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emr comments on SSC discussion: growth mindset - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: tog 11 April 2015 03:13PM

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Comment author: emr 14 April 2015 05:24:26AM *  4 points [-]

The discussion itself is a good case study in complex communication. Look at the levels of indirection:

  • A: What is true about growth, effort, ability, etc?
  • B: What do people believe about A?
  • C: What is true about people who hold the different beliefs in B?
  • D: What does Dweck believe about C (and/or interventions to change B)?
  • E: What does Scott believe about C (by way of discussing D, and also C, and B, and A)?

Yikes! Naturally, it's hard to keep these separate. From what I can tell, the conversation is mostly derailing because people didn't understand the differences between levels at all, or because they aren't taking pains to clarify what level they are currently talking about. So everyone gets that E is the "perspective" level, and that D is the contrasting perspective, but you have plenty of people confusing (at least in discussion) levels ABC, or A and BC, which makes progress on D and E impossible.

Comment author: jbay 16 April 2015 06:15:03AM *  0 points [-]

Upvoted because I think this is a really good point, which is almost totally missed in the surrounding discussion.

For example, it's interesting to see that a lot of the experiments were directly attempting to measure C: The researcher tries to persuade the child to believe something about A, and then measures their performance. But then that research gets translated in the lay press as demonstrating something about A!

I feel that if emr's post were put as a header to Scott's, the amount of confusion in the rebuttals would be reduced considerably.

Incidentally, I've observed a similarly common difficulty understanding the distinction between derivative orders of a quantity, eg. distinguishing between something "being large" vs. "growing fast", etc. This seems less common among people trained in calculus, but even then, often people confuse these. I see it all the time in the press, and I wonder if there is a similar level-hopping neural circuit at work.

For example, there are three or four orders of differentiation that exist in common discussion of climate change, eg:

  • A: Scientists recommend that atmospheric CO2 be kept below 350 ppm.
  • B: Canada emits only about half a gigaton of CO2 per year, whereas China emits nearly twenty times that much.
  • BB: Canada emits 15.7 tons of CO2 annually per capita, among the highest in the world, whereas China emits less than half of that amount per capita.
  • C: China's emissions are among the fastest-growing in the world, up by nearly 500 million tonnes over last year. Canada decreased its emissions by 10 million tonnes over the same period.
  • D: The growth in Canadian oil-industry emissions could slow if low prices force the industry to reduce expansion plans.

Et cetera...

Ostensibly what actually matters is A, which is dependent on the fourth integral of what is being discussed in D! People end up having a very hard time keeping these levels distinct, and much confusion and miscommunication ensues.

I wonder -- do you think students of calculus will be better at understanding the levels of indirection in either case?

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