Slashdot Mirror
Some People Just Never Learn
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."
I call them "co workers"
Well this explains my entire morning commute right here. The same people making the same mistakes every week. At long last we have a scientific explanation.
...all those people who voted for Bush the second time.
Apparently the editors have this genetic deficiency as well: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/08/1414258
"This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors."
"stubbornness" or inability to learn from mistakes has zero to nothing to do with compulsive disorders. I notice the source paper makes no mention of cumpulsive behaviours. Probably just another crap journo writeup of something he/she didn't understand and they pulled some bogus connection out of their ass.
says "you'll never change" I guess now i have a genetic excuse.
It had to be Germans to establish scientific proof of eugenetics.. :-(
...doesn't it mean it has some evolutionary advantages?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
This story should be tagged "Homer".
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
They are in their second or later marriages...
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
I wonder if this implies that medication that affects dopamine levels reduces (or increases) a persons failure to learn from mistakes.
Chain Gang Sheriff: (whips Homer) "No listening! You hear me?"
Homer: "Um.... n... no?"
Chain Gang Sheriff: "You just don't learn do ya?"
"And then I visited Wikipedia
Then they'll brainwash there kids into thinking they have a genetic disorder that prevents them from learning (educators will propagate this as well). Then the activists will get involved and say that poor grades are discriminatory against something that these people have no control over. Then...
I was diagnosed with some sort of generic learning disability when I was a teen.
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.
-------
Incite and flee.
So perhaps they won't invade Poland a third time?
HTH
It's also unclear whether the behaviour is properly labeled. "Learn from your mistakes" is a phrase that assumes your choice and its consequences are clear: do this or do that, and if "this" leads to bad consequences, why, you need to "learn from your mistake" and do "that" instead.
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.
If that strategy works, you're talking about bankrupting Taco Bell and the death of the Republican party.
Just because some people have a harder time learning does not mean they can't learn.
/. post), it means they have a lower capability.
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Maybe the article is badly written, but it appears as if the scientists are jumping conclusions. The test subjects were asked to pick a symbol, they got feedback in the form of a smiley face or an angry face. Some short time later they were asked to pick a symbol again. If they now picked the happy face, the scientists assumed they had learned.
Somehow, I doubt that seeing a smiley face is enough of a reward to make the subject avoid making the same choice again. I mean, the angry face might look more interesting, or the subject might just wonder what happens if the takes the other card (given that he took the happy one first).
I'm just saying - there could be many reasons other than "not learning" why a person picks the symbol that gives an unhappy face as a result. Hopefully, the scientists thought of this, but it's not in the article (as far as I can tell).
"OS/2 Supporters Petition IBM To Open OS/2 Source In 2008"
"Bill Gates Says Capitalism Shouldn't Be So Cut-Throat"
"Microsoft Says Current Windows Is The Most Secure"
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Just because some trait exists or still exists doesnt mean that it has evolutionary advantages. It could mean that the mutation hasnt been around long enough for evolutionary preasures to take place. It could mean that the trait doesnt have any advantages but also doesnt have any disadvantages. It could mean that the disadvantages arent significant enough to prevent the organism from producing offspring.
My spouse is utterly untrainable in anything vaguely related to anything invented later than the Renaissance. Anything electronic or technical or related to any repetitive task, operating a cell phone, hearing and giving directions to anywhere. Any device, appliance, application. Online purchases of all kinds are impossible. She 'learns' such as it is, the simplest things by brute force endless repetition, if it's possible at all. Every appliance in my home has been broken in one way or another by her absolute inability to even listen to simple instructions.
She is an attorney, and, ironically, a teacher.
I've been saying this for years!
Darn. Should have patented it.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
> Seriously, we know there are some pretty smart people in the US.
> 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 pestholes, dictatorships and failed states, but no places with greater individual liberty, rule of law,, respect for property and general opportunity to get ahead.
Seriously, go look at the rankings. Ranked on economic liberty the US is #4. Hong Kong might be #1 but I certainly wouldn't want to make any sort of longterm commitment in a place that is under a deathwatch, just waiting for the Chicoms to complete the takeover. Singapore is #2, but not very big on liberty outside of the economic sphere. Austrailia is a fraction above the US right now but recent events there indicate they are likely to fall faster than the US. And they already have more gun control tnan this NRA member would be able to put up with.
Nope, America is the last best hope for liberty. We make our stand here and either restore the old republic or die trying.
Democrat delenda est
This explains the US strategy in Iraq!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Is anyone else getting the impression that people are going to use this as an excuse to justify not learning from mistakes?
I'm all for discovering causes and all but I saw nothing about patients with the A1 Mutation being incapable. There was one such local news story about how a virus was discovered that causes obesity. But the way to ditch obesity remains unchanged--diet and exercise. I only hope people don't use this "mutation" as an excuse to do whatever they want. Don't be getting any ideas now kids...
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.
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: