reminds me of "The Inner Game" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12520444
The Genius of Learning
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Re: The Genius of Learning
#12"...but as people mastered the task, the systems [of the brain] stopped communicating. It turned out that people who could disengage these systems the fastest were also the best learners." This may just be an artifact of the presentation, or my misreading of it, but from then on it seems to be assumed that fast learning is a consequence of fast disengagement, rather than the other way around, yet no evidence is offer…
It's a cartoon, dude.
Re: The Genius of Learning
#13Reminds me of wéi wú wéi , the mystical Daoist concept. It literally means "action without action". My favorite story that illustrates the concept is the anecdote about the skillful butcher in Zhuangzi : Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee — zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and al…
“A good cook changes his knife once a year — because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness…
I do not mean this to be offensive, but of course bayonets are still sharp when their edges are not ground by use.
I love the story. There is much to learn; to me, it's about understanding where rather than how much.
But let's not forget it's a story. I'm sure some people are better or worse at butchering sheep, but a genericism does not add anything.
It's like if I say, "when you feel resistance, relax then work through it". It's meaningless. Not un-useful, not un-true, but definitely not "true" by the high standards of repeatable objective science.
"Not true but useful" is a phrase I frequently tell myself to improve my life without losing understanding of the spectrum of "true", and where I draw my line.
Re: The Genius of Learning
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
“A good cook changes his knife once a year — because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness…
I do not mean this to be offensive, but of course bayonets are still sharp when their edges are not ground by use. I love the story. There is much to learn; to me, it's about understanding where rather than how much. But let's not forget it's a story. I'm sure some people are better or worse at butchering sheep, but a genericism does not add anything. It's like if I say, "when you feel resistance, relax then work thr…
>I do not mean this to be offensive, but of course bayonets are still sharp when their edges are not ground by use.
It can't be offensive. I might have been unclear but we actively use one of them. The other is a French stabbing sword-bayonet unsuited for cutting.
>But let's not forget it's a story. I'm sure some people are better or worse at butchering sheep, but a genericism does not add anything.
I don't know where you're seeing a genericism because it's rather precise: you feel, as in tactile feeling, where there is a gap and you cut. I understand what you mean though by "not true but useful" and the practice of a "folk taxonomy" of sorts to create a new class called "useful but not true" to avoid polluting your "true" branch.
I remember I had detected a pattern that helped me in high school chemistry where I made up a rule based on the Carbon count. It held perfectly for the low carbon count stuff we were studying at the time but I knew it couldn't be generalized. I guess the scope of something, folk taxonomy, mnemonic devices, etc. are also examples of "useful but not true".
Re: The Genius of Learning
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I looked into cognitive skills on and off for some time. I started writing something to sythesize my knowledge about it and share it but I didn't as you can see (from the time management chapter, you see where the problem lies): https://github.com/jhadjar/Notes/blob/master/Cognitive%20Ski... From problem solving to deliberate practice, meta-cognition. etc. Long-term potentiation is one of the concepts that blew my mi…
You'd probably be interested in reading Edward Slingerland's Trying Not to Try for a take on the parallels between wu wei and current research in cognitive science.
Thank you for the not asinine recommendation, sn9.
Re: The Genius of Learning
#16"...but as people mastered the task, the systems [of the brain] stopped communicating. It turned out that people who could disengage these systems the fastest were also the best learners." This may just be an artifact of the presentation, or my misreading of it, but from then on it seems to be assumed that fast learning is a consequence of fast disengagement, rather than the other way around, yet no evidence is offer…
I assumed there was quite a bit of research and Hegelian synthesis that occurred outside of the narrative.
Re: The Genius of Learning
#17I feel like the format makes this really hard to read through. It'd be much easier to read as a blog post.