General Learning: Why We Learn To Play Than Learning The Rules

年龄，从来不是值得被尊敬的原因。
因年龄而累积的东西，才是真正被尊敬的根本。

-- 超神宠兽店 第一千四百九十一章 苏祖

Age shouldn't be something that's respectable, as the experience that one accumulate as one age is what's respectable.

An experience, no matter good or bad experience, you can learn from it. Perhaps you ever failed a test, perhaps you successfully fly your first flight, or perhaps you learn about the history of the Aztecs. As something that could be passed down, generations later strives to learn from you what you know and they don't know.

On the other hand, if you just read novel every day from young age to old age, you probably have little information useful for others, as there are too little useful information one can extract from novels that could be peruse in real life, at least for most mundane novels (which made up 99% of the novels ever created since the information bang!!!) You age, but you don't learn (much).

We speak that all information is worth learning, and yes they are. Though, it isn't necessarily they're worth mastering. Learning and mastering are different thing. When you learn, you just want to know how things work, and what you can do with the thingamajig/information available. It could be small, like perhaps a coal-powered hot air balloon behind your backyard may work? We don't know until we try. Or it could be huge, like learning the whole concept of how to program games. Mastering, on the other hand, is you're trying to beat everybody else on the field by getting to the top (or at least, top 1%, top 0.5%, etc.) Most learning doesn't take much time (especially if the field is small), while mastering, you may heard of the 10,000 hour rules already.

Believe me, if you're trying to master something, it's really pattern recognition within the domain. You master at chess? That's pattern recognition. You master at high jump? That's pattern recognition. In Range, Why Generalist Triump In A Specialized World, Chapter 1 speaks about computer (especially machine learning) being better in humans when mastering something comprise of patterns. Given the narrow world and rules that determine professionality in something, computer could fail and fail many times until they become so successful that the world best players couldn't beat time. After all, you need to sleep and rest, the computer don't.

They also speak that something general isn't so easy for computers, or even not possible to be a professional. Computers could play mundanely if there are no strict rules, and rules that are prior to change. Machine learning, or just programming in general, after all, are rules learnt/hardcoded that follow some patterns. If the pattern changes, you either need to retrain the machine learning model, or you need to recode the program. Humans also re-learn something when things change, but somehow human could "get it" by "transferrable skills". It doesn't matter of the rules: you can always get what you learn from other fields and apply onto this field.

Just see aircraft. Autopilot machine really can only fly on calm conditions: assuming nothing fails. And some autopilot could be coded for failure conditions, if they always exist based on specific patterns, their countermeasure. In other conditions, you still need the pilot in control.

And a lot of people falls to this trap, including myself. It's really the stay in the comfort zone, the reluntance to change, to avoid change. A new rule is enforced and you need to follow it; suddenly, things doesn't work as you expect it to anymore. You say, "I already have so much work that I want to focus on, and you want me to re-learn how to use this tool? Could you just leave me to do my work?" Which is my excuse to not learn something new and use existing tools as one is familiar with it. One also tends to write programs that's easily understandable, doesn't require memorization of unique "codes" (used to shorten variables that have a long name); hence when one tries to understand program with codes, especially when one isn't familiar with the program, it develops an excuse to prevent me from continuing.

Even in the larger world. As we grow more and more comfortable into the comfort zone, say one only wants to learn more about programming (generally) but not touching anything else like how to setup a printer, or perhaps how to pull wires (something physical), things related to IT. Generally, we only have this much attention and could only concentrate this much, so spreading widely means stretching attention here and there. Generally, it isn't that bad if you focus on one thing at a time, but learn things here and there over (a longer period of) time.

One would like to learn more outside one's field of programming, not just to IT but say, how to make a rocket that could go to space with candle fuel! Who knows if that works or not.

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