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Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

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Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#51

Post by timwiseman »

jaredmck wrote: post #45
megaman821 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People attribute almost everything to luck to feel better about their own lack of success. Luck plays a minor role. Intelligence and tenacity are much more important. If luck was the main factor nearly all successful programmers would come from China or India since they have the most entrants in the "lottery" for successful programmers.

Successful people attribute almost everything to their own intelligence, willpower or hard work to feel better about themselves. Luck is extremely important for any individual trial - once you get up to a large sample size, sure, your traits will win out - but many people will never reach such a sample size in their entire life. When I see "fail fast", what I really think is: "increase your sample size".

This does not match my experience. While certainly some successful people like to take all the credit, most of the successful ones I know acknowledge either luck, fortune, or God's blessing played a huge roll in their success. Machievelli in particular talked about it at length in the Prince and other works.

But you can't directly control luck. You can directly influence the other factors, and while luck does play an important role, so do other factors. To borrow a quote, "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#52

Post by acerimmer »

david927 wrote: post #47
wallflower wrote: post #3

"Most people say it's easier to pick up languages when you're younger," says David Green, of University College London, who specialises in bilingualism. "But people can learn languages at any point in their lives. Being immersed in a language is important. Personality is a contributing factor too - not being able to tolerate feeling foolish from making inevitable errors will make learning a new language a difficult p…

David Green is wrong. It's easier to pick up languages when you're younger. Noam Chomsky discovered that the brain is specifically geared to learn languages around 3 to 6 years old. Kids at that age get the language in a way that you'll never get after. But people can learn languages at any point in their lives Of course. I learned German, from nothing to fluency, in my twenties; and the same with Czech in my thirtie…

Out of curiosity, why did you learn Czech?

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#53

Post by megaman821 »

franticpedantic wrote: post #42
megaman821 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People attribute almost everything to luck to feel better about their own lack of success. Luck plays a minor role. Intelligence and tenacity are much more important. If luck was the main factor nearly all successful programmers would come from China or India since they have the most entrants in the "lottery" for successful programmers.

You argue that intelligence and tenacity are more important than luck, but then it follows that since China and India have the most entrants, the only explanation for their lack of proportional success is lack of intellence and tenacity relative to Americans(I'm not saying you think this, I'm just noting it follows from your argument). I would argue luck does play a big role, and that they weren't lucky enough to be…

I didn't mean to provide an exhaustive list successful characteristics.

Also it is a bit of a logical fallacy to say just because luck is not the main factor in success that being unsuccessful means you are lazy or dumb rather than unlucky.

You can take the luck argument too far though. You were lucky to be born as the you that you know because there were millions of other sperm competing to fertilize your mother's egg.

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#54

Post by david927 »

acerimmer wrote: post #52
david927 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Green is wrong. It's easier to pick up languages when you're younger. Noam Chomsky discovered that the brain is specifically geared to learn languages around 3 to 6 years old. Kids at that age get the language in a way that you'll never get after. But people can learn languages at any point in their lives Of course. I learned German, from nothing to fluency, in my twenties; and the same with Czech in my thirtie…

Out of curiosity, why did you learn Czech?

I visited Prague and it blew me away. I kept going back; eventually met a Czech girl. In other words: for the best reasons.

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#55

Post by MattGrommes »

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…

The book 'Thinking: Fast & Slow' has a section on 'ego depletion' that may have some insight into your question. Basically when you think hard on a problem, make difficult choices, or work hard physically, you suffer from 'ego depletion' that makes further work even harder. This has a measurable impact on brain glucose levels. People given a glucose supplement don't suffer from the same drop-off in performance as those given a fake-sugar drink.

I hadn't thought about it in terms of Dweck's work on open-mindedness but it seems like accepting failures and persisting probably fall into the category of tasks that cause ego depletion. Very interesting.

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#56

Post by rhizome »

jaredmck wrote: post #45
megaman821 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People attribute almost everything to luck to feel better about their own lack of success. Luck plays a minor role. Intelligence and tenacity are much more important. If luck was the main factor nearly all successful programmers would come from China or India since they have the most entrants in the "lottery" for successful programmers.

Successful people attribute almost everything to their own intelligence, willpower or hard work to feel better about themselves. Luck is extremely important for any individual trial - once you get up to a large sample size, sure, your traits will win out - but many people will never reach such a sample size in their entire life. When I see "fail fast", what I really think is: "increase your sample size".

That is the Fundamental Attribution Error, that success derives from the person more than it does from circumstances.

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#57

Post by KingMob »

jilebedev wrote: post #35
invalidOrTaken wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| 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 dow…

For error-related negativity (ERN), "negative" refers to the direction of voltage change, not the person's attitude.

Since ERN amplitude is associated with better learning, it might be the other way around, that people in flow are producing stronger ERN's and correcting their mistakes faster.

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#58

Post by paulhauggis »

david927 wrote: post #47
wallflower wrote: post #3

"Most people say it's easier to pick up languages when you're younger," says David Green, of University College London, who specialises in bilingualism. "But people can learn languages at any point in their lives. Being immersed in a language is important. Personality is a contributing factor too - not being able to tolerate feeling foolish from making inevitable errors will make learning a new language a difficult p…

David Green is wrong. It's easier to pick up languages when you're younger. Noam Chomsky discovered that the brain is specifically geared to learn languages around 3 to 6 years old. Kids at that age get the language in a way that you'll never get after. But people can learn languages at any point in their lives Of course. I learned German, from nothing to fluency, in my twenties; and the same with Czech in my thirtie…

"Kids at that age get the language in a way that you'll never get after."

This is just an excuse that will limit you. Yes, kids might learn at a faster rate, but they also don't do anything else but learn that language for years. Most people have busy lives which doesn't allow for this unless they completely immerse themselves. As an adult, you also have the advantage of understanding difficult concepts (because you've already learned them in your native language), which speeds up the learning process.

" You can get all the definitions, make no mistakes in the grammar, but you won't understand it at a deeper level. A language is way to express a culture, and the culture is gigantic and ineffible compared to the language."

Then you don't really know those languages as well as you think. Part of knowing the language is knowing the culture. This requires immersion, studying, and discipline.

I've been studying Japanese for the past 5 years and I've started a couple of meetup groups in my area for studying. What I've found is that 99% of the people that try to learn a new language as an adult give up at some point. Mostly when they get to any point of difficulty. You also have to be disciplined enough to study it every single day.

Something else I've learned is that the similarities between starting a business and learning a new language are actually very similar.

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#59

Post by KingMob »

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…

This. I have the exact same problem. Praised for being smart from a young age (graduated high school at 16), left me with some bad habits about work and effort., and it's only been lately, that I've started to dismantle them.

tl;dr Praising smart kids for their intelligence is a sure-fire way to screw them up for years.

Re: Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

#60

Post by drzaiusapelord »

paulhauggis wrote: post #58
david927 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Green is wrong. It's easier to pick up languages when you're younger. Noam Chomsky discovered that the brain is specifically geared to learn languages around 3 to 6 years old. Kids at that age get the language in a way that you'll never get after. But people can learn languages at any point in their lives Of course. I learned German, from nothing to fluency, in my twenties; and the same with Czech in my thirtie…

"Kids at that age get the language in a way that you'll never get after." This is just an excuse that will limit you. Yes, kids might learn at a faster rate, but they also don't do anything else but learn that language for years. Most people have busy lives which doesn't allow for this unless they completely immerse themselves. As an adult, you also have the advantage of understanding difficult concepts (because you'…

>This is just an excuse that will limit you.

Apoligies if I am making a strawman or unfairly characterizing you, but lately I've been seeing a lot of "Get Motivated" stuff here and on reddit that is completely false.

Sorry, but children do have the "language acquisition" device. I'm bilingual and learned both my languages during those golden years. My memory as a child is amazing, and I can name scene for scene the movies I watched once as a child, yet I can barely tell you the plot of the movie I saw last month. Childhood learning and the malleable brain really isn't something in dispute. Immersion isn't remotely comparable.

My wife lived for 5 years in Russia and studied the language all through college. She's no where near my childhood learned Greek which I speak maybe 5 or 6 times a year. Her Russian fades quickly too. If she's not using it, she's losing it. Oh, she speaks 4 laugnages at a proper adult level too. She needs to keep using all 4 or she will also lose them. She's no stranger to language learning or immersion. My Greek is permanent, btw, no need to practice or anything. Its forever mine.

There's just something really sad about how the motivation crowd has been co-opted by the meathead sports metaphor crowd "GIVE 110%!!!!". There's science and reality at work here. Yelling and overly positive platitudes aren't helping. If anything its a disservice to the people who really are looking for answers while trying to get motivated or trying to learn a second language. Motivation and learning and hacking them is a lot more complex than just willing yourself to make it happen. There's a fair bit of complexity here, especially when people have unrealistic expectations and do not love the process of learning and trying. Loving the process, being humble, asking for advice, accepting the pain, accepting looking like an idiot, etc are far more valuable to me than the whole "TRY HARDER!!!!" sports cliche.

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