How do children learn?

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No idea. I know very little about circuits and electricity when it comes to physics. The only physics I'm good at understanding are the conceptual aspect of atomic physics and quantum mechanics, because those are so crucial in understanding chemistry. And I love chemistry.

You like quantum mechanics? Do you know David Deutsch? He's a physicist and philosopher. He's pushing the field of quantum computing.

He wrote a book titled _The Beginning of Infinity_ where he talks about soooooo many cool subjects. Even thinks like the evolution/creation of jokes.

THIS IS A MUST READ!! !

Check out the introduction here: http://beginningofinfinity.com/excerpt

And you should definitely join our conversation about it and everything else on: http://groups.google.com/group/beginnin ... /subscribe

See you there.

--Rami

A comment on TCS. It is describing inference and empathy in communication and rational thought. You may wish to direct your research there as there is a lot of it. You also may wish to research some native american/american first nations and how children learn in those cultures. There is a very similar line of thought in many of those groups. As to if the underlying philosophy is good for education compared to other systems remains to be seen.

As I said, you have a lot of good math and good thoughts in your article. A few things that are concerning that perhaps you could elaborate more on would be three of the primary methods of learning. Auditory, Visual, and Haptic learning. While you can describe the outcome scenario as ending in a logic statement such as "If the stove is on, don't touch." How a child actually learns this could be very different. The Auditory learner may hear the information differently than the Visual learner sees it and catalog it differently. A visual learner may never have to touch the stove if he sees someone else get hurt with it first. Does that visual learner learn the same logic through experience as the auditory learner? Or is the auditory learner getting a completely different set of information?

In the case of Autism, there are many instances of logic being both functional and broken at the same time. I know of a child where when a glass broke on the ground, he didnt associate the glass breaking with unpleasantness but, with a stim. He learned that "If I break the glass, I get a pleasant sound" whereas another student learned "If I break a glass, the teacher got mad at me" and another learned "I don't like that sound."

I would love to see more on how the different learning archtypes apply with your thoughts on logic and cognitive reasoning as I think there could be a great benefit to teachers and students. Or perhaps at least some examples of those styles being made in your article?

I hope this helps you. Again, it was a good read I'll see if I can't help you with some sources too XD I have access to many databases of empirically valid research and theories. I'll share what I can when I can.

Actually that article doesn't discuss methods of learning. But I'll describe the way that people think [and thus learn].

All people think (and thus learn) by the Popperian conjecture/criticism method. Even children.

Below is a true story:

Two siblings of age 4 years and 2.5 years live in a western country. They go on a trip to an Islamic country and they hear the call to prayer being said loud on speakers (which doesn't happen where they live). The older sibling is interested in this difference, this error, i.e. an interesting problem.

The 4 year old conjectures: "I think god here is different than god there."

The 2.5 year old criticizes: "I think they are the same."

So how does the mind do this conjecture/criticism method?

As David Deutsch eludes to in a TCS article regarding how he thinks, conjectures should be very random. _Creativity and Untidiness_: http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/node/95

So the unconscious is responsible for conjecturing a thought and in this phase, irrationality is acceptable and unavoidable. This step is very chaotic. This is good and very necessary.

-- Then the unconscious serves the thought up to the conscious.

The conscious is responsible for criticizing and in this phase rationality is necessary. This step is more ordered, although its not necessary to be extremely ordered. Why? Because other people will be providing more criticisms. And it would be bad to try to be too ordered because it might keep you from presenting your conjecture to
the world, in which case other people would not be able to provide criticisms, which is bad. But why do we want criticisms? Because criticisms reveal errors. But why do we want errors? Because errors are learning tools, i.e they cause more learning.

Lets define it more clearly:

1. The unconscious is responsible for creating conjectures (which includes conjectured-criticisms) and in this phase, irrationality is acceptable and unavoidable. This step is very chaotic.

-- Then the unconscious serves the thought (a conjecture or a conjectured-criticism) up to the conscious.

2. The conscious is responsible for criticizing the thought, and in this phase, rationality is necessary. And if the thought is a...
a> conjecture, then the conscious should not attempt to limit entropy. This step is chaotic but [by its nature] is less chaotic than compared to step 1.
b> conjectured-criticism, then the conscious should attempt to limit entropy [but not too much]. This step is more ordered.

So the conscious should maximize [as much as possible] the entropy in 2a and minimize [not too much] the entropy in 2b.

And about the term *phase*. It could be replaced with *step*, but *step* seems to suggest that it is instantaneous, i.e. one connection, i.e. one thought whereby *phase* allows for longer periods of time, i.e. thought trains. I think *phase* is more accurate than *step*.

---

So this is the mind's method of learning [thinking], it is Popper's conjecture/criticism method. And what we do on this site is the same thing, just on a larger scale, i.e. with another level of emergence.

Within this site [BoI's discussion forum], we are in a bubble. Inside the bubble we are creating knowledge using the same method that our own minds use. We have 125 people here. Thats 125 minds conjecturing and criticizing in unison. So this site is a mind, a *societal mind* whose power is equal to 125 single minds.

But outside this bubble, little knowledge is being created [relatively]. 6,000,000,000 people that are not working in unison.

So what if we could increase the power of our societal mind? What if we had a societal mind whose power was equal to 1,000 minds, or 1,000,000 minds?

What do you think?

--Rami

I just read most of the culture chapter of _The Beginning of Infinity_. I think I have a good explanation for creativity.

I think that knowledge is of 3 types, situations, rules, and logics; points, vectors, and superstructures in an N-dimensional space, a mathematical abstraction in the mind. Only rules and logics have reach; rules project situations and logics project rules. Only logics are explanatory, i.e. they are ideas. Only humans have superstructures.

When we first learn a certain rule or logic, we've learned it implicitly.

I think that when a mind makes a random thought, sometimes the thought is a new connection between two pieces of knowledge in its knowledge set. Sometimes one of the pieces is a logic. When this happens, the unconscious has applied an implicit logic from one area of the space to another area of the space.

Consider what happens when you instantaneously think of an analogy to help explain your point. Sometimes the analogy you created was dead on. But how did your mind create such an analogy so quickly? I think its because the analogy is an implicit logic and your unconscious used it to explain a very different situation. And the reason that you did it so fast is that making a connection is instantaneous, or practically instantaneous, i.e. the speed of neural firing.

I think that the connections are made randomly. But I think that its random only in so far as the two ends of the connection are part of the network structure of the knowledge set.

So the more complete, i.e. connected, the knowledge network, the less random the connections are. This explains why our ability to create good analogies improves as we learn, i.e. as our knowledge networks become more complete.

And the more wide the knowledge network, i.e generalist instead of specialist, the more random the connections are because there are more possible connections.

Now for how to help increase creativity.

Somebody wrote:
>>> (Speaking of which, in a rational society, would drugs be a normal interest that people try because they find the psychological/physiological effects interesting?)
>
> Elliot wrote:
>> Drugs are boring because they are not intellectual.
>> Unless you are studying biology type stuff and are thus interested in the effects they have on human bodies. (Like Feynman who was interested in hallucinations).
>
I did/do it for fun and for study; and I am intellectual the entire time [or most of the time, depends if I'm being silly, but I think even when I'm being silly, its still intellectual]. I created my entire theory of knowledge and soooo many other emergent ideas while being high on pot. What it does is increase creativity. Although it makes reading more difficult; but I did do a lot of reading while high. And to be clear, it probably doesn't work on newbies; I think that potheads are capable of being intellectual but not newbies. I think that this is the case because different neural pathways are working when high vs not high. This is probably the reason that people say that if you are high while studying then you need to be high while taking the test.

When I was reading about Cognitive Dissonance, I learned that there is a part of the brain that takes in and filters incoming sense data. When THC is around, the filtering mechanism is put in high gear. This causes fewer distractions from the external world; from the sense data. This allows the mind to focus more on its internal workings.

One more thing to mention, in another thread I discussed the randomness of connections that the mind makes. When high on pot, the randomness is more random. This means more creative. Connections are made while high on pot that would otherwise not be made.

I've also tried shrooms, and I did make more random connections than normal, but I think I took way too much to have fruitful thought trains. 7 grams is way too much [for me]. I was trying to get visuals but not very much was happening. Next time I'm only going to take 2 grams.

Btw, I would never never never try any drugs that didn't come from the ground. Too scary for my taste.

I think that we might have evolved with pot and shrooms. If so, then they can't be bad for us. I definitely don't want to consume anything that we didn't evolve with.

What do you think?

-- Rami

I understand that wasn't the goal of the article you posted in your first post (even thoug the article is entitled "How the Mind Learns"). I'm just saying I'd love to see conjecture as to different learning archtypes in the teaching of logic and knowledge and what variations of rule sets could come about It does somewhat apply at least due to everyone having different input methods for their learning of rules and situations. As a result, the teaching of logic and knowledge isnt exactly perfict or truly defineable until you take it into account.

As for the question you pose at the end, you are currently seeing this happen I believe in the form of groups such as "Annonymous" and the various revolutions around the world. People showing thoughts and ideas on a widespread scale. When an earthquake happens now, people with cell phones who can still text are reported to be able to give warnings to people further away from the epicenter before the earthquake even hits them! I believe that with the creation of the internet, humanity has given itself the framework to create that 'societal mind'. As it stands, more and more people are hooking up to it as well It would be a fantastic thing to study as we could finally truly study the phenomenon known as "Group Think".

Well regarding the earth quake example, that is *the spreading of information*, which is not the same as *the creation of knowledge*.

About the archtypes of learning, all people learn all ways. And TCS explains that children will figure out what those ways are on their own.

And the epistemological structure of the mind [the mathematical abstraction with points, vectors, and superstructure in an N-dimensional space] explains that nobody can know how another person needs to learn, hence only the child can know this.

-- Rami

I need to make a correction to *only the child can know this*. I should have said, *each person knows better than any other person about how s/he needs to learn*. This is not to suggest that that person absolutely *knows* how s/he needs to learn. As a human learn over time, her knowledge of how she needs to learn increases. So as she learns, she learns better about how she needs to learn.

What do you think?

-- Rami

I got some feedback from The Beginning of Infinity forum:

Even the conventional cognitive scientists now think the 3 types of learning you mentioned are not true:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk

-- Rami