[jerf]

Brains are lazy. They are lazy for good reasons. They have a lot of work to do during a day and don't have the spare capacity to burn multiples of what they are already burning. They are already epic energy hogs in biological terms. Just telling them to "stop being so lazy!" doesn't work, and if you dig into it would probably be a bad idea if you could.

Consequently, one of the most dangerous ideas to feed a brain is one that works in the short term but fails in the long term. Once mired in the bad term idea, one must expend effort to switch to the better idea, and in the process, one might even go backwards temporarily, convincing the brain (quite rationally from a certain point of view) that this is a bad idea, thus making it even harder to convince the brain this switch is a good idea. (You have less control over this decision than you fancy.)

Without a lot of energy or help to get out, you can get stuck there permanently.

It's not just reading. Many skills have this pattern to them. I myself am stuck there with bowling. I have the classic "got decent at throwing the ball straight down the lane" failure. I know that I need to learn to curve the ball to get better, and I just don't care enough to do it. Given how rarely I play, my time of "getting worse before I get better" would probably be "every game I play for the rest of my life." But I am stuck in that hole. I've been there with some other skills, too; I'm not sure one can jump straight to ideal piano technique without going through this a few times.

But those are no big deal to me. Screwing up reading from the get-go is devastating.

[LeChuck]

I'm learning chess at the moment. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to slide back in rating every time I learn a new idea and try to incorporate it into my game.

I takes a lot of willpower to stick with it and fully internalize that idea. Then I read a new book and it starts all over again.