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To believe that one can compete with the psychologists who design addictive behaviors into today's modern day entertainment is not a bet I would take. Heck eve

by com2kid 12y ago

To believe that one can compete with the psychologists who design addictive behaviors into today's modern day entertainment is not a bet I would take. Heck even back when I was in school, I barely did any homework or studied at all, I lived to go home and play video games every day. I was able to skim through because traditional school had such low expectations, but without proper studying I did not learn any of the material that I tested so well on. As a result I had to retake a lot of courses when I got to college. A much more authoritarian environment in school would have been good for me. Two periods free of distraction dedicated to studying (perhaps spread throughout the day) would have resulted in my learning a lot more. One saving grace might be if the majority of students who go to these schools have parents who expect excellence. In that case peer pressure will force many students to take the same lessons that other students are. I suspect that so long as the school sizes stay small that it will be possible for such forces to dominate. Running a 2000+ student public school within the context of a community that has little expectations of academic achievement? Good luck graduating students who are even literate. (One can observe low literacy rates highly economically depressed areas already!) More fundamentally, sites/services like Reddit, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc, all directly tweak the pleasure center of our brain. By design users will not get bored of them. Yeah yeah half the users on HN will get bored of Snapchat/Facebook/Instagram, congrats, we aren't neurotypical, I don't get a spark of pleasure looking at pictures of people on some social network, but I sure as heck know others who can literally spend hours just browsing photo streams. TIL on Reddit however? Or heck just HN itself? Yup, very addictive. Learning new factoids feels good.

g_delgado14 12y ago
I disagree on the addictive nature of sites like Reddit, FB, etc. Yes, they are addictive. And yes, ppl (especially young children) will get hooked - but when you're surrounded by eager peers who are exploring interesting things (perhaps one made a game on a RaspPi), the insatiable curiosity of a child will defeat the attractive nature of the soul sucking sites that you mentioned. I think the pressures placed on someone by social norms outweigh the influences these unproductive sites have, at least in the long run.
- johnchristopher 12y ago
  > I disagree on the addictive nature of sites like Reddit, FB, etc. Yes, they are addictive. [..]
malandrew 12y ago
Running a 2000+ student public school within the context of a community that has little expectations of academic achievement? Good luck graduating students who are even literate. Totally agree. However, while there were no hard numbers in the article, it seems to me that these places may be successful because of the high "teacher" to "student" ratio. It sounds like the adults are peers and are in sufficient numbers that the children encounter enough "mature peers" with a wealth of experience to share. If you think about it, school is ridiculously out of place relative to pretty much every other institution in the world. Where else can you go and be surrounded by 15 to 30 people all within +1 and -1 year of the same age. To me it's crazy to expect learning to come out of an environment where you have 15-30 or more people equally ignorant on a topic expected to learn socially. Basically, you have one individual (the teacher) and if you're lucky 1-2 precocious students, that have much of value to add to any discussion. Furthermore, such an environment doesn't really appeal well to human desires for competition and admiration since the only person with knowledge possesses oodles more knowledge than you. "I can be as good as that person at X" isn't a thought that enters your head and motivates you when the only person good at X is orders of magnitude better at X and has many many years experience at X. I definitely see value in an environment where those n years old can also expect to learn from those n plus 1 or more years older with experience to share. Take that environment where there is peer learning and peer sharing and introduce some "seeds of knowledge" (i.e. the adults with subject matter expertise) and you've got a promising recipe for success. The expectation that the "students" also teach each other is doubly reinforcing, since teaching is one of the best ways to better master a subject. It forces you to consider the knowledge of the pupil and find a way to express what you know in terms the pupils can understand.
- brc 12y ago
  I agree that the schooling system, for most schools, is optimised for many things other than learning. Organised childcare would seem to be the primary goal for many classrooms, learning a secondary goal. Grouping by age instead of ability and interest is a poor idea in my observation. I think streaming and do grouping by level should be done much earlier. The goal should be to get talented kids to work together and in competition and achieving their learning as early as possible, and only mix them with the less talented kids occasionally. The least achieving kids should be prepared for life with an education in good solid skills and common sense, rather than making them try and fail at topics they can't do, which just turns them off learning for life. Anyway, I'd redesign the whole thing if you gave me the job. That's all.
syllogism 12y ago
> the psychologists who design addictive behaviors into today's modern day entertainment Most of them are "designed" by the market, not psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure. But yes, that part stood out to me too. "Kids will get bored and start learning". Says who? What if they don't?
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  The big ones have people with psychology major or minors on staff to help research into recurrent behavior of user interactions, and many of the smaller ones probably just copy patterns from the big ones. Just having 100 users playing your game and watching what makes them open the app again can easily be considered a psychological experiment, though in the tech business they are probably more often referred to as just "user testing".
- michaelt 12y ago
  Most of them are "designed" by the market, not psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure. If a car is reliable, is it because of the highly paid expert engineers who improve the design; or the multi-billion-dollar company that hires those engineers; or the free market competition that discourages unreliability? I'd say the answer is "all of them, but in different ways"
  - brc 12y ago
    The free market is the biggest driver in this case. We know this to be true because cars designed by companies who have lost their way and don't car anymore are typically poor. And cars designed as national projects are typically terrible. The engineers do the work, but it's the fussy and fickle customers who are their ever present, unrelenting boss.
    - kweinber 12y ago
      The free market also prefers awful and addictive things like Mcdonalds, cigarettes, and Facebook. When personal profit and easy gratification are the main drivers of a system then don't solely expect good things to pop out... good AND bad things arise.
Swizec 12y ago
> I don't get a spark of pleasure looking at pictures of people on some social network But what else are you going to do when you're pooping? Just stare at a wall? Obligatory SMBC link: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > Obligatory SMBC link: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225* http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225* Sadly, this really works that way sometimes. Just yesterday an unexpected moment of introspection triggered a small anxiety attack in me. Thank God we have Hacker News...
lotsofmangos 12y ago
The social aspects of modern technology are getting more people regularly writing to express themselves than anything else in history. Of all the visions of the future, the one that almost nobody predicted was that the children of the 21st century would use writing as a dominant form of informal social communication. Also, what is wrong with spending hours looking at photos?
- com2kid 12y ago
  > Also, what is wrong with spending hours looking at photos? Because rather than get work done, learning a new skill, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, applying for a better job, one is looking at photos.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    You do those when not looking at photos, or reading books, or watching films, or going to the theater, or flicking through a load of comics, or complaining in the comments section of a specialist news aggregator about people wasting their time looking at photos.
kire456 12y ago
> To believe that one can compete with the psychologists who design addictive behaviors into today's modern day entertainment is not a bet I would take. Perhaps. But maybe it works the other way around too. Today's adults are bombarded with addictive, manipulative products all the time, and most find themselves woefully unable to resist (cf. phone-staring parties). Isn't school the best place to get kids to develop some ability to resist this kind of addiction? External pressure stops working as soon as it's gone, but internal resilience doesn't.
Lancey 12y ago
Say a student spends all day on HN - that's a day dedicated to reading and discussing topics related to hacker culture. I've learned so much about programming and computer science in general from HN, and even physics, biology, politics, and other topics. There's an education to be gained from everything in my opinion. Even mundane things, time wasting games like Cookie Clicker, still have some educational value behind them. Could we get more education out of drills, homework, and regular testing? Maybe, but they certainly don't provide the same level of engagement.
- teacup50 12y ago
  > I've learned so much about programming and computer science in general from HN, and even physics, biology, politics, and other topics. I can almost guarantee that 1) you really haven't, and 2) the time here is wasted. With that, I'm going to close this window and go back to reading a book on math theory.
- coolsunglasses 12y ago
  > I've learned so much about programming and computer science in general from HN, and even physics, biology, politics, and other topics. Nope. Been here for a long time (this is not my first account) - it's mostly senseless factoids that fade. Nonsense synthesized from research paper abstracts. Linked from another thread: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/chapter3.html https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/... You are not building a systematic understanding of anything by reading HN, you are encountering unconnected assertions that mean nothing in isolation.
- com2kid 12y ago
  Reading about a foreign language is not learning how to speak it. Reading about programming is not learning how to code. Reading about mathematicians is not learning math. Learning comes from doing.

by com2kid 12y ago

g_delgado14 12y ago

I disagree on the addictive nature of sites like Reddit, FB, etc. Yes, they are addictive. And yes, ppl (especially young children) will get hooked - but when you're surrounded by eager peers who are exploring interesting things (perhaps one made a game on a RaspPi), the insatiable curiosity of a child will defeat the attractive nature of the soul sucking sites that you mentioned. I think the pressures placed on someone by social norms outweigh the influences these unproductive sites have, at least in the long run.

johnchristopher 12y ago
> I disagree on the addictive nature of sites like Reddit, FB, etc. Yes, they are addictive. [..]

malandrew 12y ago

Running a 2000+ student public school within the context of a community that has little expectations of academic achievement? Good luck graduating students who are even literate. Totally agree. However, while there were no hard numbers in the article, it seems to me that these places may be successful because of the high "teacher" to "student" ratio. It sounds like the adults are peers and are in sufficient numbers that the children encounter enough "mature peers" with a wealth of experience to share. If you think about it, school is ridiculously out of place relative to pretty much every other institution in the world. Where else can you go and be surrounded by 15 to 30 people all within +1 and -1 year of the same age. To me it's crazy to expect learning to come out of an environment where you have 15-30 or more people equally ignorant on a topic expected to learn socially. Basically, you have one individual (the teacher) and if you're lucky 1-2 precocious students, that have much of value to add to any discussion. Furthermore, such an environment doesn't really appeal well to human desires for competition and admiration since the only person with knowledge possesses oodles more knowledge than you. "I can be as good as that person at X" isn't a thought that enters your head and motivates you when the only person good at X is orders of magnitude better at X and has many many years experience at X. I definitely see value in an environment where those n years old can also expect to learn from those n plus 1 or more years older with experience to share. Take that environment where there is peer learning and peer sharing and introduce some "seeds of knowledge" (i.e. the adults with subject matter expertise) and you've got a promising recipe for success. The expectation that the "students" also teach each other is doubly reinforcing, since teaching is one of the best ways to better master a subject. It forces you to consider the knowledge of the pupil and find a way to express what you know in terms the pupils can understand.

brc 12y ago
I agree that the schooling system, for most schools, is optimised for many things other than learning. Organised childcare would seem to be the primary goal for many classrooms, learning a secondary goal. Grouping by age instead of ability and interest is a poor idea in my observation. I think streaming and do grouping by level should be done much earlier. The goal should be to get talented kids to work together and in competition and achieving their learning as early as possible, and only mix them with the less talented kids occasionally. The least achieving kids should be prepared for life with an education in good solid skills and common sense, rather than making them try and fail at topics they can't do, which just turns them off learning for life. Anyway, I'd redesign the whole thing if you gave me the job. That's all.

syllogism 12y ago

> the psychologists who design addictive behaviors into today's modern day entertainment Most of them are "designed" by the market, not psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure. But yes, that part stood out to me too. "Kids will get bored and start learning". Says who? What if they don't?

wodenokoto 12y ago
The big ones have people with psychology major or minors on staff to help research into recurrent behavior of user interactions, and many of the smaller ones probably just copy patterns from the big ones. Just having 100 users playing your game and watching what makes them open the app again can easily be considered a psychological experiment, though in the tech business they are probably more often referred to as just "user testing".
michaelt 12y ago
Most of them are "designed" by the market, not psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure. If a car is reliable, is it because of the highly paid expert engineers who improve the design; or the multi-billion-dollar company that hires those engineers; or the free market competition that discourages unreliability? I'd say the answer is "all of them, but in different ways"
- brc 12y ago
  The free market is the biggest driver in this case. We know this to be true because cars designed by companies who have lost their way and don't car anymore are typically poor. And cars designed as national projects are typically terrible. The engineers do the work, but it's the fussy and fickle customers who are their ever present, unrelenting boss.
  - kweinber 12y ago
    The free market also prefers awful and addictive things like Mcdonalds, cigarettes, and Facebook. When personal profit and easy gratification are the main drivers of a system then don't solely expect good things to pop out... good AND bad things arise.

Swizec 12y ago

> I don't get a spark of pleasure looking at pictures of people on some social network But what else are you going to do when you're pooping? Just stare at a wall? Obligatory SMBC link: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> Obligatory SMBC link: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225* http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225* Sadly, this really works that way sometimes. Just yesterday an unexpected moment of introspection triggered a small anxiety attack in me. Thank God we have Hacker News...

lotsofmangos 12y ago

The social aspects of modern technology are getting more people regularly writing to express themselves than anything else in history. Of all the visions of the future, the one that almost nobody predicted was that the children of the 21st century would use writing as a dominant form of informal social communication. Also, what is wrong with spending hours looking at photos?

com2kid 12y ago
> Also, what is wrong with spending hours looking at photos? Because rather than get work done, learning a new skill, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, applying for a better job, one is looking at photos.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  You do those when not looking at photos, or reading books, or watching films, or going to the theater, or flicking through a load of comics, or complaining in the comments section of a specialist news aggregator about people wasting their time looking at photos.

kire456 12y ago

> To believe that one can compete with the psychologists who design addictive behaviors into today's modern day entertainment is not a bet I would take. Perhaps. But maybe it works the other way around too. Today's adults are bombarded with addictive, manipulative products all the time, and most find themselves woefully unable to resist (cf. phone-staring parties). Isn't school the best place to get kids to develop some ability to resist this kind of addiction? External pressure stops working as soon as it's gone, but internal resilience doesn't.

Lancey 12y ago

Say a student spends all day on HN - that's a day dedicated to reading and discussing topics related to hacker culture. I've learned so much about programming and computer science in general from HN, and even physics, biology, politics, and other topics. There's an education to be gained from everything in my opinion. Even mundane things, time wasting games like Cookie Clicker, still have some educational value behind them. Could we get more education out of drills, homework, and regular testing? Maybe, but they certainly don't provide the same level of engagement.

teacup50 12y ago
> I've learned so much about programming and computer science in general from HN, and even physics, biology, politics, and other topics. I can almost guarantee that 1) you really haven't, and 2) the time here is wasted. With that, I'm going to close this window and go back to reading a book on math theory.
coolsunglasses 12y ago
> I've learned so much about programming and computer science in general from HN, and even physics, biology, politics, and other topics. Nope. Been here for a long time (this is not my first account) - it's mostly senseless factoids that fade. Nonsense synthesized from research paper abstracts. Linked from another thread: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/chapter3.html https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/... You are not building a systematic understanding of anything by reading HN, you are encountering unconnected assertions that mean nothing in isolation.
com2kid 12y ago
Reading about a foreign language is not learning how to speak it. Reading about programming is not learning how to code. Reading about mathematicians is not learning math. Learning comes from doing.