```audio-note audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/SCIM8083153125.mp3 transcript: https://dcs.megaphone.fm/SCIM8083153125.mp3?key=e9bc0decf1b4c706ea31e6a9771e9bba&request_event_id=285d6ed8-4e00-4951-b721-07377c15da67 title: How to Learn Skills Faster ``` ```audio-note audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/SCIM8083153125.mp3#t=27:23,32:29 title: The Super Mario Effect transcript: https://dcs.megaphone.fm/SCIM8083153125.mp3?key=e9bc0decf1b4c706ea31e6a9771e9bba&request_event_id=285d6ed8-4e00-4951-b721-07377c15da67 --- You adjust your motivation for learning, and you can vastly accelerate learning. Some of you may recognize this by its internet name, which is not a scientific term, which is the Super Mario Effect. There's actually a quite good video on YouTube describing the Super Mario Effect. I think it was a YouTuber who has, I think, a background in science. And he did an interesting experiment. And I'll talk about his experiment first, and then I will talk about the neurobiology that supports the result that he got. The Super Mario Effect relates to the game Super Mario Brothers, but you'll see why at the end. But basically what they did was they had 50,000 subjects, which is an enormous number of subjects. Learn a program, essentially taking words from a computer program, or the commands for a computer program that were kind of clustered in a column on the right. So these are the sorts of things that computer programs will be familiar with, but other people won't. And those commands are essentially, they essentially translate to things like, you know, go forward. And then if it's a right hand turn in the maze, then go right and continue until you hit a choice point, etc. So it's a bunch of instructions, but the job of the subjects in these experiments were to organize those instructions in a particular way that would allow a little cursor to move through the maze successfully. Okay. So basically the goal was, or at least what the subjects were told, is that anyone can learn to computer program. And if somebody can just organize the instructions in the right way, then they can program this little cursor to move through a maze. Very simple. And yet, if you don't have a background in computer programming, or even if you do, it takes them skill. You have to know what commands to give and what particular order. And they made that very easy. You could just assemble them in a list over onto the right. So people started doing this. Now there were two groups, and one half of the subjects, if they got it wrong, meaning they entered a command and the cursor would move, and it was the wrong command. The wrong command for this little cursor to move through the maze. They saw a signal jump up on their screen that said, that did not work, please try again. That's it. If they put in the wrong command, or it was in the wrong sequence, they would say that did not work, please try again. And then the subjects would reorganize the instructions, and then the little cursor would continue. And if they got it wrong again, they would say that did not work, please try again. The other half of the subjects, if they got something wrong, you just lost five points, please continue. So that's the only difference in the feedback that they got. Now, I have to confess, I would have predicted, based on my knowledge of dopamine circuitry and reward contingency and epinephrine and stress and motivated learning, and this other thing that we've been told, and many, many books on behavioral economics and in the self-help literature, which is that people will work much harder to prevent losing something than they will to gain something that you hear all the time. And it turns out that that's not at all what happened. If they looked at the success rate of the subjects, what they found was that the subjects that were told that did not work, please try again, had a 68% of the subjects that were told that did not work, please try again. And again, had a 68% success rate. 68% of them went on to successfully program this cursor moving through the maze. Whereas the ones that were told you lost five points had a 52% success rate, which is a significant difference. But the source of the success or the lack of success is really interesting. The subjects that were told that did not work, please try again, tried many, many more times per unit time. In other words, they made more attempts at programming this thing to allow this cursor to move through the maze. Whereas the people that were told you lost five points gave up earlier or gave up entirely. Okay, so let's just step back from this because to me this was very surprising. It violates a lot of things that I had heard in the kind of popular culture or the self-help literature that people will work much harder to avoid losing something than they will to gain something. And it didn't really fit with what I understood about reward contingencies in dopamine. But it did fit well with another set of experiments that I'm very familiar with from the neuroscience literature. And I'll give you the punchline first. And then we're going to take what these data mean and we're going to talk about a learning protocol that you can use that will allow you to learn skills faster by willingly participating in more repetitions of the skill learning. Meaning you will want to do more repetitions, even if you're getting it wrong some or most of the time. ``` Negative feedback can result in demotivation, despite common psychological opinions (especially in the self-help industry) that pepole will work way harder to prevent losing something than they will to gain something. However, the idea from the self-help community seems to fall apart here. Why? I think it's because they lack [[fingerprint/The Five Global Virtues|hope]], or moreso despair sets in. I feel like I would get a sense of lack-of-empowerment at a much faster rate if someone told me I was losing points, rather than just "please try again". The difference between the comments "please try again" and "you have lost five points" is that the rate at which despair/hopelessness increases is much larger for the 2nd statement. This highlights the importance of hope. --- ```audio-note audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/SCIM8083153125.mp3#t=32:29 transcript: https://dcs.megaphone.fm/SCIM8083153125.mp3?key=e9bc0decf1b4c706ea31e6a9771e9bba&request_event_id=285d6ed8-4e00-4951-b721-07377c15da67 title: The Tube Test Experiment --- ``` --- ```audio-note audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/SCIM8083153125.mp3#t=36:04,36:21 title: The only things that matters is: More repetitions per unit time. transcript: https://dcs.megaphone.fm/SCIM8083153125.mp3?key=e9bc0decf1b4c706ea31e6a9771e9bba&request_event_id=285d6ed8-4e00-4951-b721-07377c15da67 --- You want to perform as many repetitions per unit time as you possibly can, at least when you're first trying to learn a skill. I want to repeat that. You want to perform as many repetitions as you possibly can, at least when you're first trying to learn a skill. ``` The only things that matters when trying to learn a new skill, at least at the beginning is: More repetitions per unit time. ---