¶ Summary
¶ Background
- Pleasure of Learning by Piotr Wozniak (2017)
- Published as part of "I would never send my kids to school".
- Forms the core of Wozniak's philosophy of learning.
- Video summary available.
- Digital Flashcards available for Anki and SuperMemo.
¶ Main Nuggets
- Fundamental Law of Learning:
- "Good learning is inherently pleasurable."
- "Without pleasure there is no good learning."
- Learning should be pleasurable.
- Pleasure IS optimization.
- Global optimization can never work in learning.
"Students of the world unite! You no longer need to suffer the pain of learning. If you suffer, you have your basic student right to protest. If you suffer, something is going wrong! You can stop learning! If anyone demands learning from you, and you do not enjoy it, you can strike back, and demand pleasurable learning! This is not your elitist hedonistic weak heart demand. This is a demand of reason. No pleasure, no learning! Your suffering is a waste of time, a waste of health, and a waste of human global resources!"
¶ A Miserable Grind
¶ Displeasure in Learning
- Most students are more familiar with displeasurable learning.
- Schools:
- Intitutionalised misery.
- Students are like widgets on an assembly line having education forced upon them.
- Students resort to cram and dump study methods to deal with the workload.
- Most leave school having forgotton everything they learned.
- Spaced Repetition Systems:
- Many complain of the repetition "grind".
- Learners feels like workers at a flashcard factory.
- Mindlessly mashing the spacebar.
¶ "Grind is the Glory" Mindset
- Smart students suffer less at school.
- They internalize and perpetuate the myth that learning is a miserable grind.
- Myth: Displeasure must be endured to learn.
- Mistake: Become like an ascetic monk.
- Retreat into the mountains
- Deny yourself of worldly pleasures.
- Endure miserable purgatory.
- Hope for better afterlife.
¶ Societal Damage
- We spend our entire developemental period as humans in school.
- When schools are the place of misery, we create unhappy societies.
¶ Pleasure in Learning
¶ Good Learning is Pleasurable!
- Wozniak insists that learning is pleasurable.
- Our drive to learn is innate.
- Humans have a built-in desire to learn new things (Learn drive)
- Our Learn Drive has been perfected over the course of evolution.
- Learning and exploring are inherently rewarding.
¶ Knowledge Valuation
- How do we value new knowledge?
- Information enters the brain to be processed.
- Undergoes neural processing.
- An unconscious comparison between new and old.
- Is it consistent?
- Is it coherent?
- Is it surprising?
- Is it semantically relatable to my prior knowledge?
- Does it "slot in"?
¶ Jigsaw Puzzle Metaphor
The brain is asking does this jigs
nt jigsaw puzzle
If it is consistent, coherent, add it to my knowledge
else reject it.
- The brain is asking does this jigsaw puzzle piece fit my current jigsaw puzzle
- If it is consistent, coherent and surprising, accept it and add it to my knowledge
- else reject it.
- Each word is like a membrane that envelops the underlying concepts it is composed of.
- If I don't have a good understanding, I won't be able to relate the new knowledge to my prior knowledge
- When things go well, new knowledge slots in to old knowledge.
@./media/jigsaw-slot-in-export.png
Pleasure
-
For each new piece of knowledge that fits my models of reality, I am rewarded.
-
Reward of a new piece of knowledge.
-
Evolutionary past: rewarded for knowing about your environment - knowing about
-
Think about the scientist who makes a new connection and jumps up and down like a kid shouting "EUREKA"
Reading about Quantum Mechanics
- However, consider what happens when things go bad:
@./media/models-of-reality.png
- Jigsaw puzzle - how many jigsaw puzzle pieces do I need to add to my current
- Semantic distance
@./media/semantic-distance.png
- Semantic distance long = need to add many jigsaw puzzle pieces
- Semantic distance short = need to add few jigsaw puzzle pieces
Displeasure 
-
Eyelids feel heavy.
-
Feel tired.
-
Irritated.
-
This is a core problem at school: you are coerced into learning things
that are completely incoherent. Study methods are ineffective, stress-fueled cram and dump, rather than stress free pleasurable learning reinforced with the power of spaced repetition.
¶ Follow the Learn Drive!
¶ Optimizing for Short Semantic Distances
- How do we make sure knowledge "slots in"?
- Learn drive naturally guides you!
- Following the learn drive is optimal.
- Pleasure IS optimal.
¶ How do you "follow the learn drive"?
- Since the ability to learn new information depends so heavily on prior knowledge
- information channels must be tailored to the individual
- Free learning.
¶ How can this be?!
- How can simply doing what you want result in great outcomes?
- Can free learners become great mathematicians and scientists?
¶ ## Unintuitive?
- Wozniak admits he was slow to understand the power of pleasure in learning.
- TODO: Quote
¶ Simple, local rules
- Trees.
- Individual cells in the meristem of a tree twig have no global goals
- simple hormonal, biochemical, or biophysical rules that guide growth towards light
- Those simple rules are highly efficient and the tree can shape its crowns beautifully
- Easily redistribute nutrients, easily navigate objects like rocks
- Market Economies.
- economic agents make choices to buy sell in markets.
- wages guide people to their optimal employment
- creates the world economy.
- Do you have
- Blind, local optimization.
- Many other instances of this in nature, evolution for example.
¶ Revolutionary Implications
- Department of education tries to play God and use its invisible hand to globally optimize
- Traditional education system is destined to fail.
- coherence of new information can only be determined inside the learner's mind by a comparison between that new information and prior knowledge.
- When they do this, they make the same mistake as the economic planners of the Soviet Union and those who argue against evolution.
- The department of education cannot decide what information should be learned, nor when it should be shown to you
- The school system's global optimization takes the average of the prior knowledge of each student, and tries to create
- THEN they FORCE you to learn that information