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Maybe you should learn something

marginalia.nu

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Re: Maybe you should learn something

#51

Post by rpdillon »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #38
CalRobert wrote: post #6

"have infants ricocheting around your home like screaming DVD logos, then you may want to put this ambition aside for now and deal with that instead" Even older kids... my 6 year old is jumping on the couch as I type this.. I like remote work but when I had to commute it was really nice to have that downtime built in to the day. I learned a lot of Dutch vocabulary on the train.

Children are not god for peace of mind and a life of liberty. I do not recommend anyone to have children, becaues of how negatively it affects your life, cost of living etc. It is basically just tying yourself down to the wheel of consumption, and in order to jutsify everything, all the struggle, push your hopes and aspirations to the next generation, and then letting them deal with it. If you are rich, you can get a…

How many children do you have?

Re: Maybe you should learn something

#52

Post by frankie_t »

It's a very common thing to blame the lack of time and "finding" the extra time by suggesting to give up phone or some other form of procrastination. But in my experience, time is almost never a problem. It's usually:

- energy: learning requires much more than the other "bad" activities like phone

- correct psychological state: procrastination is typically triggered as a response to anxiety for me, so any learning I do instead of the phone will also have this poisonous quality of guilt and fear.

- uninterrupted time

I have a problem that I take any learning way too seriously, such that it would require deliberate focused practice. Sometimes it kills all the fun, and sometimes I give up just because it takes too much energy.

Still, it's extremely rewarding for me to learn stuff, even at this age when intelligence is becoming less useful, or at least harder to monetize.

Re: Maybe you should learn something

#53

Post by spudlyo »

HexPhantom wrote: post #16

One thing I wish this emphasized more is that adults often confuse learning with consuming material about learning, which is why my useful rule has become: if I'm not producing errors, I'm probably not practicing yet

Meta learning can be useful, but I take your overall point. You can get lost in the weeds trying to figure out the "best" way to learn something. Autodidacts do have some up-front costs: they have to figure out how to best teach themselves a thing, which usually means researching and trying various pedagogical approaches to find something that might work for them.

Language learning, for example is a huge category. You can get completely mired trying to sort out "grammar translation" versus "direct method" or "comprehensible input" approaches, the pros and cons of spaced repetition vs extensive/intensive reading, phonology & minimal pairs, picking a textbook/grammar/dictionary -- it's a lot. I imagine there are some people who are broadly interested in language learning, and don't actually use that information to actually learn a language. It might be more fun to prepare to learn a language than to get into the challenging and less fun work of actually doing it. I see the parallels with "Gear Acquisition Syndrome".

Re: Maybe you should learn something

#54

Post by i_am_a_peasant »

For me the biggest learning investment outside work I put is learning Chinese and Vietnamese. I tried music but I gave it up after a year. And I can just do it on my commute to work as well. I also like reading about 19 century comparative history. Gives me a lot of relevant talking points in a lot of conversation.

Re: Maybe you should learn something

#55

Post by Scarblac »

frankie_t wrote: post #52

It's a very common thing to blame the lack of time and "finding" the extra time by suggesting to give up phone or some other form of procrastination. But in my experience, time is almost never a problem. It's usually: - energy: learning requires much more than the other "bad" activities like phone - correct psychological state: procrastination is typically triggered as a response to anxiety for me, so any learning I…

But even then, it's still the phone, in my experience. It takes up so many hours but you also don't really rest, and it also tends to keep you up too long at night.

If you can replace five hours of doom scrolling with an hour of doing nothing in particular, an hour more of sleep, some time staring at a book page or soduku, some more work on chorse, you'll most likely gain an hour or so to use on something that takes mental energy.

Re: Maybe you should learn something

#56

Post by dofm »

casey2 wrote: post #8

Maybe, but unless you are unusually talented I'd advise against it. For every consumer there is a producer and vice versa. Most people are better off as consumers and this give more eyeballs and resources to the few talented producers.

This makes me sad. I am very confident it's also wrong; it fundamentally misapprehends what talent is.

As well as not particularly being innate or "god-given", talents tend to emerge only when supported by learned ability. And not even just your own learned ability. Talented violinists exist only in a world that had talented violin makers: you perhaps cannot fully know how society could benefit from things you could learn.

Two of my mini-talents are things I used to think were not just difficult but actually things I would be specifically bad at, like, worse than most people. (Which may for complex reasons be a sign I would not be)

I believe it also misapprehends where the boundary between practice and consumption can sit, too, but that's a longer comment.

No matter which side of the equation you sit, try to unlearn this belief you have, and help others unlearn it.

Re: Maybe you should learn something

#57

Post by dofm »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #7
atoav wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is as sad as seeing some young motivated student losing patience if the task doesn't turn out to be a quick, easy win. The saddest however are students so eager for the quick, easy win that throughout their academic career they repeat the pattern and never really dive deep into any topic. I had a student come to me with essentially the same problem over two years and each time I helped her she was in refusal…

Something I find myself struggling with is the "tutorial trap" You follow a tutorial to do something, feel happy about it. Then you start a new project to put your new skills to good use and... Blank. No idea where to start, no idea how to proceed. It's so important to build stuff, using references is fine, but following tutorials is not the way forward! You have to work on your own without the training wheels.

The great lesson here is: have your own thing you want to make or do, and then select tutorials that help you approach it, step by step. Reproduce the tutorial but also bring it to bear on something you want.

In my experience most people can do this, if they think about it a bit — identify the thing they want to learn and find a tutorial for it. Which is amazing, really; this sort of meta-knowledge is a remarkable human concept.

Re: Maybe you should learn something

#58

Post by tomiplaz »

mordechai9000 wrote: post #15

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only…

Beautiful quote I strongly relate to. When I was 16, I had a sudden realisation one day that no one knows what anything of this actually is. That was a profoundly defining moment of who I am and the deepest and most beautiful thought my limited mind managed to grasp. It made me become in awe of the universe, inspired me to learn and has been a pillar I could lean on during difficult times. I cherish that thought every day.

Re: Maybe you should learn something

#59

Post by forinti »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #39

There's really a feeling now pushing back against learning in general. The feeling is that it is pointless since technology would just do it for you. When I started learning Chinese a friend just wouldn't stop talking about how the latest airpods will just be able to translate for you. It was really rather demoralising. But there is still something incredibly rewarding about having that knowledge in your own head and…

I've been learning Russian by myself since the pandemic and along the way I've picked up bits and bobs about food, history, geography, music, and even electronics. Learning a language is not just about the language per se.

I've even realised a few things about my own language.

Re: Maybe you should learn something

#60

Post by bilsbie »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #39

There's really a feeling now pushing back against learning in general. The feeling is that it is pointless since technology would just do it for you. When I started learning Chinese a friend just wouldn't stop talking about how the latest airpods will just be able to translate for you. It was really rather demoralising. But there is still something incredibly rewarding about having that knowledge in your own head and…

Even if so, once I realized how pointless doomscrolling is I figured I might as well use that time to learn something pointless.
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