I think about this a lot. I’m currently dangling with the fourth Hypothesis, which seems more correct to me and one where I can actually do something to ameliorate the trade-off implied by it.
In this comment, I talk what it means to me and how I can do something about it, which ,in summary, is to use Anki a lot and change subjects when working memory gets overloaded. It’s important to note that mathematics is sort-of different from another subjects, since concepts build on each other and you need to keep up with what all of them mean and entail, so we may be bound to reach an overload faster in that sense.
A few notes about your other hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1c:
it doesn’t seem obvious why the computations of doing math would be more costly than those for watching TV.
It’s because we’re not used to it. Some things come easier than other; some things are more closely similar to what we have been doing for 60000 years (math is not one of them). So we flinch from that which we are not use to. Although, adaptation is easy and the major hurdle is only at the beginning.
This seems plausible for the activity of doing math, which involves many moments of frustration, which might be meaningfully micro-painful.
It may also mean that the reward system is different. Is difficult to see on a piece of mathematics, as we explore it, how fulfilling it’s when we know that we may not be getting anywhere. So the inherent reward is missing or has to be more artificially created.
Hypothesis 1d:
It seems plausible that mentally taxing activities are taxing to the extent that they involve processing ambiguity, and doing a search for the best template to apply.
This seems correct to me. Consider the following: “This statement is false”.
Thinking about it for a few minutes (or iterations of that statement) is quickly bound to make us flinch away in just a few seconds. How many other things take this form? I bet there are many.
For the monkeys that had “really good” plans for how to achieve their goals, never panned out for them. The monkeys that were impulsive some of the time, actually did better at the reproduction game?
Instead of working to trust System 2 is it there a way to train System 1? It seems more apt to me, like training tactics in chess or to make rapid calculations.
Thank you for the good post, I’d really like to further know more about your findings.
I think about this a lot. I’m currently dangling with the fourth Hypothesis, which seems more correct to me and one where I can actually do something to ameliorate the trade-off implied by it.
In this comment, I talk what it means to me and how I can do something about it, which ,in summary, is to use Anki a lot and change subjects when working memory gets overloaded. It’s important to note that mathematics is sort-of different from another subjects, since concepts build on each other and you need to keep up with what all of them mean and entail, so we may be bound to reach an overload faster in that sense.
A few notes about your other hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1c:
It’s because we’re not used to it. Some things come easier than other; some things are more closely similar to what we have been doing for 60000 years (math is not one of them). So we flinch from that which we are not use to. Although, adaptation is easy and the major hurdle is only at the beginning.
It may also mean that the reward system is different. Is difficult to see on a piece of mathematics, as we explore it, how fulfilling it’s when we know that we may not be getting anywhere. So the inherent reward is missing or has to be more artificially created.
Hypothesis 1d:
This seems correct to me. Consider the following: “This statement is false”.
Thinking about it for a few minutes (or iterations of that statement) is quickly bound to make us flinch away in just a few seconds. How many other things take this form? I bet there are many.
Instead of working to trust System 2 is it there a way to train System 1? It seems more apt to me, like training tactics in chess or to make rapid calculations.
Thank you for the good post, I’d really like to further know more about your findings.