Laziness Does Not Exist but unseen barriers do | Hacker News Reader

Laziness Does Not Exist but unseen barriers do

medium.com

36 pointsmmt10 comments

Although I posted this article (it was referenced in a comment in another thread and didn't get much discussion the first time), I don't necessarily agree with with all the author's assertions.

In particular, the author seems to extrapolate all of humanity from college students. I'm not convinced that anecdotal evidence, from a sample that's highly likely to be motivated to begin with, is enough to conclude the non-existence of laziness. [1]

I did, however, appreciate the alternate perspective, which may be particularly applicable here on HN, in our professional lives, another area where the selection is more likely to be biased toward those who are highly likely to be motivated, in which case laziness is less likely to be the explanation for inaction.

[1] At least for certain definitions of laziness that include, for example, a preference for "fun" such as sitting on the couch playing video games or watching tv over "work" such as washing dishes or mowing the lawn.

Wish I had this professor in college. I had one final exam where due to undiagnosed ADHD I wasn't listening when they announced they had moved the location of the final, so when I showed up to take it, nobody was there. I was not allowed to take the test later. So I flunked out of school and blamed myself, felt like a useless loser, suicidal, for years.

I think the time pressure element of learning is silly. Is the purpose of an exam to test learning speed or understanding of the material? If the former, why not have a specific test for it, as opposed to using a test of understanding of arbitrary material as a proxy? If the latter, why can't you pay to take the test at a later date? Why should it matter how long it took you to learn if your results are up to scratch in the end? Thank god life gives us a chance to accomplish things at our own pace!

Exams are basically some of the most flawed tests you can come across.

I sympathize with your view, but I think the time pressure is a very valid thing to be using.

If we view higher education as being more about learning how to learn, rather than simply mastering a set of facts, we have to have limited time resources to measure how effectively a student learns.

In life, business, etc. we are almost always under time pressure. These tasks often include learning something - new facts, new concepts, new context. People who can make better decisions, produce higher quality results, etc. in limited time are precious. The time element of study time/test time is effective at measuring that.

Which is fine, but completely denying someone the chance to get any type of qualification whatsoever due to a single event seems very harsh. There is precedent of a sort for softening assessment, in that here in the UK the introduction of GCSEs swung assessment toward coursework rather than exams.

Considering laziness a vice in itself is highly silly considering its inherit virtue in labor reduction and innovation - it just requires some hard work to do so. Digging a canal despite being hard work is inherently a lazy way to spare future labor. As any familiar with algorithms knows laziness is itself a strategy.

I came here to explain that laziness does in fact exist, but eh whatever

It’s easy for people whom work “hard” to unreasonably and ignorantly prejudge others to “get a job,” when there’s various individuals whom have invisible disabilities: can’t get along with other people, understand or perform traditional work. Some also can’t perform useful work because either accommodations would be costly/extreme or they have debilitating socio- or psychological conditions like psychosis, bad memories or are too kinematically-slow.

It’s even worse that in the US, Social Security disability is focused mainly on physical disabilities and randomly excludes certain social/mental imparements due to a patchwork of dumb laws. As such, people in social services are often unilaterally-declared (Abled-Bodied Adult Without Dependents) ABAWD, and have their food (SNAP) and other benefits withdrawn without mandatory participation in programs that basically ignore and discount the reasons why they got there in the first place. In California, for example, SNAP goes away for ABAWD’s for 9 months out of the year beginning September 1, 2018. IOW, penniless homeless people are having their food benefits cut off for most of the year if they’re randomly assigned this status.

This is what “falling between the cracks” looks like.

I knocked myself out when I was 17 years old, don't remember two weeks... I used to think I mostly recovered from that head injury, but I've recently realized that it left me rather non-functional. I'm making progress, but I guess I'm "invisibly disabled", in certain ways. Thanks for that description.

I took to taxi driving because of the flexibility: no direct supervision, breaks whenever I wanted, etc. I get nerve pain, so breaks were necessary. I was perfectly happy working 12-hour shifts, though...

> It’s even worse that in the US, Social Security disability is focused mainly on physical disabilities and randomly excludes certain social/mental imparements due to a patchwork of dumb laws. As such, people in social services are often unilaterally-declared (Abled-Bodied Adult Without Dependents) ABAWD, and have their food (SNAP) and other benefits withdrawn without mandatory participation in programs that basically ignore and discount the reasons why they got there in the first place.

America is very much "sink or swim". The politicians don't appreciate that sometimes people need floaters to keep their head above water, while they figure out how to get the concrete block off their feet...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com