
The Bitter Truth of Learning: It’s Tough, Unpleasant, and Often Pointless - shubhamjain
https://shubhamjain.co/2018/03/24/the-bitter-truth-of-learning-its-tough-unpleasant-and-often-pointless/?hn=1
======
corodra
This just in, water is still wet and cows moo. I don't get the profoundness
here. I mean, if you're one of those stereotypical hollywood jocks from the
50s that's never read a book in his life until the age of 60...I mean sure...
you found a "bitter truth". Yea, learning at a level beyond your local pub's
trivia tournament or beyond the 5 minute youtube tutorial video is difficult
and takes time. Most importantly, it takes effort. Always has been, always
will be... until we get the Matrix style brain downloads to learn kung-fu. No
one great in any field, that's worth looking up to, just dances around saying
it's as easy as ordering a big mac from mcdonalds. They have more self-doubt
and introspective analysis in an hour than most of the population has in a
month, myself included.

Plenty of dead ends too when it comes to the path of greater knowledge.
Learning and doing new things that you never needed for your goal. Welcome to
scientific research of any caliber in any field. If you're lucky, you recorded
the Earth shattering kabooms though. If it were easy to be "smart", then don't
you think everyone would be "smart". Obviously we all define the terms smart,
educated, learned, intelligent and !dumbass differently. But (I hope) you get
the point of the context.

Anyways, I'm sure as shit late to the party by a few thousand years (at least)
saying this since I've been hearing this from the time of... I don't know,
forever in any field I gandered into more indepth. To recognize someone else
as above average, or at least capable, they have humility and diligence
towards educating themselves. Not complaining that it is difficult, but
striving towards it because it is difficult. Most of us have heard similar at
the projectile level of ad nauseum. Now I'm thinking it's not really said
enough if people still think "learning is hard" after the age of 9 is news
worthy. Getting really tired of teens with their "unique profound insight"
that's been published since Socrates' time.

~~~
projektir
This is definitely not "water is wet" levels. "It is obvious to me that this
is true" doesn't actually mean it is true, and it definitely doesn't mean that
other people think it is true. The jury is out on both of those, and I would
say learning in general is an exceedingly poorly understood subject mostly
based on very questionable school environments.

It's pretty hard to even talk about this issue without crashing into nature vs
nurture immediately, and that's a gargantuan question in itself. For example:

> If it were easy to be "smart", then don't you think everyone would be
> "smart".

This statement entirely depends on a nurture-based interpretation of the above
gargantuan question.

I've met lots of smart, accomplished people who believe that if learning
becomes difficult or tough or grueling, you're "doing it wrong". The kind of
people for whom talking about "T-shirt turning" is their idea of fun. Hard to
argue with them when they know more than I do, isn't it? Yet, for some people,
banging their head against something to understand it seems absolutely
necessary and they can't really avoid it. And so two people learn the same
thing, one carefree, one with a great amount of pain. What's this about?

I've had my own personal experiences where I was working on something, and
found it rather easy, and assumed it wasn't really anything complicated, but
got feedback which was the opposite of this. On the other end of the scale, I
had times when I was working really hard and felt like I was using everything
I had at my disposal to do the task... and then got feedback that I was
performing extremely poorly, and was missing something fundamental that would
have made my life easier if I would have just known.

"learning is pointless" is often very much about hard work not paying off.
This has major social implications.

There's a lot of oddness that comes with learning things in general. People
learn with far less effort if the task involved is actively enjoyable in
itself. Other people learn better when the task has a return, such as a
monetary one.

I think "learning is hard" is a very useful statement _socially_. I.e., for
the average person, there's lots of resistance to learning things. But it is
not a statement that can be made _globally_ , i.e., that learning is always
hard.

~~~
goldenkey
Difficulty in learning is mostly a function of age. I learned how to make game
hacks, x86 asm, pretty much 90% of the software engineering knowledge I
possess before the age of 15. Now I am learning higher level mathematics
because I want to solve some specific problems that have million dollar prizes
attached (but I am not doing it for the money.) Fortunately, I never felt like
I was doing something for a distant goal when I was young - I had awe and envy
as if I was constantly saying Ahhh! This next bit of learning is arduous and
often times detached. At least my early learning was in programming, something
I still love and find useful. But learning late will never be as easy as
curious youth learning. What we learn as youth seems to be unguided and
incidental. While reasons for learning as adults are mostly consequential and
dependent on some other thing that we desire. Secondary dependencies are
frustrating to the brain. Sometimes you can feel like that awestruck kid but
itll never match being in that state 24/7\. Being precise and directed in
ones' goals is almost like a death knell and anhedonia for enjoyment and ease.
Oh well..

------
anon1253
There is an important heuristic to make it much more pleasant though: do the
things you like and celebrate the successes. Looking back at some of the
things I learned, yeah it was tedious and downright frustrating sometimes. But
doing these things now I also feel the reward. Pick the things you think are
fun and enjoyable, there is no greater frustration than learning something
that ultimately doesn't pique your interest. In my case, especially in high
school, I disliked learning foreign languages (apart from English, of course),
but I enjoyed chemistry and philosophy. Obviously I put more time into the
latter, and worked through all the hurdles and headaches, but it was fun
getting to know that stuff. I still only speak two languages. If figuring out
T-shirt math isn't your cup of tea, then just don't.

I often feel that people see hardship as a virtue. You /must/ feel shitty,
otherwise you're not worthy. And, I don't think that's even remotely true in
the long run.

Really my only advice to anyone who wants to learn a new skill: if you start
to feel reluctant; just stop. Really. Only do the things you ultimately enjoy.
Why put yourself through tedious things in your adulthood. The world is a big
place, I'm sure there is something you like doing. Just do that. Don't beat
yourself up over it. I've never learned to play an instrument, and suck at
countless things; and that's fine. You'll notice that you will quickly become
better at the things you enjoy, compared to the tedious ones.

~~~
orev
> Only do the things you ultimately enjoy. Why put yourself through tedious
> things in your adulthood. The world is a big place, I'm sure there is
> something you like doing.

It’s too easy to interpret that advice as doing things that are easy. Easy
things don’t require effort, and people who are not inherently driven to
explore or be creative point to advice like this as ways to justify spending
all day watching Netflix or posting on Instagram. Those things are easy and
give some level of enjoyment, but they are ultimately empty and eventually
result in deeper sadness.

Hardship is not the right word but struggle is. Struggle is not pleasant but
leads to deeper satisfaction, and that’s what people mean when they talk about
“hardship” as a virtue.

~~~
dgreensp
I am definitely on the side of “do the things you ultimately enjoy.”

If you don’t enjoy something, ask yourself if you really have to do it, and if
you do, ask yourself how you can enjoy it more. And I say this as a dad who
has changed hundreds of poopy diapers and resolved thousands of toddler
requests and minor conflicts. Learning French is not “better” than watching
TV. There are lots of pointless, impoverishing hard tasks and meaningful,
enriching easy tasks. Any value judgments on struggle will make this harder to
see.

------
twodave
In my own experience as both a young software developer and now as a more
experienced leader, the work of learning isn’t unpleasant at all. Is it hard
to find the motivation to learn at times? Certainly! But afterwards I’m never
regretful because I feel as if I’ve gained a new superpower. I spent the last
3 months or so ramping up with a company working with half a dozen
technologies I had no experience with, and today I feel capable enough at each
of them that I could run the product myself without too many hiccups (though
albeit at a much slower pace). The skill of learning is by far the most
valuable in this field.

~~~
domevent
I agree, and I’d add that I find learning to be like any other activity, in
that practice makes me better at it. I’m also not infrequently surprised by
connections to “useless” learned material that only crops up months or years
later. As far as motivation, I think practice helps too; you get used to
gathering yourself and pushing forward or you get used to giving up, and I
prefer pushing on.

I also just enjoy learning, I love making new connections and synthesis of
existing knowledge with new information.

------
angarg12
> If you want to learn, you have to try harder.

Rather than learning being pointless, I would focus on this.

In a world of instant gratification we are fed the idea that if learning isn't
fun and easy, then you are teaching wrong. Granted, a lot of material can be
optimised, but I concur that people should expect to have to make a bigger
effort once you pass the superficial stage.

~~~
ghaff
That's the problem that I've always had with the "learning should be fun"
slogan. Yes, a lot of teaching isn't well done and ideally it would be a lot
more individualized. But learning a topic to any real depth is also a lot of
work which is absolutely not going to be "fun," at least as the term is
usually used, all the time.

~~~
extralego
I have always questioned claims that “learning should be fun” for many
reasons, but I think it would be a fallacy to think learning cannot be fun.
The exception I experience regularly involves curiosity. When I am curious
about something, learning it is usually fun. But, this is a fairly personal
process. I’m not sure it can be inherently encouraged through teaching
methods. The Socratic method seems to reflect this notion but is more a useful
tool for guidance than for exciting curiosity.

I still remind myself regularly that learning _without_ the push of curiosity
is necessary, and a path to that next burst of curiosity.

~~~
ghaff
Oh learning can absolutely be fun (and exciting etc.) And some types of
learning activities can be genuinely fun in the playing a game sense of the
word. I just think that there’s a problem with the mindset that if you aren’t
loving every minute you’re learning there’s something wrong.

I also enjoy writing. I can also assure you that looming deadlines are not fun
by reasonable definitions of the word :-)

~~~
vram22
>Oh learning can absolutely be fun (and exciting etc.) And some types of
learning activities can be genuinely fun in the playing a game sense of the
word. I just think that there’s a problem with the mindset that if you aren’t
loving every minute you’re learning there’s something wrong.

Spot on, IMO. That mindset is encouraged or aggravated by kind of e-learning
startups that seem to want to kidify / gamify / dumbify all their content.
I've had interactions with some of them when they approached me for
partnerships of some kind, or for content creation, often in Python. Have had
to say no to some of them due to that mindset, which I do not think is good
for either the students or the instructors / companies providing the
instruction, from both a pedagogical and a business (profit) point of view.

------
mikekchar
When I was teaching English in a Japanese high school the other teachers often
took the approach of "This is not going to be fun, but you have to apply
yourself in order to get the rewards later on." In my own study of Japanese, I
found that I really enjoyed learning -- which was diametrically opposed to my
experience of "learning" French when I went to school. 13 years of classes and
I _still_ can't speak French. In contrast, I did complete self of Japanese and
I'm totally functional in normal Japanese society.

Often the teachers would ask me to make an entertaining class, but I
eventually decided that the fun of learning would be at least 10x better than
any entertainment I could provide. At about the same time I was working with a
teacher who urged me to start giving out surveys to my students to find out
what they enjoyed most in my classes. Even I was surprised to find that my
daily quiz was the most popular element by a huge margin.

I completely restructured my classes so that students had much more
opportunity to apply their learning, rather than focusing on shovelling an
endless stream of content into their heads. I think it's that realisation that
you went from not knowing something, to understanding it and being able to use
it easily that's fun.

Yes, as you get more advanced, there is considerably more grind, but I think
if you build techniques to enjoy the process you are going to have much more
success. Especially for languages, it's going to take a _long_ time and you
have to be consistent. If you are just grinding it out and pushing yourself
every day, I think it will be _very_ difficult to make any significant
progress.

One of the things that I found illuminating was that the satisfaction of my
students (as measured by my surveys) pretty much mirrored their performance.
The better the average class grade, the more satisfied the students. This is
all anecdotal, but at least for me it made up my mind that there is a
relationship. All kinds of success is fun and learning is a kind of success.

Edit: I should point out that there is nothing conceptually difficult in
language learning -- even exceptionally stupid people are fluent in at least
one language. So the above may not apply to something that is really difficult
as opposed to really big.

~~~
Waterluvian
I hated math in high school. Sitting in that desk with an overhead projector
and a textbook was torture. I never groked basic trig, just memorised. And
then a few years ago I made a dumb little space shooter video game. The trig
_clicked_ and I was instantly in love. And then came vectors and I was even
more in love. It's left me yearning for the free time to go back to school and
very angry about all that missed opportunity in high school.

I've wept at the reflection of how awful math class was, and how amazing it
could have been.

~~~
seibelj
I used to think that home schooling was a travesty, but now that I can reflect
on how useless school was, maybe it isn’t so bad after all. The #1 most useful
piece of all my pre-university schooling was the socializing. Academics were
consistently subpar

~~~
Waterluvian
Agreed. I've always felt that K-8 is basically, "learn social skills and while
we're here, learn the basics." High school is more about learning pre-college
skills, learning skills, study skills, discipline, and how to survive puberty.

------
jseliger
An excellent point. See also _The Case Against Education_ :
[https://jakeseliger.com/2018/03/12/the-case-against-
educatio...](https://jakeseliger.com/2018/03/12/the-case-against-education-
bryan-caplan).

I'll also observe that many fields have an unpleasant introductory learning
curve in which one must memorize lots of random-seeming and unpleasant things,
before one can operate fluidly in that field and do anything interesting.

That's sort of the opposite of the original author's statement: "Learning is
fun, but often as it happens, the fun parts start drying up as you delve
deep," but it may be that there are un-fun parts on _both_ sides of the curve,
so to speak.

~~~
ghaff
Yeah, in a lot of technical fields in particular--especially early on--you
just have to take a lot of facts as given, memorize formulas, etc. because you
just don't have the background in that subject or related subjects to
understand the underlying mechanisms or derive equations from fundamental
principles. For example, as I recall high school physics, you memorized a lot
of formulas because most students wouldn't have the calculus background to
derive them.

I'm not sure what I think of this article though. I read what he's saying as
along the lines of a lot of people who find essentially pop science about some
subject interesting would find developing true expertise about the topic a
real slog. That's doubtless true but there are relatively few things that any
of us have the time or interest to go deep on.

------
everyone
I know I'm learning when I get this feeling like.. mental pain. Still, its a
brilliant thing to do consistently.

Eg. Running is pointless, you're not running away from a predator, or a foot-
messenger delivering a message or anything; but you are maintaining your
health, fitness and quality of life.

~~~
philipkglass
The paradox of the _experience_ of learning is that I feel drained and
unintelligent when I'm actually going through the work to understand something
new. It's only some time after I start really understanding something that I
also _feel_ the mental expansion from the new skills I've acquired. If I
wanted to _feel_ knowledgable all the time, I'd be better off not trying to
learn new things other than what I acquire incidentally around my already-
honed skills. I've experienced this cycle enough times to know that I should
keep going even when I feel worn down. I agree that it's a lot like physical
exercise -- it brings tremendous benefits, but it's also unpleasant enough in
the moment that it's hard to act in your own best long term interests.

------
iandanforth
The complement to this is that after you've learned something it is easy to
forget the pain you went through. Empathy can be a powerful tool for pedagogy.
If your learner can see that you understand the struggle they are going
through it can help remove a layer of shame and self-doubt. If, on the other
hand, an educator regularly calls things easy, basic, trivial, or simple (or
worse demeans someone for not understanding) the lack of empathy will be
apparent and learning will be impeded. One thing Sal Khan has said is that
video lessons are uniquely effective because there is no chance the educator
will become frustrated with the learner even if they need to repeat the lesson
a dozen times. In person and in our writings it can be hard to remember the
struggle, but it can be one of the most helpful things we do as we train
someone new to any task or concept.

~~~
darkerside
I think there's an inverse to be wary of here. If you keep talking about how
difficult something is, and tell someone how this is really complicated, their
expectation can shut them down to understanding something that really is as
simple as it sounds.

------
gmoes
So, two points:

First of all, clickbaity title as he says it might be "pointless".

Secondly he is talking about topology. I find it to be a very hard subject. If
you pick up most topology books you will find an area of math that most people
have never really been prepared for and the books themselves start with some
concepts that are very abstract. Now depending on what you are interested in,
Topology can provide many insights into the shapes and constructions of
spaces. Things like metric topology tie into how vector spaces are
constructed. Things like n-dimensional manifolds can be related to aspects of
machine learning.

I recommend The Teaching Company’s Shape of Nature videos for learning some
general ideas about topology.

Just a disclaimer, I am not a mathematician, so I might be off on some my
perceptions. Also no pun intended on pointless.

------
cirgue
> Learning new things can be exhilarating, but it can get tough, and
> unpleasant, too. Explanations can be dumbed down, but the effort involved to
> grow further is unavoidable.

Anything rewarding demands something from you, otherwise it wouldn't be
rewarding. Pain, discomfort, and adversity are good for the soul. If you want
instantaneous gratification without sweat, do heroin or play video games.

~~~
falcor84
Well yes, and it's exactly the same for video games, which almost always are
about making the player overcome obstacles to achieve rewards.

I'm not sure about heroin, but there's a bit of an obstacle in getting that
into one's system too, no? And then usually in getting additional funds to
acquire the next fix?

Life is a struggle.

~~~
cirgue
> Well yes, and it's exactly the same for video games, which almost always are
> about making the player overcome obstacles to achieve rewards.

Video games are about creating the perception of challenge and the perception
of reward, both of which are calibrated to maximize user engagement and
enjoyment. I don't _dislike_ games as a form of entertainment, but let's not
pretend they're in any way an analogue of real life.

~~~
QasimK
Is there a difference between perception of challenge and a challenge? Either
way, I do think that some video games _are_ challenging. On the other hand,
some games, particularly freemium mobile games really do just hijack your
brain.

------
FabHK
Like exercise. It's hard, unpleasant while you do it, exhausting, and
ultimately pointless. That's not an argument against either exercise or
learning though.

(Oh, and it feels great afterwards.)

~~~
thriftwy
I would take a pill that will take care of your muscles in background any day
when it's offered.

I.e. why does it even have to require input from my side? You don't have to
train your peristaltics, why are other muscles different? I guess it just
boils to a mutation 100 thousands years ago which decreased default muscle
power to save on energy, we could roll that back, get extra colories burned as
a bonus.

Animals don't work out. They also don't push the envelope every day.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Animals constantly 'work out'. If you've ever had an indoor cat they seen as
generally one of the lazier creatures but they will every once in a while just
spaz out and start bouncing off the walls. It's not just for fun - it's an
instinct that helps keep them in shape. It's the same for all animals. They
will constantly work out. It looks like play, but it serves a valuable purpose
-- somewhat like how young predators will regularly play fight with each
other. That's not just for fun.

Evolution and life is primarily an optimization game. And our bodies are
product of that. When we do things, we tend to become better at them. When we
don't do things, we tend to lose our ability to do them well, hopefully in
lieu of new focuses. Even the brain works this way - as becomes readily
apparent when you age and can see in your acquaintances who continues to work
with their brain, and who instead spends their time watching television and
imbibing.

~~~
textor
Not really. Cats do "spaz out" episodically but a typical human with the same
amount of exercise would probably be a flabby sack of fat with cardiovascular
issues. The activity isn't predictive of the rate of muscle atrophy to the
same degree across species, because loss of muscle is mediated by a specific,
variably effective biochemical cascade and is not a consequence of inactivity
per se. Similarly, loss of memories or cognitive skills is an active process
that may have negligible speed even without much utilization.

But I'm nitpicking.

------
sagefy
In "Peak" by Anders Ericsson, he alludes to a few principles that makes
learning into deliberate practice: setting small goals, getting expert
feedback, focusing and removing distractions, and being somewhat discomforted.
This article is familiar to that last point. To get the most out of learning,
according to Ericsson, you should be in the 'yellow zone': not where you feel
comfortable and easy, but also not reaching fight-flight-freeze mode either.

Getting in depth with a subject is painful. And its easy to waste time and
effort. But it can be less painful if you're smart about it.

If you're tracking your progress, and you're aware what that next 5% looks
like, that's much easier than trying to go for 100% each time. Getting
feedback is critical too, and having that person help you set short,
challenging but achievable goals makes a big difference so you aren't moving
too quickly or slowly. Having peers who you can relate with and socialize your
challenges with makes motivation easier. And you really need to set a time and
place on a recurring basis, where the physical environment sets you up to be
successful.

Disclaimer: I'm working on sagefy.org

------
aj7
“Ownership not as a percentage of equity, but as a measure of your ability to
change things for the better.”

This is wishful thinking. This is how you wish the world was, and, as a child,
you demand it to be so.

------
erikb
Such a small article about such a big topic. Yes, real learning takes a lot of
time and energy. You might think that solving problem X, really solving it,
might be done after a few hours. And in the end, after you really done it, you
realize you spend two years.

However, that doesn't mean it's worthless, or that you should apply it to
stuff that doesn't matter (like the math of t-shirt turning). If you do that
it's really a waste of time.

But there are endeavours that are totally worth it. For instance really
spending the time to learn the movements of quick folding t-shirts might bring
more order to your life, increase your dressing and save quite some time over
the years. And there are other endeavours that are really, really profitable.
For instance learning another language well enough to read good books in it.
It will not add +X value to your life, it will add another dimension. Think
about turning a 2D person from plane world into a 3D person. How much more
vast would his understanding of the world be? While the price of learning that
much of another language might be incredibly high, the value is even higher.

So, how do you discover these profitable learning experiences? By looking at
all the Cool New Stuff that all the kids are learning, figuring out what is
the "magic ingredient" that enables everybody to just get the job done without
learning this one skill that is a lot of work, seemingly has not many
benefits, that everybody in the industry should know but for some reason most
people don't know. And then, instead of using the Cool New Stuff you go and
learn that basic skill. You will be surprised that in the end, when you really
mastered that one skill, you are not just able to handle all the Cool New
Stuff of the next 10-500 years, you won't even need it to solve your problems.

In writing that might be learning all the different words and applications,
grammar and punctuation. In software development that usually means studying
ascepts of unix (parallel processing, package management, data storage, text
processing, binary processing). In business that means learning balancing the
books and taxes. In soccer that means shooting straight curves, basic stamina,
dribbling.

You will be surprised how many partners and competitors you will beat just
with mastering these boring basic skills.

------
crawfordcomeaux
If I'm viewing learning as pointless, I'm forgetting about how learning
anything is a practice in learning how to learn.

The need to learn how to learn is so important and poorly taught in society.
There's a great online course on the subject here:

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-
learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn)

------
lewis500
This is very true. When I was in grad school I made a group to teach data vis
to grad students. The distribution of learning, in retrospect, was super
lopsided: almost everyone who did our activities wasted their time; a handful
became obsessed and are now professionals who use those skills and many others
constantly.

------
DoctorOetker
Am I the only one who found the referenced essay by Isaac Asimov on creativity
much more interesting than the article? It seems like that essay deserves a HN
thread of its own!

------
godelmachine
The first thing that came to my mind after reading the post was this book -

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge by Abraham Flexner

The second thing was - he used "cul-de-sac" instead of "dead end" :)

------
phkahler
You turn a T-shirt inside out the same way you do a plastic bag. The fact that
there are a few extra holes makes no difference. I suppose someone could bring
a whole lot of fancy mathematical thinking to this, but why?

------
thriftwy
Math and physics are hard[0], but the rest of stuff is fairly easy. You can
infer 80% from logic and experience, start learning from a high base. In any
area.

[0] so you should avoid trying to reinvent the wheel here

~~~
groby_b
Ah. That explains the beautiful explanations given time and again on HN, where
somebody utterly clueless derives a field from first principles, and proceeds
to make an utter fool of themselves.

No, you cannot infer 80% from logic and experience. It might _look_ that way,
but mostly you'll be hopelessly wrong and and entertainment for anybody
working in that field.

Do the hard work, or be a clown. In any field.

