Talk:Autodidact

When it is not such a great idea

When someone gets around to it, mention could be made of things that don't lend themselves to self-teaching, such as medical care or flying.

One sure way to start a minor harrumphing-fest on a bowed string forum is to inquire about resources for self teaching an instrument such as violin or cello. Conventional wisdom has it that, without cognizant pedagogy (yes they use that word) bad habits are easy to form and difficult to extinguish. Prompt feedback from a live teacher right there in the room can save a student years in what can be a life-long journey. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 00:07, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Feel free. The pluses and minuses of self-teaching are a very complex issue, so from my thinking the more ideas the better. EVDebs (talk) 00:50, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

This article is growing rapidly. I see someone put in an appropriate link to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Just now I am ingesting Molson's (which I learned to do all by myself) and looking out over the Gulf of St Lawrence under a cloudy sky. I might do a little desultory wordsmithing after getting back to quotidian reality in the States next week.

This article might be as good a place as any to explore the various activities which may be labeled "learning." I'm thinking of differences along the lines of performance vs. familiarity with written material, gymnastics vs. analytic geometry, that kind of thing. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 15:09, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

It's an important issue to talk about. Popular culture is addicted to "rags to riches" stories; while that's not inherently bad, the notion of "look at these guys who got rich after dropping out of university, so you should too!" is incredibly dangerous. Osaka Sun (talk) 15:19, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Speaking of which, do we have an article on Peter Thiel yet? I could be wrong but I get the sense he's kind of the Pied Piper of evangelical libertarian asshattery these days. EVDebs (talk) 16:13, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

And Dave Thomas, who got his GED, as he understood he was the exception, not the rule. --TheLateGatsby (He obviously isn't involved in woo, so he doesn't need an article, whereas Thiel might.(The end of the dock ) 16:17, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

EVDebs, I was under the impression most of the boys involved in facebook were well-to-do. Perhaps not filthy-rich, but certainly they could expect to land on their feet if things went awry. --TheLateGatsby (The end of the dock ) 16:20, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Thiel was PayPal, and frankly he's the one encouraging college students to drop out and become arrogant train wrecks of broken dreams. You're probably correct about the Facebook principals, though the Winklevii by all indications have the collective IQ of a box of rocks between them. Dave Thomas was an interesting guy, though -- lifelong conservative, IIRC, but instead of complaining about abortion he did something positive and put a lot of his money towards supporting adoption. It's entirely possible I'd never have agreed with him on anything else, but on that alone I'd buy a burger from him before McD's or BK. EVDebs (talk) 17:16, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Any good RationalWiki recommended books/resources to educate yourself?

I do love learning, and was wondering if there were any good books to check out that rationalwiki would recommend. I am most interested in space, but also any of the sort of self help/philosophy type books. ^{— Unsigned, by: 24.117.130.188 / talk / contribs}

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Now then; you specifically want books (not videos)? If so - atleast as far as introducing yourself to new subjects and just testing the waters a bit, or likewise for boning up on fun trivia about subjects you know well already, I'd recommend basically all the books in the Icon Books' Introducing series. They're all illustrated, which helps me get new angles a lot (I'm a very visual thinker). I'd also recommend basically all the books in the Very Short Introduction series (published by Oxford University Press).

Why do I recommend "basically all books" from these two series? Well, that's because I own basically all of the books in the Introducing series, and something like 50 titles in the Very Short Introduction series. Together, they almost take up a bookshelf on their own.

If you specifically crave self-help books, the only book series I have experience with is Icon Books' Practical Guides. These aren't illustrated to the same extent as the Graphic Guides are; the Practical Guides do use symbols and helpful formatting, but they're text-based. I've never been too hot on self-help myself (I bought a couple of titles in the Practical Guides out of curiosity), but as far as I could tell from these books, they don't promise high heaven, and they seem hesitant to actually dish out specific advice on "what to do" (focusing more on helping you get a better "mental overview" and asking yourself the right questions instead) — seemingly a decent approach to self-help, if you ask me.

I hope these suggestions (based on books I own myself) has been of any help at all. All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 00:23, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

If you want to make recently studied knowledge stick, I highly recommend using spaced repetition system software like Anki or Supermemo (I haven't used the latter, so I'm kinda biased toward the former). It greatly helped me in memorizing logical fallacies and I also managed to get a good grasp of Turkish in less than a year by using it daily. The best way to use these type of apps, is by getting introductory books with a lot of good illustrations like Reverend Black Percy suggested. The information in the books makes the creation of good flashcards relatively easy in your SRS software of choice. However to ease creation I suggest that you buy eBooks which allows for easier copying. ∈ NameThatNobodyTakes (✎) 10:09, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Popular education

Where would the culture of workers' educating themselves - (in the UK Mechanics Institutes -19th century onwards, the WEA etc) fit into this? Anna Livia (talk) 15:23, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Comment

Autodidacticy will range across a spectrum from 'the superficial skimming and misunderstanding' to 'the entirely reasonable': those who are developing a new area of research ( Ada Lovelace, Jean-François Champollion, etc - or certain areas of local history) will have to learn what they need to learn about.

Would 'the range of coverage and amount of feedback/interaction involved' be a key factor in 'sensible autodidacticy' and what is being described by the article? Anna Livia (talk) 00:06, 21 March 2021 (UTC)