Learning

How do people learn?

I started digging into this with the comment on "Leonardo had it easy", and it made for some interesting reading and thinking. Wow, this is a big one! There are so many theories of learning, and implications about learning that its nearly overwhelming! 

So the basics - What do we mean by learning? Basically its "to aquire (knowlege, habit, skill etc) by experience, exposure, instruction, or the like.

Pretty open ended, but it addresses the fact that we humans are pretty much learning machines. Everything we experience basically changes us. Quite often though the change is either not very great, or somewhat unexpected direction! The thing that really interests me though, it how do people generally perceive how the act of learning works. What is the conceptual model they use?

Yay, another bucket of worms that just keeps on going. But the general consensus is that there is a particular learning curve, or more precisely an S curve. The initial change (in behaviour or knowledge) is hard, followed by a period of reinforcement which tapers off over time. Each unit of "effort" then, gives a different result depending on how much you know. The initial investment is hard, then it gets easier to improve, until it becomes expensive to get any significant improvement.

Now after this, things get very confusing and there are lots of different opinions and experiences. But the thing that struck me was the pretty consistent bias towards "education" or instruction. ie how one person transfer's or imparts stuff to another. The idea of an autodidact (ie, someone who learns without formal instruction) has weird implications in a lot of theories, and is often quietly left unmentioned.

This is also a prevalent attitude amongst most people I know or have heard about. There is a HUGE amount of emphasis on "certification" and "courses". You can only be recognized as knowing something if you have done the right courses or have the appropriate certification. Graduations, Degrees etc. The biggest horrors: home- or un-schooling. Heck, the process of getting this formal certification has become a massive industry, and even when the certification is seen as sub-par or unconnected to the real work, its often seen as still necessary.

Strange. There are a whole series of logical fallacies based around that one :)

But this has a big impact on another of my favorite areas: games and stories. There is a strong expectation that if a character in a game of story does something new, it was prefaced by either some effort to pick up the new thing, or a explanation of how it was taught to them. There is even a regularly used trope of a "training montage"! Having a character repeatedly show new competences without some effort or training is often viewed as unrealistic or a cop out.

I think i'll take a closer look at learning in games/stories in a bit.

Lets geek out!

I love to geek out about stuff, and wish I could find more people to geek out with :)

What do I mean?

Geek (noun)

someone who is interested in a subject (usually intellectual or complex) for its own sake

Geek out (verb)

to be overexcited about a specialized subject or activity, or to talk about it with excessive enthusiasm

I could geek out about sci-fi for hours.

Well

- interested in a subject. YES! Many of them

- usually intellectual or complex. Well, if something is too simple and there isn't much to get curious, then it pretty much isn't interesting by definition?

- for its own sake. I tend not respond to extrinsic motivation so well, and to be honest I don’t think I have the required skill needed to turn my many interests into a paying gig. (and no matter what anyone might promise, it takes a butt-load of time and effort to develop skill in pretty much anything.)

Yep, I'm a self-identified geek :)

When I encounter something new, I tend to behave like a little kid and ask those annoying questions - "Why? How?".

Hey, that movie was awesome! Why do I think so? How did they make it so appealing?

Hey, this food is delicious! Why does it taste so good? How did the chef make it?

Hey, that person is so obnoxious! Why do they think those things? How did they get that way?

Etc.

That pretty much explains my general thought patterns. When I encounter something that grabs my attention (positive or negative), I will get very curious about it and try to learn more about it - ask questions, look up information, or just talk to people about it. If those answers raise more questions, then down the rabbit hole I go :)

So I quite often want to dig into things, and then go talk about them. This talkingis often not always at appropriate times, or totally appreciated. How many times have you experienced this - You have something that is just burning to be told so you run over to someone and want to tell them. Often they are busy doing something else, or give you a look that just says "why are you talking about this?" Its only very rarely that the person you talk to has the same interest, and the time to talk to you right then! I used to encounter this a lot while at university and the years closely following. I would be be chatting away, beer in hand, and overhear someone express their like for something I knew about - and I shortly I would find people trying to change the topic, or staring at me while I wondered - "but there is so much more to talk about!"

I quickly learnt to hide my enthusiasm over topics so I could be more "socially acceptable", but the urge still runs deep. When I encounter something interesting  I want to analyze it, to know why it is interesting, how does it work, etc. I want to try to know everything I can, and perhaps experiment a little. Most of the time this has had little to no real economic advantage and just makes me spend a few days obsessed with something, but in a few cases it has overlapped with my work, which has been a nice experience.

My biggest hero is someone who I think was the ultimate geek - Leonardo da Vinci. He was an autodidact: a person who was mostly self-taught in the things he knew, mostly because there was no formal education available. So he became the ultimate Renaissance Man, knowledgeable and interested in a wide variety of topics. He is still looked upon as a genius today, but I fear the more modern obsession with trying to put people in boxes, and try to become specialized in only one particular field of knowledge.

Since I don’t want to bore to tears the people close to me, I decided to (finally) put up a blog where I can geek out without fear, and also feed my need to share what I learn. Most of the time I will talk about the thing that entertains me most, Stories. Both how they are told (movies, TV, books) and how you can tell them (roleplaying). I'll possibly venture into my other obsessions with food, history, communications, and cultures :)

Let's see how this goes.