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In a general sense, all people learn in the same way, and would do well to remember this. In particular, learning -- creating knowledge -- consists of creating
by curi 19y ago
In a general sense, all people learn in the same way, and would do well to remember this.
In particular, learning -- creating knowledge -- consists of creating something complex (an idea in your own head) that didn't already exist.
How complexity could come about is a famous question. The original answer was via a designer, but that begs the question, because either the designer already contained the complexity in question, or had to create it (somehow).
But now we have a better answer: evolution. And that is how people learn.
Evolution consists of imperfect replication and selection. In thinking terms, what you have to do is think of lots of ideas, subject them to criticism, and then think of (hopefully improved) variants of the surviving ideas, then more criticism, repeat, etc
This is important to know because being open to criticism is more important than people realize. It's generally considered a good character trait, but it is in fact absolutely fundamental to learning anything.
- dmoney 19y ago> learning -- creating knowledge -- consists of creating something complex (an idea in your own head) that didn't already exist This reminds me of The Programmer's Stone: http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/r0/ http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/r0/ which talks about "mapping" and "packing" as two different ways people learn. The authors found it easy to teach programming to those that tended toward mapping--building a mental map of a subject rather than accumulating facts about it.
- curi 19y agokind of interesting. but i don't think the main point that people think in one of two different ways, is correct. one reason is it's very hard to find a person who thinks well in most areas. partial mappers are much more common than consistent mappers.