck as tutors [...] Teaching is such a valuable skill in itself! And, it can be improved. I'd argue that you can't say that you understand something unless you can explain it to someone a step away from your current level of depth in the domain. Now, imagine every developer spend 5%, 1% of their (coding) time learning how to teach or communicate ideas in a succinct, empathetic way. We…
> Teaching is such a valuable skill in itself! And, it can be improved. You dont improve peoples skills in general just by throwing them into water and hoping that swimming happens by itself.
This is by no means limited to young people; I much prefer video games where I can keep discovering things to the tedious business of performing tasks or winning beating bosses.
I am having fun discovering the plots bit by bit
I guess I must have bever lost the child in me. I've been a fan of open world games, just so I can roam the world. I sometimes dont even play the storyline at all. I still don't like that Steam added 'achievements' that I can't turn off, I'll be in charge of what constitutes a goal thank you very much :) Another poster had an interesting observation about academia vs corporate work. I'm 33 and still in academia, and…
>I'm 33 and still in academia, I'm allergic to competition, scores, rewards, prestige I had been under the impression that academia was mostly very competitive to be able to get career (tenure track) positions. Are you not aiming for that, is it less competitive in your field, or am I missing something else?
It does indeed come with a lot of freedom, but the relatively flat structure means that there's usually no one above the group's PI to promote their research. As a result PIs spend a lot of time writing grant proposals.
While the study classifies it as exploration and claims an intrinsic reward that will die out later in life, I would describe the behavior as novelty-seeking. I'd wager that for adults, a game on a screen is just not new enough. But if you'd give adult males a choice of which female to undress, I'm pretty sure they would value "exploration" very highly again. In a similar vain, when smartphones were new, the adult po…
But if you'd give adult males a choice of which female to undress, I'm pretty sure they would value "exploration" very highly again Likely, but that's not the same experiment anymore since the sex factor comes into play and living beings are basically programmed to reproduce as much as possible and also with as much variety as possible (maybe oversimplified, but you get the point). So for a smartphone you can talk ab…
They're saying that novelty is the fundamental drive behind the observed behavior, not some priority towards "exploration" that children have in greater abundance than adults. The children are seeking pleasure through novelty, and the researchers are interpreting that as exploration. The parent comment illustrates how silly that is, if you substitute something that still holds pleasure for an adult (ie sex), they exhibit the same behavior.
The difference between the adult and the child is the adult has the world experience that the trivial game doesn't hold novel (therefore pleasurable) implications for them anymore, not that they don't prioritize "exploration".
There's lots of benefit in letting kids simply explore. As a parent, I find I have to stop myself from pushing my child to the 'best' result and let them be. That it's okay to pick a less optimal solution.
Where I find this alarmingly true is when outcome/results are negative (usually ending in pain). "Don't stand like that on the chair." "Climb in this way" "Don't eat that dirt, soap, car, whatever!!"
I know my job as a parent is to guide while keeping them safe at the same time letting exploration happen, but man sometimes it's just so hard. For example, letting my child explore while walking home can make a 5 minute walk take 10, 15 minutes longer.
Such things tend to be at odds with what I want but it is more important than myself.
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The finish system seems to get this mostly right, from what I've read. No clear age based classes, group work across traditional class boundaries, older kids helping the younger ones. They also seem to get excellent results based on the Pisa studies. Mind you, this is from reading about it, I don't have first hand experience how the system works. I can however attest to the effectiveness of tutoring in higher educati…
Come on Finns of HN, we know you're out there. What's your experience of this?
I think higher education in Finland isn't anything special, if you actually want a quality education you'll have to go abroad (like the actually successful people do here anyway). Even the arguably best schools aren't that good. People mostly coast through them once they get in and just want the piece of paper at the end. Good parties though.
Years later in the work force they'll wake up and see they barely make more money then an electrician with their fancy degree because of the insane tax policies here. What's the point of having a nice degree if you're still gonna have a moderately low salary compared to other European countries?
For anyone interested in this type of stuff, I can recommend reading Drive . Briefly, human behaviour can be motivated for extrinsic and intrinsic reasons. The rewards in this article are extrinsic motivators. Exploring is rewarding in an intrinsic way; it is a strive towards autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In adults (and in older children) applying extrinsic motivators kills intrinsic motivation. Once the extrinsic…
We finish 50 million kids in school each year.
100's of millions have been through the US system alone over it's history.
If this was simply true then I feel like there'd be some evidence by now.
Yes we can do better schooling for some kids, and yes there are certainly improvements, but after 100's of year of doing it, it's not going to be a country wide system of let kids just have more freedom.
The best improvement we know of is cohorts matter. Which is a zero sum game.
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Come on Finns of HN, we know you're out there. What's your experience of this?
The Finnish school system is nice, until you wanna go to college/university. I think higher education in Finland isn't anything special, if you actually want a quality education you'll have to go abroad (like the actually successful people do here anyway). Even the arguably best schools aren't that good. People mostly coast through them once they get in and just want the piece of paper at the end. Good parties though…
Interesting comment in a thread about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation...
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I often see criticism of the school system like yours. I think it comes from a perspective of a fairly intelligent, self-motivated individual, probably from a family that valued education. However many children lack one or more of those factors. For them the intrinsic motivation is to play video games all day, or talk to their friends, or smoke weed. There is no intrinsic motivation for most children to learn all the…
> However many children lack one or more of those factors. [...] For them the intrinsic motivation is to play video games all day, or talk to their friends, or smoke weed. We grossly overestimate the amount of kids who fall into this group, maybe because we're priviledged enough exclude ourselves from it. > I think the school system is fairly good at forcing all children to learn at least a little about all subjects.…
It’d be great to solve internal motivation issue. It’s damn hard though. Forcing some of them to learn in other ways is better than nothing while we come up with a solution for the core issue.