4 ms·

There's a formula in there that reads: Invested Time x Motivation -------------------------- = Results Inhibition As an engineer without formal

by asteli 8y ago

There's a formula in there that reads: Invested Time x Motivation -------------------------- = Results Inhibition As an engineer without formal education, this rings very true. When people ask "how'd you get into this?" typically my answer includes the phrase "interest times time." The inclusion of inhibition in the formula crystalizes something I've been feeling for a long time.

miobrien 8y ago
This formula is fascinating. Sums up what I've read on expertise by K. Anders Ericsson. Inhibition is what makes this unique and I think traditional education could benefit from acknowledging the role of inhibition in learning.
munificent 8y ago
This resonated with me too. In particular, one of the things that's always made software approachable to me is that my failures are hidden on my machine where no one can see them, so I have almost no inhibition. Learning any skill that requires social interaction is much harder for me because then all of my social anxieties and fear of failure kick in. I would love to learn a second language, and this is the main thing holding me back. I think I have the right mental skills to put the time in and wrap my head around it, I just break out in a cold sweat when I imagine horribly mispronouncing something in front of a native speaker.
- jnurmine 8y ago
  Mispronunciation is no big deal! That is just one dimension in a language and one which gets better over time and immersion. If you wish to avoid the social aspects completely, how about starting with practising to only read a language? There are plenty of newspapers and other material to study and it helps to be able to figure out what is said from the context. It will involve some guesswork but it keeps your brain thinking. With context I mean that any big piece of news is likely to appear also in the news written in a language you already know, so you can cross-reference and figure out unknown words.
  - titanix2 8y ago
    > Mispronunciation is no big deal! I'd argue on the contrary that it is the most important part when starting learning a new language. People easily skip the pronunciation and phonology part of their target language and then hit a barrier while still being at the beginner level because they cannot go further: nobody understand them. Working seriously on that part at the beginning is fundamental not to lost time and waste effort later on. Heck, I've heard people with 3 years of Chinese that still could not make most consonants correctly...
    - zzzcpan 8y ago
      It's not a barrier if no one understands you, still many years of learning to do. To make a sound you first need to hear it many times and be able to recognize and distinguish it.
      - titanix2 8y ago
        You don't need years to produce a phoneme that can be recognized by a native speaker. The important point is two-fold: being close enough to the actual sound, and working on minimal pairs where confusion can occur. It means you don't need to sweat over how you pronounce /r/ in French because however you make it it won't be confused with something else, but one sure should work on making their Chinese /t/ and /tʰ/ correctly. Also for listening given the sheer amount of audio and video that there is on the web it is easy to cram the required hours of listening in a few months.
        zzzcpan 8y ago
        My point is speaking early on doesn't help with learning the language and isn't a barrier. On the contrary, it slows down progress. You shouldn't try to speak or even attempt to write sentences until you have large enough vocabulary in your brain with all the proper pronunciation and spelling associations and patterns, like to understand 80% of the words in a random article large vocabulary (or more, it takes many years to get to 99% and higher). Otherwise you will learn wrong things and form associations with wrong pronunciations because you had to make assumptions due to broken methodology and those take a long time to get rid of and relearn.
- wallflower 8y ago
  Almost everyone goes through this. It is especially bad with your friends. The hack is to pay someone to help you practice. iTalki is a great site for finding native speakers who aren’t necessarily language teachers but who have a genuine interest in helping others learn languages. Also, friends may get frustrated with you as you probably will speak grammatically incorrectly starting out and they may not be able to state the correct grammar to use, having internalized it in childhood.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  You get that with human languages too. You don't have to talk to other people until you are ready. And almost none of the effort in learning a language goes into practicing speaking either way. I get that traditional approaches of studying languages focus on speaking early on. Just avoid them, they are too broken and crazy inefficient.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  Have you tried 1 drink of beer or wine first? Can reduce your inhibition and keep the other person less judgmental.
  - asteli 8y ago
    Not the parent commenter, but I've tried this, my anecdatum is that I became less sharp and thus had a much harder time staying deeply attentive, which, for me, is critical for social interaction.
    - jacobolus 8y ago
      You have a hard time with social interaction after 1 drink? YMMV, for sure. Most people I know seem to get chattier (in whatever language) after 1 drink, but responses are variable and I can imagine some folks clamming up.
      - asteli 8y ago
        I'm one of the ones with variable responses. Sometimes it amplifies anxiety and inhibition, occasionally alleviates it. Stimulants typically do me better. A couple years ago I got an ADD diagnosis. Should have happened when I was 12, but you work with what you got. I credit the ADD with pushing me to pursue my interests over what was assigned to me. Wasn't really a choice, I would stay up until 3AM+ regularly, trying and failing to do homework. I graduated from high school a semester late, with a 1.2 GPA. In the meantime I was teaching myself, with basically no guidance, how to build small robots, program bare-metal microcontrollers, generally build things. When I was 18 got me a job at a small tech company (what luck!), which opened up a whole world of opportunity - interesting projects to work on, very talented people to learn from.
  - munificent 8y ago
    That is my default solution for social anxiety, yes. Works surprisingly well.

by asteli 8y ago

miobrien 8y ago

This formula is fascinating. Sums up what I've read on expertise by K. Anders Ericsson. Inhibition is what makes this unique and I think traditional education could benefit from acknowledging the role of inhibition in learning.

munificent 8y ago

This resonated with me too. In particular, one of the things that's always made software approachable to me is that my failures are hidden on my machine where no one can see them, so I have almost no inhibition. Learning any skill that requires social interaction is much harder for me because then all of my social anxieties and fear of failure kick in. I would love to learn a second language, and this is the main thing holding me back. I think I have the right mental skills to put the time in and wrap my head around it, I just break out in a cold sweat when I imagine horribly mispronouncing something in front of a native speaker.

jnurmine 8y ago
Mispronunciation is no big deal! That is just one dimension in a language and one which gets better over time and immersion. If you wish to avoid the social aspects completely, how about starting with practising to only read a language? There are plenty of newspapers and other material to study and it helps to be able to figure out what is said from the context. It will involve some guesswork but it keeps your brain thinking. With context I mean that any big piece of news is likely to appear also in the news written in a language you already know, so you can cross-reference and figure out unknown words.
- titanix2 8y ago
  > Mispronunciation is no big deal! I'd argue on the contrary that it is the most important part when starting learning a new language. People easily skip the pronunciation and phonology part of their target language and then hit a barrier while still being at the beginner level because they cannot go further: nobody understand them. Working seriously on that part at the beginning is fundamental not to lost time and waste effort later on. Heck, I've heard people with 3 years of Chinese that still could not make most consonants correctly...
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    It's not a barrier if no one understands you, still many years of learning to do. To make a sound you first need to hear it many times and be able to recognize and distinguish it.
    - titanix2 8y ago
      You don't need years to produce a phoneme that can be recognized by a native speaker. The important point is two-fold: being close enough to the actual sound, and working on minimal pairs where confusion can occur. It means you don't need to sweat over how you pronounce /r/ in French because however you make it it won't be confused with something else, but one sure should work on making their Chinese /t/ and /tʰ/ correctly. Also for listening given the sheer amount of audio and video that there is on the web it is easy to cram the required hours of listening in a few months.
      - zzzcpan 8y ago
        My point is speaking early on doesn't help with learning the language and isn't a barrier. On the contrary, it slows down progress. You shouldn't try to speak or even attempt to write sentences until you have large enough vocabulary in your brain with all the proper pronunciation and spelling associations and patterns, like to understand 80% of the words in a random article large vocabulary (or more, it takes many years to get to 99% and higher). Otherwise you will learn wrong things and form associations with wrong pronunciations because you had to make assumptions due to broken methodology and those take a long time to get rid of and relearn.
wallflower 8y ago
Almost everyone goes through this. It is especially bad with your friends. The hack is to pay someone to help you practice. iTalki is a great site for finding native speakers who aren’t necessarily language teachers but who have a genuine interest in helping others learn languages. Also, friends may get frustrated with you as you probably will speak grammatically incorrectly starting out and they may not be able to state the correct grammar to use, having internalized it in childhood.
zzzcpan 8y ago
You get that with human languages too. You don't have to talk to other people until you are ready. And almost none of the effort in learning a language goes into practicing speaking either way. I get that traditional approaches of studying languages focus on speaking early on. Just avoid them, they are too broken and crazy inefficient.
jacobolus 8y ago
Have you tried 1 drink of beer or wine first? Can reduce your inhibition and keep the other person less judgmental.
- asteli 8y ago
  Not the parent commenter, but I've tried this, my anecdatum is that I became less sharp and thus had a much harder time staying deeply attentive, which, for me, is critical for social interaction.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    You have a hard time with social interaction after 1 drink? YMMV, for sure. Most people I know seem to get chattier (in whatever language) after 1 drink, but responses are variable and I can imagine some folks clamming up.
    - asteli 8y ago
      I'm one of the ones with variable responses. Sometimes it amplifies anxiety and inhibition, occasionally alleviates it. Stimulants typically do me better. A couple years ago I got an ADD diagnosis. Should have happened when I was 12, but you work with what you got. I credit the ADD with pushing me to pursue my interests over what was assigned to me. Wasn't really a choice, I would stay up until 3AM+ regularly, trying and failing to do homework. I graduated from high school a semester late, with a 1.2 GPA. In the meantime I was teaching myself, with basically no guidance, how to build small robots, program bare-metal microcontrollers, generally build things. When I was 18 got me a job at a small tech company (what luck!), which opened up a whole world of opportunity - interesting projects to work on, very talented people to learn from.
- munificent 8y ago
  That is my default solution for social anxiety, yes. Works surprisingly well.