For clear cut examples, the question certainly remains. Your example of the comedian is what got me thinking about this though, because if I heard of a person doing what he’s doing, the “fake justifications” explanation would seem like the vastly more likely one to me.
There’s no way he actually thinks Garfield is the best way to comedy superstardom, or even a reasonable use of his time at all. In your example, we can look into his mind and see that he’s doing comedian training. If I met this guy in reality though, my explanation of his behavior would be “He’s lazy and just wants to watch tv all day. He tells himself it’s training because he doesn’t want to admit this”.
If he just wanted to watch TV all day, I’m sure he could find something more entertaining. After a while, the jokes about mailing Nermal to Abu Dhabi get really old. This sounds like a case where he somehow convinced himself that watching Garfield and Friends was a good way to become a better comedian.
So did I, but while I’m sure a comedian-in-training could learn something from it, it’s far from optimal.
Actually, most possible things people do are obviously far from optimal. Just look at how much time students spend zoning out in class, “learning”. It’s trivial to come up with a better way to use that time. Thinking about this scares me, because I could probably be doing something better most of the time, if I had a better idea of how to win at life.
Just look at how much time students spend zoning out in class, “learning”. It’s trivial to come up with a better way to use that time.
School isn’t about learning. Zoning out in class can be a rational choice on the part of a student. If your goal is to acquire the credentials school provides and a required component of that is a certain attendance level but you get little of value from the class then zoning out can be a rational response. This describes much of my school career.
When I was in those situations, I would usually read a book, or ponder something, and periodically check to see if the teacher was saying anything important. It was like an enforced study time. That’s more rational than sitting there vegetating. (The downside is that some of the most boring teachers would get ticked off. Still worth it, though.)
I would usually pay attention to the actual lesson unless it was review over what we’d already been assigned to read or otherwise not new information. At that point, and otherwise when question and answer or assignment writing was going on and I was finished the assignment, I would mostly tune out the teacher and spend my time drawing on the backs and margins of my worksheets. I never in any other period of my life did as much artwork as I did while bored or distracted in high school, and I think it’s because for many reasons I don’t bother with well enough to control I am usually tired, and prefer to piss away my time with small “entertainments” like YouTube videos which are almost always available than invest my time in things which require more of an energy commitment despite also being more rewarding.
Or I would nap on my desk. Got in trouble for it surprisingly rarely.
Maybe we should put the X-is-not-about-X stuff on the wiki so we can accumulate datapoints. I mean, for schooling I have 2 (lack of use of the proven superior spaced presentation/spaced repetition over the prevalent massed presentation; lack of sensible school hours for high schools), but most people interested in the topic will never come across these.
So did I, but while I’m sure a comedian-in-training could learn something from it, it’s far from optimal.
Definitely. And I’m sure that you’d learn a lot more about television than about how to do stand-up comedy by studying a television series that isn’t itself about stand-up.
For clear cut examples, the question certainly remains. Your example of the comedian is what got me thinking about this though, because if I heard of a person doing what he’s doing, the “fake justifications” explanation would seem like the vastly more likely one to me.
There’s no way he actually thinks Garfield is the best way to comedy superstardom, or even a reasonable use of his time at all. In your example, we can look into his mind and see that he’s doing comedian training. If I met this guy in reality though, my explanation of his behavior would be “He’s lazy and just wants to watch tv all day. He tells himself it’s training because he doesn’t want to admit this”.
If he just wanted to watch TV all day, I’m sure he could find something more entertaining. After a while, the jokes about mailing Nermal to Abu Dhabi get really old. This sounds like a case where he somehow convinced himself that watching Garfield and Friends was a good way to become a better comedian.
I liked Garfield and Friends...
So did I, but while I’m sure a comedian-in-training could learn something from it, it’s far from optimal.
Actually, most possible things people do are obviously far from optimal. Just look at how much time students spend zoning out in class, “learning”. It’s trivial to come up with a better way to use that time. Thinking about this scares me, because I could probably be doing something better most of the time, if I had a better idea of how to win at life.
School isn’t about learning. Zoning out in class can be a rational choice on the part of a student. If your goal is to acquire the credentials school provides and a required component of that is a certain attendance level but you get little of value from the class then zoning out can be a rational response. This describes much of my school career.
When I was in those situations, I would usually read a book, or ponder something, and periodically check to see if the teacher was saying anything important. It was like an enforced study time. That’s more rational than sitting there vegetating. (The downside is that some of the most boring teachers would get ticked off. Still worth it, though.)
I would usually pay attention to the actual lesson unless it was review over what we’d already been assigned to read or otherwise not new information. At that point, and otherwise when question and answer or assignment writing was going on and I was finished the assignment, I would mostly tune out the teacher and spend my time drawing on the backs and margins of my worksheets. I never in any other period of my life did as much artwork as I did while bored or distracted in high school, and I think it’s because for many reasons I don’t bother with well enough to control I am usually tired, and prefer to piss away my time with small “entertainments” like YouTube videos which are almost always available than invest my time in things which require more of an energy commitment despite also being more rewarding.
Or I would nap on my desk. Got in trouble for it surprisingly rarely.
Maybe we should put the X-is-not-about-X stuff on the wiki so we can accumulate datapoints. I mean, for schooling I have 2 (lack of use of the proven superior spaced presentation/spaced repetition over the prevalent massed presentation; lack of sensible school hours for high schools), but most people interested in the topic will never come across these.
Definitely. And I’m sure that you’d learn a lot more about television than about how to do stand-up comedy by studying a television series that isn’t itself about stand-up.