Just got around to reading this edition, Bela Fleck is so good. Have you ever watched a video of their drummer performing? He plays the drums with a guitar, as impossible as that sounds. I encourage you to check out this video of it if you haven't seen before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqGEc8vnMbk&ab_channel=nevesh
The podcast with Jim was interesting and fun. There was a brief discussion on how learning for kids could be much better in today’s world. Can you please drill down on this topic? I have read about Ad Astra School (Elon Musk) - https://markattrack.com/ad-astra-school/#Ad-Astra-School …but trying to figure out more on how to practically implement a better encourage kids to learn to learn on interesting and impactful topics.
Hi Shinka! Thanks for listening, glad you found it fun.
I haven't looked at the details of that school -- I think what I said was about an anecdote told in one of Richard Feynman's memoirs..
The general idea is that it's usually better to focus a lot on the meta skills like learning how to learn, learning how to look things up, how to solve problems, and build up good habits like curiosity and skepticism and the general principles of the scientific method (test hypotheses by trying to disprove them, etc), basic psychology like confirmation bias or anchoring, etc... Than learning a bunch of rote facts and knowing lots of "teacher's passwords" that give you good grade, but your understanding of the world isn't that much better and you don't really have the tools to keep going with lifelong learning and problem solving.
Maybe I'll dive deeper in that topic at some point, thanks for the suggestion!
Also to this point, sometime in the podcast Jim mentioned how the US were ranked really poorly in learning math and what not. I have a lot of friends who grew up in some of the countries that rank very highly and although their rote memorization ability and mental calculation speeds are very high, they're also very linear thinkers that have high deference to consensus. We discuss the educational differences a lot and one of the things we always circle back to is that I learned that learning could be fun. They learned hard work and discipline. To which we all wish we could have a bit more of the other's system.
Loved the podcast and hearing more about your thought processes. Would be curious to learn more about how you developed your curiosity!
I don't think anyone has the perfect system and does everything well. Some systems are stronger on some aspects and weaker on others. If you were designing something from scratch, you'd probably want to pick best practices from here and there, and try new things and have a good iterative loop with good feedback loops, and make sure you measure the right thing because these metrics tend to become what is focused on (so you can end up getting worse while thinking you're getting better).
Just got around to reading this edition, Bela Fleck is so good. Have you ever watched a video of their drummer performing? He plays the drums with a guitar, as impossible as that sounds. I encourage you to check out this video of it if you haven't seen before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqGEc8vnMbk&ab_channel=nevesh
🤯
Wow, that's crazy. Thanks for sharing, Spencer 💚 🥃
Hi Liberty,
The podcast with Jim was interesting and fun. There was a brief discussion on how learning for kids could be much better in today’s world. Can you please drill down on this topic? I have read about Ad Astra School (Elon Musk) - https://markattrack.com/ad-astra-school/#Ad-Astra-School …but trying to figure out more on how to practically implement a better encourage kids to learn to learn on interesting and impactful topics.
Hi Shinka! Thanks for listening, glad you found it fun.
I haven't looked at the details of that school -- I think what I said was about an anecdote told in one of Richard Feynman's memoirs..
The general idea is that it's usually better to focus a lot on the meta skills like learning how to learn, learning how to look things up, how to solve problems, and build up good habits like curiosity and skepticism and the general principles of the scientific method (test hypotheses by trying to disprove them, etc), basic psychology like confirmation bias or anchoring, etc... Than learning a bunch of rote facts and knowing lots of "teacher's passwords" that give you good grade, but your understanding of the world isn't that much better and you don't really have the tools to keep going with lifelong learning and problem solving.
Maybe I'll dive deeper in that topic at some point, thanks for the suggestion!
Also to this point, sometime in the podcast Jim mentioned how the US were ranked really poorly in learning math and what not. I have a lot of friends who grew up in some of the countries that rank very highly and although their rote memorization ability and mental calculation speeds are very high, they're also very linear thinkers that have high deference to consensus. We discuss the educational differences a lot and one of the things we always circle back to is that I learned that learning could be fun. They learned hard work and discipline. To which we all wish we could have a bit more of the other's system.
Loved the podcast and hearing more about your thought processes. Would be curious to learn more about how you developed your curiosity!
I don't think anyone has the perfect system and does everything well. Some systems are stronger on some aspects and weaker on others. If you were designing something from scratch, you'd probably want to pick best practices from here and there, and try new things and have a good iterative loop with good feedback loops, and make sure you measure the right thing because these metrics tend to become what is focused on (so you can end up getting worse while thinking you're getting better).