7 ms·

I mean, is this even true? I love programming for example but love it a lot more when I’m being paid a lot of money.

by mruts 7y ago

laumars 7y ago
I think the previous poster meant learning should be incentivised with rewards; rather than a behaviour forced because the alternative is punishment.
- pavel_lishin 7y ago
  > withdrawal of rewards is also punishment
- andrei_says_ 7y ago
  Incentivizing human beings means treating them like the rats and birds Skinner-ian techniques were derived from. But we’re not rats nor birds and thus such attitude is not effective long term. Apart from being condescending, humiliating, degrading and destructive. Rewarding a child for reading makes them read for the external reward (for someone else) and makes them hate reading even more because of the humiliation and having to go against their own internal compass in order to get something they want. You may say this prepares them for the “real world” of exploitation but maybe 1, truly successful people find ways to include their internal compass in their daily flow career-wise and 2., a society where almost everyone tolls at the whims and pleasure of a very few ought to be questioned (reference the insane levels of inequality worldwide, having a king emperor is not sustainable).
  - laumars 7y ago
    > Incentivizing human beings means treating them like the rats and birds Not at all. Incentivising means to motivate. How many people work because they want money rather than because they like to work? > Apart from being condescending, humiliating, degrading and destructive. You're being a tad over dramatic :) > Rewarding a child for reading makes them read for the external reward (for someone else) and makes them hate reading even more because of the humiliation and having to go against their own internal compass in order to get something they want. The first part might be true in some cases. But the latter part certainly isn't. We might try to take the moral high ground but parents effectively bribe their children on an almost daily basis: "if you eat all your dinner you can have ice cream / chocolate for pudding"; "if you go in the bath now I'll pour extra bubble mixture in"; "if you're a good buy while we are shopping then I'll buy you a magazine / chocolate"; etc. Even just the process of potty training involves giving over-enthusiastic praise every time they use the potty / toilet instead of wetting themselves - effectively rewarding them with gratitude. Children are wilful creatures and, as much as we promote independence, we still have lives we need to manage with chores and other stuff that isn't always fun. Even as adults we manage that by saying things like "if I tidy the kitchen now I'll chill with a glass of whisky and an episode of my favourite show" or "I'll go for a run 3 times a week then reward myself with an ice cream at the weekend"... etc. I used HN as a reward for some really dull work (eg I'll write 10 sprint tickets then read something interesting on HN). Suggesting that the whole concept of a reward system is broken is a massive over-exaggeration. True, rewards can be a broken way of encouragement when used inappropriately but lets not throw the baby out with the bath water (proverbially speaking). > You may say this prepares them for the “real world” of exploitation but maybe 1, truly successful people find ways to include their internal compass in their daily flow career-wise and 2., a society where almost everyone tolls at the whims and pleasure of a very few ought to be questioned (reference the insane levels of inequality worldwide, having a king emperor is not sustainable). I think you're trailing off into a hugely philosophical tangent and one I don't really agree with. Capitalism is largely driven by financial reward - many of the greatest disrupters did so for financial gain (the whole "changing the world" meme is really a more dignified way of saying "we want this product to make us rich"). So you can work for personal rewards without being exploited.
    - andrei_says_ 7y ago
      I appreciate the conversation but don’t have the bandwidth to engage your points. If you’d like to explore the research, check out the resources I mentioned. It’s possible you’ll arrive at a different opinions... different from mine but also maybe different from your current ones. I dislike the dismissive + condescending label you try to attach to someone you haven’t really met. Labeling while effective, is not clean argument.
      - laumars 7y ago
        > I dislike the dismissive + condescending label you try to attach to someone you haven’t really met. Labeling while effective, is not clean argument. You need to read back this discussion because I've been anything but dismissive and condescending while you have been using language like "condescending", "humiliating", "degrading" and "dismissive" throughout. In fact if you do read it back you'd also realise that I'm not even disagreeing with the research per se but rather disagreeing with the extreme tone and ideology you're applying to it. The rest of my post is just real world examples demonstrating that point.
        andrei_says_ 7y ago
        > You're being a tad over dramatic :) You don’t know me, and trying to frame me as something or other is a technique to dismiss my statements. Ad hominem is not an argument, although it works because human brains are vulnerable to fallacies. If you are curious about why I used strong words you may ask :) And, I appreciate the conversation and your clarification.
        laumars 7y ago
        > You don’t know me, and trying to frame me as something or other is a technique to dismiss my statements. Ad hominem is not an argument, although it works because human brains are vulnerable to fallacies. You're reading far to much into that statement. It was simply an expression stating "your wording is unnecessarily extreme". A point I stand by. The terms you used go far beyond reasonable judgement. > If you are curious about why I used strong words you may ask :) If you're using intentionally provocative wording which requires an explanation then you shouldn't be surprised if people take those comments on face value when you don't supply an explanation.
jacobolus 7y ago
Yes, this is confirmed by study after study after study. People perform better at tasks requiring deep thought and creativity when doing them for their own sake, instead of based on extrinsic rewards/punishments.
- andrei_says_ 7y ago
  Dan Pink’s TED talk on motivation speaks about this: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript?... Human beings are complex, love doing interesting (to us) things, love being in the flow, love contributing to others and hate the feeling of being ordered around or obviously manipulated into something we don’t like.
andrei_says_ 7y ago
It’s a bit more complex than this. I highly recommend the book, has a ton of research and cites a lot of the experiments. It’s truly fascinating.

I mean, is this even true? I love programming for example but love it a lot more when I’m being paid a lot of money.

by mruts 7y ago

I mean, is this even true? I love programming for example but love it a lot more when I’m being paid a lot of money.

I think the previous poster meant learning should be incentivised with rewards; rather than a behaviour forced because the alternative is punishment.

pavel_lishin 7y ago
> withdrawal of rewards is also punishment
andrei_says_ 7y ago
Incentivizing human beings means treating them like the rats and birds Skinner-ian techniques were derived from. But we’re not rats nor birds and thus such attitude is not effective long term. Apart from being condescending, humiliating, degrading and destructive. Rewarding a child for reading makes them read for the external reward (for someone else) and makes them hate reading even more because of the humiliation and having to go against their own internal compass in order to get something they want. You may say this prepares them for the “real world” of exploitation but maybe 1, truly successful people find ways to include their internal compass in their daily flow career-wise and 2., a society where almost everyone tolls at the whims and pleasure of a very few ought to be questioned (reference the insane levels of inequality worldwide, having a king emperor is not sustainable).
- laumars 7y ago
  > Incentivizing human beings means treating them like the rats and birds Not at all. Incentivising means to motivate. How many people work because they want money rather than because they like to work? > Apart from being condescending, humiliating, degrading and destructive. You're being a tad over dramatic :) > Rewarding a child for reading makes them read for the external reward (for someone else) and makes them hate reading even more because of the humiliation and having to go against their own internal compass in order to get something they want. The first part might be true in some cases. But the latter part certainly isn't. We might try to take the moral high ground but parents effectively bribe their children on an almost daily basis: "if you eat all your dinner you can have ice cream / chocolate for pudding"; "if you go in the bath now I'll pour extra bubble mixture in"; "if you're a good buy while we are shopping then I'll buy you a magazine / chocolate"; etc. Even just the process of potty training involves giving over-enthusiastic praise every time they use the potty / toilet instead of wetting themselves - effectively rewarding them with gratitude. Children are wilful creatures and, as much as we promote independence, we still have lives we need to manage with chores and other stuff that isn't always fun. Even as adults we manage that by saying things like "if I tidy the kitchen now I'll chill with a glass of whisky and an episode of my favourite show" or "I'll go for a run 3 times a week then reward myself with an ice cream at the weekend"... etc. I used HN as a reward for some really dull work (eg I'll write 10 sprint tickets then read something interesting on HN). Suggesting that the whole concept of a reward system is broken is a massive over-exaggeration. True, rewards can be a broken way of encouragement when used inappropriately but lets not throw the baby out with the bath water (proverbially speaking). > You may say this prepares them for the “real world” of exploitation but maybe 1, truly successful people find ways to include their internal compass in their daily flow career-wise and 2., a society where almost everyone tolls at the whims and pleasure of a very few ought to be questioned (reference the insane levels of inequality worldwide, having a king emperor is not sustainable). I think you're trailing off into a hugely philosophical tangent and one I don't really agree with. Capitalism is largely driven by financial reward - many of the greatest disrupters did so for financial gain (the whole "changing the world" meme is really a more dignified way of saying "we want this product to make us rich"). So you can work for personal rewards without being exploited.
  - andrei_says_ 7y ago
    I appreciate the conversation but don’t have the bandwidth to engage your points. If you’d like to explore the research, check out the resources I mentioned. It’s possible you’ll arrive at a different opinions... different from mine but also maybe different from your current ones. I dislike the dismissive + condescending label you try to attach to someone you haven’t really met. Labeling while effective, is not clean argument.
    - laumars 7y ago
      > I dislike the dismissive + condescending label you try to attach to someone you haven’t really met. Labeling while effective, is not clean argument. You need to read back this discussion because I've been anything but dismissive and condescending while you have been using language like "condescending", "humiliating", "degrading" and "dismissive" throughout. In fact if you do read it back you'd also realise that I'm not even disagreeing with the research per se but rather disagreeing with the extreme tone and ideology you're applying to it. The rest of my post is just real world examples demonstrating that point.
      - andrei_says_ 7y ago
        > You're being a tad over dramatic :) You don’t know me, and trying to frame me as something or other is a technique to dismiss my statements. Ad hominem is not an argument, although it works because human brains are vulnerable to fallacies. If you are curious about why I used strong words you may ask :) And, I appreciate the conversation and your clarification.
        laumars 7y ago
        > You don’t know me, and trying to frame me as something or other is a technique to dismiss my statements. Ad hominem is not an argument, although it works because human brains are vulnerable to fallacies. You're reading far to much into that statement. It was simply an expression stating "your wording is unnecessarily extreme". A point I stand by. The terms you used go far beyond reasonable judgement. > If you are curious about why I used strong words you may ask :) If you're using intentionally provocative wording which requires an explanation then you shouldn't be surprised if people take those comments on face value when you don't supply an explanation.

jacobolus 7y ago

Yes, this is confirmed by study after study after study. People perform better at tasks requiring deep thought and creativity when doing them for their own sake, instead of based on extrinsic rewards/punishments.

andrei_says_ 7y ago
Dan Pink’s TED talk on motivation speaks about this: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript?... Human beings are complex, love doing interesting (to us) things, love being in the flow, love contributing to others and hate the feeling of being ordered around or obviously manipulated into something we don’t like.

andrei_says_ 7y ago

It’s a bit more complex than this. I highly recommend the book, has a ton of research and cites a lot of the experiments. It’s truly fascinating.