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I spent 15 years coaching college paintball and the Socratic method was invaluable to me in getting important topics across. Why? The problem: - Paintball ha
by alexpotato 8y ago
I spent 15 years coaching college paintball and the Socratic method was invaluable to me in getting important topics across.
Why?
The problem:
- Paintball has game theory that is very different from traditional sports
- Most people haven't had 15 years of playing time when they get to college and want to play paintball (as opposed to say, soccer).
- I needed to get people up to speed quickly.
So here is an example of how I used the Socratic method (and hopefully you learn something too!):
- Me: Given two teams A and B, what are the odds that A beats be? This is not a trick question.
- Player: 50%?
- Me: Correct! Now if someone on team B gets eliminated what are the odds of team A winning? In other words, what are the odds of winning a 5 vs 4? This is kind of a trick question as I had to collect a lot of stats to determine this.
- Player: I don't know, somewhere between 60 and 80%??
- Me: Close! That's what most people guess and the correct answer is 75%. Next question: if you are on team A and you are eliminated, what happens to team B's odds of winning?
- Player: I guess they would go from ~25% to 50%
- Me: In other words...?
- Player: They double!
- Me: Right! So what do you think is the most important thing to do if you are in a 5 v 4?
- Player: Stay alive?
- Me: Excellent!
Had I just told people "Don't get eliminated in a 5v4! Do you understand?" and they said "Yes!" I wouldn't really know if they understood or not.
This is why, when talking to tech folks, I often explain the Socratic method as a cross between programming and debugging.
The questions you ask a. allow you to "debug" the thought process of the person you are speaking too and b. can act as a directed linked list to an end state you are looking for.
I would also add, the Socratic method can be done completely with positive reinforcement. B.F. Skinner is famous for saying "People would be amazed what can be achieved with only positive reinforcement."
That being said, some organizations e.g. law schools, the military etc believe that the anxiety in a more punishment based system causes the information to "stick" better.
YMMV.
- SilasX 8y ago>Had I just told people "Don't get eliminated in a 5v4! Do you understand?" and they said "Yes!" I wouldn't really know if they understood or not. That seems like less of an issue of using the Socratic method, and more about quantifying the cost of getting killed. "Dying costs your team X" is more helpful than "don't die". The former tells you under which conditions the heuristic "don't die" is no longer applicable, while the latter doesn't. Or, to use my attempt at a neologism, your method satisfies the Scylla-Charybdis Heuristic, while "Don't get eliminated" doesn't: http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2015/12/the-scylla-charybdis-heuristic-if-more.html http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2015/12/the-scylla-charybd...
- theorique 8y agoThe lesson is "quantifying the cost of getting killed". The method by which that lesson is conveyed to the student is the Socratic method. The point is that the Socratic method of asking leading questions and building agreement at each stage was more effective in getting the point across than "do you understand X? OK, good." The student constructs the knowledge him/herself and internalizes it better than otherwise.
- alexpotato 8y agoThis is an excellent explanation of what I was describing in the original comment.
- SilasX 8y agoYes, it's better than asking if they understand the assertion of the point, but the parent was giving a misleading comparison to something that stripped out both the Socratic questions and the quantification of the cost.