Why is immersion the best way to learn a language?
I submit that it is because you do not get to stop.
I’m not sure of this. I got quite good at English basically by immersion—reading English books, watching English TV and movies, hanging out on English forums, playing video games in English—so that by the time I was in my mid-to-late teens, people online were already mistaking me for a native speaker (or writer, rather). But it’s not that I was forced to do those things. I could have read only books in Finnish, just read the Finnish subtitles in English TV shows / movies, hang out exclusively on Finnish sites / with Finnish people, and do things other than play video games. In fact most kids my age and in that area did not spend as much time learning English as I did, nor did they get equally good at it.
I’d rather say that learning English felt valuable in that it gave me new options for what to do. If I wanted to pursue some of the things that felt the most interesting to me (e.g. read Star Wars novels that hadn’t yet been translated into Finnish, obviously a supremely important task), then I needed to learn English. That seems related to the “you do not get to stop” criteria in the sense that learning the language is high-value to you—if you are in an environment where you don’t get to stop learning a language, it means that you need to learn the language in order to be able to do anything. But it seems like the key is simply in it being of high value, and “you can’t do anything without it” is just a particular special case that makes it maximally high value.
On the other side, there are all the parents who aren’t actually very good and neglect or abuse their children. Even though they are forced to be around their kids too, they don’t put equally high value on their child’s well-being as a good parent does, so the relentlessness doesn’t translate into good parenting.
This sounds like the common thread to me. Humans tend to become proficient at things they spend a large amount of time doing, especially if it is something that requires active participation and generates utils. One does not have to be forcibly immersed to gain new proficiencies so long as becoming more proficient is sufficiently useful that the benefits gained exceed the effort required, especially when the benefit is realized in the short term.
To become proficient in math and truly internalize it, you must be able to use it like language, i.e., as a tool to interact with or understand the universe in a way that aligns with your utility function. Much like many people don’t often find it useful to be fluent in Hungarian, many people don’t find it useful to be fluent in mathematics. It just isn’t high-value enough to devote the time to learning.
Being high value isn’t sufficient on its own though. There has to be the opportunity to learn and improve over time, ideally at the boundary of one’s comfort zone instead of entirely outside or wholly within. The ocean does not allow much opportunity to a non-swimmer. Life is the ultimate prerequisite to learning anything.
I’m not sure of this. I got quite good at English basically by immersion—reading English books, watching English TV and movies, hanging out on English forums, playing video games in English—so that by the time I was in my mid-to-late teens, people online were already mistaking me for a native speaker (or writer, rather). But it’s not that I was forced to do those things. I could have read only books in Finnish, just read the Finnish subtitles in English TV shows / movies, hang out exclusively on Finnish sites / with Finnish people, and do things other than play video games. In fact most kids my age and in that area did not spend as much time learning English as I did, nor did they get equally good at it.
I’d rather say that learning English felt valuable in that it gave me new options for what to do. If I wanted to pursue some of the things that felt the most interesting to me (e.g. read Star Wars novels that hadn’t yet been translated into Finnish, obviously a supremely important task), then I needed to learn English. That seems related to the “you do not get to stop” criteria in the sense that learning the language is high-value to you—if you are in an environment where you don’t get to stop learning a language, it means that you need to learn the language in order to be able to do anything. But it seems like the key is simply in it being of high value, and “you can’t do anything without it” is just a particular special case that makes it maximally high value.
On the other side, there are all the parents who aren’t actually very good and neglect or abuse their children. Even though they are forced to be around their kids too, they don’t put equally high value on their child’s well-being as a good parent does, so the relentlessness doesn’t translate into good parenting.
This sounds like the common thread to me. Humans tend to become proficient at things they spend a large amount of time doing, especially if it is something that requires active participation and generates utils. One does not have to be forcibly immersed to gain new proficiencies so long as becoming more proficient is sufficiently useful that the benefits gained exceed the effort required, especially when the benefit is realized in the short term.
To become proficient in math and truly internalize it, you must be able to use it like language, i.e., as a tool to interact with or understand the universe in a way that aligns with your utility function. Much like many people don’t often find it useful to be fluent in Hungarian, many people don’t find it useful to be fluent in mathematics. It just isn’t high-value enough to devote the time to learning.
Being high value isn’t sufficient on its own though. There has to be the opportunity to learn and improve over time, ideally at the boundary of one’s comfort zone instead of entirely outside or wholly within. The ocean does not allow much opportunity to a non-swimmer. Life is the ultimate prerequisite to learning anything.