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Young children would rather explore than get rewards

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Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#121

Post by circlefavshape »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #81
kqr wrote: post #4

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…

Try getting children to learn to play guitar or piano or math purely through intrinsic moyovation. They might be into it for a bit, but not enough for regular practice. But, when they have enough skill, they can then develop further intrinsic motivation to really get good. Everything in moderation.

+1

It takes at least 5 years of learning piano to get good enough to enjoy it. IMO this is why adults almost never take it up - we're just not prepared to invest in something that takes so much work with such a distant payoff

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#123

Post by officehero »

trombonechamp wrote: post #118

Monkeys do the same thing: Many non-human animals show exploratory behaviors. It remains unclear whether any possess human-like curiosity. We previously proposed three criteria for applying the term curiosity to animal behavior: (1) the subject is willing to sacrifice reward to obtain information, (2) the information provides no immediate instrumental or strategic benefit, and (3) the amount the subject is willing to…

Doesn't this just mean that the "reward" definition is poor in this case i.e. the agent does not care about maximizing it because there are additional components left out of it (e.g. survival)?

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#124

Post by krageon »

jariel wrote: post #41
yellowapple wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I ain't vain enough to consider myself even "fairly intelligent", but I can say that I ain't very self-motivated, nor have I been since elementary school, and in hindsight my education system's insistence on strangling such intri…

Decent high school grades are not that hard to get. It's not 'strangulation' to have to take 'English, Geography, History and Math'. I wish I had paid more attention in English class, I did not respect how important it was going to be until later in life, for example. The course load in Eng. or in Grad School - now that can be overwhelming to the point of exhaustion.

Your experience mirrors mine, but it's not like that for everyone. There's a group of people for which a given level of highschool education is going to be a crushing workload. Minimising their effort doesn't help them to get to a better mindset, so why do it at all?

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#125

Post by distant_hat »

This is completely expected. If you look at multiarmed bandits, getting rewards would be exploiting and the other option is exploring. If you have a longer time horizon as children will, it is better to explore and find a better return than exploit something already known which is likely to be suboptimal.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#126

Post by batty_alex »

rpastuszak wrote: post #68
kqr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Student-to-student tutoring is super effective. Even if most students suck as tutors (which they probably do – tutoring is difficult), the benefits outweigh the problems by a big margin. Most importantly, it allows each student the desired individual focus. But it also improves the tutors' memories of the classes they used to take. I'm baffled it's not more widely employed in lower education. (Higher education seems…

+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…

> We'd not only have less 40yo ranting at some 15yo project, because they used React, but also the quality of our work would improve drastically.

I’m not sure what you have against people in their 40s but, it might be worth it to spend 5% of your time learning to respect and have empathy for them.

Side note, people in their 40s aren’t old. Damn.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#127

Post by watwut »

kqr wrote: post #112
watwut wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sucks to be the kid who behaves well is punished by being a tutor for kid with issues the adults have hard time to motivate or deal with. The tutors is not improving own recall. The tutor is dealing with social problem outside of tutors control or abilities. And no, good student kid wont be able to individualize teaching better then adult teacher. The good student kid will struggle with the whole motivational thin…

> And no, good student kid wont be able to individualize teaching better then adult teacher. That's not the alternative, either, because nobody will pay for one adult teacher per student. The alternative is no tutoring at all.

One kid teaching another is nice occasional exercise.

It is absolutely not solution to lack of teachers. Even teacher having 15 bad students the same time is better then one kid trying to be tutor.

It is also quite unfair expectation to be placed on a kid.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#128

Post by ajmadesc »

jariel wrote: post #41
yellowapple wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I ain't vain enough to consider myself even "fairly intelligent", but I can say that I ain't very self-motivated, nor have I been since elementary school, and in hindsight my education system's insistence on strangling such intri…

Decent high school grades are not that hard to get. It's not 'strangulation' to have to take 'English, Geography, History and Math'. I wish I had paid more attention in English class, I did not respect how important it was going to be until later in life, for example. The course load in Eng. or in Grad School - now that can be overwhelming to the point of exhaustion.

Decent Eng Grad School grades are not that hard to get. It's not 'exhausting' to have to take 'Electrodynamics, Orbital Mechanics, or Geophysics' I wish I would have paid more attention in Project Management class, I did not respect how important it was going to be until later in life, for example.

See how stupid that sounds

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#129

Post by simonh »

e12e wrote: post #99
lxrbst wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What's the point of having a nice degree if you're still gonna have a moderately low salary compared to other European countries? Interesting comment in a thread about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation...

It's not an either or though. Just because a company generates good extrinsic motivation by paying well, that doesn't mean its impossible for them to also foster intrinsic motivation too. It's really not unreasonable to ask for both.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#130

Post by barrenko »

kqr wrote: post #4

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…

I've been meaning to read that for some time now.
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