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The Art of Learning to Do Things


Vern Edwards

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An excerpt from "How to Do Everything" in today's (Aug 29, 2022) New York Times:

The Art of Learning to Do Things

By Malia Wollan

Quote

If you want to know how to do something, don't just search the internet. Instead, find a person who already knows how and ask them. At first, they’ll give you a hurried, broad-strokes kind of answer, assuming that you’re uninterested in all the procedural details. But of course that’s precisely what you’re after! Ask for a slowed-down, step-by-step guide through the minutiae of the thing.

Now all you have to do is find someone who already knows how and knows the right way.

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@Vern Edwards

Reference your May 9th Recommended Reading post: 

I thoroughly enjoy these existential, inward-looking topics.  I just finished reading Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It (Basic Books, 2014), by Ian Leslie and at your recommendation.  In it, the science of learning is stated to have established two theoretical schools: one that is learner-led, like the Montessori schools of today, and one that is teacher-led and characterized by rote learning (memorization), like the medical schools of today.  The author claims via his analysis of many peer-reviewed studies that only the latter school fosters beneficial curiosity.  This is because curiosity, or what I think you term here as “the art of learning”, is a combination of 1. Broad, baseline knowledge made recallable, and 2. Grit.

1) Baseline knowledge (long-term memory)

On 8/29/2022 at 11:35 AM, Vern Edwards said:

find someone who already knows how and knows the right way.

Leslie rightly states the difference between our human minds and those of animals, or of machine learning, is that humans are the only ones that are able to establish connections between seemingly disparate concepts and ideas.  This works so long as one end of the connection being made is an idea previously committed to one’s long-term memory.  His statement supports the need for memorizing baseline knowledge of a myriad breadth, so that all new information we encounter can subconsciously be run against that baseline in a search for viable connections.  The space between those connections is what makes us human.  So, my connection between your OP yesterday (art of learning) and your Reference post (curiosity) is an example of these connections being made above some ape’s ability, and this post I am writing now is what makes me human as opposed to machine.

2) Grit (dedication to continue connecting).  

On 8/29/2022 at 11:35 AM, Vern Edwards said:

through the minutiae of the thing

This is a tough one for anyone who’s used to instant gratification (“puzzle solving”, as Leslie puts it).  Its deficiency in some is the reason society has to warn us to stay in school.  Getting through the minutiae of the thing means there are a lot of mysterious, failed connections.  Fears of rejection or uselessness ensue, but when one finally occurs it all pays off.  I feel good to have made this connection here today, for example.  Reason being, I am now bolstered in my understanding of the book, making me better prepared and more confident to defend my ways against someone else’s poorly supported ways.  This confidence means I can chart a path forward for years to come.  It may come in handy when, for example, a fellow parent recommends to me I raise my kids entirely the Montessori way, based only on anecdotal evidence like how the Google founders (those masters of making mysteries seem like puzzles) recommend it in their biographies.

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