I both think and feel that those are wise words.

Posted by Kolya @ 06/22/2003 04:48 PM EST

I think its worth noting that the word "learning" is ambiguous. In most people's sense of the word, you *can* learn anything and everything without having fun i.e under coercion. Under this definition, learning something means that you can later regurgitate it and/or use it on demand.

The TCS definition (to my knowledge) involves the collection of useful knowledge, in the sense of being useful and desirable to the holder. This does not guarantee that this learner will be able to pass the other learner's test of regurgitating stuff and remembering everything etc.

So, almost by definition, *real* learning is contingent on the intrinsic motivation of the learner. A desire for pleasure or fun is only one possible reason to be motivated to learn something.

Having basically repeated what you already said in a more garbled fashion, I will terminate this post.

Posted by Dan Strimpel @ 06/22/2003 06:23 PM EST

I agree that desirable learning -- by which I mean learning that can serve as the basis of creativity -- is contingent on intrinsic motivation. But as you both rightly say, and TCS wrongly obscures, the pursuit of fun is only one of many possible intrinsic motives.

Posted by Kolya @ 06/22/2003 07:16 PM EST

Kolya -

The moments where one is actually being creative and aquiring new knowledge are fun. It might even be correct to define fun this way.

Learning is the proccess of aquiring useful knowledge. It is the whole process, not just the fun/directly fruitful bits. It makes sense to use a different term to describe these bits, but it does not make sense to destroy the term that refers to all of it.

Posted by Woty @ 06/22/2003 10:44 PM EST

The idea that fun and learning are the same thing is, I think, a conjecture based on the idea that, as Woty says, moments of actual creativity are inherently satisfying. (I prefer “satisfying” or “enjoyable” to fun, because they denote a deeper and more significant kind of positive feeling.)

There are times when learning is so slow as to barely register on the enjoyment scale at all. There are other times when learning is interspersed with coercion, so that, again, enjoyment is hardly noticeable (for instance, learning a bit of maths in a boring lesson). Even in the midst of horrible life-experiences, however, people can learn some things: and their moments of creativity feel good- even while surrounded by bad feelings, and outweighed by those bad feelings. The human mind is complex.

The unenjoyable bits of learning that Woty refers to are not, therefore, fun-free learning, but times where learning is sparse. But knowing that one is moving towards greater creativity is still satisfying, despite the constraints and mundane obstacles that slow us down sometimes. Adjusting to these requires immense creativity often, and this is a slower form of learning and enjoyment than moving forwards in a promising direction without obstacles. One can learn maths more quickly and fruitfully by having access to a library than by having all one’s books burned by an evil regime.

The pursuit of fun, however, is a terrible primary motive: one should seek truth, and doing so should be satisfying. The kind of “fun” that is nothing but a diversion from reality is, according to the definition I set out above, no fun at all: hedonism is ruinous, not satisfying.

On the other hand, the anti-fun meme, which teaches us all to expect and justify hardship as if it was part of growth, undermines our creativity and is the root of much evil.