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This guy was not really trying to explain to hacker parents how they should teach their kids to ride a bike. As has has been adequately demonstrated in the comm
by sofayam 2y ago
This guy was not really trying to explain to hacker parents how they should teach their kids to ride a bike. As has has been adequately demonstrated in the comments they already know aaaaaaaall about that. His actual point, which seems to have whooshed past most people’s heads, is much more interesting: can you learn a thing more effectively by first simplifying that thing so radically that a seasoned user would find it useless? Also not exactly a totally new idea but, depending on context, just counterintuitive enough that you may miss it.
- globular-toast 2y agoIt's funny really. I assumed by the context of being posted here on HN that this wasn't literally about teaching children to ride a bike. I'm reminded of the approach taken by the book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP): start with this magical thing called Scheme and learn simple programming techniques and general principles like abstraction, then gradually add the "pedals" back until you've basically learnt to program in assembly and write a compiler for your high-level language.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nmeofthestate 2y agoFolk sometimes can't see the Linkedin post for the trees.
- Maxion 2y agoDon’t Miss the Post for the Trees – Here’s Why Most People Do You see it all the time. A post comes through your feed. It's insightful. It’s bold. It’s… mostly ignored. Why? Because people don’t actually engage with the core idea — they react to what they think it says. The same thing happens in business: - Founders get stuck in the weeds of their product without seeing the bigger market opportunity. - Teams hyper-focus on the tech, missing the customer pain point. - Investors hear the pitch, but miss the deeper vision driving it. People miss the post for the trees. Here’s the thing: breakthroughs happen when you push past surface-level reactions. The best founders? They’re not just building products — they’re connecting dots others miss. The best marketers? They’re not just optimizing campaigns — they’re shifting narratives. The best investors? They’re not chasing trends — they’re seeing past the noise. If you want to stand out in a noisy world, here’s the question to ask yourself: Am I reacting to the surface? Or am I leaning in to understand what’s really being said? The magic is always in the nuance. The signal is often buried in the noise. The big ideas? They’re the ones that most people scroll past. So… don’t. (I'm sorry I had to)
- sofayam 2y agoAnd now you’re all just being mean.
- nickburns 2y agoI belive this is simply called 'critical thinking.'[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
- DonHopkins 2y agoCareful, you're going to trigger the conservative anti-thinking brigade's thoughtless criticism by undermining their authority! https://www.pressherald.com/2024/01/27/opinion-critical-thinking-is-authoritarians-kryptonite-lets-use-it/ https://www.pressherald.com/2024/01/27/opinion-critical-thin... >Opinion: Critical thinking is authoritarians’ kryptonite; let’s use it. >The culture of MAGA Republicans is antithetical to critical thinking. Which is exactly why the rest of us need to insist on it. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/texas-gop-no-more-critical-thinking-in-schools/2012/06 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/texas-gop-no-more-c... >Texas GOP: No More Critical Thinking in Schools >Teachers, you may want to be sitting down for this one. >The 2012 Texas Republican Party Platform, adopted June 9 at the state convention in Forth Worth, seems to take a stand against, well, the teaching of critical thinking skills. Read it for yourself: >"We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."
- adamcharnock 2y agoI would love to see this approach in language learning, which I am fairly bad at. I'm very much driven by results rather than accuracy, and so often a teacher will correct me on the finer points of the language I'm using and I'll either no idea what they are talking about, or know that I am certainly not going to remember that detail. In either case I find it very demoralising. If there was a "Learn to speak German like a 5 year old" course then I would love that. Give me something usable to motivate me further, then I can come back for more complexity when I actually want and need it. But isn't this the case for all language courses? They start you slow and build up? I feel like it isn't, although perhaps it is just the courses I have seen. It seems to me that the people who teach languages generally really like languages, so they understandably revel in the details. I, however, do not (although I wish I did). I realise now this is a bit of a rant. Apologies!
- ted_bunny 2y agoI would think such a course might ingrain bad habits. The case system sounds strange when used incorrectly, and it'd be much harder to re-learn it if the wrong version started to become familiar to you.
- senjin 2y agoI think this is exactly what the article is getting at. Maybe you’re right but maybe it’s at least a step in the right direction just like learning to ride without pedals didn’t ingrain bad habits.
- DontchaKnowit 2y agoCheckout Learncraft Spanish. The step they take to simplify that others do not is that they focus knly on grammer for a very lokg time, and just use english verbs and nouns. For example, at a certain point the only words you will have learned are que and lo, so the quiz sentances will be like : I want you to eat it -> I want que lo you eat This prpgram has been extremely useful to me and helped me learn spanosh far quicker than other methods. They also use memory palace techniques and have an unusually effective way of organizing vocab learning
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- smohare 2y agoI’d like to say, “Is this not obvious?” but I’m not sure I fully appreciated what follows until I had a sufficient level of exposure to abstract mathematics. A core element of problem solving is reduction, be it to logically equivalent formulations or to more atomic components that can be reasoned about together.
- fredtalty5 2y ago[dead]
- netghost 2y agoAnother take I've had is that we were wrong in the past. Pedaling isn't the tricky part of riding a bike. Balancing is. Training wheels let you learn to pedal.
- conor- 2y agoMaybe that's part of the reason why "strider" bikes are becoming a lot more common for toddlers to learn how to ride a bike. They're effectively what the OP describes, a bike with no pedals that you run and then balance on.
- CRConrad 2y agoThose were already somewhat common around here, back when I taught my kid to ride some... 17-18-19 years ago. But it felt rather superfluous to buy a separate gadget that he'd use for at most a few months, when the same effect could be achieved by just taking the pedals off a "real" bike. (Unfortunately, we'd already started him on the old-fashioned route with pedals and training wheels. Fortunately, he wasn't all that heartbroken when we "discovered that a thief must have stolen" the pedals and training wheels. And he was quite ecstatic when later "the thief must have returned the pedals".) So I really recommend the ordinary-bike-with-removed-pedals method to start with. The trick is just to get the saddle low enough. Old-fashioned[1] saddle mounts with a multi-piece clamp on the saddle post usually have that below the longitudinal rails on the saddle. You can flip the bits around so the rails go below the bolt of the clamp, and thereby lower the saddle by a couple centimeters / about an inch. This is a rather fiddly job within the narrow confines under the saddle / above the rails / inside the side flaps of the saddle, but it's possible. Three guesses as to how I know this. ___ [1]: And most stuff on not-exorbitantly-expensive kids' bikes is quite old-fashioned; kids' bikes are much cheaper than "serious" adult ones, so manufacturers have to scrimp wherever they can.
- throwway120385 2y agoI've been told that it's easier to learn to ski without poles by an experienced instructor. Apparently his pupils would all spend their time trying to figure out these new "pole" things and very little time actually learning how to balance if he started there. I also think it's probably better to hike without trekking poles even on difficult terrain until you master balance. They're more for supporting your upper body if you have a 75+ liter pack full of gear than for keeping you from eating shit if you step on an unsupported rock.
- keeganpoppen 2y agothat might be a good analogy because, generally speaking, skiing is much, much harder without poles (hence an expert would never do it (unless they are hitting an olympic vert ramp or something)), but it is exactly for this reason that the poles distract you from learning the "right" lesson-- people use their poles pretty much randomly at the start, and the poles help them... to do the wrong thing. but once you have the real crux of skiing down-- body position and balance + using your edges and weight shifts to turn-- poles are completely trivial to add. great analogy!
- tarentel 2y agoI took skiing lessons a couple years ago. This is how it was done. I can't say it was any easier as I had never skied before and I never will again.
- marklubi 2y agoI've taught several snowboarders how to ride and the teaching process is about putting them in a position where they forget about the distracting things. Always start them on a blue (or blue-black) slope, because it forces them to learn to use the edge of the board. Lot of easy drills like side slipping and simply turning your head to control direction. If you start a snow boarder on a green run, it always results in them catching an edge and eventually face planting. Not a fun experience.
- semi-extrinsic 2y agoA bit like skateboarding - on typical pavement, it's easier to fall just going straight if you go ~3 mph than if you go ~6 mph.
- dr_dshiv 2y agoI love riding bikes with no pedals. You do feel like a dandy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_horse Also, is it shocking to anyone that pedal+chain bicycles were invented in 1885, less than 20 years before powered flight? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoSort of a sit-down, off-road push scooter!
- robotresearcher 2y agoThey used to be called ‘velocipedes’.
- wrsh07 2y agoThere's a great (underrated) video on YouTube about training a neural network to manage a double pendulum It changes gravity! This is sort of like managing a double pendulum under water^ and then trying it in the air The video: https://youtu.be/9gQQAO4I1Ck?si=Hs_3GxrZgmhr2xSn https://youtu.be/9gQQAO4I1Ck?si=Hs_3GxrZgmhr2xSn ^ haha not sure this would be easier
- jodrellblank 2y agoThat is an interesting video! Your writing made me expect the neural network had changed gravity as hacky part of its solution, but it's the creator trying to train a neural network to balance a simulated double pendulum and failed, and then wondered if he could train a simpler version in a simulation with no gravity and high friction to make it easy, then see if the solution can gradually be retrained to cope as he adjusts those to full gravity and normal friction. The visualisations in it are very good.
- wrsh07 2y agoGah I can see why you would be confused Yes yes, I was trying to show "here's a simplification one made to train a simple network how to do a hard thing" and much like removing pedals, I think it's effective Unrelated, in dog agility they sometimes train weave poles using the channel method. So they set the weave poles to form a channel that the dog runs through. And then they gradually narrow the channel. Finally they have narrowed the channel until the poles are in a straight line
- HenryBemis 2y agoBalance bikes. The dude discovered balanced bikes.
- loglog 2y agoWhich were also the historical precursor of bicycles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_bicycle#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_bicycle#19th_ce...
- photochemsyn 2y agoMade perfect sense when I read it, because this is also how to teach snowboarding. A reasonably proficient snowboarder will think 'it all about going back and forth from the front edge to the back edge smoothly' but a beginner needs to learn how to first stand in balance over the board without falling on the face or their back.
- nagonago 2y agoI agree, but to be fair I think that point could have been made clearer in the post. A similar but related lesson: the best way to teach something is to design a task that is just difficult enough that the learner can figure it out on their own. When I was reading parenting books in preparation for my own kids, this is one consistent theme that kept coming up, sometimes called "scaffolding." The idea is that you provide a safe environment, design a task that is just the right level of difficulty, then let the child figure it out themselves. (For example, rather than directly holding a kid climbing up a ladder, let them climb it by themselves while you stand by to catch them just in case.) As a result, they develop more independence, self-confidence, and the lessons stick. "Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand that which we allow him to discover by himself will remain with him visibly for the rest of his life." -- Jean Piaget
- d1sxeyes 2y agoPiaget is well known in teaching circles as a philosophical father of pedagogy. A (slightly) less know pedagogist is Vygotsky, who invented the term “Zone of Proximal Development”. The idea is that kids can learn from others and from experimentation if you can design activities where you take the skills they currently have, consider the skill you want them to acquire, and build steps between them that a child can succeed in. To develop this example: once a child can walk, they can learn to balance by being given a task which allows them to safely experiment with falling over and staying upright. Once they can balance, you can experiment with moving while balancing. Once they can move forward with balancing, they can learn stopping safely. Finally, they should be ready to learn how to pedal. If you don’t allow them to complete all the previous steps, they may just keep failing at the next task, because they’re not yet in the “zone” to be able to acquire the next skill. If a child can’t balance annd move forwards unaided, they won’t be able do the next thing (pedalling) even with help. Children have different skills and capabilities and Vygotsky is not prescriptive about who needs to help, and the ZPD theory often encourages learning from peers rather than adults (parents/teachers).