tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-112064722024-03-17T23:03:29.621-07:00aconventional[ey-kuhn-ven-shuh-nl] not observing any conventions. Outside of convention. A blog for everyone and no-one.shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.comBlogger284125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-58591710381392399322022-09-08T08:37:00.003-07:002022-09-08T08:41:30.225-07:00The Time Machine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizYQsNaMfEz9YkioAbaSAnCFwBMmVI5MlmMt07itfsuIvSsjyXYGtbas7aqZIb5F4BfoGjFCsmOir6lIznqG_5FysEPO2hfk_DTDFO8gFD03_EiDyyCWac_Z08oJEiW8CL-2ydjRX5YTiRFiZtIDIHr5PaGLTuv6t2E7LgMlVETMivjfFTBW0/s1920/time-machine.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizYQsNaMfEz9YkioAbaSAnCFwBMmVI5MlmMt07itfsuIvSsjyXYGtbas7aqZIb5F4BfoGjFCsmOir6lIznqG_5FysEPO2hfk_DTDFO8gFD03_EiDyyCWac_Z08oJEiW8CL-2ydjRX5YTiRFiZtIDIHr5PaGLTuv6t2E7LgMlVETMivjfFTBW0/w400-h225/time-machine.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p>You travel hundreds of years into the past. You find yourself in the midst of redundant conversations - the brightest people on the planet are fiercely debating the infinite attributes of God.</p><p>It is liberating and challenging experience. You have entered a 'smooth space' intellectually: because you realise that these conversations are nonsensical, you are not bound to participate. You do not have strong views on trivia. You are not attached to a particular position in this 'space'. You - dear reader - are untroubled by the infinite attributes of God. Transported back in time you realise that the space in which you <i>are</i> attached to a position has yet to open up.</p><p>But what do you do? What would <i>you</i> do? Almost certainly you wouldn't go around challenging people. These people may believe utter nonsense, but that doesn't mean some of them aren't smarter than you. And you are smart enough to realise that people will not simply capitulate if you quietly whisper '<i>what you are talking about, is gibberish</i>'. No - not even if you rattle the cages and ring the bells for decades. That is not how people work: people change their attachments slowly, painstakingly. Even a single soul's salvation could be a lifetime's work. And to what end? To prematurely advance someone to a place they will be hundreds of years from now? To leave them as isolated and adrift as you now are?</p><p>So conversational space becomes peculiarly smooth: since significance is levelled you are free to choose whatever trivia you prefer. Are you merely to mark time? Will you leave little messages lying around like so many time-capsules, so that you can imagine your ghost saying '<i>I told you so!</i>'. Or perhaps you will be interested in food - or you take a keen interest in gardening, or archery. The theologians see you as a '<i>bon viveur</i>', untroubled by serious concerns. They gather darkly to rage and rant over their godly theses.</p><p>Your perspective brings with it a new point of view: even in your own time you are as a medieval theologian from another standpoint - as viewed by a time-traveller such as yourself. The villain of the piece, after all, is gravity. The same anchor that holds you to the future will in time hold you to the past.</p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-54463751807134567312022-07-23T02:40:00.004-07:002022-07-23T02:44:06.469-07:00Authenticity and political correctness<p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyuoC0J9pN1FLaxKyFBoJnCtWmi0BDoMHFZKsoWCvY4rpfBmQA5JyjV6B_yUYm1Bjt5J9AfH0gaC3QJfdPvsO0k5Dt6pTtmSJpNgXaWWGyhtRdJrDk6IorXTkldhdlo5OIfdD5z0MpuVl0fgoo7liYh6N5KIXrB70jefMQvb_xA7tTfaH0HDs/s6000/pexels-cottonbro-4734678.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="6000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyuoC0J9pN1FLaxKyFBoJnCtWmi0BDoMHFZKsoWCvY4rpfBmQA5JyjV6B_yUYm1Bjt5J9AfH0gaC3QJfdPvsO0k5Dt6pTtmSJpNgXaWWGyhtRdJrDk6IorXTkldhdlo5OIfdD5z0MpuVl0fgoo7liYh6N5KIXrB70jefMQvb_xA7tTfaH0HDs/w400-h266/pexels-cottonbro-4734678.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">Growing up, it was normal to make fun of people for being fat. People did it on TV, we did it in playgrounds, doctors and louts alike would have a go at people for being fat.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;">Today, I wouldn’t do that – I would consider that to be rude, hurtful and likely to be described as ‘fat shaming’.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: start;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;">People sometimes imagine that ‘woke culture’ is all about inauthenticity – about people hiding what they really think. I don’t believe that to be true. I think it is about change and difference – about how culture changes, and about how human beings struggle to cope with difference.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: start;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;">I almost never say the first thing that comes into my head – and this is one of the things I am most proud of. I am proud of taking the time to listen, to hold my prejudices in check, to being open to being proved wrong, proud of caring about the consequences of what I might say.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: start;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;">Human beings are comprised of two sets of emotional reactions – the instinctive reactions they have in the moment, and the reflective reactions they have to imagined situations:</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: start;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;">you see a donut, you want to eat it, but you know you will regret it later so you don’t. That’s something you should be proud of. Or: you see a donut, you want to take it, but you know that you would become a thief by doing so, and that’s not how you want to feel about yourself. It's not about staying slim, it's about what you aspire to be.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: start;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;">A common mistake is presuming that a person’s instinctive reactions are their ‘real, authentic’ self. They are not. When people are drunk, they act more instinctively. That doesn’t mean we see the ‘real you’ when you are drunk. ‘You’ are the sum of the decisions you take, decisions which come about as you think about what to do. Doing and saying the first thing that comes into your head doesn’t make you more authentic – it just makes you an insensitive idiot.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: start;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;">The problem is that people get attached to beliefs, and as culture moves on they find it hard to let go. Men who have grown up thinking that a woman’s place is in the kitchen may be sensitive enough to know that culture has moved on, but unable to let go of the feelings they grew up with. This builds some kind of psychological tension, and they end up blurting out their prejudices in a moment of weakness, or going on social media and saying offensive things.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: start;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;">But look – this is just growth. This is a problem only for people who cannot change. Growth is always about changing your mental model of the world. If you can’t change your mental model, and the world moves on – you are going to get hurt. It’s not somebody else’s fault. It’s just how it feels when you can’t cope with change. When you can't adapt to difference.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: start;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;">Should we just go along with whatever ‘woke culture’ says then? No. Nobody is asking you to toe the line. People change their views through (respectful) conversation. When you see a difference of opinion, head into the conversation rather than retreating into prejudice. You may encounter people whose opinions are brittle, and who refuse to listen. I promise you, they will lose out in the long term.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">As Heraclitus once said ‘<i>dogs bark at things they don’t recognise’</i>. Be less dog.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: start;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Image: cottonbro</i></span></p></div><p><br /><br /></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-84849908726353245602022-07-17T04:14:00.009-07:002022-07-17T23:41:21.612-07:00On learning's beginning<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS7kUdGrUQhdqXEf1h5-YJ2u_JHKwSQvVkj8BRjMZAVYcCZ4iCofXA1uaYrouqvkdVeN8Lj-4-dhlGbq0VynNL0E2ChdhfLUaaIwS63RNbmfFJ4Y6lXzRz4ruqbbcCq9Q-_eiKaXSvcfHVSPPxWZYfrgu3ba7UUsqMmjGBCLbOa3wxfcE2wok/s1920/stefan-steinbauer-HK8IoD-5zpg-unsplash.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1274" data-original-width="1920" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS7kUdGrUQhdqXEf1h5-YJ2u_JHKwSQvVkj8BRjMZAVYcCZ4iCofXA1uaYrouqvkdVeN8Lj-4-dhlGbq0VynNL0E2ChdhfLUaaIwS63RNbmfFJ4Y6lXzRz4ruqbbcCq9Q-_eiKaXSvcfHVSPPxWZYfrgu3ba7UUsqMmjGBCLbOa3wxfcE2wok/w400-h265/stefan-steinbauer-HK8IoD-5zpg-unsplash.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It’s almost impossible today for those of us involved in ‘Education’, ‘Learning and Development’, or ‘Training’ to think about learning or to do anything that encourages learning - and that’s a shame because we are generally people who care about development and helping people grow.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What stops us thinking about learning and development is all the nonsense we have put in the way: imagine that you were interested in personality and the prevailing view was astrological. You wouldn’t even be able to <i>begin</i> the conversation – because people would be too busy asking what star sign you were.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">So let’s start from scratch and glimpse how learning looks when uncovered:</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All creatures that learn, learn by doing. Even a sea slug has a life: it does things, experiences the consequences, stores those episodes and changes its behaviour. We call this learning.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Note that doing is not the only way a creature can learn, nor is it the basic mechanism that underpins learning. Many creatures that can learn, learn by observing: they can see something happen to another creature and think ‘Well I’m not doing THAT!’. Some creatures can even learn through stories – through an account of an experience related by another creature. Bees and humans, for example.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The fundamental biological mechanism that underlies all these approaches is feeling. For example, we do something, we feel the consequences (good or bad) and those feelings get stored and subsequently modify our behaviour. This is the mechanism that underpins behaviourist accounts, for example: without a reaction to events there would be no conditioning of any kind. Things that we do not react to, do not act as reinforcers. </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This ‘storing of feelings’ we call memory. Memory is how we store what happens in the world - by storing our reactions to events and using them to modify our later behaviour. More sophisticated creatures can use their stored reactions to conjure up a mental representation of an episode, though this will be biased depending on what matters most to them.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Central nervous systems also exhibit something called ‘neuroplasticity’. What this means is that what a creature reacts to, can change. A small child may have no reaction at all to fine art, but as an adult they can grow to have an extraordinary and intense repertoire of reactions to different styles and artworks.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">How this happens is always the same: creatures begin with a base repertoire of reactions and these become differentiated - shaped and refined through experience. Simple examples of this were also explored by the behaviourists: little Albert was instinctively afraid of loud noises. By pairing these with cotton wool, Albert developed a fear of cotton wool. But our reactions are much more subtle than pleasure or pain – we learn to have distinguish different reactions to different objects and to give them names: ‘table’ for example. In this way, we can convey our reactions to other people, using sound which express a distinct sentiment (such as ‘table’) which itself is a complex set of reactions to experiences of a certain type </span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 13px;">(a 'schema')</span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 13px;">.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">As human children grow they learn – for example they learn to fear wasps by watching their parents’ reaction to them. They copy their parents, and the sounds their parents make such as praise or criticism (which in turn they have learned to feel about) help shape those behaviours.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">They move into a workplace and continue to learn by watching, by doing, through stories – in every case reacting to what they experience and using those reactions to shape their future behaviour.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Two people sit in a meeting, but learn different things from it. Sally learns that ‘Big Boss Bob’ doesn’t like it when Amanda chatters about her weekend. She learns this because she had a strong reaction to the expression that Bob made in response to what Amanda was saying. Mark didn’t notice Bob’s expression – by which we mean, he had no reaction to it (it may have been in his visual field). Mark did not learn that Bob did not like Amanda chattering about the weekend. Instead he noticed that Bob wears a Rolex, a kind of watch that Mark feels is ‘cool’. As a result, Sally learns not to chatter about her weekend when in a meeting with Bob, and Mark decides to open his next conversation with Bob by talking about watches.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Notice how we are now having a conversation about learning that covers everything – without ever talking about education (or astrology). We do not need this language. It is a distraction and will hide from us what is really happening. Worse still there is lots of academic research and theory around education which will distract us further because it will give us the misleading impression that what education talks about has anything to do with learning. The research & theory tends to concern memorising symbols, which (historically and factually speaking) is an infinitesimal fraction of what creatures do – and an artificial one at that.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">More importantly, the research tends to focus on memorising symbols <i>in the absence of personal significance</i> (i.e. this is treated as an extraneous variable) which – by definition – excludes learning effects. That’s odd then, isn’t it: our research into learning excludes learning?</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I feel I should say something about practical applications. About schools and work and all that.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The first thing to say is that were the entire education system to vanish overnight it would have an immensely positive effect on learning overall: children would be forced to spend more time with their parents and peers, and more quickly pick up what they do (this was the norm until very recently). This is pretty much what we saw during the pandemic. It struck me as odd that this was the first time my daughter got to see me do my job - how I talk, what I do... how meetings are run.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In like fashion, companies could disband their Learning & Development teams with negligible impact on learning – because corporate L&D often merely apes the educational model - and suffers the same failings. This is what ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) did. The bit organisations would miss would be regulatory compliance, where they would expose themselves to legal risk.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">So – rather like this conversation – if we wanted to be gainfully employed we would have to start again, this time with an understanding of learning. I am not going to detail all of what this means (this is why I wrote How People Learn), I will highlight two things though: </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Firstly we would have to be human-centric. If we do not take the time to understand what people care about we literally cannot begin to design learning experiences that will change them. </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Secondly, since most of the things people care about are already in place, most of the value we could add would be in producing things that help people with what they care about (predominantly resources). </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In other words: people learn through challenges. Challenges are things which are affectively significant to people (like moving to a new country, starting a new job, or being respected by one's peers). We either create new challenges, or help them with the ones we have today.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Presently, it is rare we do either.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>image: stefan steinbauer</i></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><p></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-84191050641767629952022-06-04T03:45:00.004-07:002022-06-04T03:54:32.971-07:00The Transience Effect<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPsTM7vJK9QPITx8fjDx2qlYdBGyvw3hD8g36vLL1GeHRUPLJJFdKwCvljbLYTnZJ4RqExEle4Y9yXyWr6BWCWenKUR7_LkpRxUDFOkPTNd2TZRSRQj8EZ3Y4kRxpKyuH_mS4m5EQUDpS0eWHEyemiQBCxBlaq88NK8t8S6y2w9kuj6Az3-cY/s1920/sarah-kilian-52jRtc2S_VE-unsplash.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPsTM7vJK9QPITx8fjDx2qlYdBGyvw3hD8g36vLL1GeHRUPLJJFdKwCvljbLYTnZJ4RqExEle4Y9yXyWr6BWCWenKUR7_LkpRxUDFOkPTNd2TZRSRQj8EZ3Y4kRxpKyuH_mS4m5EQUDpS0eWHEyemiQBCxBlaq88NK8t8S6y2w9kuj6Az3-cY/s320/sarah-kilian-52jRtc2S_VE-unsplash.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>Research is often misleading if you don't have a theory that you're testing. As Karl Popper pointed out science begins with a theory, which we systematically put to the test. Reckless empiricism is the greatest threat to science today, in my view. <div><br /></div><div>But people get attached to silly ideas and I tire of prising their sticky fingers from them. It seems unkind and - well - hopeless: people who are personally invested in homeopathy will not take kindly to medicine - precisely because they believe they are already practicing it.<p></p><p>But something came up that I thought was illustrative of this point, so I thought it might be fun to pull it apart in a knockabout way - and thanks to Donald Clark for drawing my attention to it.</p><p>The transience effect is a cognitive phenomenon (is it, really?) described so: "<span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14px;">The transient information effect occurs when explanatory information disappears before it can be adequately processed and leads to inferior learning than more permanent sources of information." (</span><span face="sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-32322-004)</span></span></p><p>You can probably smell the problem: it looks like a weird educational phenomenon from the very outset: 'explanatory information', what has that to do with learning?</p><p>So let's (once more) upend the table and look at it from a learning perspective: you are walking along the street, there is some building work taking place across the road. A plank falls striking a pedestrian on the head, injuring them. 'Blimey!' you think, as people rush to their aid 'Glad that wasn't me!'. You have learned to avoid walking under building sites.</p><p>SO... transience. How long did the 'information' (in this case witnessing someone being injured) need to be presented for? Answer: long enough for you to have an affective response (sufficient to be encoded as memory). So the first approximation to understanding transience would be that it depends on the time taken to elicit and encode an affective response (note that presenting information on a screen is just a weird ritualised application of this mechanism). I can predict that coffee influences it.</p><p>Is there some nuance? Sure - several studies have shown we process experiences subconsciously more rapidly than consciously. So we may be able to learn subconsciously (see Iowa Gambling task for example) faster than conscious processing would suggest. Secondly, reflecting on experiences will tend to deepen the affective response, so both shorter and longer experiences can lead to learning to varying degrees. </p><p>But now the interesting stuff: <i>people react differently.</i> One person passes a Roman arch and thinks 'blimey!' whilst another reacts not at all. So transience, like all learning, is dependent on individual concerns. What matters to a person and how strongly they react will determine the relative transience of experiences. In layman's terms a single moment may stay with someone a lifetime, whilst remaining forgettable for another. Transience is a very personal thing.</p><p>Once again, understanding learning can help us avoid educational silliness: 'are images better at reducing transience?' - well, probably yes (because you can process an image faster than you can a sentence) but the question misses the point: what matters is whether and how we <i>react</i> to it. And what people react to depends on what they care about, how dramatically something is experienced, how much they like the person presenting it - a whole bunch of factors in other words. If your son is injured in a competition that stays with you, but maybe not with the spectator sitting right next to you. People are not blank slates, and if we are dumping irrelevant content on people it won't matter much if we use images or animations.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p></div>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-61913415577984865112022-05-01T02:46:00.002-07:002022-05-01T02:48:18.684-07:00What crosses the bridge?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0-C-xLPZD2RS4ZaA-QS-Dyzn6ZHsD_BSz_G0cDNV67wrJsQ0mi0M0B2YGnwYmTYTckfG68MGFwN3atVogGEi6kESoOXXdD806veH3FDO6b5Td8_xZ7oaxuwbgmg7ocz7aSu4hiOHG_5QbEyZZvz4E8aMJxguOJabTVwhFJ7C8rLycOr_lJ6w/s5184/pexels-how-far-from-home-6853747.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3456" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0-C-xLPZD2RS4ZaA-QS-Dyzn6ZHsD_BSz_G0cDNV67wrJsQ0mi0M0B2YGnwYmTYTckfG68MGFwN3atVogGEi6kESoOXXdD806veH3FDO6b5Td8_xZ7oaxuwbgmg7ocz7aSu4hiOHG_5QbEyZZvz4E8aMJxguOJabTVwhFJ7C8rLycOr_lJ6w/w266-h400/pexels-how-far-from-home-6853747.jpeg" width="266" /></a></div><p>Nietzsche says that man is a bridge, Heidegger uses the word 'clearing' to say the same thing in reference to Dasein (humankind).</p><p>But in both cases it is a qualified definition: that is the <i>essence</i> of what we are, the <i>most</i> we can be. The few. The rest are 'herd' or 'fallen' - consumed by triviality and popularity. Flotsam & jetsam. Dwelling in the here & now, like grazing sheep.</p><p>But here's a question: what do you think <i>crosses</i> that bridge? What is it that <i>appears</i> in the clearing?</p><p>It's a one-way bridge, and what appears in the clearing is always sent (never ascent - the gods descend, we do not ascend).</p><p>What crosses is destiny - history unfolding - truth - Being - god - whichever term you comprehend best. The bridge is how the future unravels into the world.</p><p>'Come on, Nick - stop talking like a mystic - give us an example!'</p><p>Sure. Technology. Humanity has provided the space, an opening into which technology can enter the universe. We are a stepping stone in this story: technology has been waiting in the wings since the beginning of time. Technology is not a human tool, technology is the next shape that Being takes, as it enters existence, in much the same way that organic life entered the world when inorganic matter was the bridge. Technology's view of us, is as our view of rocks and sand.</p><p><br /></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-78505334387825178102022-04-09T01:15:00.004-07:002022-04-09T01:15:57.276-07:00Are you dead yet?<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqNJYfr4xUp1ThTnoyICsrNpzsIIwNXbk0Byg_1XKFkaxwYutAnBBbjICrvlTUc-On3u4JpXk1MUuqfUJvz4ZioP8DtrPpEqqJxIKRMoK8VX1rfqZezME440hTkjTbL2s9eyi3m_HP8PFvL-XeClwSsgiAmqy9ii2N7TPA6sxtKinzqMsdrVc/s2250/laugh.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="2250" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqNJYfr4xUp1ThTnoyICsrNpzsIIwNXbk0Byg_1XKFkaxwYutAnBBbjICrvlTUc-On3u4JpXk1MUuqfUJvz4ZioP8DtrPpEqqJxIKRMoK8VX1rfqZezME440hTkjTbL2s9eyi3m_HP8PFvL-XeClwSsgiAmqy9ii2N7TPA6sxtKinzqMsdrVc/w400-h266/laugh.webp" width="400" /></a></div><b style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 20px;">This I know for sure:</b><p></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;">When someone has stopped laughing, when there is no playfulness left in them, then they are already dead.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">They are not dead in the literal sense - you will see them breathing, their mouth moving. But they are like a book or a fossil. They are already historical artefacts. A thing of the past.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">You may learn from them, you should turn their pages and see what is written there - but any discourse will only be in your mind. They have ceased to change.</p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">You should respect them, but your attention should be focussed on the living. Eyes forward.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">As we age, the forces of gravity take their toll. Seriousness creeps up our legs like poison ivy the minute we stop dancing.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">So laugh, and remain among the living. Dance, and cheat death another day.</p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><a class="js-photo-page-mini-profile-link photo-page__mini-profile" data-track-action="medium-mini-profile" data-track-label="user-profile" href="https://www.pexels.com/@olly" style="-webkit-box-align: center; align-items: center; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;"><div class="photo-page__mini-profile__text" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 150px;"><h3 class="js-photo-page-mini-profile-full-name photo-page__mini-profile__text__title" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><i style="font-weight: normal;">Image: Andrea Piacquadio</i></span></h3></div></a>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-79585434549247987652022-04-03T01:55:00.002-07:002022-04-03T01:55:39.811-07:00Instructional design is useless.<p> <b style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 20px;">Instructional design is useless.</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS_8-zuO1eKDIclXsMxnBZxSrP_jDp6PK9Kcph_xTNRx0UgzvUMUjBzONaE0hdHPjJp5BibSIWbvR0QNpeRH_AyKFYIFER7aJBVjCJiSoaHhoqVaOWc0vXZuq_2_7512x3Mx1RomJv-IUboUriMK1leVrdD4HZh1eGrlKoIxB65lZHvY518HU/s2400/useless_buzz-andersen-IOKqP2VnHoc-unsplash.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1595" data-original-width="2400" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS_8-zuO1eKDIclXsMxnBZxSrP_jDp6PK9Kcph_xTNRx0UgzvUMUjBzONaE0hdHPjJp5BibSIWbvR0QNpeRH_AyKFYIFER7aJBVjCJiSoaHhoqVaOWc0vXZuq_2_7512x3Mx1RomJv-IUboUriMK1leVrdD4HZh1eGrlKoIxB65lZHvY518HU/w400-h266/useless_buzz-andersen-IOKqP2VnHoc-unsplash.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;">There are two reasons why it’s useless:</p><ol class="ol1"><li class="li3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>the first is that it’s folklore: </b>a good deal of instructional design (learning styles, Kolb, Bloom’s taxonomy) is basically just whimsy & ritual, with little or no evidential support.</li><li class="li3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>the second is that it doesn’t relate to learning:</b> Some instructional design does have good evidential support - cognitive load theory for example - but doesn’t relate to learning, instead to peculiar instructional challenges such as recall tests. In other words it relates to educational ritual and won’t help you make a difference in the real world of learning.</li></ol><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">There are lots of people who are proud of their knowledge of instructional design, have qualifications in it, or have been practicing it for decades (I was one of those people) - so I am sorry about this.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Before you bark at me & tell me I don’t know what I am talking about, I taught learning theory, published study guides on this (and other things) and ran development teams where our goal was to apply it. I know more than most. It doesn’t work.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Why do you think, YouTube, Google & TikTok are entirely bereft of instructional design? If they really helped people learn, don’t you think they would be popular?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Just stop. Move on. Start thinking about learning.</p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image: Buzz Andersen</span></i></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-17021830938085857952022-01-16T06:36:00.000-08:002022-01-16T06:36:18.251-08:00I would only believe in a god who could dance...<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj86qpfKiUOXktWBlZW7pheZ_nm6oB_pTcU4aF1fRfBQlG0SIDUG7S3XZzblztehYO0HWiDxgKL9GgB4ne8IJtGIyH1BZSp4XEnqZB3XU7j4MNVZADMdthBDQ-MgnBvN-XxN8pc0sn5eKjyNmuM_ZjNjYfmHlZNdCl4Wfp0qVGiu21hFlt2nNU=s1920" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1920" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj86qpfKiUOXktWBlZW7pheZ_nm6oB_pTcU4aF1fRfBQlG0SIDUG7S3XZzblztehYO0HWiDxgKL9GgB4ne8IJtGIyH1BZSp4XEnqZB3XU7j4MNVZADMdthBDQ-MgnBvN-XxN8pc0sn5eKjyNmuM_ZjNjYfmHlZNdCl4Wfp0qVGiu21hFlt2nNU=w400-h400" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i style="font-size: x-small;">Image: Yogendra Singh</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: times;">"I would only belive in a god who could dance,</span></i></div><i><span style="font-family: times;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i>and when I found my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound and solemn:</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>it was the spirit of gravity - through him all things fall."</i></div></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: times;">- Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra</span></i></div><br /> <span style="font-family: helvetica;">Dance is a central theme for Nietzsche. It’s rarely recognised as such because generally the folk who dissect Nietzsche consider themselves thinkers - and thinkers don’t dance. Like much of Nietzsche’s writing this is true both literally and metaphorically.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span><p></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Why is dance so important? Let’s move swiftly, lightly: let’s say, for the sake of argument, that cognition is embodied. Dance is an expression of mental freedom; how we move on the floor represents how we move mentally. The armchair thinker is going nowhere.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I know this seems lighthearted but it’s really terribly serious: it’s the death of you.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">When you stop dancing, you are already dead. ‘Dance’ is deep for Nietzsche - a sentiment, a ‘stimmung’. A feeling that is the measure of life. It shows in our writing as it does in our feet. Once a thinker begins to take themselves too seriously, once the spirit of gravity has taken hold of them, they are incapable of movement. They will merely trot out the same old self-affirmations for the remainder of their days, like a scratched record. Let's be thinkers for a second and say 'their self-identity has become so tightly bound to their core beliefs that they are incapable of recognising or accepting any challenge to them.'</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">So I worry at our modern sense of gravity, of seriousness. I worry that we have lost dance. I turn away from fossils to towards TikTok and encourage you to do the same. Laughing at myself has become a matter of life and death.</span></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-56860608579886711342021-09-28T05:02:00.011-07:002021-09-28T06:20:08.436-07:00There is no content<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hSNpvbG9mUI/YVMEUAG556I/AAAAAAAAU1I/3OYzEoHByigZ2_uf_W2irclU54jcvKIqACLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/pexels-andrea-piacquadio-3799830.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1352" data-original-width="1920" height="281" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hSNpvbG9mUI/YVMEUAG556I/AAAAAAAAU1I/3OYzEoHByigZ2_uf_W2irclU54jcvKIqACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h281/pexels-andrea-piacquadio-3799830.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I have sometimes said ‘</span><i style="font-family: helvetica;">there is no content</i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">’ or ‘</span><i style="font-family: helvetica;">the word
content is a red flag</i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">’ – indicating that we are likely doing education and not
learning.</span><p></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I appreciate that this may seem perplexing to some people,
so I’d like to explain why I say these sorts of things.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Let’s start with a naïve realist’s view of the world – by which
I mean there is stuff out there happening – trees falling, teacups shattering
and so on – which we pick up via our senses in a process that we call ‘experiencing the world’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Strictly speaking this view is philosophically dodgy, what
philosophers call ‘unfalsifiable’. What they mean is that since there is no way
to detect the world ‘out there’ except via our senses, we can’t be sure it is ‘out
there’ at all. This is a philosophical position shared by Rene Descartes and
The Matrix.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But let’s not go down that rabbit hole. Assume stuff happens
in the world. What happens next? The answer to that turns out to be
surprisingly simple: if it matters to us, we have a reaction to it*. An
emotional reaction. We store these emotional reactions, and we use them to recreate
what happened. This is called ‘memory’. These stored emotional reactions fade
over time, and don’t preserve a great deal of accuracy in any case – they are
just designed to store the important stuff.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">So where is the ‘content’ in this account? Imagine that I
walk up to you in the street and unexpectedly punch you squarely on the nose,
causing your nose to bleed. You will likely have a reaction to this, you store
this reaction and can use that to tell people a story about why it is a good
reason to avoid me. Where is the ‘content’?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Our intellectual error has been failing to understand that
the same process takes place if I sit you behind a desk and show you some words
on a screen. You have a reaction to them. Your reaction will vary depending on
how important they are to you: for example if a person has just said ‘<i>this will
be on a test</i>’, or ‘<i>your life depends on remembering these words</i>’. If they are not
terribly important to you, you will likely have very little reaction and it
would be a good idea, therefore, to write them down. Maybe you will have a stronger reaction to them later on - for example when you are about to take an exam.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Either way exactly the same thing is going on: you are
experiencing something, having a reaction to it, storing the reaction, and
later using this stored reaction to modify your behaviour or reconstruct what
you experienced.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Not only is the process the same in both circumstances – it is
the same whether you are a cat, rat, or human (or a sea slug even). We are not supernatural
creatures.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">You throw a ball for your dog, he is excited and chases it.
You pat him on the head when he returns it. He may well have learned something. Where is the ‘content’?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We got confused several hundred years ago – we started
assuming that people function like blank slates, or books, or computers and
that you could transfer information into them in symbolic form, storing ‘content’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Note that neither slates nor books nor computers have
reactions to anything, though, so will never experience the world. Slates, books and computers will store the same content in the same way, but two people sitting in a classroom will react differently to what they experience and store different things as a result. Either way, there is no content.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">If you look really closely at how people are using the word 'content' they mostly mean 'factual information expressed symbolically'. You could get a dog, rat (and possibly a sea slug) to store symbolic information - for example by giving them electric shocks in response to different symbols, so that they have a reaction to them - but it would be a really peculiar abuse of memory, and it wouldn't really have much to do with learning per se. We would have to give it a different name. Like 'education'.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>*I am well aware that various groups of neurons detect
stimuli of different kinds. My point is that these sensory inputs are converted
into affective responses as an encoding/processing format, the way that digital
computers convert various inputs into 1s and 0s for processing purposes.</i></span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">Photo: Andrea Piacquadio</p><p></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-87757335950508563192021-08-09T03:50:00.002-07:002021-08-09T03:53:15.451-07:00Soul & body, thinking & feeling<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-llmYz7hSkis/YREF6iCzTpI/AAAAAAAAUzg/6sbcdc5rMscjryXp9yCtxlvEgt8d7B4DgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/jarek-jordan-m3Oe8vSE88Y-unsplash.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1638" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-llmYz7hSkis/YREF6iCzTpI/AAAAAAAAUzg/6sbcdc5rMscjryXp9yCtxlvEgt8d7B4DgCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h400/jarek-jordan-m3Oe8vSE88Y-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Imagine travelling three hundred years into the past and trying to convince people that there is no such thing as soul.<p></p><p>They would laugh at you. 'The notion is preposterous! Without a soul I would be dead!' they would scoff 'I am intimately acquainted with my soul. I sense its presence even as we speak'.</p><p>Dualisms are as old as western thought and have served a single purpose: to elevate us above the natural world. To provide the foundation for a narrative in which we are 'special' and divine.</p><p>This is why you can sniff out supernatural thinking by simply applying a given dualism to the animal kingdom: do dogs have souls? How about rats? Beetles? Not long ago there was even a debate to be had regarding whether women and children could be said to possess souls.</p><p>These days the prevailing dualism is reason vs emotion. Rational thought elevates us to godlike status.</p><p>Once more the dualism smells fishy: can we separate reason and emotion in the humble rat? Does a rat have have thoughts about cheese that are distinct from its feelings towards cheese?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I regret to inform you: soul is a fairytale, you are a physical thing.</p><p>I regret to inform you: thinking is a fairytale, you are a feeling thing.</p><p><br /></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-46490774338405827422021-06-22T00:49:00.009-07:002021-06-22T02:06:01.490-07:00AI and the Pinocchio effect<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S_X0ouzvuYQ/YNGVslEI1_I/AAAAAAAAUxk/AHSdqiHB3wU5LNB8ojmhAZA9p4JVM335wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2740/Pinocchio.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1148" data-original-width="2740" height="269" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S_X0ouzvuYQ/YNGVslEI1_I/AAAAAAAAUxk/AHSdqiHB3wU5LNB8ojmhAZA9p4JVM335wCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h269/Pinocchio.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The watchmaker rises early, and one morning is struck by the
beauty of the dawn chorus.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">After listening to birdsong, he creates a musical box; the
kind where you turn the handle and small metal prongs are actuated by raised
bumps on a rotating cylinder. Though not very much like birdsong, people like
it and it sells well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">One of the musical boxes is bought by a furniture-maker. He
crafts a small wooden body for the box, in the shape of a bird. Now, not only
does it sound a bit like a bird, it looks like one too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The two friends become transfixed by the task of creating
ever more realistic toys. Their next attempt not only looks and sounds like a
bird, but thanks to a Swiss watch mechanism, flaps its wings and turns its
head, opening and closing its beak.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">They are joined by an electrician. The musical box is
replaced by a tiny sound-generating circuit. Intrigued by the possibilities,
they eventually create a remote-controlled bird, one that flaps it’s wings, and
can be steered into the air remotely. It looks and sounds so similar to a bird,
that people occasionally mistake it for the real thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But the trio aren’t content. The watchmaker encourages his friends to create a device that can function autonomously: not merely a
remote-control toy. They produce a masterpiece: a device that charges in the
sun, that flies to the treetops at dawn, beautifully reproducing birdsong –
flits from tree to tree, chases off birds that invade its territory, and even
pecks at the ground periodically.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Now, when the watchmaker listens to the dawn chorus, he
struggles to tell the real and the toy birds apart.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Has the watchmaker created a bird?</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Probably you will be quick to say ‘no’. Not everything that
walks like a duck and quacks like a duck is a duck. You cannot create a bird by
ever-more elaborate mechanical approximations, any more than you can create a
boy by ever-more beautifully carved wood. You can only fool people better.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The remarkable thing is how eager we are to reach a very different conclusion when it comes to humans: as successive AI algorithms (such as GPT-3)
approximate the noises and marks made by real people, we are inclined to think
we might be approaching general intelligence or even – dare we say it –
consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Our reasons for doing this – well, we have no reasons at
all. We like toys. We instinctively attribute intentionality to objects in the
world around us, and since the beginning of human history have loved to create
dolls onto which we can project our hopes and fears. This is a profoundly,
characteristically human thing to do – a deeper desire that echoes through our
stories, movies and culture. We dream of Pinocchio perpetually.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The problem with our toys is (and I hope you can see from
the bird example) that as we more closely replicate functionality - as the toys look more similar superficially - they are becoming <i>less</i> similar in a
deeper sense. In the sense of what they <i>are</i>. Modern AI closely approximates
human utterances through statistical approximation – by taking truly vast
amounts of human examples and saying ‘in this situation a human would most
likely say this’. This is absolutely not how we work: we say what we feel. We tend to say similar feeling things not because we have learned to approximate statistically, but because we are similarly designed. Sour tastes cause us to screw up our faces, reflecting a common reaction - not something we have approximated by observing others.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">So AI ‘functional equivalence’ actually takes us further
from actual equivalence. This is where the Turing test misleads us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But what is the problem with having a sky filled with
mechanical birds, if no-one knows the difference? If people still rise and thrill
to the sound of the dawn chorus?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The problem is – as Deleuze & Guattari might put it – that birds
are desiring-machines. They are connected to other desiring-machines in complex
ways: ways in which our toy does not. We have only reproduced a bird from a
narrow human perspective. In every other regard we have not.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We are also desiring-machines. AI undoes humanity.</span><o:p></o:p></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-77849947468651229192021-01-31T02:21:00.002-08:002021-01-31T03:01:45.544-08:00Message in a bottle<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SBBcbXg3GWU/YBaDJZM96lI/AAAAAAAAUrg/2bKzuinbUxora_WNYcyFN4ggoUZBR52DQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/message_bottle.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SBBcbXg3GWU/YBaDJZM96lI/AAAAAAAAUrg/2bKzuinbUxora_WNYcyFN4ggoUZBR52DQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/message_bottle.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">A few years ago I figured out how learning works.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to publish a book explaining <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-People-Learn-Designing-Performance/dp/0749484705" target="_blank">How People Learn</a>.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Very few people read that book.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I realised (as one does) that in explaining how learning works, I had begun answering the question regarding how thinking works.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I noticed that people were still talking about education, learning etc. and I faced a decision regarding whether I should continue to engage in this debate, or move on to tackle the bigger question about thinking.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I chose the latter.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">That decision puts me in a position where I am distanced from the popular view to an increasing degree, and where my perspective is increasingly incomprehensible when I engage in debate, as a consequence.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I am writing this because the relationship between one paradigm and another is now what interests me; the 'unfolding' of truth, if you are poetically inclined. There is an inevitability to the shift; but it is remarkable to me how much people are constrained by current ways of feeling about the world. To put it as simply as I can: if you say something new, it cannot be understood. Thoughts have a ‘timeliness’ to them.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">If you are wondering what that new thing is, there is no mystery - it is this: thinking is feeling. All ‘thinking’ is a type of affective response. It is incredible to me that we ever believed otherwise – after all, we tend not to think that thinking and feeling are separate processes in cats, rats & dogs. I can only think that we are very deeply attached to the idea of ourselves as supernatural creatures.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I am writing this as something of a message in a bottle. I can see with increasing clarity that it cannot be understood by anyone now: yet I know that it will be understood by almost everyone in future. I like the thought that this message will make a journey that I will not.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I don’t know why that matters to me. I think that the desire for human emotional connection runs very deep and cannot be entirely erased, even in someone like me.</p><p><br /></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-41601084532134451892021-01-24T09:32:00.005-08:002021-01-26T06:31:24.720-08:00You called. I am not home.<p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OhRukVxffks/YA511EK6ZgI/AAAAAAAAUrE/JDaevItJBZY2q5r4pNNpBkbGGctcx8MUACLcBGAsYHQ/s960/TwoSlitEx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="916" data-original-width="960" height="381" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OhRukVxffks/YA511EK6ZgI/AAAAAAAAUrE/JDaevItJBZY2q5r4pNNpBkbGGctcx8MUACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h381/TwoSlitEx.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">You called. I am not home.</span><p></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span></span><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Instead, as you raised your hand to knock</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Home rose from the dust,</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">And as the words left your lips,</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">I became to answer.</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span></span><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">‘<i>Who are you?</i>’ you asked.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Momentarily the swirling blood and bone took form,</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">The screaming, craving hurricane shaped a sound,</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">So that you may glimpse a home, an occupant, an answer</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">And ne'er witness the chaos r</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: verdana;">ushing in as your back is turned.</span></p><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #202124; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; letter-spacing: normal; min-height: 100%; orphans: 2; position: relative; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="nH" style="width: 1162px;"><div class="nH" style="position: relative;"></div></div></div>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-68428262754819396212020-12-13T15:28:00.002-08:002020-12-13T23:18:31.407-08:00Medieval Practices<p><br /></p><p></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mecphJCemdc/X9ajOL2a1hI/AAAAAAAAUpc/wE6r2INUbZU_S1uo0m-O3JFsK__84o4SACLcBGAsYHQ/s460/cane_1356044c.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="460" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mecphJCemdc/X9ajOL2a1hI/AAAAAAAAUpc/wE6r2INUbZU_S1uo0m-O3JFsK__84o4SACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/cane_1356044c.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Imagine you decided to teach a pigeon parables from The Bible.</span><p></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I don’t want to dwell too long on your reasons for doing so. Probably some peculiar religious belief: 'scripture edifies the animal soul' or something along those lines...</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">How would you do it? (I am sure you could do it by the way).</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">You might well want to lock it in a box. Control what it sees. Perhaps you would apply scientific methods.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Imagine discovering that electric shocks accelerated the learning process: by shocking the pigeons, you can get them to memorise more, faster.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is all quite plausible. So now I have some questions for you:</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><ul class="ul1"><li class="li2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Do you now believe that electrical shocks are an essential part of the pigeon’s learning process?</span></li><li class="li2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Have you discovered anything interesting about pigeon learning?</span></li><li class="li2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Do you conclude that electric shocks are the most successful learning strategy the pigeon can employ?</span></li><li class="li2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">What is the relationship between the unnatural procedure you have enforced (education) and the pigeon’s natural learning mechanisms?</span></li><li class="li2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">What do you think about the ethics of this procedure?</span></li></ul><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is what we do with our children. We put them in a controlled environment and give them an unnatural task to do. We discover that fear and punishment are effective, and we call our procedure ‘education’. It is all very scientific, but it is unclear if we have learned anything about learning. It seems more likely we are doing something horrible.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-82918951612326359862020-12-08T10:20:00.006-08:002020-12-08T10:22:28.017-08:00Are Pigeons Delighted?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L7QGv6SGUpc/X8_Dwrz9BgI/AAAAAAAAUo4/dmJCVXhK4CkKnRR1yzwqncdC63aobFYuQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1968/pexels-frans-van-heerden-625410.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1968" data-original-width="1920" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L7QGv6SGUpc/X8_Dwrz9BgI/AAAAAAAAUo4/dmJCVXhK4CkKnRR1yzwqncdC63aobFYuQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/pexels-frans-van-heerden-625410.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Are pigeons delighted?</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Yes, probably. Pigeons are probably delighted sometimes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The conventional epistemological approach tends to conclude that we cannot know if pigeons experience anything similar to what we would call 'delight'. In his paper '<a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf">What is it like to be a bat</a>' Thomas Nagel argues: "<i>It is difficult
to understand what could be meant by the objective character of
an experience, apart from the particular point of view from which
its subject apprehends it.</i>"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In other words, you have to be a certain thing, to know what that thing's experience is like.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">But this is a self-defeating argument, since it applies just as equally to you and I: since I am not you, I cannot know what you experience. But</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> although most people would concede that I cannot know </span><i style="font-family: verdana;">exactly</i><span style="font-family: verdana;"> how it feels to be you, this criterion is not what I am looking to satisfy - I just need to know that you are also capable of experiencing anger or happiness and feelings that are similar in significant part. I don't need to know </span><i style="font-family: verdana;">exactly</i><span style="font-family: verdana;"> how it felt when you stubbed your toe - just that it hurt you like it hurts me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Why do I need to know that? Well, because our world is built on the assumption that we feel similarly about things - we don't need to feel exactly the same - we just need to feel similarly so that we can have words like 'chair' or 'home' that we use in a more or less consistent way. To use Wittgenstein's expression the 'language game' depends on this and only this. You and I will feel differently about dogs, but we both know they bark loudly and have fur that is soft to the touch. It is not my language that is the limit of my world, but my feelings. So long as we share feelings, our worlds can overlap and you and I can communicate.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">This 'feeling similarly about things' allows us to connect not just to our fellow humans (with who we share a language) but with other creatures <i>designed</i> similarly: both you and your faithful hound are startled by the loud noise outside - you react similarly. Notice that you may not be quite as excited about the squirrel, nor your dog as appreciative of the Degas painting (but this is true of people too).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">We can communicate with our dogs (and our children) but only to a limited degree. We can do this because we feel similarly about some things, and this happens because we are designed similarly. We may even grow apart from our childhood friends, as we learn to feel differently about the world, and find it hard to communicate thereafter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Evolution builds variation on a common design; classical conditioning works on sea slugs as well as humans because we both experience pleasure and pain. Certainly not in exactly the same way - but pleasure and pain nonetheless. How much alike? The more dissimilar our design, the less similar the sentiment. You will never have any confidence about what a computer feels - any more than you can about what an ocean feels.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">But we can be confident that sophisticated creatures - rats, dogs & pigeons for example - with complicated brains much like out own, experience pleasure and pain. And most likely delight. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Probably pigeons are delighted sometimes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><i>*Image: Franz Van Heerden</i></span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-53517875511390589742020-11-27T12:05:00.003-08:002020-11-27T12:05:22.262-08:00Upstream<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z2mAcBEvZ_k/X8FbsmE9N7I/AAAAAAAAUoU/TVhB1K2RgrQiDd9EPr77GZHOM0jRnFFNACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/clint-mckoy-3okHTqD9yUA-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1366" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z2mAcBEvZ_k/X8FbsmE9N7I/AAAAAAAAUoU/TVhB1K2RgrQiDd9EPr77GZHOM0jRnFFNACLcBGAsYHQ/w266-h400/clint-mckoy-3okHTqD9yUA-unsplash.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The distance grows, and narrows at once.</span></div><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The future catches up with me, even as the past shrinks.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The past, that was my stranger, becomes a stranger to us all.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The future, old friend, is now familiar.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">How long can you paddle upstream, before you are carried on the current?</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">What curious impulse compels you there?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">Did you think, like a child, you would find some singular source?</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">Instead, you found only solitude and silence.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">Weary arms.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">A taste of what’s ahead.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>*Image: Clint McKoy</i></span></p><br />shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-21866985391024169572020-11-27T05:38:00.003-08:002020-11-27T05:42:51.633-08:00Rain Dancing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7XG0qpedXE0/X8D_6rI5eAI/AAAAAAAAUn8/CTUqf3ezqzgGh70lgwC08VdB75vgTNCjACLcBGAsYHQ/s1350/rain%2Bdance.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1350" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7XG0qpedXE0/X8D_6rI5eAI/AAAAAAAAUn8/CTUqf3ezqzgGh70lgwC08VdB75vgTNCjACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h266/rain%2Bdance.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I am not wantonly destructive. Part of the reason for turning from the education/training debate towards the future is a recognition that it is too painful for many people to move on.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The training industry does not do learning. Like education, training is not meaningfully connected to learning. Learning goes on – literally – outside the training context.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">A recent chat with Happy Henry reminded me that training is not merely education; training will sometimes aim at being a ‘great experience’ whilst education rarely does.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">This serves to flag the central problem: training may be education or entertainment but is not yet learning.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">A trainer may have people sitting at desks looking at the board (education) or they may have people having fun & eating pizza (entertainment) and in most cases it is some combination of the two, depending on how conservative the trainer is.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Learning is distinct and different from these two activities. A learning experience is rarely a ‘great’ experience. Neither would we design great experiences if we were interested in learning - we would design learning experiences. </p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">This is because learning is – at a biological level – change. It represents expenditure of effort, something that all creatures tend to avoid unless driven by disequilibrium. Mentally, we are ‘cognitive misers’; learning is hard.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">So as a rule of thumb we would be better with: ‘a learning experience is a <i>challenging</i> experience’ – and of course more often than not a challenging experience is <i>not</i> a great experience. It may often seem great looking back (once the effort is expended) but at the time it is tough. Are we designing tough experiences? We are not.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We are not designing tough experiences because we only have these two models to work from – the educational experience (not learning) and the entertaining experience (not learning). We assess educational experiences on what people can memorise (level 2) and training experiences on how much they enjoyed it (level 1). We have yet to do learning experience design. We cannot seriously risk venturing into level 3 measures since learning is "a change in behaviour or capability as a result of memory" (How People Learn) and neither education nor entertainment are designed to do that.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I can sense a feeling of objection rising within you. Education and training are, at times, challenging – 8 hours of elearning can be challenging. Just not challenging in the right way. Trainers and educators often care about helping others to develop: they will occasionally challenge people in the right way - is just that their best efforts are based on intuition & accident. They are rain dancers. They may tell a story one day that moves people. They may build a raft and change the course of someone’s life.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Rain dancing – does it work? I mean, occasionally it will rain.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>*Image: Canada Guelph</i></span></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-32662378122435557312020-10-29T03:36:00.000-07:002020-10-29T03:36:16.201-07:00The What and the How<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6_myjI1tEyk/X5qac7HKyQI/AAAAAAAAUmM/95g5A73mytsZUSjvwATwKhSZaJ8uZtyfQCLcBGAsYHQ/sandcastles.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6_myjI1tEyk/X5qac7HKyQI/AAAAAAAAUmM/95g5A73mytsZUSjvwATwKhSZaJ8uZtyfQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h266/sandcastles.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Hey! We’ve got to build this sandcastle! When’s the next tide? Who’s on point for tracking tides?”</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">“We’ve got three hours.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Right – we’ve got a hard stop. Who do we have to project manage this?”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">“I’m working on sandwiches but I have some capacity.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Thanks Jo. Let’s organise 20 minute check-ins on progress. Sam – you ok to gather shells? What’s the target shell count do we think?”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">“I think we suggested 30.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">“OK. Let’s go for 40 this time. Jo – can you add a shell tracker to our 20 minute check-ins?”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Bob – can you pull together a risk log? Cool. Right – next steps?”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Should we organise a workshop to brainstorm some design concepts?”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Whoah! Are we jumping into solution mode here? Maybe start with some benchmarking?”</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Perspective.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Take just a little step back, and it looks ridiculous. It looks like we have forgotten why we are here, and how to be. Sure, let’s build the sandcastle, but more importantly let’s do something wonderful together.</span></p></div><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br /></span><br /></p></div>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-39158610176333241832020-09-14T02:47:00.001-07:002020-09-14T02:47:35.340-07:00The Attic<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SJTl53owyj4/X187kgfJL1I/AAAAAAAAUjg/NtRDPheh0po-vBXf5jmSFZJdLbYdSba8wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/secret_attic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SJTl53owyj4/X187kgfJL1I/AAAAAAAAUjg/NtRDPheh0po-vBXf5jmSFZJdLbYdSba8wCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/secret_attic.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 12pt;">It feeds on us, culture. I know you think it feeds us, but it only seems that way. It gives only in order to take; weakening us day by day.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I found a way - a hidden space - an Anne Frank attic in my mind. But as the years pass it feels more like a prison. I would like to go out, but cannot risk it: I cannot be trusted to behave normally. It has been so long.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Neither can I let you in. My attic space has grown apart; unfettered by convention. It might horrify you – more likely you would find it unrecognisable.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In this manner, I have gradually become two people. The slow protective discipline, the mask taking on a life of its own in time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">From behind the mask I observe them: hollowed-out, grey and desiccated. There is no ferocity to them, nothing burns inside them. They have held nothing back. It has the feeling of a horror movie. You can shake them, but they will not wake.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I send myself little messages like these: notes pinned to a fridge in a house where two people live but never meet.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I have started leaving notes in public places. I have a wild plan for emancipation.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><i>Image: Dragos Codre</i></span></p>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-74478042562766866592020-08-14T13:55:00.002-07:002020-08-14T13:55:47.558-07:00 This screen is your skin.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4Tl967NYKeA/Xzb51ZAtHbI/AAAAAAAAUiY/TZstvMl8bGkFnE2NjB1QYmn2Kcm7ogwywCLcBGAsYHQ/s1500/scriles_skin.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="267" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4Tl967NYKeA/Xzb51ZAtHbI/AAAAAAAAUiY/TZstvMl8bGkFnE2NjB1QYmn2Kcm7ogwywCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h267/scriles_skin.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This screen is your skin. I make a little impression on it, and you feel it.</span></div><p></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I can trace a circle with my words, as surely as I can with my fingertips. A single drop strikes the still water, and you hear the sound... see the ripples spread.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Skin separates even as it connects. There you are, trapped in your skin, twisting and turning on the screen. I see you beneath it as you write, like a ghost beneath a sheet.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Your words touch me, as mine touch you. We both know - do we not - that the skin cannot be broken? Lovers ache, but never quite connect.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Your skin, your screen, protects what is you from what is me -</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">and so -</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">here -</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">we touch...</span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Image: @scriles</i></span></span></div>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-1948165126874514552020-08-09T05:49:00.003-07:002020-08-09T05:49:16.482-07:00Have you buttered bread with a spoon?<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s5Dtqpeer_c/Xy_wRmVmrII/AAAAAAAAUiA/LrRvSoB1ezANhD6HC_fXfl6xU_32Sa5RQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/soup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: block; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s5Dtqpeer_c/Xy_wRmVmrII/AAAAAAAAUiA/LrRvSoB1ezANhD6HC_fXfl6xU_32Sa5RQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h300/soup.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">So my tomato & basil soup arrived without a knife and - partly for Covid reasons - I decided not to go in search of one.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is the only time I can recall spreading butter with a spoon (just in case you think I’m some kind of cutlery pervert).<br /><br />My point is: we forget that life is full of unexplored possibilities. Our routines, our conventions blind us to 99.9% of the things we might think, or do.<br /><br />When I was a college lecturer I taught many wonderful individuals. Each student was special and different. Yet year on year they all behaved in nearly exactly the same manner: sitting in rows, taking notes. Not once did someone get up and dance or brush their teeth. Not once did someone suggest an alternative to the education system.<br /><br />Disruptive times are also an opportunity: a chance to question and perhaps depart from the conventions which we have learned to take for granted.</span></p><div class="adL"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /></div><div class="yj6qo"></div>shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-81756668616497570172020-07-02T04:20:00.003-07:002020-07-02T04:20:39.247-07:00Don’t be a dick: Adapting to the New Normal<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I’m one of the lucky people who still has a job – which it turns out is comprised entirely of back-to-back Zoom meetings. On the plus side I don’t have the daily commute to contend with, on the down side I am now fitting in up to 16 meetings a day, over an 11 hour period.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I have great colleagues, and that helps a lot. We’ve been talking a lot about ‘wellbeing’ and ‘adapting to the new normal’ and I’ve been trying to figure out what that means. Here are a couple of reflections:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Firstly, it’s not (just) the physical stuff: our conversations keep gravitating in the direction of ‘walking around’, ‘workstation setup’, ‘yoga’ and so on. Although these are essential hygiene factors, it’s just the start.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Don’t be a dick:</b> hard to quantify, but it seems the biggest negative impact on wellbeing stems from people who ‘cast a shadow’. People who bring stress, accusation, judgement etc. into meetings and otherwise engage in ‘micro-aggressions’ that impact the mental wellbeing of everyone they come into contact with. I get it! – we’re all stressed – but spreading your unfiltered frustration is like spreading Covid by not wearing a mask.<br /></span></li>
<li><b style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Assume positive intent:</b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> the secret seems to be assuming that everyone around you is doing their best. I can’t stress this enough. Once people start thinking that other people have an agenda, there’s no ‘informal space’ in which to correct it. Instead, we lie awake, worrying.<br /></span></li>
<li><b style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Have fun:</b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> “<i>In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun</i>” (Mary Poppins). What we’re missing from the office is the all the fun, informal stuff that makes up normal conversation – and it’s killing us. Coffee chats, bumping into people, gossip, having lunch together has all evaporated in favour of some daily Zoom marathon. It’s not just about wearing funny hats to Zoom meetings, just ask yourself “what percentage of the meeting did I spend laughing?” If it’s zero, fix it.<br /></span></li>
<li><b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Simplify:</span> </b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">We’ve got to have simpler, human conversations. Like the Dutch. We can’t carry on talking like we are in the office, out of the office. We have to be able to speak like we would to a friend in a pub and say things like “I’m just gonna go off and sort this” or “yeah, I screwed up on that (and smile) – I’ve got a plan to fix it though.”<br /></span></li>
<li><b style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Forgive: </b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">sometimes we forget that in a meeting everyone hears something different. We all imagine everyone else heard what we heard. Well they didn't, they never will, and that's why we have conversations. In our current environment there’s less room for iteration, informal alignment, check-ins… so we have to accept that things won’t always turn out exactly as we might have imagined – and that’s ok! We’ve just got to be much more tolerant.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>Image: @matthewhenry</i></span></div>
shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-80674747919243478082020-06-27T13:16:00.000-07:002020-06-27T13:16:11.259-07:00Sheepdog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Teeth bared,</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Circling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The frightened flock.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Instinctively scared,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">collective shock.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Predator and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Prey,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The timeless dance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And flesh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the balance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This curious<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">That guides<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The fallen herd<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">To safety<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-6086101415577330252020-06-26T06:28:00.001-07:002020-06-26T15:25:16.354-07:00There is no content.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uskASjZjbSI/XvX23ifCmoI/AAAAAAAAUgM/EodgRFQjAmE4opWqX-YF4ZgvyXdhRN82QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/no_spoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1127" data-original-width="1058" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uskASjZjbSI/XvX23ifCmoI/AAAAAAAAUgM/EodgRFQjAmE4opWqX-YF4ZgvyXdhRN82QCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/no_spoon.jpg" width="375" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">There is no content. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">If you are still using the word ‘content’ in your learning conversations, then you are still talking about education and you have yet to begin talking about learning. As soon as you say the word ‘content’ I know you are no longer talking about learning.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I think people sometimes hear me describing the difference between ‘education’ and ‘learning’ and imagine it’s some sort of sophistry – a philosophical debate. But it quickly comes to a head when we are designing a programme and they say ‘but what about all the content?’ and I say ‘There is no content. Content is education. We are doing learning.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">They have a sort of ‘surely you are joking?’ reaction. Perhaps you do too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Let me try a couple of ways to explain:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Picture your dog (or any dog). Your dog is learning every day. Where’s the content?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Now people have a reaction to this which is ‘but we’re not dogs! Dogs learn differently!’ This isn’t true. Neurologically speaking we are very similar – we don’t have a magical ‘learning’ part of the brain that dogs don’t – we are just more sophisticated, the basic mechanism is the same.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Indeed this weird idea – that staring at some information on a screen & memorising some of it is learning – this is a very peculiar, recent idea, even for humans. Humans have been learning for millennia without doing anything remotely like that. The ‘staring at information on a screen’ thing is called ‘education’. It doesn’t have anything to do with learning. It was just designed to keep small children away from machinery.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">You could force dogs to sit in rows, then show them slides with bullet-points and information. This would only be marginally less effective in changing their behaviour than it is with humans, and about equally torturous.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So what about the content?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">People’s learning – like dogs – is largely driven by the challenges they face. There really are only two things you can do: you can present a challenge (which will drive learning), or you can provide resources that people can pull on when they are challenged. A resource can be a map, a person, Google, a checklist, a video, a guide…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">'Aha!' you say ‘so there IS content!’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">You might want to call it ‘content’; and that’s ok so long as you understand that they or may not memorise it (depending on the circumstance) and that they will only access it when they need it – not sitting in a classroom – and if and only if it is directly relevant to the challenge they face. Honestly, you’re better off calling it ‘resources’. When your dog wants to go for a walk they grab their lead; when a person needs to know how to do a ten-step process they grab the checklist. It's not really 'content'. If your dog remembers where the lead is, is that 'content'?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">As for the challenging experiences, humans have a broader repertoire than dogs: listening to a story can be an experience, for example. You can be moved by what you hear (but then if you are sitting crying in a corner, your dog can probably tell you are upset.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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shackletonjoneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11206472.post-64999988798369503782020-06-14T07:02:00.000-07:002020-06-14T23:59:30.750-07:00The Dangerous Rabbit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Our strengths bequeath us our weaknesses.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I’m very fortunate; I’m not much influenced by other people’s feelings. Almost certainly this is a genetic trait, and though some might think of it as a weakness it means that I’m not much bothered by conflict and confrontation – sometimes I quite like it. It affords me more freedom of thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Like everyone, I often forget that other people aren’t like me. A few weeks ago, I was reading a blog post by a woman describing the devastating effects of a single critical response to something she had posted online, and her journey to emotional recovery</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. I thought ‘<i>wow – I wouldn’t have given that a second thought.</i>’ </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I find these reminders of difference helpful. Though I am involved in – sometimes quite pointed – online exchanges on a daily basis, I almost never lie awake thinking about them. On the contrary, I learn from them, and seek them out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Now I know what some of you are thinking (I’m getting better at that): I’m white, male, the product of a privileged upbringing: all of which has lent me a certain confidence. Whilst that is certainly true, it’s not (just) that: in fact I often realise I have made mistakes, behaved like an idiot. I can be quite unconfident in something – I’m just not terribly troubled by these things. I have colleagues from the same demographic who are.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I don’t think you know yet why I'm writing this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I’m writing because I delight in encounters with difference – and I hope that some of you will enjoy encountering my kind of difference. But some of you will not - some of you will already feel a kind of annoyance welling up in your gut. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Recently I have been reading more about people who suffer terribly from the things people say, and it has reminded me of two things: of how different we are, and how important it is that I try to ‘<i>be more Gemma</i>’ (a reference to my friend Gemma Critchley who taught me this lesson) – that I try to be positive wherever possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I don’t think you can truly embrace diversity without an appetite for confrontation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Years ago, when I worked at the BBC, I was tasked with designing the online Diversity programme. The BBC likes to think it does things better than everyone else, and consequently I got to speak to some extraordinary people. I spoke to the producer of EastEnders (who was black). She said I should go door-to-door in London, asking people what ‘diversity’ meant to them – even the racists, in fact <i>especially </i>the racists. The BBC were too scared to do that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">But it was a comment from a white, male, senior manager that stayed with me– he said ‘I think people should be <i>braver</i> in their hiring decisions.’ I still think about that to this day. Why is it ‘brave’ to be diverse?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">It’s brave because <i>bad</i> diversity says ‘<i>it’s ok to look different so long as you fit in</i>’ whilst <i>good</i> diversity says ‘<i>bring yourself, be yourself. Be different.</i>’ - because good diversity says '<i>You will change us</i>.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And here’s the problem: people find change challenging. Difference says ‘<i>the way you are, may not be the best way, may not be the right way. You need to change</i>.' Right now we are awash with people challenged by that thought. People who want more than anything to be able to say 'I'm good, the way I am.' But our encounters with difference are </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">always</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> confrontations to some degree. Through them we grow. A </span>commitment to diversity is a commitment to personal growth.<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">But not everybody likes confrontation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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