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Some People Just Never Learn
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jan 24, 2008 06:27 PM
from the i-could-use-a-dose-of-anti-a1 dept.
from the i-could-use-a-dose-of-anti-a1 dept.
Iddo Genuth writes "German scientists recently showed what many of us suspected but could not prove — some people just don't learn. The German researchers have found a genetic factor that affects our ability to learn from our errors. The scientists demonstrated that men carrying the A1 mutation are less successful at learning to avoid mistakes than men who do not carry this genetic mutation. This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors."
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Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Yes (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
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I call them me (Score:5, Interesting)
I tend to bang my brain against new concepts again and again, until I finally understand them in big chunks. I tend to overlook the obvious, and go for the bizarre interpretations of things.
So I often find myself in situations where I feel stupid for not grasping something that is readily apparent to most everyone else, but at the same time I've been successful with teaching myself certain concepts other people wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.
For instance, I've taught myself how to program in Haskell, whereas most programmers run screaming from anything with more than a minimal functional paradigm component. It did take me quite a while to get some concepts in Haskell, though.
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Re:I call them me (Score:5, Insightful)
Case in point, you have certain so called "flaws", but also talents in other areas. Every last one of us does, but most keep trying to fit the idiotic mold of society, that they miss out on where their talents would be best placed. Whether you blame genes, parental upbringing, childhood experiences or chemicals in your diet, the pedigree means far less than what is done with it.
I congratulate you on benefitting from your strongpoints, and not letting your weaker points take you down. There truly is little reason to let the crooks and liars shape your life. Ten years from now they will once again discover that the research in a certain direction was paid by certain people. Live your life, enjoy it, and let the crooks sell to other suckers.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My problem is more with people who, when finding out they are wired differently, then say "oh, it's not my fault, it's my genetics" and proceed to not even try to learn. Obviously this isn't the GP, but for far too many people, things like this (and say, ADHD, Aspergers, etc) become an excuse to be trotted out when convenient, not
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Giving up on learning because you're ADD is probably a bad idea, but giving up on school could possibly be beneficial. If one can find a better way of doing things on one's own, then that route should be taken.
Re:I call them me (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm reading a little anti-...oh, maybe anti-ADHD-diagnosis in this, among other things. Funny, this happened last time this story was reported here [slashdot.org]. Let me clear up a few things.
Lower output of dopamine (or some insufficiency of it in some way), which is what this article is about in the end, is implicated in ADHD. It's very well known that dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, is one of the few things responsible for your prefrontal cortex getting a jump-start when you need to reason about something. (Another is norepinephrine, the neurotransmitter associated with stress.) The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive function: integrating memories, learning, predicting outcomes - a whole slew of things. Presumably, the dopamine squirt is what gets babies to learn to eat. Chew food -> dopamine + good feeling -> brain kicks into gear to figure out how to get it again.
Most healthy adults can start up the prefrontal cortex on demand. People with low levels of dopamine can't. From a neurological perspective, low levels of dopamine is obviously a bad thing.
When I was diagnosed with ADHD, I did my own research, including reading relevant papers from neuroscience literature. ADHD generally shows up in brain scans as decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex. Taking medication brings dopamine levels up to normal - it's why they prescribe stimulants. For anyone else it's a bad idea, but for people with ADHD it's normalizing.
(I'd be very interested to know whether these researchers at Max Planck have discovered any ties between this mutation and ADHD.)
Nearly all of my grade-school teachers suspected that I had ADHD and told my parents, but they never let on to me. Instead of being labeled "ADHD" or "damaged" or "worthless" (as you say), I got labeled "hyperactive" and "annoying" and "arrogant" and "difficult". I was 25 by the time I understood that something must be objectively different. By the time I was 31 I was feeling "damaged" and "worthless" without anyone ever saying those words to me. I had started affixing those labels to myself because of repeatedly failing to do things I knew I was perfectly capable of that I actually wanted very badly to do.
Still want to withhold diagnosis and treatment based on your preconceived notions of normal variation?
I don't. My son, who is like me in so many ways it's scary, is getting all the relevant information as soon as he's old enough to understand it. He's entitled to the full knowledge he'll need to decide who he wants to be. I never got that option.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Haskell [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So that explains... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So that explains... (Score:5, Funny)
FiremanSam - now flame proof.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"all of those voting machines that voted for Bush"
Whether or not enough votes were faked/switched/stolen to steal the election, it seems indisputable that about five out of ten U.S voters voted for Bush in 2004. And turnout was sixty percent, so really seven out of ten * registered voters either didn't care if Bush got re-elected or they voted for him. Having known and worked with many Americans in the United States for several years centred around the 2004 election, I still don't know how to account for that widespread amount of mass wilful ignorance
Dupe? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dupe? (Score:5, Funny)
Then again, given the subject, perhaps it bears repeating?
Given the subject, perhaps it bears repeating?
Given the subject...
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well my wife (Score:3, Funny)
If A1 is still found today... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:If A1 is still found today... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:If A1 is still found today... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:If A1 is still found today... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:If A1 is still found today... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes.
"Will you go out with me Saturday night?"
"I wouldn't go out with you on Saturday if you paid me $1 million."
"What are you doing next weekend then?"
Persistence in the face of negative feedback sometimes is a winning strategy.
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Re:If A1 is still found today... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not necessarily, evolutionarily wise, a trait will not be propagated "just" because it is advantageous (although that does help), better to look at it as it will only be extinguished if it is disadvantageous (puts the member with those traits behind others in the group competitively).
But in our current society, where we prop up traits that would (in a more aggressive society (e.g. animal kingdom) be naturally extinguished (like autism, retardation, sia
Story tag (Score:3, Funny)
Easy to spot the men who carry the A1 gene (Score:4, Funny)
Dopamine (Score:3, Interesting)
Oblig. Simpsons Quote (Score:5, Funny)
Homer: "Um.... n... no?"
Chain Gang Sheriff: "You just don't learn do ya?"
Just wait till the general public get hold of this (Score:4, Interesting)
Obligatory german/austrian comment (Score:5, Funny)
HTH
Learn1 Learn2 != Learn = 0 (Score:4, Interesting)
It's just harder.
Seriously, it doesn't mean they don't learn (the title of this
It's like saying that Americans can't speak more than two languages. Most have never tried, nor had the easy resources to do so, but they could probably learn additional languages, even if it might be harder here.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> What we cannot figure out is why they are not leaving.
Several reasons.
1. There is still hope of turning the tide and sweeping the socialists from the field of battle. All we really need is one more Reagan type who understands that when strongly confronted, evil tends to yield.
2. Even with the government about to fall to the socialists, America is still a good place to be.
3. Related to #2, name somewhere better? Lots of socialist p
In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Bill Gates Says Capitalism Shouldn't Be So Cut-Throat"
"Microsoft Says Current Windows Is The Most Secure"
BINGO !! (Score:3, Funny)
She is an attorney, and, ironically, a teacher.
VINDICATION!! (Score:3, Funny)
Darn. Should have patented it.
Strategy (Score:5, Funny)
biological "explanations" explained (Score:3, Informative)
Got that? Sample size: 26.
People just eat this shit up these days, they love biological "explanations" for human behavior. Hey, it's not my fault, I was born this way. Work harder in school? But if you don't have the natural talent, what's the point? Spend more money on public education? Oh, what the hell for? Those people will never learn.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What does this have to do with OCD? (Score:5, Funny)
We smart people use alcohol as a method of temporarily relieving the lonely burden of not being a moron, in order to fit in with the rest of you.
If it weren't for alcohol, most, if not all, of my slashdot posts would not exist. Judging by the rest of the posts here, I'm not alone in my relentless pursuit of mediocrity.
Race you to the bottom, gentlemen!
Parent
Re:What does this have to do with OCD? (Score:5, Informative)
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plus some definition problems (Score:5, Insightful)
But real life is not nearly so simple. First, there are many cases where people don't see all the choices, or even any choice. You can't be guilty of failing to learn from your mistakes if you're not even aware of the alternate choices you could be making.
Second, it's only in fairly restricted cases that a perfectly clear connection can be drawn from choice to consequences. If you try to beat the train at the RR crossing and get creamed, well, that one's easy. But what if you take a job at X corporation and are then unhappy five years later? Is it really the job, or is it the crappy marriage that you contracted, too? More importantly, how do you really know that if you'd not taken a job at X corporation, you'd be happier? Maybe things would be even worse! Real-life choices are usually befogged by the difficulty of being sure of the connection between choice and consequences, and by the difficulty of accurately guessing what the consequences of alternate choices might have been.
Finally, there is sufficient statistical noise in many choices that sometimes the best decision is not to "learn from your mistakes." We call that "persistence" and give great credit to people who display it, when their continued "failure" to learn from their mistakes eventually pays off. The guy who starts business after business, each failing, until he finally hits on the one that pays off. The athlete who comes in 2nd and 3rd, time after time, until eventually he wins. We can go back and, with 20/20 hindsight, argue that he did "learn from his mistakes" in that he didn't do the same thing in exactly the same way again. But it's still the case that on the topmost issue, the main choice, he "failed to learn from his mistakes" by deliberately choosing to do again and again something at which he failed again and again. Until one day, he didn't.
For all these reasons, I think the definition of what it means to "learn from your mistakes" in real life (as opposed to the narrow world of the academic psych lab) is pretty problematic.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of all races.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I'm drifting away from my point here so to bring it back, I'm just saying that Germans hold no monopoly over hating Jews. There are LOTS of people who had done horrible things to them in the past.
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Re:Of all races.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
SLOW DOWN, mate! Think of the consequences... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't tell if your comment here is supposed to be approving perserverence or chiding stubborness, but in any case, the perl 6 development effort has achieved some notable successes over the years (and few, if any, members of the team have been working soley on perl 6...).
Off the top of my head: