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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

#211

Post by thefucnjosh »

zackmorris wrote: post #203

Well ya. I've found at middle age that I'm most interested in connection and transcendence, finding meaning and such. When one realizes that material things truly are valueless compared to things like consciousness, friendship, love, dignity, etc etc etc, then everything else falls away. I often find myself realizing that I am looking at the world with the same childlike wonder I had when I was 5. To me, this search…

It's been known for years that oftentimes paying people more for intellectually demanding tasks, leads to decreases in productivity Capitalism and the ideologies surrounding it, fall apart when you start looking at real assets and how the exchanges value of those assets takes a hit during economic down turns. The idea that "humans [were] motivated by monetary rewards and material things" didn't turn out to be false, it's just always been the case that it wasn't true.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#212

Post by Florin_Andrei »

zackmorris wrote: post #203

Well ya. I've found at middle age that I'm most interested in connection and transcendence, finding meaning and such. When one realizes that material things truly are valueless compared to things like consciousness, friendship, love, dignity, etc etc etc, then everything else falls away. I often find myself realizing that I am looking at the world with the same childlike wonder I had when I was 5. To me, this search…

It's just a matter of optimal strategies.

When you're young, take risks, explore, maybe fail on occasion. There's still time to fix all that.

When you're old, go for the more likely reward. If you screw up, that's how it stays, forever.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#213

Post by mikorym »

zackmorris wrote: post #203

Well ya. I've found at middle age that I'm most interested in connection and transcendence, finding meaning and such. When one realizes that material things truly are valueless compared to things like consciousness, friendship, love, dignity, etc etc etc, then everything else falls away. I often find myself realizing that I am looking at the world with the same childlike wonder I had when I was 5. To me, this search…

> Which makes the conceptual basis of things like economics suspect.

> Dunno about the rest of the world.

If you are poor, then money is the means to have the necessary things for survival.

My opinion is that materialism is something separate from money, but it is often induced by desire for more money.

The only main problem to me with the way money works is that value generation != money generation. So, what I mean is that if you plant food, it doesn't mean that money necessarily exists. And hence money != labour * scarcity if there isn't a way to introduce the money in the first place. This observation is mostly for third world countries, where you have scarce things and a lot of labour, but you don't necessarily have money. The USA suddenly becomes much nicer in your world view when one realises that for the most part money = scarcity * labour does hold there.

Anyway, I would say, don't worry about the USA too much. I don't think the issues you are feeling are due to economic theories, I think it's more due to social circumstances. Culture is something you can build for yourself, you don't have to worry about the rest of your fellow countrymen.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#214

Post by pg_1234 »

thefucnjosh wrote: post #211
zackmorris wrote: post #203

Well ya. I've found at middle age that I'm most interested in connection and transcendence, finding meaning and such. When one realizes that material things truly are valueless compared to things like consciousness, friendship, love, dignity, etc etc etc, then everything else falls away. I often find myself realizing that I am looking at the world with the same childlike wonder I had when I was 5. To me, this search…

It's been known for years that oftentimes paying people more for intellectually demanding tasks, leads to decreases in productivity Capitalism and the ideologies surrounding it, fall apart when you start looking at real assets and how the exchanges value of those assets takes a hit during economic down turns. The idea that "humans [were] motivated by monetary rewards and material things" didn't turn out to be false,…

There's converse to this however, when you charge a company more they're less inclined to waste your time.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#215

Post by fxtentacle »

watwut wrote: post #202
kcolford wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you find it cringeworthy, but I find it on topic and very relatable. The role of a speaker is to make their material easy to digest for their audience. For this audience in particular, I would argue that this example is statistically likely to resonate with most of them. So your parent commenter is strongly incentivized to use this example and conduct themselves this way, so of course they did so. I don't think…

I think that point was that relevant portion of adult male population spends a lot of time play games on screen, not finding it boring at all. They do find it more then they do porn. In 2020, claiming that "a game on a screen is just not new enough" for adults is highly inaccurate.

While I fully agree with you that there are fantastic games on screens (I'm playing HL Alyx at the moment), I was trying to present an alternative explanation for the study. So we are taking about a game that is easy enough for kids to understand and play reliably. That might make the game used in the study too boring for adults, because they have played similar games in the past, while it is a new experience for the kids.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#216

Post by asdf333 »

cyberlurker wrote: post #199
fxtentacle wrote: post #32

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…

Let me just be the one to say your choice of topic for exploration is incredibly cringeworthy in 2020. Also inaccurate for some parts of the adult male population. Use a better example next time.

might be true but the OP didn't intend any harm and was just trying to illustrate a point.

I think we should strive to be more tolerant. we should encourage more discourse and take well intentioned remarks in context or else how different are we from the morality police in other countries?

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#217

Post by Wohlf »

gowld wrote: post #197
germinalphrase wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also noticed that my toddler falls “better” than most adults do. If you ever take up judo, early on they need to teach you to fall correctly so you avoid injury. My toddler does most of it be instinct which is cool.

Toddlers are so far more spherical than adults

Also, much closer to the ground.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#218

Post by jariel »

jdmichal wrote: post #152
jariel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The forced cadence of certain topics actually does have a part to play. Imagine if you could have skipped all those English classes back then. Guess what? You would be learning it all right now! Just like you're _re_learning it right now. Why? Because you now have intrinsic motivation to learn it. Having entirely skipped it, you might even have realized a lot sooner the actual need instead of limping along with whate…

So I agree about the 'cadence' bit.

But this:

" Imagine if you could have skipped all those English classes back then. Guess what? You would be learning it all right now!"

No, no way.

It's a total misunderstanding of education to contemplate this.

Education is not 'some facts and things you learn that you may use later'.

Education at HS level is much more fundamental than that, particularly English.

It's about communicating, developing ideas, writing. Not only is it essential, it takes quite a lot of time and effort, and it's hard to just 'pick up'.

I have an Angel investor friend who just set up his own basic website (simple is fine) and wrote his own little intro copy. It's atrocious. Basically, in four sentences in writing, he reveals his own lack of education to anyone who cares to read. I mean - it's not 'that that bad' - but it really is sub professional and embarrassing. He's otherwise very smart, very educated, but it turns out he can't string together a few tightly coherent sentences to make a point.

There's no 'going back'. Both of should have paid more attention in school.

I do agree with he cadence, I think that school days should be shorter, and there should be more music and sports, shop class and longer term projects.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#219

Post by jariel »

ajmadesc wrote: post #128
jariel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, your version does sound stupid.

English, Math, History and Geography at the high school level are fairly straight forward, and the subjects are important to a rounded character. They really are not hard.

Most of Grad school is utterly gruelling, there isn't time to sleep, students pulled in different directions, and studying mostly arcane subjects that really are not important to anyone.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#220

Post by acituan »

adrianN wrote: post #115
acituan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for nearly every kid there is intrinsic motivations you can find I think this can be generalized to all humans. It would be near impossible for a true lack of intrinsic motivation to have made it through evolutionary selection. Like you say, what matters is matching the child's potential with what is available in their current environment, and institutional schooling might be a very blunt tool for that. Not only it…

I don't like evolutionary arguments because society changes much faster than genetic adaption can keep up with. There was no industry making money off distracting people when our intrinsic motivation system was shaped.

Certainly our environment changes very fast but assuming all adaptation has to happen in the genetic space is fallacious. Humans are already the most generalist species ever existed; even at the most basic level we can live in environments ranging from deserts to arctic, just using our bodies we can locomote through walking, climbing, swimming, and on top of that our offsprings take the most time to raise because so much of our adaptive machinery is installed memetically on that generalist hardware (genes). Besides, even the society we change is part of our niche construction, so we do have influence over it. Maybe not huge as single individuals, but that industry making money off distracting people is still our own making, not a "force of nature", and most of what is done by us can be undone by us.
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