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(Recording) Discussion/Q&A: "How Might We Learn?" (Patreon)

Published:
2024-05-20 20:50:28
Imported:
2026-06
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2024-05-19 Discussion of "How Might We Learn?"

Discussion of https://andymatuschak.org/hmwl

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Collin

You might already be aware of this, but your ideas around "picking the herbs" seem very related to the idea of legitimate peripheral participation (see Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's "Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation").

Collin

I'd like to articulate a few inter-related critiques and ideas related to "How Might We Learn". I hope they are be generative for you. The first critique is that self-directed learning is useful but not sufficient. Humans are interdependent and have many blindspots. Many of the most useful growth experiences come from becoming aware of these blindspots/unknown-unknowns. However, you can't direct yourself to your specific blindspots, because you are not yet aware of them. I think that a powerful tool for self-directed learning would be immensely helpful to many people, but it might leave the majority of people's problems unaddressed. As an example: one could imagine a situation in which someone might tell Sam something like "Hey, it seems like maybe you're interested in BCIs mainly as a way to feel a sense of belonging in a community. It also seems like maybe you don't put as much effort into maintaining and improving relationships with your friends and family as you could. Maybe you'd better be able to achieve a sense of belonging by improving those relationships rather than by seeking new relationships elsewhere? A good first step would be to respond to their messages promptly instead of ignoring them for months." This is definitely not self-directed, and might even be unwelcome, but might also be very valuable feedback. One might argue that something like the above is a job much better left to humans than technology. However, recommendation engines currently do a lot to expose people to ideas, content, etc. that they would not have sought for themselves. The very idea of recommendation engines, as opposed to search engines, is to expose you to things that you would not have sought ought for yourself. The second point I'd make (more of an idea than critique) is that I think there is a confused relationship between non-coercion, non-violence, non-deception, and helpfulness. You noted that people who are the most helpful to us are frequently pushy and have expectations of us. This sort of looks like coercion, but seems helpful. However, there is also deception. This can be a part of coercion, but is distinct from expectations, which are often relatively explicit and non-deceptive. "I think that you can accomplish this and I want you to accomplish it. I expect you to diligently work on this." is non-deceptive in a way that "Hey, look at this interesting thing [that I'm exposing you to because I think it will influence you in a way that you aren't aware of and that I'm not going to share with you]!" isn't. I think maybe non-deception is important in a learning environment but that maybe non-coercion can be a bit confused and preclude things that are actually necessary or helpful in a learning environment. The last critique, really a continuation of the first, (and which you may have thoughts on that you didn't share in the talk), it that education cannot be value-neutral. What does the enabling environment enable? When we construct an enabling environment for ourselves, we construct it for our purposes (ignoring the question of how we got our purposes). When we construct an enabling environment for others, what do we think we should enable them to do? I think that maybe non-deceptiveness requires that one be relatively clearly about this. I also think that statements like "this enabling environment enables people to pursue their own ends" can be confusing and confused. Like, there has got to be some reason why one chose this as a goal for the enabling environment over other goals. There has got to be some implicit theory as to why this is the thing that we should do, and this theory probably says something about what ends ought be pursued. Learning and growing can sound appealingly value-neutral, but learning what and growing towards what? Why learn instead of not learn? Why grow instead of not grow? Deeper still, for such a goal to be meaningful we must inhabit an ontology in which growth, learning, ends, etc. are meaningful concepts. In addition to being philosophically important, I think that this is very useful for building a product. "I want to build a tool that will enable me and others like me to quickly find pertinent bits of information in papers from well-established academic disciplines." is relatively more actionable because of its specificity. Means are for ends -- I think maybe at some point it is important to ground the means in concrete ends. The ends might be relatively amorphous or might shift during research/ideation, but I think maybe it can be very fruitful to bring it back to concretes. Anyways, I hope some of this is interesting, and would be happy to discuss more.