Replying to LO26404 --
Dear LO'ers, dear Winfried,
You mentioned something that most of us wonder about. The amazing and fast
evolution of our surroundings and ourselves.
> timeframe we had for evolution. So what made learning so effective, so
> unbelievably fast that in only a few billion years the surface of our
> earth evolved up to the form we know today?
Maybe it is nice as thought experiment to think on how it is possible to
avoid any evolution during a few billion years. And not only our earth,
but also the evolution of the chemical elements is interesting. Thinking
of the moon and some of our planets we may build some impression of the
great role which our atmosphere gas played and still plays.
Winfried continued on the evolution of his kearning and the sparkling
moments of knowledge jumps.
> If this kind of experience is common to all of us, although with varying
> frequency, it must be possible to count them. If this kind of experience
> is closely related to fast and effective learning the count could serve as
> a measure for learning.
>
> I have no idea how to make this practical, but as a thought experiment I
> like the measure.
Could we measure these jumps and will this measurement be an indication of
learning rate.
Well Winfried, I think so. But as you already indicated, these jumps are
difficult to count. There are smooth jumps and explosive jumps. Which one
will be counted.
I digged again in our LO-archives. You wrote in 1999 (LO22719 Fast vs slow
learning):
"I am afraid that I still need to learn about learning, before learning
about fast and slow learning. But here is also a feedback loop active
between "starting the car" and "driving the car". I can drive my car, so
there is no problem in starting it whenever I need to go somewhere I want
to by car. On the other hand, I don't want my children (3, 8 and 9 years
old) to start the car. But without starting the car, they will never learn
to drive it. In a few years, they will take a teacher, teaching them to
drive a car. Surely I wouldn't rely on giving them a book or letting them
participate in a mailing list discussing the issue of starting and driving
a car."
It is now 1 and 1/2 year later. What a progress!
It was an issue that regularly also played in my head. I digged further in
the archives to look what I had written in:
Time, gaps, memory and emergencies LO21209.
My idea at that time (and still now) is that these 'jumps' (or emergences)
are the very anchor places of our memory. So maybe Winfried, we are able
to count retrospectice the number of memories to get an impression of the
possible relationship with learning rate. Is that a possible idea?
I realise that this way of counting is open for much debate. But possibly
a statistical aproach will say at least something.
dr. Leo D. Minnigh
l.d.minnigh@library.tudelft.nl
Library Technical University Delft
PO BOX 98, 2600 MG Delft, The Netherlands
Tel.: 31 15 2782226
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Let your thoughts meander towards a sea of ideas.
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--Leo Minnigh <l.d.minnigh@library.tudelft.nl>
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