My high school math teacher used to always say to us, “When you don’t know what to do, do something.” I think he said it because he was constantly pissed about questions left completely blank on his math exams, and wanted students to write down scribblings or ideas so he could at least give them some partial credit
I actually hate that practice of math teachers—encouraging students to “write something down” so they can give partial credit. Often this means that when students run into a particularly difficult problem, at some point they stop actually trying to solve the problem and start intentionally making mistakes so that they come up with some sort of answer—you know, they make shit up. This does not seem to be a skill that teachers should encourage students to develop. I don’t even want to think about how many points I’ve gotten on exams for writing down things that I knew were patently false.
This may be the intuitive line of thinking, but in the course of life, action seems to be incredibly more effective than non-action. There have been many times where I haven’t done anything and I’ve kicked myself in the butt for not at least putting forth some sort of effort vaguely aimed at the goal because even that little bit would have been better than the alternative. It doesn’t seem like bad pragmatic advice to suggest people to move to action rather than sit passively, as we all know how one can “Fake it till they make it,” and while that does not build the most efficient system, it does give the person a chance to stay afloat where otherwise, if they did nothing, they would sink.
in the course of life, action seems to be incredibly more effective than non-action
To stop this generalization from running too far, it depends on situation: what are the probabilities, rewards and risks. But assuming that there is no danger, yes, even doing random things is an opportunity to learn; and we often do better than random.
About the teacher vs student situation, this can be solved by proper incentives. What about giving +1 point for a correct answer, −1 point for incorrect answer, and 0 points for blank? Then rational students will stop making up stuff that has less than 50% probability to be right.
To be clear, the problem isn’t that the professors are encouraging action over inaction. It’s that they are encouraging students to spend some of their limited amount of action points making things up rather than actually making progress toward solving the problem.
I actually hate that practice of math teachers—encouraging students to “write something down” so they can give partial credit. Often this means that when students run into a particularly difficult problem, at some point they stop actually trying to solve the problem and start intentionally making mistakes so that they come up with some sort of answer—you know, they make shit up. This does not seem to be a skill that teachers should encourage students to develop. I don’t even want to think about how many points I’ve gotten on exams for writing down things that I knew were patently false.
This may be the intuitive line of thinking, but in the course of life, action seems to be incredibly more effective than non-action. There have been many times where I haven’t done anything and I’ve kicked myself in the butt for not at least putting forth some sort of effort vaguely aimed at the goal because even that little bit would have been better than the alternative. It doesn’t seem like bad pragmatic advice to suggest people to move to action rather than sit passively, as we all know how one can “Fake it till they make it,” and while that does not build the most efficient system, it does give the person a chance to stay afloat where otherwise, if they did nothing, they would sink.
To stop this generalization from running too far, it depends on situation: what are the probabilities, rewards and risks. But assuming that there is no danger, yes, even doing random things is an opportunity to learn; and we often do better than random.
About the teacher vs student situation, this can be solved by proper incentives. What about giving +1 point for a correct answer, −1 point for incorrect answer, and 0 points for blank? Then rational students will stop making up stuff that has less than 50% probability to be right.
To be clear, the problem isn’t that the professors are encouraging action over inaction. It’s that they are encouraging students to spend some of their limited amount of action points making things up rather than actually making progress toward solving the problem.