Stephen Downes

I think it's important to understand the substance of this post in order to come to any sort of understanding of the world (and by that, I include most of what we know about how students learn, how to prepare them for the future, and how to explain AI). It's this: "through survival of the fittest and evolutionary patterns, our brains are hyper attuned to pattern detection. This means that when random or seemingly random things happen to us, we're allergic to the explanation that it was just arbitrary... when you look closely at the nature of causality, reality and existence, is that things that are bewildering are happening all the time, and we just ignore them." There's no single cause for anything; everything is a chaotic mash of causal connections. Sure, we can influence outcomes, but we can't control them.