Top all-time · #1565
Alfie Kohn
Personal blog · alfiekohn.orgculturecareer
Alfie Kohn's personal blog at alfiekohn.org covers culture and career. Since 2009, 46 different Hacker News readers have linked it 59 times, most often “The “Mindset” Mindset (2015)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 8 of 34 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Alfie Kohn's essays and books criticise rewards, grades, homework, competition and grit in schools and workplaces. HN commenters most often cite them as support for points about motivation and education.
- Recommended for · 8 comments
- Called a classic book on the subject; a good starting place; good commentary; an interesting read that shaped one commenter's views; does a good job contrasting
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 34 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The Work Of Alfie Kohn
Most-linked posts?
- /books/pbr.htm4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-01-19
- /contest/2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-11-12
- /homework-myth/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-07-24
- /punished-rewards/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-18
- The “Mindset” Mindset (2015)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-03-12
- The Case Against Competition (1987)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-01-26
- /homework-myth/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-05-05
- For Best Results, Forget the Bonus2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-07-09
What Hacker News says?
Some resources you may find of interest: * "Have Fun at Work" by William L. Livingston -- Livingston provide examples of how organizations are often incapable of hiring the people who might help them most. * "The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet" by Mickey Z. -- This book is more in the category of seeing how bad so many creative people have it (until perhaps we get a basic income some d…
Comment linking /punished-rewards/
on “Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already”Submitted For Best Results, Forget the Bonus as a story · 101 points
HN discussionOn that ideal and whether it is still reachable someday, see my 2010 essay: "Recognizing irony is key to transcending militarism" https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transce... From there: ----- Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead…
Comment linking /contest/
on “Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance”Submitted Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating as a story · 92 points
HN discussionThat's an excellent point, one that is illustrated in the book, "Punished By Rewards." http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm
Comment linking /books/pbr.htm
on “Sal Khan explains SOPA / PIPA”Submitted Why Self-Discipline Is Overrated as a story · 59 points
HN discussionSocietal competitiveness vs. cooperation can be observed in the differences between human cultures, even similar ones. http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/nc.htm does a good job contrasting cultures in this regard, iirc. Moving to New York from Canada, I was quite surprised how much more competitive people were, even about things that don't matter. It's just there .
Comment linking /books/nc.htm
on “The 7 Habits of Highly Overrated People”Submitted The Case Against Homework as a story · 56 points
HN discussionReplacing intrinsic motivation with extrinsic rewards cheapens the activity and makes it less enjoyable. Awarding me badges for brushing my teeth and taking out the trash is a great way to help me do boring tasks. Awarding me badges for having deep, meaningful conversations with my partner . . . not so helpful. Alfie Kohn has collected decades of studies and written about that in his book Punished by Rewards . It's…
Comment linking /topics/motivation-inside/
on “Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails”Submitted For Best Results, Forget the Bonus as a story · 25 points
HN discussion"Progress" is a rhetorical device used to paint whatever actually happened in a positive light. But coincident with the positive elements of the rise of western society, is a whole lot of tragedy. Wars with unprecedented brutality and scale, genocide, factory farming, mass extinctions and the systematic destruction of the planet, selfishness as a defining cultural trait. Replacing competition with cooperation may ha…
Comment linking /contest/
on “Andrej Karpathy talks about how Tesla's NNs are structured and trained [video]”Submitted The “Mindset” Mindset (2015) as a story · 18 points
HN discussionI've been more skeptical of Grit after reading this: A Skeptical Look at the Latest Educational Fad By Alfie Kohn https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/grit/ The gist of the argument is that grit may not be what we ought to aspire to sometimes. The justification for grit is circular. Why focus on just 1 thing as oppose to have several interests and activities? The author approaches the topic from perspective of raising…
Comment linking /article/grit/
on “I was tricked into thinking I had “grit””Submitted Why Self-Discipline Is Overrated as a story · 8 points
HN discussionYou might be interested in the book "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn. It goes into detail about why praise can be detrimental, and what to substitute for it. From the description on his site < http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm> , it "[draws] from hundreds of studies, [and] demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives." The biggest revelation…
Comment linking /books/pbr.htm&
on “I Was Told I Was Very Smart”Submitted How To Create Nonreaders as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThere's a lot to unpack in your short utterance I just would like to comment on eliminating SAT scores. > Noninstructional factors explain most of the variance among test scores when schools or districts are compared. A study of math results on the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that the combination of four such variables (number of parents living at home, parents' educational background, typ…
Comment linking /teaching/pdf/Standardized%20Testing%20and%20Its%20Victims.pdf
on “Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'”Submitted Why Students Hide Themselves from Us as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> son needs more discipline This does not seem like the right conclusion. More like "needs running around time and free play". Cf. e.g. https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/discipline-problem-solutio... https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/beyond-discipline-article/
Comment linking /article/beyond-discipline-article/
on “Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)”Submitted The Case Against Competition (1987) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt seems I have to qualify "recent", this was already studied in the 70's [1]. But recent material is available as well [2],[3],[4],[6]. [3] provides a view from an economists perspective (incentives), [6] looks at motivation of employees and compares to performance and well-being outcomes. The psychological question is about intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, and has been studied for a long time now, for an overvi…
Comment linking /punished-rewards/
on “Internal competition can often be the most dangerous kind”Submitted The Case Against Grades as a story · 2 points
HN discussionEven if preparing people to just put up with something miserable were a valid goal, it's exceedingly unlikely that just subjecting them to it for years on end is the most effective or the most efficient way to prepare them for it. An entire essay on the subject: https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/getting-hit-head-lessons/
Comment linking /article/getting-hit-head-lessons/
on “Teens' anxiety levels dropped during pandemic, study finds”Submitted Do Students Really Need Practice Homework? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI'm getting more at things like a perspective shift, like represented with ideas at these links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource https://www.remineralize.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cost+of+militarism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/case-competition/ https://www.pop.org/overpopulation-myth/ htt…
Comment linking /article/case-competition/
on “AI as Normal Technology”Submitted Why Feedback Often Doesn't Help as a story · 1 points
HN discussionInterestingly, a lot of those techniques are extrinsic motivators, which studies have found to actually reduce self-motivation. (A classic book on the subject is Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards."[1] Dan Pink's TED talk[2] is a entertaining overview of the same concepts.) That's not to say that I have any answers. But when I tackle the problem, I'll probably focus on intrinsic motivators (love of the material, sens…
Comment linking /books/pbr.htm
on “Ask HN: When did people start paying for your SaaS and why?”Submitted For Best Results, Forget the Bonus (1993) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIt is true that helping a child learn about resiliency is important. As Carol Dweck says, the brain is like a muscle and effort can eventually be rewarded with skill. So it is good to praise effort and persistence. And failure is part of life and needs to be dealt with. That said, consider Alfie Kohn's writing, such as "No Contest: The Case Against Competition": https://www.alfiekohn.org/contest/ "No Contest, which…
Comment linking /contest/
on “What I Learned About Failing from My 5 Year Indie Game Dev Project”Submitted Another Look at Workplace Incentives (2002) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
