5 ms·

This just in, water is still wet and cows moo. I don't get the profoundness here. I mean, if you're one of those stereotypical hollywood jocks from the 50s that

This just in, water is still wet and cows moo. I don't get the profoundness here. I mean, if you're one of those stereotypical hollywood jocks from the 50s that's never read a book in his life until the age of 60...I mean sure... you found a "bitter truth". Yea, learning at a level beyond your local pub's trivia tournament or beyond the 5 minute youtube tutorial video is difficult and takes time. Most importantly, it takes effort. Always has been, always will be... until we get the Matrix style brain downloads to learn kung-fu. No one great in any field, that's worth looking up to, just dances around saying it's as easy as ordering a big mac from mcdonalds. They have more self-doubt and introspective analysis in an hour than most of the population has in a month, myself included. Plenty of dead ends too when it comes to the path of greater knowledge. Learning and doing new things that you never needed for your goal. Welcome to scientific research of any caliber in any field. If you're lucky, you recorded the Earth shattering kabooms though. If it were easy to be "smart", then don't you think everyone would be "smart". Obviously we all define the terms smart, educated, learned, intelligent and !dumbass differently. But (I hope) you get the point of the context. Anyways, I'm sure as shit late to the party by a few thousand years (at least) saying this since I've been hearing this from the time of... I don't know, forever in any field I gandered into more indepth. To recognize someone else as above average, or at least capable, they have humility and diligence towards educating themselves. Not complaining that it is difficult, but striving towards it because it is difficult. Most of us have heard similar at the projectile level of ad nauseum. Now I'm thinking it's not really said enough if people still think "learning is hard" after the age of 9 is news worthy. Getting really tired of teens with their "unique profound insight" that's been published since Socrates' time.

agumonkey 9y ago
to me it's not that learning is difficult, is that society incarnation of learning is a bit blurry if not twisted: in school there's social pressure and single point of explanation for a mass; not optimal but somehow necessary. Then there's competition in jobs. About the pointless part, sometimes learning something means killing its magic. Or at least you end up in plato's cave, with your expertise surrounded by people mania. It's not a great joy to render a piece of knowledge dull. And a meeting point between the last two paragraphs. Society teaches you things so you can work but in the end it's also to help/serve others; which makes your knowledge valuable by giving something to someone. And a lot of value in knowledge is when you can share it.
RangerScience 9y ago
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/best-life-advice https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/best-life-advice "All good advice is obvious". Repeating obvious things helps you remember that they're true, because there's a surprising number of obvious things we forget on a regular basis.
projektir 9y ago
This is definitely not "water is wet" levels. "It is obvious to me that this is true" doesn't actually mean it is true, and it definitely doesn't mean that other people think it is true. The jury is out on both of those, and I would say learning in general is an exceedingly poorly understood subject mostly based on very questionable school environments. It's pretty hard to even talk about this issue without crashing into nature vs nurture immediately, and that's a gargantuan question in itself. For example: > If it were easy to be "smart", then don't you think everyone would be "smart". This statement entirely depends on a nurture-based interpretation of the above gargantuan question. I've met lots of smart, accomplished people who believe that if learning becomes difficult or tough or grueling, you're "doing it wrong". The kind of people for whom talking about "T-shirt turning" is their idea of fun. Hard to argue with them when they know more than I do, isn't it? Yet, for some people, banging their head against something to understand it seems absolutely necessary and they can't really avoid it. And so two people learn the same thing, one carefree, one with a great amount of pain. What's this about? I've had my own personal experiences where I was working on something, and found it rather easy, and assumed it wasn't really anything complicated, but got feedback which was the opposite of this. On the other end of the scale, I had times when I was working really hard and felt like I was using everything I had at my disposal to do the task... and then got feedback that I was performing extremely poorly, and was missing something fundamental that would have made my life easier if I would have just known. "learning is pointless" is often very much about hard work not paying off. This has major social implications. There's a lot of oddness that comes with learning things in general. People learn with far less effort if the task involved is actively enjoyable in itself. Other people learn better when the task has a return, such as a monetary one. I think "learning is hard" is a very useful statement socially. I.e., for the average person, there's lots of resistance to learning things. But it is not a statement that can be made globally, i.e., that learning is always hard.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  Difficulty in learning is mostly a function of age. I learned how to make game hacks, x86 asm, pretty much 90% of the software engineering knowledge I possess before the age of 15. Now I am learning higher level mathematics because I want to solve some specific problems that have million dollar prizes attached (but I am not doing it for the money.) Fortunately, I never felt like I was doing something for a distant goal when I was young - I had awe and envy as if I was constantly saying Ahhh! This next bit of learning is arduous and often times detached. At least my early learning was in programming, something I still love and find useful. But learning late will never be as easy as curious youth learning. What we learn as youth seems to be unguided and incidental. While reasons for learning as adults are mostly consequential and dependent on some other thing that we desire. Secondary dependencies are frustrating to the brain. Sometimes you can feel like that awestruck kid but itll never match being in that state 24/7. Being precise and directed in ones' goals is almost like a death knell and anhedonia for enjoyment and ease. Oh well..
pjungwir 9y ago
μὴ εἶναι βασιλικὴν ἀτραπὸν ἐπὶ γεωμετρίαν.
- ILikeConemowk 9y ago
  Background and alleged author since my parent failed to provide both: There is no royal road to geometry. (μή εἶναι βασιλικήν ατραπόν επί γεωμετρίαν, Non est regia [inquit Euclides] ad Geometriam via) Reply given when the ruler Ptolemy I Soter asked Euclid if there was a shorter road to learning geometry than through Euclid's Elements. Proclus (412–485 AD) in Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements as translated by Glenn R. Morrow (1970), p. 57. ἀτραπός "road, trail, track" here takes the more specific sense of "short cut". The Latin translation is by Francesco Barozzi, 1560) https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wik https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wik
jodrellblank 9y ago
So, you insult the author as either a stupid jock or a 9 year old, and boast that it's not interesting because you already knew it. Yet, apart from the put-downs and boasting, and saying "we've heard it ad nauseam", the main body of your comment is .. you repeating the same content you just said wasn't worth saying?

agumonkey 9y ago

to me it's not that learning is difficult, is that society incarnation of learning is a bit blurry if not twisted: in school there's social pressure and single point of explanation for a mass; not optimal but somehow necessary. Then there's competition in jobs. About the pointless part, sometimes learning something means killing its magic. Or at least you end up in plato's cave, with your expertise surrounded by people mania. It's not a great joy to render a piece of knowledge dull. And a meeting point between the last two paragraphs. Society teaches you things so you can work but in the end it's also to help/serve others; which makes your knowledge valuable by giving something to someone. And a lot of value in knowledge is when you can share it.

RangerScience 9y ago

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/best-life-advice https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/best-life-advice "All good advice is obvious". Repeating obvious things helps you remember that they're true, because there's a surprising number of obvious things we forget on a regular basis.

projektir 9y ago

This is definitely not "water is wet" levels. "It is obvious to me that this is true" doesn't actually mean it is true, and it definitely doesn't mean that other people think it is true. The jury is out on both of those, and I would say learning in general is an exceedingly poorly understood subject mostly based on very questionable school environments. It's pretty hard to even talk about this issue without crashing into nature vs nurture immediately, and that's a gargantuan question in itself. For example: > If it were easy to be "smart", then don't you think everyone would be "smart". This statement entirely depends on a nurture-based interpretation of the above gargantuan question. I've met lots of smart, accomplished people who believe that if learning becomes difficult or tough or grueling, you're "doing it wrong". The kind of people for whom talking about "T-shirt turning" is their idea of fun. Hard to argue with them when they know more than I do, isn't it? Yet, for some people, banging their head against something to understand it seems absolutely necessary and they can't really avoid it. And so two people learn the same thing, one carefree, one with a great amount of pain. What's this about? I've had my own personal experiences where I was working on something, and found it rather easy, and assumed it wasn't really anything complicated, but got feedback which was the opposite of this. On the other end of the scale, I had times when I was working really hard and felt like I was using everything I had at my disposal to do the task... and then got feedback that I was performing extremely poorly, and was missing something fundamental that would have made my life easier if I would have just known. "learning is pointless" is often very much about hard work not paying off. This has major social implications. There's a lot of oddness that comes with learning things in general. People learn with far less effort if the task involved is actively enjoyable in itself. Other people learn better when the task has a return, such as a monetary one. I think "learning is hard" is a very useful statement socially. I.e., for the average person, there's lots of resistance to learning things. But it is not a statement that can be made globally, i.e., that learning is always hard.

goldenkey 9y ago
Difficulty in learning is mostly a function of age. I learned how to make game hacks, x86 asm, pretty much 90% of the software engineering knowledge I possess before the age of 15. Now I am learning higher level mathematics because I want to solve some specific problems that have million dollar prizes attached (but I am not doing it for the money.) Fortunately, I never felt like I was doing something for a distant goal when I was young - I had awe and envy as if I was constantly saying Ahhh! This next bit of learning is arduous and often times detached. At least my early learning was in programming, something I still love and find useful. But learning late will never be as easy as curious youth learning. What we learn as youth seems to be unguided and incidental. While reasons for learning as adults are mostly consequential and dependent on some other thing that we desire. Secondary dependencies are frustrating to the brain. Sometimes you can feel like that awestruck kid but itll never match being in that state 24/7. Being precise and directed in ones' goals is almost like a death knell and anhedonia for enjoyment and ease. Oh well..

pjungwir 9y ago

μὴ εἶναι βασιλικὴν ἀτραπὸν ἐπὶ γεωμετρίαν.

ILikeConemowk 9y ago
Background and alleged author since my parent failed to provide both: There is no royal road to geometry. (μή εἶναι βασιλικήν ατραπόν επί γεωμετρίαν, Non est regia [inquit Euclides] ad Geometriam via) Reply given when the ruler Ptolemy I Soter asked Euclid if there was a shorter road to learning geometry than through Euclid's Elements. Proclus (412–485 AD) in Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements as translated by Glenn R. Morrow (1970), p. 57. ἀτραπός "road, trail, track" here takes the more specific sense of "short cut". The Latin translation is by Francesco Barozzi, 1560) https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wik https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wik

jodrellblank 9y ago

So, you insult the author as either a stupid jock or a 9 year old, and boast that it's not interesting because you already knew it. Yet, apart from the put-downs and boasting, and saying "we've heard it ad nauseam", the main body of your comment is .. you repeating the same content you just said wasn't worth saying?