The Learn Drive

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I am almost with you right there: All learning must be pleasurable.

Of course you also make an exception for the “push zone” in which pain is closely associated with the pleasure of learning, so we may have some work to do in understanding this concept of the push zone. In fact, that may be where the most interesting issues lie.

Let me pause our debate, in which we are productively discussing even the terms of debate, and ask you: How do you view the concept of the zone of proximal development? How is it similar or different than the push zone?

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With my emphasis:

Your statements are contradictory. First you say we should not interfere with decisions, and then you say that all decisions are “isolated” (i.e. implying that interference is impossible). The contradiction is resolved by realising that you also stepped away from the model of decision making in the brain when you made that first statement.

I agree with @Agaricus here. While the models themselves have heaps of value (which is why we’re discussing them in great detail), the persuasiveness of the current formulation is lacking. That is one aspect that we’re trying to improve through this discussion.

You may indeed be the first to see the moons of Jupiter, but simply naming those moons and recording their orbits is not convincing for someone who hasn’t seen them. Your models may be highly internally consistent, but for others it is the external consistency - linking with everything else that is known - that counts the most. You hinted at this when you mentioned “counterintuitive”.

Although “push zone” is @Woz’s term, he has written about push zone vs zone of proximal development before, so I will have a go.

Based on my understanding of ZPD as a teacher, I would say the main difference to me is a focus on the long term. With ZPD, I can help a child learn a topic much faster - in the short term - via heavy guidance. However, by doing so I can also erode the students’ sense of independence, as she learns that she needs me in order to learn. With the push zone, I might just say “Look it up yourself. There’s some great resources on youtube”.

Having tried both approaches, my experience is that students find the latter approach much more annoying, because they often believe it is the job of the teacher to simply transfer knowledge. However, with my persistence, I’ve found that many students also gain a much deeper sense of pride and knowledge when they do feel in charge of their learning. However, there is a large, immediate cost - since they don’t get the answer straight away, their short term progress is tangibly slowed. This process also has to be done with care, so that it doesn’t come across as showing a lack of care.

64

The following sentence shows why seemingly contradictory statements are actually pretty well phrased: Optimum learning decision is determined by the learn drive system, while coercion changes the optimum decision by outweighing the knowledge valuation network.

Before a good model can spark a cultural paradigm shift, it needs to infect a few influential sneezers. They care about consistency and clarity more than about wider persuasiveness. The carrier memes can be developed collectively. At this moment, in my texts, I use 31 metaphors, and the list keeps growing. Mountain climb and jigsaw puzzle have a good record of swaying skeptics.

If you say my models are not easily digestible, keep coming up with better metaphors!

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I view it as uninteresting. ZPDs speaks of short-term assistance. Optimum push zone (OPZ) speaks of redirection with positive long-term outcomes. ZPD smooths up the path up the mountain. OPZ disruptively changes the path. ZPD is naturally productive in an interaction. OPZ poses dilemmas to ponder. Employment of ZPD (assistance) may take away learning opportunities and suppress the learn drive. OPZ by definition adds to the learning process. ZPD is a child of an old-fashioned Prussian teacher-student model. OPZ is an offshoot of the limits on the optimality of the learn drive (ancient problem of local minimum).

You say that “the push zone” might be the most interesting part of “the optimality of the learn drive”. I disagree. In a healthy brain, in a healthy environment, the optimum push zone should be microscopic. Almost non-existent. It is the omniscience of the learn drive that should guide the future of education.

You almost agree with “All learning must be pleasurable”, but still have issues with striving at optimality. Let me then take it a step further: “learning should be maximally pleasurable” because it implies the optimality of choices for the future of a brain/child/student (by criteria such as goodness, happiness, intelligence, knowledge, productivity, etc. … you name it).

66

I think you may misunderstand my disagreement. You write:

At this moment, in my texts, I use 31 metaphors, and the list keeps growing. Mountain climb and jigsaw puzzle have a good record of swaying skeptics. If you say my models are not easily digestible, keep coming up with better metaphors!

The problem you set for us: Develop better ways of convincing other people that @woz’s ideas are correct. However, this is not possible without accomplishing an upstream task: Discover what we agree about, through better articulation, persuasion, or developing more advanced common understanding. When I criticize your formulations, it is not because I’m convinced everything you say is fundamentally correct, and I’m trying to find a better way to serve the ideas through popular exposition; no, it is because I can’t produce full agreement in myself. Specifying the nature of agreement and disagreement with a new philosophy of education, especially one that is radical, internally consistent, and uses specialized vocabulary, is exacting work. There is always a suspicion on the part of somebody who isn’t fluent in the specialized vocabulary that the whole framework is flawed. Therefore it takes commitment (typically a personal commitment based on the known intellectually reliability of a researcher like yourself) to carefully untangle the story and figure out where the problems may be. That’s what I’m doing. It’s slow but necessary.

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Let me specify a concept that I think is problematic in your formulation: “environment.” You write that we must not coerce, but only help by developing an optimal environment. I struggle with this formulation because it is not clear where the environment stops and the coercion begins.

For instance: In your view, I think, forbidding more than a certain number of hours watching TV is coercion. But how about if I decide not to own a TV. Is that simply “the environment?” Is that a distinction your framework supports? You won’t be surprised to know I find that sort of thinking quite weak.

The conceptual weakness of the concept of environment was discussed with some clarity in Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. However, note that Chomsky’s review doesn’t touch Pavlov’s discovery of the conditioned response. I wonder if your theory of the Learn Drive mixes a fundamental biological theory with an over-specified social theory in a similar way.

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I am glad you mentioned this problem because it truly did not occur to me there could be a confusion. Let’s look into a child’s mind and see the difference between the two problems to solve:

  • coercive: My dad put a ban on TV. He does not understand …
  • free: I have no TV. I wonder if I might …

Note that in the free case, environmental modification, the brain is focused solely on problem solving and educational decision-making.

In the coercive case we may have a whole constellation of trouble: anger, reactance, variable reward, learned helplessness, conditioning out parental authority, etc.

In coercion, the factor of change in the decision is someone else’s clearly perceived volition whose input is not filtered by knowledge valuation. There is no defense from the change by giving someone’s will a low priority.

Perhaps the simplest expression of the above is: in coercion, the educational decision is made by someone else (the harm might occur even if the decision would have been identical to the one generated by the learn drive)

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Instead of focusing on non-universal and untranslatable ethnocentric emotion words (e.g. “pleasure”, “happiness”, “enthusiasm”, etc.), perhaps it would be less hazardous and more productive to reflect on more general phenomena of control? As Timothy Carey put it:

Control is not so much what we do as what we are. We can never step outside the process of organic, autonomous control. […] When we understand ourselves and others as controllers, we can recognize how futile it is to suggest to people they should not control.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-control/201910/you-have-control

His other articles on control are worth reading too:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-control

But the problem with controlling others is that we are limited by what is called “control blindness”:

More on non-equivalence of emotion words, e.g.:

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Forgive me that I did not give Chomsky-Skinner reading high priority (please point me to some particular claims if you want me to address them). In short, both geniuses lived in the era before the wave of research on neural networks, or the role of the neocortex. Skinner would see the brain as a box that could be controlled with reinforcement, while Chomsky overemphasizes innate wiring of the networks. In that sense, they could argue till cow comes home and never arrive at the true nature of conceptual computation that capitalizes on research that exploded in the 1990s and continues accelerating. My own/third/modern point of view is that you can expose a concept network to ANY environment and see conceptualization occurring. That’s the best path to AI. Not many researchers seem to appreciate that yet. The bigger the brain, the slower the conceptualization process. For a child to learn a language, all it needs is an incentivized exposure (i.e. environment in which the language is useful). There is not need to manipulate incentives, nor can we hope for a language in a setting where it cannot be used as a tool. Feedback is essential for conceptualization. Grammar emerges as a set of rules expressed by abstract concepts. We do not need to be “specially designed” for the language beyond the learn drive, the incentives, and the cortex with its sensorimotor wiring. I never studied chimps, but if their lips could generate sophisticated audio messages, their ability to acquire language would likely only be limited by the power of the learn drive. Their cortex is good enough. It does not imply that Gary would find it easy to master Spanish. Most of all, his brain needed to combat powerful toxic memories from school. And then there is (1) the insufficient incentivized exposure, (2) the huge volume of knowledge that needs to be acquired, and even (3) the force of proactive interference that turns many liberals into conservatives at old age :slight_smile: In Gary’s case, spaced repetition can indeed be a breakthrough ingredient that reduced the cost of conceptualization by a quick acquisition of voluminous factual knowledge (i.e. associative knowledge that needs little generalization). In our discussion, it is important to separate the environment from extrinsic agents who attempt to redirect the conceptualization process away from the guidelines of the learn drive. This prescription is universal in that it affects schooling, socialization, rules of good conduct, ethics, disposition, health, and so on. After all, all those processes are controlled by the concept network of the brain.

The “theory” of wanting and liking in reference to novel input is not mine. It is ancient and common sense. I only beg to confine the discussion to the “learn drive” rather than to rely on ambiguous terms such as “curiosity”, and similar labels with a heavy baggage. Conditioned responses do apply to social sciences because they explain how networks work at the lowest level (e.g. outwardly observable as associating the building of the school with anxiety that started with a single bad math/French teacher). The learn drive is also a very basic and simple force that explains a whole lot about human behavior. But only its interaction with the concept network of the brain provide a powerful tool to understand how learning affects social intelligence and forces that shape societies.

p.s. I am not sure why you say “over-specified”. “Over-generalized” might be an accusation easier to pose. After all, I propose general models, and leave the details for others to fill in. For example, open behavioral spaces is a very general prescription derived from the learn drive, but the idea of the “protected zone” before sleep is a specific prescription emerging at hoc in this discussion for that specific social context of your story (I generally claim that “protected zone” is essential for brain health, creativity, learning, sleep, etc.).

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I would enjoy that change immensely if we wanted to focus on perfecting the control theory models that would help us understand behavior or improve general prescriptions. However, the simplicity and predictive power of the idea of the learn drive is so immense that I already see a burning need to spark a cultural paradigm shift that would spare millions of kids from tremendous suffering. I cannot live with a thought that we, modern good humans, impose a system verging on slavery on millions of little souls in seemingly absolute blindness to the harms, and a deep-rooted belief that we are doing a good thing. I see it as John Holt on steroids with an overwhelming powerful backup from science (not just good heart). This is why I joined this thread with great enthusiasm. Note that it is a brain child of minds with a strong erudite slant towards philosophy, social science, pedagogy, culture, etc. This is how we can translate science into a language understandable and acceptable by a wider audience. In this context, the word “pleasure” is extremely useful. If the learn drive generates pleasure (independent of your definition of pleasure), we have an attractive quality that speaks to many. I would love to see a revolution. But revolutions bring an association of blood. If we re-associate a revolution with pleasure, we can make a huge step forward towards the goal. In short, we are now not just about science. We are about communication. We can sacrifice a bit of precision for the sake of making the communication attractive and palatable.

Naturally, this does not mean you should tone down your input. Many thanks for a great deal of interesting links. I will read.

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I.A. Richards said that “The sovereign formula in all reading is that we must pass to judgment of details from judgment of the whole. It is always rash and usually disastrous to reverse the process.” Likewise, I would remark, it is not unwise to start with the general and get more specific as you move on.

Because shared language is the basis of all communication, I’ll attempt to avoid culture-specific words and concepts by using semantic primes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_primes

At the most general level, all people seem to agree, as we can impute from the alleged irreducible core of all human languages, that we are structured in such a way that (a first approximation):

We want things.
We see things.
We hear things.
We feel things.
We know things.
We think about things.
We feel some things (feelings).

At all times, many things happen to us. If we know, think or feel that what we see, hear and feel is not the same as what we want, we can do two or more things because of this.

We know that if we do one of these things, we cannot do the others. We think about these and what we want to do. There is one moment when you know what one of these you want more, and after this moment, you do this one for some time to know more about it.

That’s the essence of control explicated in simple words, or at least its first working approximation. We try to control our own perceptions of what we want to see, hear and feel. We do this through acting in our environment to bring our perceptions in line with our desires and goals.

And as Timothy A. Carey puts it “Control in the Classroom”:

“The “how” of control is explained by the presence of a little perceiving-comparing-acting (PCA) unit for everything we control. […] Essentially, what we are is a myriad of PCAs connected hierarchically and in parallel. […] Growing, developing, and learning, then, is a bit like building with Lego. It’s a matter of putting little PCAs together and then fitting them into, on top of, beside, behind, underneath, and in front of PCAs that are already there.”

I think it should be evident now that in the cognitive domain, in addition to the learn drive, there is also a decision drive. The first one is about interacting with the environment without imposing any changes upon it. But the latter is just the opposite – it’s all about making changes. They both are like two interdependent faces of a “Problem-oriented Janus Head”. You don’t want to separate them, I mean the drives and the faces, unless you aim at nurturing a disintegrated slave. A number of charges can be made against schools, but the main accusation is a prevalent disregard for the decision drive. In the established system there is no place for “I want X”. Determining a problem statement logically precedes the stage of solving it. But learners are not expected to identify and solve their own problems. They are required to apply standard solutions to standard problems. In effect, the impoverished decision skills lead to a bankrupt learn drive. David Perkins put forward an idea of “knowledge as design”, i.e. knowledge as “a structure adapted to a purpose”. I call it a “control-adequate information”. By being tailored to a person’s purposes, it becomes meaningful. Thus it reminds me of the Richards-Ogden Semantic Triangle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_reference) and of Wittgenstein’s statement:

“If a sign is useless, it is meaningless. That is the point of Occam’s maxim.”

Now it is up to you to judge the importance of the decision drive and the nature of its relation to the learn drive.

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decision drive is an interesting idea, but I would rather not use the term on the following grounds:

  • we can express the decision drive in terms of the learn drive by showing that we are driven to decisions that maximize the difference between BrainState[d] (at decision time) and BrainState[d+1] (after decision)(where the brain state includes the valuation of the state of the world)
  • brain state evaluation comes from the same roots as knowledge valuation (a valuation tree with network-based reward)
  • we can use the term executive function to express related behaviors
  • in addition to knowledge valuation network, I needed a separate and analogous term: problem valuation network; The concept is needed to prove that children are not lazy and they do not take the line of least resistance (e.g. in videogames)
  • the fact that we interact with the environment (or not) is secondary. We are mostly interested in the output form the brain (executive or otherwise); the output may be expressed outwardly or not, but it is the mechanism that matters
  • while the learn drive is not well understood, its monumental role in education needs to be emphasized; the decision drive is less interesting because we all make decisions, while kids are often not willing to learn; outwardly we do not see a decision problem. It is the internal valuation that matters. This is why knowledge valuation network could be an important term to explain the learn drive for those who already make the first steps in the right direction

In all the following cases, the concept network model can be the best way to disentangle complexity:

  • learn drive vs. decision drive - both are an expression of hierarchical valuations in the network
  • semantic primes - they become integrated and networked in the same way as all other concepts; the order of emergence is secondary, esp. that it may differ (e.g. in a deaf child, in a blind child, etc.)
  • top-down vs. bottom-up reasoning - in all problem solving we may avail of both approaches. It is up to the conceptual computation to find the shortest path. We may try to want to control that process consciously, but in the end, the concept network knows best

NB: I became curious about one of my earlier statements about teaching chimps to speak. Upon a bit of reading, I found that it was very difficult to have chimps ask questions in the language. This is symptomatic. Their learn drive would not consider the language as a good tool for exploring the world. In that sense, it would spell death knell to the prospects of language learning even if the chimp’s cortex was 3 times the size of ours. Interestingly, the story of Nim Chimpsky reminds of the worst practices of schooling. If I wanted chimps to speak, I would begin with respect and freedom to intermingle with human society. Without culture there is no education. Only then could we judge the power of the chimp learn drive.

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decision drive is an interesting idea, but I would rather not use the term

Our dynamic “information network” consists of:

  • goals [I want],
  • beliefs [I know], incl. observations [I see, hear, feel],
  • backwards and forwards reasoning [I think].

The combination of backwards and forwards reasoning is illustrated by the following example (borrowed from Robert Kowalski):

Goal: If there is an emergency, then you get help.

Beliefs:
You get help if you alert the driver.
You alert the driver if you sound the alarm.
There is an emergency if there is a fire.

Observation: There is a fire.

Forward reasoning: There is an emergency.
Forward reasoning (goal): You get help.
Backward reasoning (sub-goal): You alert the driver.
Backward reasoning (action sub-goal): You sound the alarm.

Now remove the goal “If there is an emergency, then you get help” and try to execute the program. It will fail miserably by completely disregarding reasoning. This is what happens when you abandon goals. I used the name “the decision drive” to make it analogous to the learn drive. To deal with our problems we need both goals (the decision drive) and beliefs/observations (the learn drive) in addition to general-purpose reasoning (backwards and forwards reasoning) that let us use our knowledge.

in addition to knowledge valuation network, I needed a separate and analogous term: problem valuation network

I’m not surprised!

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Imagine what may happen if someone by using force tries to transplant a huge part of his “information network” (goals and beliefs) into another person’s “information network”. Beliefs without goals are passive and costly redundancies. Worse still, logical inconsistencies between goals can arise that may eventually result in a serious breakdown. The larger the discrepancy, the harder it is to reconcile the conflicting goals and the greater the collapse. And control blindness doesn’t seem to facilitate it. Does it sound familiar? It should.

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It may be yet another example of ethnocentric bias. Many people assume that even yes/no questions formulated as interrogative statements, because of their illusory simplicity, are universal. Apparently they are neither simple nor universal and can be decomposed into simple structures. [1]

What we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions. John Archibald Wheeler [2]

One could argue that a full account of questions (except rhetorical ones) include three semantic components: ‘I don’t know’, ‘I want to know’, ‘I want you to say’.

Is Mary at home? =

I want to know something
I think maybe it’s like this:
Mary’s at home
I don’t know
I want you to say

Another example:

Is she at home or not? =

I want to know something
I think one of these two things is true
‘she’s at home’, ‘she’s not at home’
I don’t know which
I want you to say one of these two things

Also see:

[1] Cliff Goddar: Yes or no? The complex semantics of a simple question.
[2] https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09/02/it-from-bit-wheeler/

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I, like @646c, think that a reframing of the issue might make such conflicts dissolve.
However, unlike @646c, I am not sure that introducing the new concept of “control” helps things. In particular, the formulation of control as posed in those links seems tautological: Once we define everything as a process of control, then nothing is not control. If so, then that perspective gives no advice on how we should behave. It does however hint at the possibility of this environment-coercion boundary being a red herring.

To get more clarity, I think we can still get use from the language of “decisions”, “problems” and “valuations” if we focus on the child’s point of view. What are the child’s motives for learning? What are the algorithms they use to decide if something is worthwhile? In one case, a child may make the effort to learn for the reward of candy. In another case, to avoid detention or being grounded for not doing homework. In another case, because he has heard a word several times and is curious about what it means.

By looking at such motivations in more detail, I believe we can start to see patterns.

Firstly, this perspective, coercion is simply part of the environment. On this point I am pretty sure @Agaricus, @646c, @Woz and I all agree.

Secondly, we can see that some motivations might actually affect the quality of learning differently to others. For example, once the candy is consumed or the test score is shown to the parents, the knowledge that earned it may become worthless; I have felt similarly after doing some mandatory online professional development tests. However, if it was acquired out of curiosity, it will probably continue to have worth to the child. Therefore, it is important to focus not only on if learning occurs, but why.

Thirdly, the idea of “pleasure” as part of the learn drive becomes quite obvious. In the examples I gave above, and in any others you can provide, it will always be possible to frame the decision to learn as motivated by the desire to seek pleasure and/or avoid pain.

Before we make the reflexive jump straight back into “how can we influence this?” (through coercion, freedom, parenting, etc.), let me first ask: What other factors contribute to the result of learning, from the learner’s point of view?

1 Like
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“Treadmill desks are an adult invention that suffers from a lack of foresight that a well adapted e-kid exhibits from their preschool years.”
Huh? why is this bad? because it reduces focus? put it in front of the TV instead.

“Perverse incentives are just a subset of the problem. Do you count coercion as an incentive? When a kid cannot leave for a bathroom, or cannot use a mobile phone, it is not an incentive issue.”
What about school choice vouchers making kid’s opinions a market pressure.

“Child’s interests and passions should dominate.”
I was a video game addict and would do little else given the freedom. Slight upside; winning required thinking.
Sometimes the games were very very fun and at other times I was escaping other problems.
I enjoyed healthier activities but usually did not have the self control and wisdom to switch to them.
Unhealthy interests must be forbidden. I could not stop the addiction without completely rejecting most types of games. I wish I had done it years earlier.
Often exists a healthy alternative can easily supplant an unhealthy one. E.g. board games, collectible card games over video games. I did not get access to these until far later.
QS can help detect and illustrate the unhealthiness of activities.

School could have been much more fun if its lectures were run like Overly Sarcastic Productions, CPG Grey or Extra Credits. Also audiobooks.
Educational videogames too. Examples:game-engines-without-the-need-of-writing-a-single-line-of-code and GSG
Educational games are never as fun as pure entertainment games and do not addict. Using purely entertaining games lessens future novelty of the medium.
The problems of edutainment are damaged eyesight and attention. “Already, children are made increasingly restive by the contrast between the slowness of School and the more exciting pace they experience in video games and television.” -Papert
Today I have trouble concentrating on books after an hour of youtube. I think I suffered “Digital Dementia” at the extremes of my video game addiction.

I think schools should teach learning theory as an early required class. Let them understand coercion and learning drive and just learning so they may decide on what works for them.

Exists an anime on some of these topics. Baka and Test. Illustrates gamification and direct incentives and coercion and their failures? Very meta this piece of info.

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Hi RainDome,

“Treadmill desks are an adult invention that suffers from a lack of foresight that a well adapted e-kid exhibits from their preschool years”

I have been tainted by years of bad habits, but I like doing creativity while jogging in the woods, or listening to lectures while walking around with headphones, etc. While typing this, I am glued to a chair. An e-kid would probably use voice dictation.

What about school choice vouchers

Choice good. Support for education, or human creativity is good. I support them

I was a video game addict and would do little else given the freedom. I was escaping other problems

Reward deprivation is the minimum condition in addictions. “other problems” is even deeper (limits on freedom, school coercion, parental pressure?). A kid that needs to escape is likely not free (unless escape is part of healthy problem solving)

Unhealthy interests must be forbidden

I don’t believe in “unhealthy” interests in a healthy mind. As discussed previously, we should be able to provide a mathematical formula for the optimality of the learn drive.

If adults define games as unhealthy, this is nearly always due to their poor understanding of a child’s brain. If gamers define games as unhealthy in retrospect, it is usually due to a generalization that is biased by new valuations of knowledge. The only good estimator of knowledge is a healthy learn drive system in a healthy mind at the moment of valuation (i.e. while gaming).

I could not stop the addiction without completely rejecting most types of games. I wish I had done it years earlier

Unhealthy environments that produce addictions have one painful side effect. In retrospect, the gamer says “I am the one to blame”. The exact same problem refers to schooling. Your words indicate that your brain was able to find the right trajectory by evolving valuations. That’s how it usually happens and it is rather a point of evidence for the optimality of the valuation system.

Often exists a healthy alternative can easily supplant an unhealthy one. E.g. board games, collectible card games over video games. I did not get access to these until far later

This is the same optimization problem that pesters schooling. A mature adult determines what is healthy for a child. This is the first step towards the vicious cycle of lost freedom and addictions. If you impose board games as an alternative, you may increase the likelihood of addiction.

QS can help detect and illustrate the unhealthiness of activities

please explain how

Educational games are never as fun as pure entertainment games

let child’s brain decide

“Already, children are made increasingly restive by the contrast between the slowness of School and the more exciting pace they experience in video games and television.” -Papert

correct. This is good. Let them rebel, give up restrictive schooling and follow their own natural instincts that ensure best adaptation to the modern world. Papert would also want the young generation to take education in their own hands

Today I have trouble concentrating on books after an hour of youtube. I think I suffered “Digital Dementia” at the extremes of my video game addiction

please explain. Digital Dementia is a harmful myth

I think schools should teach learning theory as an early required class

this would be the first steps towards kids hating “learning theory”

Let them understand coercion and learning drive and just learning so they may decide on what works for them

Kids do not really need to learn about the learn drive. They have it from birth and the only strategy needed is not to destroy it by schooling (e.g. “on the virtues of the learn drive”). In the exact same manner, kids understand coercion and will rebel until learned helplessness sets it.

Thank you for testing my preparedness for debates in the subject. Please smash my reasoning about gaming using your own example. As an ex-addict, you are sure wonderfully qualified to abolish theoretical models!

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I use to think about the brain in terms of logic too, however, the interpretation based on conceptual computation seems dramatically simpler and more convenient.

We do not pause for backward or forward analysis. The network is using its own heuristics, which may use bad logic and still be beautifully effective.

As for the decision drive, it withers at school for the lack of decision-making practice. For the lack of options. I would still express it in terms of the learn drive because the mechanisms is the same. All we need to understand is the networked nature of valuations, and how to build those structures optimally. Once we have rich accurate valuations, we will use them in further learning, creativity, and problem solving (incl. decision making).

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Exist MANY other possible problems to escape from besides schooling.
Exist many other drives besides learning. Not all of them are healthy. It is very uncommon to be born without such drives. “I don’t believe in “unhealthy” interests in a healthy mind.” no true scottsman? If a drug addict never knew of the addictive substance he could not possibly become an addict. If a kid gets access to lots of healthy activities and does not even know of the unhealthy ones he will not feel coerced.

As an example; my SET game score drops from 1m30s to 2m20s if I drink coke for a couple of days straight and I get less sleep. If I dare get back in to my addictions again I am sure other cognitive test scores will suffer. See Nick_Winter eats butter. Supermemo should be able to score user’s performance vs expected performance as a measure of cognitive ability. Fun is an engineering pressure and when it competes with Educationality the game ends up with less fun. See https://twitter.com/nwinter 's coding game.

But natural instincts do not evolve nearly as fast as technology. If you would like to feel “digital dementia” play League of Legends or Civilization for 9 hours straight. Needs cognitive testing.

So the learning drive is not a conscious effort? Its just the enjoyment of learning without planned goals? Not really in hands kind of thing.