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Thank you! I appreciate the summary. That actually helped a lot... I'm reading through some of the articles on this website, but feel like I'm lacking some pr

Thank you! I appreciate the summary. That actually helped a lot... I'm reading through some of the articles on this website, but feel like I'm lacking some prerequisite knowledge. I find this stuff very interesting just, a bit out of my league. Must keep reading I suppose :) If this theory is correct then one could use it to guide one's own life? Here's something I don't understand when trying to look at it through the lens of this theory: I've had mostly success when it comes to software development. Whether it be new languages, new projects, what have you... If I sit down, focus, and do the work, it comes out well and succeeds. This is in stark contrast to other areas of my life btw, where I've worked very hard at things but made minimal progress. So if I understand correctly, my internal prediction machine should be predicting success, and thereby providing a jolt of motivation, whenever I think about a new cool project. Take VR development. I really want to learn Unity and make a cool VR game. But every time I start, I putter out. I get distracted, I don't make progress fast enough, I just.... end up stopping, and doing something else. Why?

afarrell 6y ago
Because in a new domain, you don't know which pieces to tug at to lead to success and which not to. When you try something and fail, you don't retrospectively identify which parts of your attempt led to that failure. So instead of a clear nuanced picture like "do X.1 never X.2...sometimes X.3 simultaneously with X.4", you've just trained yourself to predict "If I do X, I'll likely fail." You need something to point out which bits of X to pay attention to. Thats why teachers are valuable -- the indicate where to pay attention. --------- Consider going onto http://codementor.io/ http://codementor.io/ and hiring someone to pair-program with you for a while. If you were at the office and spent 4 hours getting nowhere with a problem, you'd ask a colleague for help.

afarrell 6y ago

Because in a new domain, you don't know which pieces to tug at to lead to success and which not to. When you try something and fail, you don't retrospectively identify which parts of your attempt led to that failure. So instead of a clear nuanced picture like "do X.1 never X.2...sometimes X.3 simultaneously with X.4", you've just trained yourself to predict "If I do X, I'll likely fail." You need something to point out which bits of X to pay attention to. Thats why teachers are valuable -- the indicate where to pay attention. --------- Consider going onto http://codementor.io/ http://codementor.io/ and hiring someone to pair-program with you for a while. If you were at the office and spent 4 hours getting nowhere with a problem, you'd ask a colleague for help.