Teaching Kids About Their Own Brains
Christian Long, think:lab, March 1, 2007.

I've read Hawkins's 'On Intelligence'; I thought it was pretty good. But this post reminds us how much knowledge is a matter of perspective. Long writes, "He believes that 'prediction is the fundamental component of intelligence.' Prediction? Prediction? Prediction?" Well, OK. That's not too far out there. From my perspective, pattern matching is the fundamental component of intelligence, reasoning that proceeds by means of similarity. But the very same phenomenon, viewed from a different perspective, becomes "prediction" (though not of the Hypothetical-Deductive variety). (Hits Today: 0 Total: 1726) [Direct Link] [Tags: Similarity]

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Re: Teaching Kids About Their Own Brains

Anymouse, March 1, 2007

Stephen -- As always, thank you for taking time to parce through a post of mine. The end of that paragraph with the repeating "prediction?" line hinges on the next paragraph, and an absolute belief that predication -- or pattern forming ability -- is the key to not only survival, but also higher cognitive abilities. Schools, sadly, spend little time with prediction. Stats, for instance, would be far more advantageous than calculus, but most schools wouldn't disrupt the holy grail of math progression to teach something that most students can use and the higher level students can max out in later years. Like you, I FULLY agree that pattern-recognition -- call it gestalt sense making -- is key to intelligence. I'd offer it up as perhaps the most fundamentally critical part of having a brain, both for high and low needs. So, we agree. Perhaps the line taken out of context in your abstract misses this, but I'm comfortable either way. Cheers, Christian [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: Teaching Kids About Their Own Brains

Anymouse, March 4, 2007

I'd like to suggest that teaching 'un patterning' might be an additional key. Time and again it is our reliance upon habits (patterns of behaviour) that lead us astray because we somewhat automatically, decide upon a course of action based on our past understanding.

This leads us to look for and assign patterns that don't exist or ought not to be considered as the ONLY pattern that exists. By patterning on autopilot we generate decisons which are unlikely to be the only ones or neccessarily the best ones available to us, if only we could break the patterning habits.

Marcus Barber [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: Teaching Kids About Their Own Brains

Stephen Downes, March 6, 2007

Marcus, that's an excellent point. We need to look at mechanisms for 'unpatterning'. But we should not think that they are going to be radically different in form - there will not be some homonculus arbiter of patterns, or some completely separate cognitive pattern-assessing process. What happens is, if you will, competeitions between patterns - one pattern is 'unpatterned' only as the results of the emergence of a more salient incompatible pattern. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: Teaching Kids About Their Own Brains

Anymouse, March 12, 2007

Appreciate Marcus' use of 'unpatterning' as a response to my own comment after Stephen linked to my original post.

Perhaps 'pattern'-recognition (such as all semantic turns of phrase) can be taken in many ways. I did NOT mean it in the way of a habitual behavior. Quite to contrary. I meant in the way that one steps back from Serat's painting where seemingly tiny dots up close suddenly transform into new 'patterns' or forms from a new distance. I used the phrase 'pattern recognition' as a way of suggesting symphonic (a la Daniel Pink) and gestalt thinking. Or the way thesis and anti-thesis come together to form synthesis. However one uses the terminology, I'm suggesting something far from habitual, repetitive behaviors or lenses. I'm suggesting that begin able to see novel constellations once seemingly well-known points of knowledge are re-considered from a distance.

So, in Marcus' suggestion, I, too, support 'unpatterning' but still hold true to what I originally suggested.

Cheers,
Christian [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

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