Learning - synthesis, what can go wrong

Opting out 

It is difficult for those who are young and bright to appreciate just how wearing and wearying the constant need to work out new mental models and adapt old mental models can be to many people.

For those of us not blessed with particularly active minds, or having brains of only limited processing power and perhaps those of us getting older, the constant need to be one step ahead can be utterly exhausting. After a while you just want to give up, go hide somewhere where the world doesn’t change so fast and there is not the constant need to be ‘on your toes’ the whole time looking for new events or hidden dangers.

But of course opting out means we no longer learn and when we no longer learn we are in danger - particularly from those who do and who are without scruple and conscience. 

Faulty synthesis 

Synthesis is not an easy process.

Trying to deduce a system from the observations – the tagged impressions all in your mind is extremely difficult, whether this is consciously or unconsciously and it is clear that some people are really not very good at it, their powers of pattern matching are simply awful.

Any systems analyst when trying to build up a picture of a system in order to build a computer system, uses any number of different diagrams and checks and tests to see if they have understood correctly.

People in everyday life do not do this, a lot can go wrong.

A good systems analyst will have received a university degree and will also be a good mathematician and logician. Most good systems analysts are pure mathematicians as well as computer analysts. But the ordinary everyday chap in the street will have none of this training. There is a lot of room for error.

We may have the wrong place-holders, the wrong inter dependencies of activities, the wrong relationships between things, the wrong attributes of things, the wrong classes, functions and so on. We may even assume system when no system exists.

Yet people build up their own personal knowledge bases – their own memories –assume them to be absolutely true and attempt to live by them.

Rather frightening don’t you think?

Teaching and using diagrams would help. 

Observations

For iPad/iPhone users: tap letter twice to get list of items.

• Agassiz, Louis – Essay on Classification – Deducing the natural system of animals
• Agassiz, Louis – Essay on Classification – Improving our observational skills
• Alain Danielou - While the Gods Play - 01 The Experimental Method (Vaisheshika)
• Alain Danielou - While the Gods Play - 02 The Experimental Method (Vaisheshika)
• De Morgan, Augustus - The Budget of Paradoxes – There’s a paradox to blame
• Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher - 00 The children took their own share in the instruction
• Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 01 His first lesson was one in looking
• Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 02 Trusting your pupils with all the material available for observation
• Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 03 Treating pupils as friends and equals
• Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 04 Promoting a broad education and set of interests in pupils at all levels – avoid specialisation, encourage generalisation
• Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 06 Learning how to observe properly
• Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 07 Avoid book learning, suit the subject to be observed to the interest of the student
• Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 08 Vary the objects being studied in order to improve perspective and objectivity
• Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 09 Make every mistake into an opportunity for learning
• Lane Cooper - Louis Agassiz as a teacher – 10 - 'Look, look, look'
• Mesopotamia - Its technology and culture 02 Divination
• North Whitehead, Alfred – The nature of discovery and learning
• Obiter Dicta - Louis Agassiz
• Professor William James - Louis Agassiz, Words Spoken at the Reception of the American Society of Naturalists [Dec 30, 1896]
• Ramacharaka on Louis Agassiz - On learning to observe
• Tarot - 02 Minor Arcana - 08s Learning
• Wallace, Alfred Russell - The use of observations as evidence