Ask HN: Is it ethical to "addict" students to learning?

3 points by james-revisoai 2 years ago | 2 comments

I run a studying app. I am considering applying more psychological aspects - think sometimes emotional methods like a sad avatar if you don't study, building streaks, or notifications, all this stuff. Imagine though, the study app provides users a controllable "addictometer" where you can turn down the applications utilized methods and frequency of increasing your engagement.

Now my question is, is this ethical to you?

We often talk about social media addiction & things like unregretted minutes - if someone urgently wants to learn (study) and be motivated, is this a scenario where you'd consider any time studying unregretted minutes?

What do you think of this position?

h2odragon 2 years ago |

It could be worthy just as a contrast to all the other apps using addictive patterns for other less beneficial uses.

The ethics of it are neutral if the user has the controls. If someone else has the controls then there still might be ethical uses. Which particular instance of usage vs. bait and reinforcement would depend on the context of the ongoing process between the user and the provider...

Much like we require some medical therapies to be monitored and prescribed by trained and licensed providers; perhaps the dangers of unethical use here would require society to be involved in the form of regulations and professional standards.

"app" is a distraction; irrelevant to the question of ethics. Can you as an individual go teach someone a new thing that brings them joy, praise them and otherwise reward them in ways they find pleasant, without expecting to face social consequences? If it's wrong for an "app" to do it it otter be wrong for you, as well.

Would it be right to just go teach someone else's kid to play drums, without any oversight or preparation for the negative consequences? Dow we really want our society to encourage the undisciplined spread of libertine free-thinking like that?

ask "what is truth?" and see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Assassins

eimrine 2 years ago |

The question you have asked has a clearly "yes" answer, but the devil's detail is that you bending the narratine (I would prefer to say that you are lying) about what are you doing in reality. You are addicting your peers to a (the) closed-source software which is running on the incredible unsafe device such as something with Android or something from Apple's walled garden.

When you are trying to make your student "streak of learning" what happens in reality is gluing the student to the device which effectively is a someone's social network client and nothing more. He/she is going to be bombarded with all kinds of dark patterns which are the essence of every snoop-phone. So, no matter how good teacher you are, I will never consider using a snoop-phone for a kid less than 18 years old as something ethical.

What is really ethical is to be an offline mentor/teacher for those who urge to study what you have already mastered. Tomas Edison once has said that the video industry is going to be the best creation of all times to enhance learning. I understand why he used to think like that. But from my experience of working with teenagers, learning is just not possible when there is something other than plain text has involved.

Learning is not when the app shows some sad picture and the learner starts doing anything in order to make sad picture happy. Learning (if not under academia which goals is not 100% of making students smarter) is making your student to yield some really smart questions. Learning is hunting in my pov, learning (no matter what industry) is always about reverse engineering, learning is continuously sitting calmly and solving some tasks interesting to learner, not being bombarded with notifications profitable for Alphabet or Apple or you.