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Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

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Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#71

Post by eminence32 »

spencerchubb wrote: post #55
philip1209 wrote: post #18

This article talks about learned helplessness in a learning context. I talked about it in a work context, and the two could be linked. I think social media is training people for everything to be quick, but learning + work aren't necessarily quick. > This insistence on constant availability disrupts the essence of focused work. Rather than encouraging employees to tackle complex problems independently, there’s a tren…

As a junior dev, sometimes I've been blocked for hours because I want to show that I can solve problems independently. But I've definitely had cases where I should've asked questions early. A question that takes 1 minute to answer could have saved hours. For instance, I was stuck on figuring out how to send an email through AWS. Turns out we have a lambda function that handles all the authentication and security thin…

As you get more and more experience, I think this will become easier. You'll eventually get a feel for what types of questions you should just work through yourself, and which types of questions you should ask someone else about, and the threshold for moving between the two (you'll develop a sense of "let me investigate theory A, B, and C, and if I still can't figure it out, I'll ask for help").

Some of this will probably be via an increased understanding of the types of problems you can and can't solve. And some of this will probably be because you'll eventually know more people who can help (something like "oh yeah, I know Sam worked on a similar problem last month, let me see if they found a solution")

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#72

Post by NhanH »

spencerchubb wrote: post #55
philip1209 wrote: post #18

This article talks about learned helplessness in a learning context. I talked about it in a work context, and the two could be linked. I think social media is training people for everything to be quick, but learning + work aren't necessarily quick. > This insistence on constant availability disrupts the essence of focused work. Rather than encouraging employees to tackle complex problems independently, there’s a tren…

As a junior dev, sometimes I've been blocked for hours because I want to show that I can solve problems independently. But I've definitely had cases where I should've asked questions early. A question that takes 1 minute to answer could have saved hours. For instance, I was stuck on figuring out how to send an email through AWS. Turns out we have a lambda function that handles all the authentication and security thin…

The nuance here lies within the “hours” quantifier.

A junior member being blocked for 3-8 hours semi-regularly is expected. Once every other month you probably should be blocked for several work days as well.

In your example, the challenge would have been realizing you wouldn’t have been the first one trying to send an email in the team. Recognizing that and it is very easy to know that you should just ask the question right away. It’s not a technical skill, but something a bit more meta.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#73

Post by picometer »

Summary: Scott Alexander recounts his gullibility to various well-reasoned crackpot arguments on a topic, and describes how he to decided to trust experts instead of investing time into learning enough to assess the topic for himself. Then he reflects on the nature of argument-accepting and its relation to rationality.

I don’t think the term “learned helplessness” fits well here. It suggests a lack of agency, whereas he exercised much of it, employing his skill of critical thinking to arrive at the right epistemic stance.

A better term might be “bounded agency”, to pair with the concept of “bounded rationality”. We recognize that we cannot know everything, and we choose how to invest the capability and resources that we do have. This is far from any type of “helplessness”.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#74

Post by helicalmix »

bitzun wrote: post #70
helicalmix wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, Scott is underselling himself, and could probably argue circles against the average educated person. Debates are the rationalists bread and butter, and you should expect them to be better at you the same way you would expect a trained boxer to beat you in a fistfight.

I've been to dozens of rationalist meetups (I don't know why), people are constantly talking out of their ass while constantly referencing contrived rhetorical devices. A lot of "just asking questions", confidently asserting solutions to e.g. palestine, cartels, etc. and contending with things TV pundits say. I like some of Scott Alexander's writing, but "rationalists" in general online or IRL have not been very impr…

Haha yeah, I've been to rationalist meetups too, and have come to the same conclusion that I don't like them very much. Too much IQ stroking for my tastes.

Scott specifically though, has an established history of thinking through arguments that I find much better than most, and I still think someone who trains at this stuff will do better.

To extend my analogy a little further from before, if you go to a boxing gym or boxing enthusiast meetup, there will be plenty of people there who like the idea of fighting, but don't know how to fight. That doesn't mean that a trained boxer still won't be tough in the ring though.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#75

Post by riversflow »

jfengel wrote: post #47
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #2

Philosophy is so hard that most people don’t ever start In fact in my experience people who can push past this “epistemological learned helplessness” also tend to have significant problems with day to day living In a manner of speaking, I boil this down to how often you spend in different levels of thinking. I’m gonna go ahead and share a back-and-forth chat I had with ChatGPT on this precise topic the other day: htt…

I have a hard time engaging deeply with philosophy. I've tried to get a good overview, but whenever I read the real scholarly work I find an assumption I hate on page 3 and cannot bear to engage with that assumption for a thousand further pages of close reading. I don't want to be the philosophical equivalent of those guys who pester physics professors with "I've unified gravity with quantum mechanics and I just need…

> I can’t pick up Kant or Hegele or Sartre

Ah, there’s your problem, at least in my opinion/experience. You have to start at the beginning, read Plato’s Republic followed by Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. When you read them don’t take them as fact but as a “living” historical foundation that will help you set the stage for reading increasingly more recent books.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#76

Post by switchbak »

eminence32 wrote: post #71
spencerchubb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a junior dev, sometimes I've been blocked for hours because I want to show that I can solve problems independently. But I've definitely had cases where I should've asked questions early. A question that takes 1 minute to answer could have saved hours. For instance, I was stuck on figuring out how to send an email through AWS. Turns out we have a lambda function that handles all the authentication and security thin…

As you get more and more experience, I think this will become easier. You'll eventually get a feel for what types of questions you should just work through yourself, and which types of questions you should ask someone else about, and the threshold for moving between the two (you'll develop a sense of "let me investigate theory A, B, and C, and if I still can't figure it out, I'll ask for help"). Some of this will pro…

There's also a minimum bar of seeking that you need to have both performed and can demonstrate - this shows you're doing your due diligence, and not just wasting the more senior developer's time. It also provides you the context you need to understand the solution. The last thing you want is a LMGTFY moment from someone who was interrupted from deep focus on a hard problem (or worse: a series of them).

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#77

Post by evnc »

Swizec wrote: post #22
philip1209 wrote: post #18

This article talks about learned helplessness in a learning context. I talked about it in a work context, and the two could be linked. I think social media is training people for everything to be quick, but learning + work aren't necessarily quick. > This insistence on constant availability disrupts the essence of focused work. Rather than encouraging employees to tackle complex problems independently, there’s a tren…

As a tech lead I would rather see a team member ask me questions early than never. Nudging them in the right direction before they waste 3 days going down a path that’s never going to work is at least half my job. But it’s important that they’ve done enough research to formulate the question. A little struggle helps the learning stick.

Yeah, it's a balance. I love being able to help, and I am generally in favor of asking questions early, but not ones of the form "hey so I ran this code and it errored. Help?"

"... did you read the stack trace? Did you look at the code referenced by the stack trace?"

This is where I've learned responding with "Sure! What have you tried so far?" is relevant.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#78

Post by [deleted] »

helicalmix wrote: post #36
thadt wrote: post #25

> The medical establishment offers a shiny tempting solution. First, a total unwillingness to trust anything, no matter how plausible it sounds, until it’s gone through an endless cycle of studies and meta-analyses. Isn't this just... science? We learned from the ancient philosophers that really smart people can reason powerfully about a whole lot of things. But - if we want to know whether that reasoning holds up, i…

One counterexample for why I think it's not always the best approach is that there are sometimes disproportionate rewards for being right when everyone else is wrong. Doing so, however, requires you to take an idea seriously before it has gone through analyses so extensive that everyone else believes the same idea too.

[deleted]

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#79

Post by scotty79 »

Strongly disagree.

> Anyone anywhere – politicians, scammy businessmen, smooth-talking romantic partners – would be able to argue them into anything.

Epistemically helpless people are the easiest targets because conmen don't try to convince you to something you don't believe. They use what you already believe against you.

The vaccine against bad arguments is not ignorance. It is curiosity and inquisitiveness. It's always searching for debunks against every well argued thesis you encounter. And evaluating both the thesis and the debunks. After few such excercises about varied subjects you start to notice the patterns and you can learn to separate personal charm and attractiveness of the idea from the truth.

People lie and con and speak absurds the same way all the time about everything. You can learn to spot it if you put your mind to it.

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