ほんとづす。
So this is my first blog post containing some of the very little Japanese I know. I am sticking to hiragana (ひらがな）because I was finding it simply too difficult to learn the kanji and learn to speak at the same time.
If you don't see the JP characters, you'll need to install JP language support on your system.
You may want to learn to read/write Japanese yourself, as I intend to write some of my blogs in this language as I learn more.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Thoughts about Thinking
I was sitting at the cafe at the hotel I stay at in Penang, working through some simple math exercises from a book I purchased for the purpose of brushing up on my math skills. It occurs to me that if I'm to help my children with their math, I'm going to need to know it myself.
While I was working through the exercises, I began visualizing an interaction w/my son in which he was working through the problems faster then me and understanding the concepts better then me. I pictured this raw intelligence, filled with potential and yet ill-equipped to handle life on life's terms, given his lack of experience.
This process set me to thinking about about the difference between a child's mind and an adult's mind.
It seems as I get older, my tendency to calculate answers to various questions decreases and my tendency to rely on experience as my guide increases. This makes sense. I have built 39 years of experiences from which to draw conclusions about the world around me. A child is bare of many of these experiences. His mind must make calculations about the world around him since in many cases the inputs and circumstances are new to him.
Perhaps there is some line between the "calculating" mind of a younger person and the "experiential" mind of an older person. It seems that the natural progression is for the calculating mind to make a shift toward the experiential mind as one's body of experiences grows. Perhaps, there is a benefit in this - One's ability to make the correct decision quickly in any given set of circumstances is enhanced if all one has to do is draw on memories of previous cause and effect, and act accordingly. If one had to calculate the cause and effect each time one was faced w/a given scenario two things might happen: Firstly, one might come to a "correct" conclusion in some cases, and an "incorrect" conclusion in other cases. Secondly, even if one were always correct, the calculation takes time and decisions to act would be made more slowly.
On the otherhand, there's something to be said for holding on to one's ability to calculate. If my experience shows anything at all, it's that I can't always trust my conclusions about previous experiences. Life is not so black and white as to ensure a similar outcome each and every time one is faced with what appear to be similar inputs and circumstances. It remains important to be able to examine a situation, determine if anything about it is new (relative to previous similar experiences) and then make adjustments to one's response if necessary. These, in a sense, are the same calculations the child's calculating mind are making all the time.
The tendency is for adults is to turn more and more toward the experiential thought-process as they grow older. This is probably fine, depending on an individual's body of experience and ability to retain memories. But brings up the question of what happens once one begins to lose his ability to remember. Does the mind begin again to rely more heavily on calculation? Perhaps so, though it's a losing battle given the fact that the calculations themselves must be based on some fundamental set of facts, the size of which is constantly decreasing as the mind deteriorates.
So, my little act of trying to refresh myself on elementary math has yielded an entirely new line of thought (at least for me). I have no idea if my conclusions have any merit, and I'm not sure it matters, in any event...
While I was working through the exercises, I began visualizing an interaction w/my son in which he was working through the problems faster then me and understanding the concepts better then me. I pictured this raw intelligence, filled with potential and yet ill-equipped to handle life on life's terms, given his lack of experience.
This process set me to thinking about about the difference between a child's mind and an adult's mind.
It seems as I get older, my tendency to calculate answers to various questions decreases and my tendency to rely on experience as my guide increases. This makes sense. I have built 39 years of experiences from which to draw conclusions about the world around me. A child is bare of many of these experiences. His mind must make calculations about the world around him since in many cases the inputs and circumstances are new to him.
Perhaps there is some line between the "calculating" mind of a younger person and the "experiential" mind of an older person. It seems that the natural progression is for the calculating mind to make a shift toward the experiential mind as one's body of experiences grows. Perhaps, there is a benefit in this - One's ability to make the correct decision quickly in any given set of circumstances is enhanced if all one has to do is draw on memories of previous cause and effect, and act accordingly. If one had to calculate the cause and effect each time one was faced w/a given scenario two things might happen: Firstly, one might come to a "correct" conclusion in some cases, and an "incorrect" conclusion in other cases. Secondly, even if one were always correct, the calculation takes time and decisions to act would be made more slowly.
On the otherhand, there's something to be said for holding on to one's ability to calculate. If my experience shows anything at all, it's that I can't always trust my conclusions about previous experiences. Life is not so black and white as to ensure a similar outcome each and every time one is faced with what appear to be similar inputs and circumstances. It remains important to be able to examine a situation, determine if anything about it is new (relative to previous similar experiences) and then make adjustments to one's response if necessary. These, in a sense, are the same calculations the child's calculating mind are making all the time.
The tendency is for adults is to turn more and more toward the experiential thought-process as they grow older. This is probably fine, depending on an individual's body of experience and ability to retain memories. But brings up the question of what happens once one begins to lose his ability to remember. Does the mind begin again to rely more heavily on calculation? Perhaps so, though it's a losing battle given the fact that the calculations themselves must be based on some fundamental set of facts, the size of which is constantly decreasing as the mind deteriorates.
So, my little act of trying to refresh myself on elementary math has yielded an entirely new line of thought (at least for me). I have no idea if my conclusions have any merit, and I'm not sure it matters, in any event...
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