OK, I see where you’re coming from. Learning to play the violin is frustrating, but it’s probably fun once you can do it.
So if we could find a way to make learning easier, hypothetically speaking, you would use that opportunity to be a better generalist rather than further specialising in your chosen area? That’s interesting because specialists are usually better paid. I wonder if that’s a common point of view.
LWers are generalists, in general. Most of us know some psychology, some economics, some philosophy, some programming and so on. But I wonder what Less Wrong would be like if we all specialised, while remaining united by the pursuit of rationality. I think Robin Hanson said something similar in that post where he compared us to survivalists, trying to learn everything and failing to reap the benefits of specialisation and cooperation.
Anyway sorry for rambling like this. I tend to use these open threads as an opportunity to think out loud, and nobody’s told me to shut up yet so I just keep going.
I’ve been thinking about educational games as well. The main problem, it seems to me, is that trying to make learning fun for someone who isn’t already interested and motivated is a waste of time because you’re just trying to hide the teaching under a sugarcoating of computer game, and that never works. On the other hand trying to make learning fun for someone who is already interested and motivated is pointless, because they already want to learn and the game just adds needless hassle like completing levels in order to reach the next piece of knowledge, or whatever game mechanic you’re using. It’s a pity, because I think of the way games like Portal build up complex puzzles from simpler ones and use the level itself to ask the player leading questions, like a kind of visual/spatial socratic method, and I think there must be a way to use that to teach, espiecally mathematics where visual/spatial metaphors could easily translate into mathematical metaphors… but I just can’t come up with a concrete version of the idea that wouldn’t be boring or stupid.
Lately I’ve been thinking that the fastest way to get to grips with a new subject is probably just to memorise big chunks of information without trying to understand it, using techniques like a memory palace and spaced learning programs like Mnemosyne and Anki, then think about what you’ve learned later, and insight might strike you. This would be espiecally effective if you combined it with a social precommitment to teach your knowledge to someone else, or to take part in a competitive quiz.