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> give up much more quickly when a solution does not come easily to them Anecdotally, kids often also give up easily when faced with trivial setbacks. I think

> give up much more quickly when a solution does not come easily to them Anecdotally, kids often also give up easily when faced with trivial setbacks. I think your speculative generalization is far too broad. I’d be interested to see some concrete research, but my impression is that there is very wide variability, and I’m not sure how meaningful the statistical averages are. The people I know who are best at diving into a new never-seen thing and experimenting systematically to figure out quickly and accurately how it works are all adults. They easily run circles around kids at this: the kids get tired, get distracted, get confused and give up, get stuck into an obviously sub-optimal pattern but don’t try to fix it, etc. (The kind of adults who have decades of practice at trying / learning new things. Many relevant metacognitive skills have broad applicability across disciplines.) One big advantage kids have is that their basic needs are met by someone else, and they generally don’t have lots of other worries and responsibilities. This allows them to focus on something they are interested in far longer and deeper than most people who aren’t doing that thing professionally. The best for learning (for either an adult or a child) is a combination of personal interest + pleasant no-pressure environment + face-to-face guidance from a trusted expert tutor/coach, who can probe weak points, notice and correct mistakes and misconceptions, suggest methods of practice, .... > pride/hubris What you call pride/hubris, I call shame and fear of embarrassment. People really don’t want other people (or themselves) to see them as failures. > when someone in an inferior social positions knows a thing This kind of social situation is completely different than the “self-directed intrinsically-motivated reward” situation you were talking about before. It’s hardly surprising that someone who is supposed to be an expert doesn’t want to be shown up by their subordinate or their junior colleague. It makes them look incompetent and is a direct threat to their social position and livelihood.

derefr 5y ago
> What you call pride/hubris, I call shame and fear of embarrassment. It sounds like you're assuming these conversations/learning events occur in public. Why would people feel shame/embarrassment about something nobody can see them doing? This was the point of my example: if someone is alone in the wilderness, what does it matter to anyone but them—to anything but their survival—if they were to try and fail at building a shelter or a trap? > It’s hardly surprising that someone who is supposed to be an expert Who said anything about being an expert? The example that comes first to my mind is a grandchild trying to teach their grantparent to post photos to Facebook on their iPad. The grandmother explicitly—even "infamously"—has no experience with computers or anything to do with them. If their friends/family/etc. were to observe the situation, they'd have a preconception that the child would know more about "posting photos to Facebook" than the adult would. And yet, despite nominally having no real way to be "shown up"–no presumed domain expertise to lose; and despite nominally wanting the grandchild to teach them how to post photos to Facebook; and despite the grandparent being intrinsically motivated to learn how to post photos to Facebook (because they enjoy the social interaction that comes when friends see their photos); the grandparent still won't bother to focus at all on paying attention to / understanding / remembering what the grandchild is saying. I would describe this as a kind of learned helplessness, except it's more like contextual helplessness. It's not that they can't learn how to do this–they seem to be able to learn it from a peer their own age just fine. But when it comes to those they think of as people they are supposed to be teaching, their mind just turns into a brick wall. I would compare it to the prevalence of people who get their romantic partner to open jars for them, instead of buying one of those gripper gadgets that allow them to open the jar. If their partner offers to buy them one of those, they'll often actively refuse the gadget! They think of this job as something someone is supposed to do for them — something they shouldn't have to do – rather than something they want to get done by whatever means, as efficiently as possible. Despite it not being a hard/complex job, or a matter of comparative advantage.

derefr 5y ago

> What you call pride/hubris, I call shame and fear of embarrassment. It sounds like you're assuming these conversations/learning events occur in public. Why would people feel shame/embarrassment about something nobody can see them doing? This was the point of my example: if someone is alone in the wilderness, what does it matter to anyone but them—to anything but their survival—if they were to try and fail at building a shelter or a trap? > It’s hardly surprising that someone who is supposed to be an expert Who said anything about being an expert? The example that comes first to my mind is a grandchild trying to teach their grantparent to post photos to Facebook on their iPad. The grandmother explicitly—even "infamously"—has no experience with computers or anything to do with them. If their friends/family/etc. were to observe the situation, they'd have a preconception that the child would know more about "posting photos to Facebook" than the adult would. And yet, despite nominally having no real way to be "shown up"–no presumed domain expertise to lose; and despite nominally wanting the grandchild to teach them how to post photos to Facebook; and despite the grandparent being intrinsically motivated to learn how to post photos to Facebook (because they enjoy the social interaction that comes when friends see their photos); the grandparent still won't bother to focus at all on paying attention to / understanding / remembering what the grandchild is saying. I would describe this as a kind of learned helplessness, except it's more like contextual helplessness. It's not that they can't learn how to do this–they seem to be able to learn it from a peer their own age just fine. But when it comes to those they think of as people they are supposed to be teaching, their mind just turns into a brick wall. I would compare it to the prevalence of people who get their romantic partner to open jars for them, instead of buying one of those gripper gadgets that allow them to open the jar. If their partner offers to buy them one of those, they'll often actively refuse the gadget! They think of this job as something someone is supposed to do for them — something they shouldn't have to do – rather than something they want to get done by whatever means, as efficiently as possible. Despite it not being a hard/complex job, or a matter of comparative advantage.