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Does Education teach us to memorize information, instead of understanding it, or is memorizing important for future use?
I belive that knowing and understanding are completely two different concepts. Understanding something is far better than knowing something, but does the education system teach us to memorize everything? Wouldn't memorizing everything be a bad thing or does small things not matter as long as you knew it was supposed to happen (even if you somehow forgot). Like in the case of Atul Gawande's Talk about doctors should use checklists and cowboys already using checklists.
Should education not dually educate their students to know something for the first half of their educational life, then understand it for the second half? Would that system not be more efficient that way?
What can we change about, or what is the use of, memorizing so much information in a course at school, as opposed to understanding?
Update: check out this video introduced by Edwin Nazarian:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-QS7Fo6FTk
I elaborated about it in a seperate post, just a bit though.
Mini Update: Edwin's video has bad sound quality, but try to bear with it and hear it through. Amazing information.
UDATE: THIS VIDEO WAS MIND BLOWING, especially the visual part, BUT INFORMATION IS AMAZING TOO!
Watch this! =)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=youtu.be
Thanks Mary for sharing this amazing video with us. =)
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Chris Kelly 20+
Memorization leads to learning.
Learning leads to knowledge.
Knowledge leads to understanding.
Understanding leads to comprehension.
Comprehension leads to wisdom.
Wisdom leads to teaching.
It's the natural evolution of thought.
Mitch SMith 50+
You know . I had a good friend called Chris Kelly.
He was 6 foot 7inches and an imposing person - his humour was unmatched and he was a total psycho.
Me and Chris would get on teh train on the long trip to the city, but we would embark at opposite ends of the carriage .. and tehn we would start talking to each other in funny voices and make jokes about everyone between us. By the time we reached our destination, everyone had a smile on their faces, and we knew them all as friends.
Me and CHris moved into a weird house on teh outskirts of town.. it was a strange place with beutiful snadstone foundations but the timebr frames were clad in flattenened oil drums. My brother and I left that house because we had bought a beutiful hatchet to cut wood .. but we hid it from Chris to avoid his psycho humour .. but he found it and mennaced us with his out of control humour .. and we left soon after.
Chris stayed and took in some skag addicts to help pay the rent.
One Saturday, when it was the role of addict #1 to mow the grass, Chris noticed that he was still in his bed at mid-day.
Addict #1 heard the lawnmower start as he lay in his sleeping bag on the old mattress in his room.
He heard the mower enter the house via the back door as it proceeded down the hallway.
Chris burst in the room, revved the mower and drove it over the old mattress.
He related how it was just like a cartoon with flock and feathers going everywhere.
And to this day, he says that he never saw someone get out of bed so quick.
THe addicts left Chris alone very shortly after that, and within a week, the local paper ralated how that house burned to the foundations one nigh .. from an "electrical fault"
;)
Mary M. 100+
Thank you for this story..............and all your many others.
Chris Kelly 20+
The story of your Chris Kelly is so much more interesting than my Chris Kelly story.
Although I have never mowed anyone out of bed, I've had my TED account revoked twice now, yet I return to ... shall we say ... sing another day?
A firm believer that 'everything happens for a reason', I can think of no better reason for me to have this name for my TEDavatar than hearing the story you just told.
It was great ... and I thank you.
Keep singin'.
Mitch SMith 50+
Chris was homosexual, and was so jelous of my girlfriend .. hey ho. His family had spent 20grand convincing a judge that the note Chris had pushed accross to the teller was just a joke .. and that the M16's he and his mates had posession of were just to get free pizza in inner city Melbourne .. that and the other 10 grand in cocain for the hudge and the legal guys .. everyone went away happy. I suppose. The Gay community in Melbourne were very good to Chriss, becuase he bashed homo-bashers so they could walk the streets unmollested .. he was .. and I suppose still is . a major human.
Life gets a whole lot more colourful when you dive in. It hurts a lot, but it's good.
Mitch SMith 50+
I can't help it - it just keeps flowing out. ANd all the colourful people I have met .. each with their own issues, all I want to do is love them. From the pimps to the warlords to teh drug smugglers to the politicians, the refugees, the murderers, the money lenders and fraudsters, the corporate psychopaths the bikers and the good normal people (if there is such a thing). I love you all.
Mitch SMith 50+
I have met them - they are not so bad. Sure, they get in your face and force you to know things. But only if you ask for it.
And if you ask, you will be given the tour.
You come out better.
Same with the druids and the godamn corporation of London.
I have seen, and spoken and lived with all of them, and I know the way forward - you only need to ask.
Chris Kelly 20+
You lift more spirits than an Irish pub. ;-)
Derek Young 30+
So you believe that memorization is the first step towards learning, learning leads to knowledge, etc?
Could you give examples of the differences between memorization, learning, knowledge, understanding, comprehension, and wisdom or maybe a how-to-step-by-step format of the evolution of thought?
Mitch SMith 50+
EAch step is a noise reduction occuring over the resonant perception/agency/perception loop.
More often than not, what is being memorised is not rote-memorisation, it is deeply integrated with effective result and improvement in agency.
http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html
Chris Kelly 20+
ahaha get it? Key?
Indeed, sound creates vibrations which result in resonance of harmony or discord depending on our intention.
"God said ... " and it was so.
Keep singing.
Chris Kelly 20+
I had to memorize the alphabet in order to learn how to form words.
I had to learn how to form words in order to know how to read.
I had to know how to read in order to understand what was written.
I had to understand what was written in order to comprehend what was conveyed.
I had to comprehend what was conveyed in order to become wise.
I had to use wisdom to determine what and how to teach.
Mary M. 100+
First, definitions:
* memorization: faculty of remembering
* learning: to get knowledge, usually by studying, observing, practicing (learn by doing)
* knowledge: general information
* understanding: grasping the idea
* comprehension: grasp with the mind, perceive
* wisdom: knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action
Memorization is used throughout life (first letters and numbers, colors, times tables...later as adults, phone #'s, passwords, addresses, driving directions, etc...
Learning is the process of gaining knowledge. Most people have formal education to gain knowledge. Later in life we learn different skill, such as cooking, changing the oil in our car, etc.
I will go out on a limb and say that understanding and comprehension begins early in life also.....first it is pretty superficial, then, depending on one's thirst for knowledge, and for understanding such knowledge it can deepen profoundly.......one can have a deep understanding of one subject, and be a total ignoramus as to another.
And WISDOM...........well, that is what we all would love to be.....wise, being able to understanding things fully in order to always make the right choices in life.
I hope my thoughts together with those of Chris help you out Derek.
Mitch SMith 50+
Now let me take you into reality ;)
All those bulet points have relevenace only to our current world-view perception.
Do not make the mistake that your wrld view is remotely equivalent to anyone elses.
Perceptional Grain size is individual.
It's part of topology.
Resonance does not converge grain size - it finds lowest common denominator.
thus .. to understand another human is to alter your perceptive grain by more than one order of magnitude (otherwise known as "Occam's Razor")
Go look at neural net self-organisation - the math is quite explicit on this subject.
It is by mutuial resonance that we defeat "assumptions" .. assumptions are our "rote learning" - the magic tricks that work every time .. but not always ;) .
to escape "magic tricks" is to resonate and resonate .. untill the trick becomes knowledge.
Then in our own subdivision - at the hands of our own observational razor .. then we get wisdom - wisdom is the observaion of the pattern in the patterns.
At that moment, when we see the patterns in the patterns - in that moment, we see it all.
And no one un-wise can see it, so we make paths for the wise .. and most fail.
The wise become our true lovers.
And all else?
Well . protein - we will find a good use for them . we will, or reality will.
What is ethics and morality after that?
We will be bedt plsaced in wisdom to go forward .. and for the rest?
We will go towards the abundance defind by our planet - there is nowhere else to go, and our wisdom cannot exceed the wisdom of our biome.
(humans are probably very tasty - but they won't last forever)
Derek Young 30+
All three of you built a very complete picture for me. That was extremely enlightening! =D
Chris Kelly 20+
Yes, because the question is (specifically) about education and understanding v. memorization.
Although I do love your posts ... they're a natural high.
Keep singin'.
Mitch SMith 50+
To help a little with the world-view observation:
COnsider the Chinese languages - as pictograms they do not rely on the structured mnemonics that make up our Greko-Roman system.
IN our mnemonic system, we gain a transitional phase in symbol-building, thus we "memorise" 40 or 50 variants of sound that coalesce into a few hundred mnemonic cells that can then be freely associated and recombined for almost infinite vocabulary - without memorisation beyond the gramatic and syntactical rulesets.
In teh pictogrammic system, the vocabulary is constrained to teh average memory retention capacity of teh participants - maybe 20,000 unique pictograms at best.
But wait .. we are talking about written communication here. A child can learn to talk and construct grammatically correct sentences without it. There we are looking at contextual resonance .. what is being memorised is behaviour, not system and rule tricks.
This forms the core symbol set - the behavioural (spacio-temporal) topologies of success.
The mastery of secondary symbolic systems of communication gives us access to media that extend beyond line-of-sight/range of hearing/time of utterance.
It is the nature of teh media that defines the ruleset .. so far, it is mostly heuristic (requiring memorisation of instance) plus some degree of general gramatic system(requiring memorisation of process).
These conventions lay down cognitive limits. One will find that the written language constrains our thinking a whole lot more than we acknowledge.
Perhaps there is a more direct way to represent the behavioural-success topology which defines the true process of behaviour - this would obsolete the need for intermediary heuristics and the flaws inherent in them?
Chris Kelly 20+
:-D
The physical being is limited by its very finite nature; the mind is infinitely unlimited. We are already able to use subliminal messaging to silently program the sponge that is our sub-conscious level of mind and forego the intellectual learning process altogether. As humanity grows in consciousness, so will our tools for communication.
But for now, I'm rather fond of symbols, language and the written word.
Mitch SMith 50+
ut .. well, if we can maintain this internet medium of rich media (high modality), then lossy compressional systems such as text will be eliminated over time. And we will return to the high-redundancy communicaions of rich experience/transmission.
Skype will destroy text in time - and then there will be no need for heuristic tricks and the priesthoods of the scribes.
But it's all very touch and go.
Our Skype technology hangs by a thread - and it is totally dependant on a mergin of energy that is rapidly failing.
We will see.
Derek Young 30+
After decoding your pattern, I respond with my thoughts about sub-subjects within the main subject. I think it is absolutely fine. Learning brings about sub-subjects that relate or correlate to the main subject, but if not, it can be delving into a deeper source of understanding that I never thought of, so let it fly, but I am in no way saying that memorizing is a bad thing. Only memorizing everything is a bad thing though.
Mitch SMith 50+
natasha nikulina 50+
Sum of all noises is silence and it needs no patterns. :)
Chris Kelly 20+
Even if no one is there to hear a tree fall in the forest, the vibration resonates and the sound ripples whether it is heard by human ears or not. In fact, the ears (as with the rest of the physical matter which makes up our human form) act as a filter because there is such a vast difference between the resonance of dense matter v. the resonance of pure spirit.
As we become more aware of our higher levels of consciousness, we increase our vibration ... it is referred to as 'light' in the sense of knowledge, ("enlightened") but not an intellectual knowledge as much as an intuitive knowing. The higher our state of consciousness, the more receptive we are to intuit, which is beyond the scope of learning, it's a knowing that forgoes the tedious process of intellectual learning.
natasha nikulina 50+
The universe is devoid of silence, there is no such thing as silence.
I agree with you ,silence does not exist as well as emptiness, there is no such thing. But take 'nothingness', it means no-thingness, there is not a thing, yet nothingness is full and fertile and the womb of all.In this context Silence is absence of sounds, which breeds all sounds. Is void/vacuum silent ? Somebody said that the vacuum is a sacred Silence "filled with profane noise" Is this noise a chaos ? I think, it's a beautiful order (cosmos) we can't grasp. As mystics teach : to know ( not to know about, but to know) you should go into the Silence, where pattens do not exist and it is" beyond the scope of learning"
I meant that ' silence"
OK, frankly, I don't know, it's just contemplation ...:)
Thanks for your response !
Mitch SMith 50+
Noise is error.
I like your observation that silence is without error :)
But you will see that the sum of all noise is not deviod of pattern.
Unresolved resonance gives rise to mathematical Chaos.
Unmatched resonant structures can fall into infinite orbits around strange attractors, they will go into and out of regular oscillation depending on energy being exerted on the resonant pair.
In the chaotic margins between the regular oscillations you will observe the "ghosts in the noise" - potentials, not actuals.
By having matched resonators, we avoid a lot of the chaos. The role of memorisation is to fine-tune the resonators. We begin nicely tuned by being physialogically matched - the human genome is very homogenous when compared to other species - without this lack of variance, it would be much harder to communicate.
Feedback loop resonance reduces noise (error) by trial and observation - the first iteration is very noisy, the error is adjusted for in the next iteration - over a few iterations, the error is logrithmically reduced .. very fast convergence.
I have proposed elsewhere that we make proxy-selves in our brains with 2 copies of self for all interactions - one proxies for "self", one proxies for "other". Observational corrections are done on each of the pair until they converge - thus the proxies in each others heads converge to very close replication. My proxy for you and your proxy for yourself will converge, and visa versa - depending on iterations of the exchange.
I suspect that there will always be a noise threshold in which chaotic potentials will persist - you could say this is teh boundary of "understanding".
Noise is a better word than error, because it infers more than a single dimension of convergence.
It creates a multi-dimensional "fuzz" around dimensional vectors and topologies.
Problem with proxies is that you can mistakenly identify with them. One can lose ones true self in the process.
natasha nikulina 50+
Thanks for the response !
Clever ! I am not quite sure I understand everything you've said, sorry ! But I like the "ghosts in the noise", I have the feeling that it is the most important part :)
Seriously, I agree with you , we are noise-reduction-machines. What our mind is doing is filtering, it's extraordinary effective filter, whose main function is not to extend our consciousness, but , in a very real sense, to contract it . Which is what its biology has trained it to do, and for a good reason. What doesn't fit to the pattern, hence we can't understand through logic reasoning, it marks as 'error', 'noise' . And it is a blessing, otherwise we would go mad :) But it's only part of the story about who we are... we also have intuition, imagination , and it's the place where the real story begins.
But maybe I went too far... as for the communication and understanding , I agree with Chris: Resonance is key. When two people communicate verbally , the words they speak 'drop stones into the pond' .It is not exactly the word that conveys the meaning, but the ripple it sends out and here a sort of computer search begins for matching waves. The mind must resonate with the wave form of the message to 'take it in' If it doesn't , the situation will look like this : ( I love this quote :)
"I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I am not sure you realize , that what you've heard is not what I meant."
Hope, now it is not the case :)
Thank you !
Mitch SMith 50+
Yes.Um - here are some ghosts -
http://25yearsofprogramming.com/images/wbif/green1.jpg
THis is from teh chaos function: next year's population = r * this year's population * (1 - this year's population) where r is the birthrate. The (1-P) is a resonant limiter that stands for predation and death rate. When you iterate the equation 60 times for each rising value of r you get the image in the pic. WHen you zoom back to the whole picture you get this graph:
http://saba.kntu.ac.ir/eecd/ecourses/Nonlinear%2086/SelectedProjects/Sharbafi/test/mychaos/9.GIF
I make pennywhisles. They are just little flutes. When you drive a small energy breath into the instrument the note will resolve to teh first period(octave 1), as you increase breath energy, a chaotic boundary is encountered that sounds like noise, but one can hear the ghost-notes suspended in potential. THen after a little more energy the note resolves to period 2 (1 octave higher) .. more energy finds another chaos-band, then period 3(perfect 5th) ... period 4 etc.
Noise is extremely important. In the early neural network research, it was found that neural nets require noise in order to reduce training time. the noise is applied to both the input data and teh initial synaptic loadings. INput noise is reduced with each training iteration, synaptic loadings are self-correcting. If ou don't do this, the network will settle in a "local minimum" which is an incorrect result. The noise serves to "bounce" the topology out of local minima so that it can complete the synaptic gradient to the absolute minimum. GAusian noise was used for this, but I suspect that chaotic noise would serve better - because chaotic noise contains potentials - but it might also serve to skew the topology .. I haven't done those models yet.
In a human, the noise is actually generated by the behaviour = all first steps are wrong. This is amplified in teh social context where all participants are on different points of the noise gradient
Mitch SMith 50+
Understanding is a perfect neural training. It allows for direct stimulus to reach result in a single iteration - you just "know" .. and it also explains "intuition" (well trained neural systems can make "quantum" leaps by inference based on fragmented data - limited by teh noise/signal that defined the initial topological dynamic).
Understanding is not a conscious function - it is an absolute minimum that references both space and metaspace (the full perceptive field).
Logic, on the other hand, represents a pre-trained/pre-fabricated topology (rules). THis is application to a memory area that contains the pre-fab topology. It takes extra iterations to access it - and is therefore "conscious" - one must access it via perceptive focus into the metaspace portion of perceptive field.
Rules fall into 2 categories: convention, and causality.
Convention (memorisation) is a deliberate local minimum that, by nature, has no absolute minimum and can never be resolved.
Causality can be generated, or confirmed, by observation - the pre-fabricated ruleset eventually becomes subsumed into the direct neural topology and is only referenced consciously for the purposes of communication.
By its nature, convention is a perpetual noise (error) .. it's best to have as little of it as possible.
Mitch SMith 50+
Imagination is an intrinsic part of the beysian forecasting system that we build through fully-trained rules of causality.
The basic purpose of forecasting is to formulate courses of physical action.
Using the beyesian method within trained neural topology allows us to "project" outcomes over many iterations of "time" in metaspace before committing to agency. This is teh actual noise-reduction device that identifies the corrective vector in subsequent agency.
To do this, we use meta-proxies that are, essentially copies of core-self that are projected as actors into our causal topology - we then watch them act over sufficient iterations, observe their outcomes and predict possible error to be avoided - including the ability to take action to a certain point of risk and plan behavioural update at an identified crisis point.
These proxies work very nicely, because they retain actual connection to our body-regulatory systems. So a forecast that results in personal injury elicits a real body-shock.
The proxies are enhanced in humans - we create proxy-pairs to forecast inter-personal dynamics.
Each pair is connected to body-regulation, so if an intertaction results in injury to the "other" proxy, we still get the body-shock .. this is empathy.
Enabling all of this are a series of maps(both geographic and causal) which provide teh environment for the meta-drama to play out.
That's teh basics of it. But it gets more interesting when we project partial proxies (e.g a single arm or lung) - this allows for invention .. or we can just free-play object or personal proxies across our maps for artistic visualisation .. paintings .. novels. We can even project conceptual rulesets into this meta environment to observe conceptual interaction.
IT's all a by-product of the expansion of perceptive field through communication. COmmunication requires meta-proxy pairs for noise reduction in the communication.
Mitch SMith 50+
This is where we store teh different degrees of "memory".
It is associative. I.E, they are neural paterns that "co-fire" with experiential events.
That is useful for blind association - things like "the aaa sound associates with the shape A". OR " "I know what's around the next corner because the last time I was there I saw it".
THen there is a transitional map .. it is causal E.G "1 + 1 = 2" OR "if I fall that far I get hurt".
In usual process of being, these associative maps flow constantly through our meta-perceptive field - many fire symultaneously, but our cognitive machinery has not got enough space to deal with it all in real time, so we "concentrate" on the associative "flashes" according to their strength. THis will be a priority loading that has the strongest signal accordind to the highest relevance to body regulation. I.E: "This makes me happy", "this makes me sad" "This makes me hungry", "This makes me afraid", "This makes me horny", "This makes me angry", "this makes me curious" and "WTF!!???".
Each associative will have a strength that governs imediacy. Very strong associative signals will find their way into instant reactive agency. We call this "instinct".
As the associative strength declines we might be thrown into a "mood" as the associative chain goes through the noise-reducing loops until they are over-powered by new stimuli or resolve into a new state of association.
Or, we might simply play-out the association for simple amusement (curiosity).
Any low-level association that contains negative body response will become progressively de-prioritised, because of teh negative health outcomes of extreme body state responses (fight/flight/injury/startle). But they don't go away until a positive body response resolves the threat - at that point, they resolve into communicative insight - they become fully-trained causal maps. This is what we call "sub-conscious".
We are perception-widening machines.
Mitch SMith 50+
OR we can widen it to resolve untrained associative space.
We so it all by the true "self" - by constant feedback of experience and memory through the true self to normalise signal strength in our entire associative memory.
You and Mary both express "Zen" conceptualisation.
This is all about moving the existential identity away from the proxies .. away from the secondary perception-space and into the core self .. and letting the associative map-space resolve itself. It does not go away, you simply don't let it rule you. Then your identity is bound by all that takes a single cognitive iteration to resolve. In other words, this is "coming to your senses" . or "being here" .. or .. "the eternal, all powerful, all intelligent no-thing".
It is about moving out of the noise of unresolved secondary meta-space (of the communicable) into the relatively noiseless personal primary metaspace of being where (and when) you are.
My work is to identify how metaspace affords us the ability to move through the expanded dimensions of metaspace into new vectors of reality. I posit that we do this regularly - intuitively - and I am looking for the math and method of it: How we travel in time .. sideways.
We are more than noise-reducing, perception widening machines. It is all at the service of agency-widening.
We are "potential" resolving machines . we are the power of life - it is by us (And all of life) that the universe expands.
TOgether, we resolve the neural limit of "exclusive or" (See Minsky)
natasha nikulina 50+
Thank you for responding, I appreciate your time very much !
I am not zen master not even close, but the idea of enlightenment is very dear to me.
We may spend lifetime reckoning the strict line from A to B, but it is very difficult line to keep, because of interferences or 'noises', 'errors', which require a lot of patterns to be created in order to be understood. So they multiply exponentially without end... ad infinitum. While reduction of spacetime to 0 makes it 'AB' or even '... ' keyboard capacity doesn't allow me to print two letters at once. Keyboard mentality marks it as 'error' :) But i mean it, A becomes B , they become One. That's where knowing and true understanding takes place ' knowing' is the 'knower' , 'seer ' is the 'seen'. It's ideal, like Plato Forms, but here living in time and with time we are dealing with projections. But i believe, such state of consciousness is possible, even inevitable if one really wants to be there.
I like your idea : it is by us (And all of life) that the universe expands.
I don't know why i like it, but , you know, 'gut feeling' :) I think there is a point.
You've mentioned Minsky, is it Hyman Philip Minsky ? I don't see the connection, sorry, definitely, it's my ignorance. Could you elaborate ?
And listen to this guy :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R2dNwih-1s
Enjoy !
Mitch SMith 50+
http://www.adyashanti.org/index.php?file=watchvideo
But it does help to not leap out too far beyond our functional machinery.
A lot of mystycism and metaphysics are turning up in functional biology .. the (endless) process of de-mystification of the state of life.
Marvin Minski is one of teh pioneers of AI. He is a mathematical topologist who proved that the early neural models had topological flaws.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/marvin_minsky_on_health_and_the_human_mind.html
Then there ANtonio Damasio on the neuro biological nature of self and consciosness.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/antonio_damasio_the_quest_to_understand_consciousness.html
THen Wolpert examines the nature of beysian forecast in neural topology:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/daniel_wolpert_the_real_reason_for_brains.html
Then we look at the associative mapspace that stores geographic, causal and conventional patterns:
http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_burgess_how_your_brain_tells_you_where_you_are.html
Hereis another part of teh puzzle:
http://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments.html
And here is a hint about the role of perception in enlightenment:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
Mitch SMith 50+
THe senses interface with the perceptional boundary which is teh conversion of sensual physical data into metaphysical information. at teh other side of teh equation, the meta-map of intention (agency) is converted into the physical action of our motor systems. In between these interfaces is consciousness. It is all dedicated to the conversion of perception into agency. And it is by the measure of perception that agency depends.
LIfe requires agency to establish its niche for existence.
This creates a map - the physical senses of the individual define the basic source of perception. THis sense-locked region I call "primary perception" - dependign on the amount of causal forecast capacity, the field of perception will exceed the field of senses.
In the social animal, we have a very powerful trick to massively widen our field of perception. THrough communication, we can get the benefit of teh primary perceptive field of others.
This "inherited" field of perception I call the "secondary field of perception". IT is different in that it contains much more noise(error) and has to be wieghted by an error measure that we call "trust".
Within the limits of trust, this massively expanded perceptive field gives rise to massively augmented potential agency.
However, teh secondary perceptive field has a boundary, beyond which we are perceiving the secondary perceptive fields of others .. giving rise to a tertiary field of perception that is even more noisy.
It is in the secondary and tertialry fields of perception that our communicative self-proxies operate.
It is in these areas that all of religion, morality, empathy/reciprocity, society, politics, law, ethics, pathos, logos etc all these things are meta. I seek some decent meta-map in order to examine noise reduction and identify structural failure.
This does not preclude the divine, but it helps to exclude corruption of it (assumption)
natasha nikulina 50+
Maybe you are, your choice of talks gave me a glimpse, only a glimpse, i don't claim for understanding of your 'proxy' .( If i am not misusing the term here ) You are a kind of intelligent noise/error-fighter. :) Please, no offence ! But i think if you wake up tomorrow into a world of a pristine harmony where all noises vanish altogether you'll probably get bored, depressed and start to drink gin at 9 in the morning :)
Sorry, just kidding ! Moreover such world will never come into existence, so you are pretty safe .
Seriously, to cut the story short, you are more in a mental department while i am more in intuitive business here. And, as a zen master ( which i am not ), I don't discriminate between those two. No way is better or worse than the other, it's a matter of choice and predisposition. " Ocean rejects no river " and each of us on its own path...
Good luck with yours !
Thanks for the conversation !
Mitch SMith 50+
Yes - I am comfortable with the complexity. Mostly because i understand the underlying simplicity which generates the complexity. I have an advantage through having understood holography at a very early age - that interference patterns can be used to capture images to an astounding level of compression with very little loss .. you can shatter a holographic plate into a million shards and each shard will still show the image (from its own original perspective) it kind of turns our linear thinking on its head. Then evolving that to understand neural topology (synaptic pathways) .. then evolving that through Damasio's observation of the self. I had another advantage through being a forecast systems specialist for 16 years, so I understand the Beyesian prediction algorythm.
What all that does is give me a chance to redefine a lot of words - some get merged, some get split .. all of it to reduce these kinds of speculations to something you can actually poke with a stick - no assumptions, no guesses, you can set it up and just observe it.
The interesting part is seeing how language kind of gets it right, but inadequate training of specific words has them trapped in local minima in the lay population .. this leads to mystical assumptions that don't really exist - ambient mass delusions that can be physically demonstrated to be skewed perceptions of reality.
By cleaning all that up in my own vocabulary, I get insight into accurate predictions of behavioural and perceptional improvement.
This does not preclude any divinity, nor does it suggest that complexity is for all. COmplexity and simplicity have a balance - every simplicity is delivered by a complexity, and every complexity arises from a simplicity. For the purpose of day to day life, simplicity has the better return, but if you want to adapt, some of teh complexity must be explored (the devil is in the detail).
Derek Young 30+
You weave ideas together well. I think usually your comments seem complicated, but this one I can comprehend at a better level. I think....
You should become a teacher or something. Make your way to California and I will be your first customer, but I get to go for free *cough*cough*. HAHA! =)
I also reached my maximum thumps up for you this week! =(
Thanks for sharing your insight with us Mitch!
natasha nikulina 50+
Thank you for your farewell speech , or speeches , above and below, it's brilliant !
I agree with you that faith, when it solidifies to dogma blocks the flow, creating a lake on the way to the Ocean.
Nice extension to the beautiful metaphor. I can't take credit for it, but I am on board with this vision. Originally it sounds " Sea rejects no river" and has continuation :
"We're in motion to the Ocean. We are not land locked"
I agree, that all assumptions and even opinions are vanity.
Isn't it an assumption ? :) You see ?! here is the illustration: the very tool we are using now to communicate - language is a function of ' Maya'- the weaver of illusion. In this context how could you possibly insist that something does not exist ? What does ? If a thought appeared in your mind, hence you shaped it in words, means that your mind collapsed the wave function of the flow, and your thought starts 'to be' in a meta reality ; you put your energy into it, and your thought has a very good chance to be materialised. I don't know if my picture is right or wrong ( most likely both ), but to be on the safe side I try to be very careful with my thoughts. And it leads me to an 'assuption' that it is much more important to be kind than to be right. If someone chooses to reside in a lake,I prefer to respect his/her choice. ( for this very occasion, yesterday I invented a new pronoun -" sheh's".You may check out here
http://www.ted.com/conversations/10968/love_for_words.html?c=451445 )
By the way, I love your 'holographic plate' image ! Some time ago i came up with a 'symphony' , in terms of this metaphor, a quantum wave is like a full orchestra with limitless number of instruments, each playing a different version of a common theme. Let's conclude : nothing in this Universe has independent existence apart from everything else. So... lakes are also versions of the Ocean :)
Thanks again for the conversation !
Mitch SMith 50+
It has been my pleasure .. i DID warn you that I'd have fun with this one!
It has certainly allowed me to push my little bubble further into the void ;)
And I thank you very much for the opportunity! (and your patience ;)
and @ Natasha: Thank you VERY much for teh river/ocean image - that is almost exactly what neural topology does!
And to make clear what aare local and absolute minima:
Using your analogy, the absolute minimum IS the ocean, a local minimum is like a lake where al teh water is trapped and never finds the ocean.
This topic has been quite insightful as I explore teh unresolvable local-minima of convention/rote-memorisation (alphabets, words). I will incorporate this into a new direction of study. The outcome of which will be direct neural communication of causal symbology - this will free us from convention and blow the whole universe apart. SOunds exciting to me! All lakes will have outflows - and we will join each other at last in the ocean. (I happen to inhabit a small version of this already . and it's pretty nice!
In Hindu terms, we collapse "Maya".
And then we all become the Buddha.
Oh - and an edit to say:
REality moves .. we follow .. faith is equal to following reality.
As reality moves, our interface with it widens, and results in noise. The noise bounces us out of our comfort and makes us go seeking again ..
A moving ocean .. let's not be left behind in a comfortable, but shrinking, puddle.
This is the purest definition of "love".
I love you.
Pass it on.
Derek Young 30+
I am glad that my topic allowed your mind to freely flow in a free verse of messages through the medium of language. =)
I hope to someday comprehend or somehow assimilate your knowledge.
I bet you must be a great drinking buddy. Haha!
Best wishes and many more to come. =D
Mitch SMith 50+
We have 3 or 4 fields of perception .. maybe more.
Sartori, Nirvana .. no-thing
THis all resides in the primary field of perception - it is anchored in the senses.
Let all your thoughts end back in your senses - let all the big levels of our great awareness run like rivers back to where we are.
It is the primary field of perception that is like the light that radiates our truth and our light - from what we feel, to what we do.
This I know.
SIng, dance, or play music .. it helps - because you have to be here to do those things..
Um .. right now, I am listening to Alasdair White's CD he made in 2006 .. it has the sound of the whistle I gave him that year ..
Over Easter I went to a folk Festival to teach whistle and demonstrate my craft, Alasdair was there with Battlefield Band (who I have been following for 30+ years) .. And we lay on the grass telling outrageous jokes getting really pssed and enjoying our love. Specially the space he makes for the young fiddler ..
SO Alasdair gave me the CD ..
And I asked Mike (the piper) to play "the little cascade" which is a great tune and hard to play .. and so he got out his highland pipes and we went onto a big loud set of music, and it drowned out the other 3 or 4 sessions going on quietly in the bar .. and all the muso's came round to listen, and then I kicked off a set of jigs on my mandolin - obscure but lovely old tunes .. and the house went silent to enjoy .. and then Mike and Alasdair went off doing their own favourite jigs and reels about 3 times faster than any human could possibly do - and the excitement went through the roof.
I grabbed a couple of cheap whistles and played Scottish rythms on the plastic chair I was sitting on, and the energy got so high that I bent the whistles over .. and by the end .. everyone there were high as kites .. it's always nice to hear the applause of musicians.
We are all on the road - flowing to the sea.