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Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

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Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#31

Post by kevinalexbrown »

tpatke wrote: post #5

I think about Spolsky's post on programmer productivity quite often [1]. I think the most interesting part of the post is when he says, "The mediocre talent just never hits the high notes that the top talent hits all the time." Obviously, I wonder if I am a programmer who can hit the high notes and, if not, what it will take to get there. When I read a post like this, I try to apply it to making myself a better progr…

EDIT: So I got a coke and thought about this a bit. I like your point, but I feel like maybe the high-noters are high-noters precisely because they're ruthlessly self-critical and growth-minded. Ever see someone who was really good at something cringe after what you thought was an amazing performance, because they missed, e.g. the f6 in Mozart's Queen of the Night? They're better (honest?) at seeing their mistakes, and they're better at addressing them. Maybe that's the natural talent?

Aside from the tone, maybe, this article is not 'one for the masses.'

Jony Ive didn't just sit down and whip up the iPod, to use Spolsky's example. We don't see the blood/sweat/tears that goes into it. From Ive:

One of the hallmarks of our team is this sense of looking to be wrong ... It’s about being excited to be wrong because then you’ve discovered something new.

Obviously Ive has the creative ingredient. And some are going to be predisposed with talent. Michael Jordan may have had his famous "4am club" where he hit the court every morning to just drill, but so did Scotty Pippen, and he never hit the Jordan high note clutch performances that make my jaw drop watching 20-year-old replays. So I see your point, that talent matters. But the other way to look at it is that Jordan was just better at learning from his mistakes in those 4am practices.

So no, this is not some pedestrian piece of feel-good soup. Great work, in programming, design, anything, is about repeatedly pushing a boundary, recognizing where you messed up, fixing it, and repeating that all over again. The people who do this best are the people who believe that by iterating they can get better. This works even as you get all the way up into the stratosphere of a field.

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1367481/Appl...

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#32

Post by invalidOrTaken »

jilebedev wrote: post #27
aristus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought a lot about creativity by watching the people around me in art and science. I suspect that an important, perhaps defining characteristic of highly creative people is their ability to change their mind at will. (Similar to how a good scientist develops the ability to change his mind utterly when confronted with solid evidence, and change it back when that evidence is refuted.) A factor in that is developi…

Article: > unless we experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong — that surge of Pe activity a few hundred milliseconds after the error, directing our attention to the very thing we’d like to ignore — the mind will never revise its models tpatke: > it just doesn't apply (and I am a huge fan on Dweck's work). This article is one for the masses - not people who are trying to create the next Google aristus: > defi…

| A good question for Moser/Dweck would be: is the physiological response of a child to a mistake a function of their blood glucose levels? I suspect that it is: | anecdotally, people are a lot more optimistic and willing to explore an issue instead of yielding to to surface obstacles if they're on a sugar high.

I wondered this as well. Even if it's not necessarily glucose-focused, there are a ton of angles. Depression? The two ends of manic/depressives? Sleep -> mood -> mistake response? Talking to an attractive member of the opposite sex and having it go well/not well?

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#33

Post by bored »

jackpirate wrote: post #13
tpatke wrote: post #5

I think about Spolsky's post on programmer productivity quite often [1]. I think the most interesting part of the post is when he says, "The mediocre talent just never hits the high notes that the top talent hits all the time." Obviously, I wonder if I am a programmer who can hit the high notes and, if not, what it will take to get there. When I read a post like this, I try to apply it to making myself a better progr…

It's very easy for us to forget about variance and standard deviation of programmer productivity when all other factors are equal. Let's imagine we have 1000 of the world's best programmers working for a year on creative projects. All of them will try something innovative. Only some of them, however, will succeed. Who succeeds is a function of what projects they were working on. And that, is almost purely random and…

And the very best just seem to be "luckier" than the rest...

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#34

Post by bgutierrez »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #18

I wish I had happened on this article 10 years ago ... I was always very good at school, so I picked up what I thought were bad habits. Reading this now, it's clear that what I was doing was protecting myself from failure. When I'd do badly on a test in a class that I thought I should do well in, I'd stop taking the class seriously so that when I got a 'C' I could kid myself and say "I did that and wasn't even really…

All of the greatest under-achievers I've known were constantly told how smart they were by people with the best intentions, and they had experiences similar to yours.

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#35

Post by jilebedev »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #32
jilebedev wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article: > unless we experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong — that surge of Pe activity a few hundred milliseconds after the error, directing our attention to the very thing we’d like to ignore — the mind will never revise its models tpatke: > it just doesn't apply (and I am a huge fan on Dweck's work). This article is one for the masses - not people who are trying to create the next Google aristus: > defi…

| A good question for Moser/Dweck would be: is the physiological response of a child to a mistake a function of their blood glucose levels? I suspect that it is: | anecdotally, people are a lot more optimistic and willing to explore an issue instead of yielding to to surface obstacles if they're on a sugar high. I wondered this as well. Even if it's not necessarily glucose-focused, there are a ton of angles. Depressi…

Yet another question for Moser/Dweck: does the almost-immediate negative response to making mistakes diminish if the subject is in a state of flow? From personal experience, a state of flow while performing an intellectually engaging activity diminishes any and all negative feelings I may have. Positive and calm feelings remain, but when I encounter an obstacle or an error, I simply adapt to it like water flowing down a mountain.

I suspect that Moser/Dweck would find that programmers in a state of flow encountering a compile/runtime exception would exhibit significantly lower amplitude signal associated with immediate negative response.

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#36

Post by silentscope »

"Education is the wisdom wrung from failure."

I really couldn't disagree with this more. No doubt, failure is important in learning. However, to be educated or have an education, at the end of the day, you need to get something right.

Personally, I don't learn by failing fifty times and never succeeding. I don't learn how to lose weight if I try fifty diets and never lose a pound. I don't learn how to talk to a girl if I speak with a dozen of them and get shot down every time. I don't learn how to rockclimb by falling off the rock and never gaining elevation.

That is negative re-enforcement. I have learned what not to do--the opposite of what I set out to accomplish. Education is progressive. I learn by failing until I succeed, if only a little bit. Then I go back and try to succeed even more. That's the hard part, not calling it quits. Finding inspiration and success in the smallest scraps of result.

Just don't sell education or yourself short.

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#37

Post by jerf »

commanda wrote: post #25
mekoka wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to learn from a "mistake" there needs to be some sort of feedback. Many programmers make the same mistake over and over because it hasn't yet come back to seriously bite them in the ass, or because the evidence of it isn't clear. Only then is the mistake corrected and the lesson learnt. For example, in this day and age of fast processors, abundant memory, large hard-drives, you can't expect a novice to put m…

If it never comes back to bite you (or anyone else) in the ass, was it really a mistake?

Taking your question literally and in isolation, no.

But the manifestation more relevant to the real world is not having the experience base to realize it's biting you in the ass. Specifically, even though X is working, it could be working better, for less effort. Or another common case is X is not working and you misidentify why ("lazy developers not willing to do the work" instead of "used the wrong paradigm for the job", for instance).

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#38

Post by WalterBright »

bored wrote: post #33
jackpirate wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy for us to forget about variance and standard deviation of programmer productivity when all other factors are equal. Let's imagine we have 1000 of the world's best programmers working for a year on creative projects. All of them will try something innovative. Only some of them, however, will succeed. Who succeeds is a function of what projects they were working on. And that, is almost purely random and…

And the very best just seem to be "luckier" than the rest...

The difference between lucky people and unlucky ones is that the lucky ones were able to recognize opportunity better. I've seen some research on this, but don't have a link handy.

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#40

Post by Afton »

bored wrote: post #33
jackpirate wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy for us to forget about variance and standard deviation of programmer productivity when all other factors are equal. Let's imagine we have 1000 of the world's best programmers working for a year on creative projects. All of them will try something innovative. Only some of them, however, will succeed. Who succeeds is a function of what projects they were working on. And that, is almost purely random and…

And the very best just seem to be "luckier" than the rest...

Sounds like you're putting the cart before the horse. How are you identifying 'the very best' but by their successes? The argument is that you need both to 'succeed'. So, sure, if you only look at the ones that were both hard-working/relentless/growth-oriented AND lucky, then boy howdy does it look like luck isn't a factor.
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