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Indeed! Per Kay: perhaps we should instead be optimizing “number of Sistine Chapel ceilings per generation.” vpri.org/pdf/hc_pers_co

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Carlos De la Guardia

@dela3499

· Oct 23, 2018

Replying to @dela3499 and @andy_matuschak

I get the impression that self-directed learning is tested by the perverse question: “When students are free to be different and learn what they like how they like, do they nevertheless turn out the same, and learn precisely and only what I want them to know - efficiently?”

Ken Kocienda

@kocienda

Oct 23, 2018

Are you implying that the Sistine Chapel ceiling is an exemplar of self-directed work? If so, I’m not sure that’s right. Pope Julius II coerced Michelangelo to do the painting. The artist himself would have much rather kept to his sculpture.

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Oct 23, 2018

No, Kay argues that we should choose goals which emphasize leaps of beauty and insight over, say, proficiency with a set of standard skills. So: is it possible that student-directed methods support the former but are judged by the latter?

Ken Kocienda

@kocienda

Oct 23, 2018

I get your point. Yet, fresco painting is a difficult skill, and without proficiency in it, leaps of beauty and insight in that medium are not possible. So, a question: is it possible to make skill acquisition joyful?

Michael is back in San Francisco, soon in Santa Fe

@michael_nielsen

Oct 23, 2018

Reversing the question: can you do joyful things which result in you acquiring deep skills? And the answer seems to be yes, in many domains.

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Yes! Which in turn creates lovely prompts: * How might we make the joyful things you already do better supply you with deep skills? * How might we help you plot a path from your position to some goal which traverses only joyful activities which result in deep skills?

6:40 PM · Oct 23, 2018Twitter Web App

Replying to

and

Ideas are connected, and deep ideas are connected to many things (e.g. evolution is related to biology, epistemology, optimization, neural networks, etc.) If somebody’s interested, you can explain those connections.