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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

#231

Post by mam2 »

blobbers wrote: post #193

Isn't this the children solving the multi armed bandit problem? In a child's mind, they haven't yet fully decided how things behave and react, so they are willing to try things to see if they've changed (because in fact often they do in their own mental models, as well as the resolution of those models. If you think of it as a regression tree, their models start out fairly shallow and then slowly get deeper as they a…

Yes its called "simulated annealing for your own life".

In 3 days hacker news will discover GANs and make a shocking headline like "challenges and adversity makes you better / stronger".

#mindblown

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#232

Post by marmaduke »

irjustin wrote: post #96

Overall, this style is what Montessori-schools of teaching believe and how they operate. Essentially a self-exploratory based learning style. 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 (…

> it's okay to pick a less optimal solution

There’s a lot of space between optimal and failure, though it doesn’t always feel like it. Kids can sit a million ways in chairs but at some point they can also understand the concept of balance so that they can figure out for themselves the 10%of positions which result in failure.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#233

Post by marmaduke »

nostrademons wrote: post #198
irjustin wrote: post #96

Overall, this style is what Montessori-schools of teaching believe and how they operate. Essentially a self-exploratory based learning style. 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 (…

> 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. As we were putting our 2-year-old to sleep last night, my wife was commenting, "Remember how last year, when we read him a book, it would take all of 3 minutes and…

> The drive to make sense of the world appears to be innately human

I think it is something kids learn though. They seem content early on (2-3 years) with a collection of observations (I ate water melon, my hands are sticky, I’m now touching the dog), yet they constantly see us engaging in “sense making” as part of teaching them to talk and described their surroundings.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#235

Post by andrekandre »

gomes33 wrote: post #148

For those interested in this topic i recommend reading about the Montessori method. The basic idea of the Montessori philosophy of education is that every child carries within him/her the man/woman he/she will become. In order to develop the physical, intellectual, and spiritual powers required for this task to the fullest, there must be freedom—freedom to interact with a prepared environment.

along those lines, seymour papert talked about imersion being necessary for students to learn in thier own way, and for teachers to be not just instructors but guides who also share and learn with the students

i guess said more simply, its learning by doing (go to france if you wanna learn french, or at least make a mini-france in your classroom)

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#236

Post by yellowapple »

cameronbrown wrote: post #176
yellowapple wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Decent high school grades are not that hard to get. "Decent" high school grades are seldom adequate to even meet acceptance requirements for "good" colleges, let alone actually compete with the straight-A students also applying to said colleges. Not that this really does anything to address the broader point: that "get into college because you'll make more money" is one of many extrinsic motivators American schools…

Your university does not define you. Plenty of people go to a crap university, yet can still be the top of their field one day.

It's easy to say that now, we being adults long out of high school. Do you really expect a high schooler to understand that? I sure as hell didn't back then (my guidance counselor strongarmed me into a curriculum specifically around meeting UC and CSU requirements, despite me having nowhere near the GPA to get into any such school), and thus admission into a 4-year university was an extrinsic motivator that seemed unrealistic and was therefore ineffective.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#237

Post by blobbers »

mam2 wrote: post #231
blobbers wrote: post #193

Isn't this the children solving the multi armed bandit problem? In a child's mind, they haven't yet fully decided how things behave and react, so they are willing to try things to see if they've changed (because in fact often they do in their own mental models, as well as the resolution of those models. If you think of it as a regression tree, their models start out fairly shallow and then slowly get deeper as they a…

Yes its called "simulated annealing for your own life". In 3 days hacker news will discover GANs and make a shocking headline like "challenges and adversity makes you better / stronger". #mindblown

Haha. Don't blame hackernews! This is social science encounters real research ;)

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#238

Post by SuoDuanDao »

acituan wrote: post #222
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But identical arguments to the suicide-logic can be made about a lack of intrinsic motivation - someone without intrinsic motivation but who is easily externally motivated could be a great asset to a group with more plans than people to enact them. I could imagine plenty of situations where strong intrinsic motivation relative to external motivation could be detrimental to either the individual or the group.

That is a fair point. But wouldn't an intrinsic motivation for group conformity be a competitive advantage here, instead of being coerced or convinced for it? For example ants must have high intrinsic motivation for following the group, they don't need to be motivated or convinced. Likewise, humans come with factory settings for many prosocial behaviors somewhat instinctively (e.g. mother-infant behavior), therefore…

Can be certainly, but I'm not convinced it would be a selective advantage in all situations - when being coerced by a more powerful human or group of humans for example, it may be most adaptive to be pliant to the extrinsic motivation for co-operation but maintain an intrinsic motivation to act against the coercer's interest.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#240

Post by arminiusreturns »

narag wrote: post #230
arminiusreturns wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might like this interview with the now deceased but brilliant contrarian educator John Taylor Gatto, in which he speaks about just that in the schooling system and the crazy changes he saw when he said he moved towards a more intrinsic motivation system, though he didn't use those terms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiW_l848t8&list=PL463AA90FD...

Not a native speaker, I can understand but his speech gives me a hard time. Could you share a pointer to a relevant segment? The complete interview is five hours!

https://youtu.be/YQiW_l848t8?list=PL463AA90FD04EC7A2&t=1640 is a decent starting section, and I know he is hard to listen to, but very worth it and you get used to his speaking style over time. That said, here is a transcript: https://www.scribd.com/document/76968236/SOURCED-TRANSCRIPT-...
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