Tag: Adam Mastroianni

Maybe join a book club instead

Adam Mastroianni, in an article on the myths of political hatred:

I think there is one very good reason to cap our political hatred: it makes us miserable. Not because we’re always coming to blows with our political enemies—the data suggests that doesn’t happen very often—but because we’re always thinking about them. I’ve seen perfectly nice evenings turned dismal by the discussion of the latest political outrage. I’ve heard goodhearted people pine for the painful deaths of certain Supreme Court justices. I’ve watched friends pickle their brains in the poisonous brine of political Twitter. The true cost of partisan antipathy is not the war waged between us and our enemies, but the war we fight in our own heads.

I just think this a bad way to live. Indulge your contempt long enough and it’ll turn you stupid and mean. You’ll start thinking that pointless things are actually important, liking writing angry emails to your cousin or publishing the ten millionth scientific article on political polarization. You’ll live in the perpetual hell of a world that is always ending but never ends. I dunno man, maybe join a book club instead.

October 7, 2022 Add Comment

On learning and vibes

Experimental psychologist Adam Mastroianni wrote an interesting (if long) consideration of why we forget most of what we learn, and how “vibes” are more important than knowledge in that learning process.

That sounds a lot more woo-woo than it really is. An example he gives:

Here are things I don’t remember from high school:

– The phone number of my best friend, despite dialing it hundreds of times.

– How to play a high D on the trumpet, despite playing it for years.

– Almost everything I memorized for quizbowl competitions, despite carrying around freezer bags full of flash cards and testing myself on them over and over for months at a time.

Here are things I do remember from high school:

– How fun it was to call my best friend and talk for hours.

– How exciting it was to march onto the football field, trumpet in hand, and play a halftime show.

– How much I despised my school’s rival quizbowl team, how infuriating it was when their coach called us “reasonably intelligent,” and how I was so nervous before our championship match against them that I nearly threw up.

On vibes:

Knowledge is cheap and easily acquired. What you really need is curiosity, self-efficacy, perseverance, perspective, and hope. And those are vibes.

On what it takes to learn (and teach) through good vibes:

The students who ultimately succeed in learning R [the programming language] are not the ones who force themselves to memorize functions or do a bunch of coding drills. They’re the ones who accept they will feel stupid and that most of the rules will at first seem totally arbitrary, and who understand that they will gain great power if they just keep going. … I’ve found that the best way to transmit this vibe is to show them just how dumb I am.

On vibes as dark energy:

It is possible for teachers to send a vibe of “success in school depends on satisfying my whims.” Peers can give you the vibe of “this is all just a game before we go do whatever will pay us the most.” Buildings can say “it’s cool to cause the opioid crisis as long as you donate some money afterward.” Nobody ever has to state any of this explicitly, and usually nobody does. Vibes are like dark energy: invisible, but evident everywhere.

September 7, 2022 Add Comment