reinforcement learning theory explains why I slacked on classes

[gusl]

Incidentally, I think reinforcement learning theory explains why I've become such a "bad student", ever since high school, with an up-dip for Freshman and Sophomore years of college.

Beginning student (cup is empty):
* effort is high (working through difficult problems; conceptual work)
* immediate reward is very high (new understanding, new concepts, which inspire new ideas and projects)

Experienced student (cup is full):
* effort is medium (keeping up with terminology, readings, homework; drudgery, but very little conceptual work)
* immediate reward is low (what you discover after working on problems is not groundbreaking, and often roughly what you already expected; also, you realize that the particular things you are learning have no immediate relevance to your life, and that you'd rather look it up when you come to need it.)

By "immediate reward", I mean in the scale of a semester. The reward for good grades seems to only come when you get a job offer or acceptance letter.

As a young student, I was addicted to "conceptual revolutions". To quote Robin Hanson:

I am addicted to "viewquakes", insights which dramatically change my world view

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm easily excitable by ideas. But it is a fact of life that "viewquakes" are a non-renewable resource: eventually, the brain's librarian gets tired of resorting everything, one's frame becomes stable (for better or worse), and all new knowledge must fit into it, if it is to be understood. After this point, conceptual revolutions are only allowed at a small scale.

Fortunately, not all my motivation comes from new ideas. I can also get excited by technical challenges, and small-scale reconceptualizations (e.g. unifying concepts). But the latter are best honed through intensive week-long or or month-long projects, not by jumping from problem to problem every half-hour. The expression "jump through hoops" comes to mind, especially when the homework is meant to be challenging.

I am expecting admissions committees to read this. It may not be a satisfactory explanation, but I think it's better than the alternative: bad grades without an explanation.

Comments

[dkmnow.livejournal.com]

At this point (my cognitive state these days), I'd be hard pressed to put my thoughts on this into words. But it does echo some of what I'd expect to see in our carrot-and-stick culture. "Self-Determination Theory" asserts that extrinsic conditioning undermines intrinsic motivation (http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/cont_reward.html) [*], which, by my admittedly loose assessment, is putting it very mildly. While they apply this almost exclusively to extrinsic rewards, it's hardly a stretch to apply it to punishment as well. But even in the case of rewards, this was something I sensed intuitively even as a child: being "rewarded" for my behavior in a way that had no cause-and-effect relationship to what I had actually done (except in the context of an arbitrary, contrived and externally imposed social power relationship beyond my control) always seemed strangely galling in a way that was almost worse than being punished. It was as if I had an innate mechanism warning me that such rewards were harmful and a danger to my future, and I always felt soiled, as if I had somehow allowed myself to be manipulated into participating in my own destruction. My sense now is that this was and is absolutely correct, though until recent years, I lacked the conceptual vocabulary to even begin to understand why.

[* 1) Most of the research is available in PDF format via the Publications pages; 2) The above link is no longer accessible via the site's internal links, including the navigation menu, so if this interests you, you'll probably want to bookmark the "Rewards Controversy" page right away.]

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Alfie Kohn makes the same point in the context of education.

yay, rationality

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

from http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/fdtd-g.htmfrom

2. Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenging tasks. Students of all ages who have been led to concentrate on getting a good grade are likely to pick the easiest possible assignment if given a choice (Harter, 1978; Harter and Guzman, 1986; Kage, 1991; Milton et al., 1986). The more pressure to get an A, the less inclination to truly challenge oneself. Thus, students who cut corners may not be lazy so much as rational; they are adapting to an environment where good grades, not intellectual exploration, are what count. They might well say to us, “Hey, you told me the point here is to bring up my GPA, to get on the honor roll. Well, I’m not stupid: the easier the assignment, the more likely that I can give you what you want. So don’t blame me when I try to find the easiest thing to do and end up not learning anything.”

Re: yay, rationality

[dkmnow.livejournal.com]

Yup, not only does extrinsic conditioning destroy intrinsic motivation, it corrupts the learning and development process in any number of other ways. In education, this general conclusion pops up all over the place in various forms. And yet, the more clearly one attempts to present the hypothesis, and the more soundly one supports it with research and other evidence, the more actively one's work is attacked and suppressed by the "old-school" academic establishment...

As someone once said, "Never believe anything until it has been officially denied."

:-p