This is the reply I can't write on Hacker News, because PG is a fucking child and I get the "submitting too fast" error after ~3 posts per day.

hackernews-banned-post

In reply to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7031552

*People, as a group, really aren't interested in learning any more than the bare minimum they need to 
get what they want. That's what MOOCs are really up against.*

True, and the people who are motivated tend to rely on each other, if not for support, at least to have
peers who are similarly interested. It's like the fact that people whose friends are obese are more likely
to gain weight. 

If your motivation/work ethic/freedom-from-external-distraction level is 9-10, then you're fine working
alone. The 4-6 are what you described: willing to put in the minimum for a decent grade, not going to work 
without external reward. Most of us are 7-8 most of the time, because even if we might *want* to be 9-10, 
we have a lot going on (work, family, side projects) and more stuff that we know we should learn than we 
have bandwidth. 

It's the 7-8 for whom being surrounded by other smart people with similar interests, and even the jokes 
about logistic regression at the bar, really make a difference.