1) This is a short thread about the notion of ‘uncomfortable learning,’ or that rigor and learning are inversely correlated with ‘comfort.’ This notion itself is unrigorous. Here’s why:
2) One could imagine certain forms of intellectual discomfort that are indeed signals of learning:
-understanding when you’re wrong
-having a closely held assumption convincingly overturned
-experiencing a different culture or language
etc. etc.
-understanding when you’re wrong
-having a closely held assumption convincingly overturned
-experiencing a different culture or language
etc. etc.
3) This kind of ‘discomfort’ is not the same ‘discomfort’ as when, for example, you’re a woman and your male math prof keeps making jokes about his wife’s innumeracy.
4) In these different scenarios, discomfort is either a sign of learning or an obstacle to it. The problem is that we then speak in generalizations about learning as intrinsically uncomfortable, as a spartan exercise in which we ascribe learning value to *any* discomfort.
5) From there it’s easy to run with a simple fallacy: that given discomfort, there must be some learning going on.
Only in the most facile sense is this true, e.g. ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ e.g. nothing is not ‘learning.’
Only in the most facile sense is this true, e.g. ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ e.g. nothing is not ‘learning.’
6) This is why I don’t trust ‘uncomfortable leaning,’ whose main function is aphoristic (it’s virtue signaling). It conflates different senses of discomfort that may or may not be healthy components of learning. It’s not representative of the reality of learning. /end
