Monday, December 18, 2000

The three stages of knowledge acquisition:

  1. Instinctive: If you possess a genetic mutation that confers a favorable behavior, you pass it on. If the mutation confers a disadvantageous behavior, you don't pass it on (because you die). Thus behaviors become encoded into our genetic code.
  2. Intelligent: If you do something that results in bad consequences (short of death), you don't do it again. If you do something resulting in good consequences, you do it again. That is how you, as an individual, learn.
  3. Cultural: You learn from someone else's experience, and others learn from yours. Furthermore, knowledge doesn't disappear with the individual, but instead lives on.

¶ 29 Posted at 06.01 PM ⇒ No Comments ( theorizing )

The stages of knowledge acquisition (revised):

  • Instinctive: If you possess a genetic mutation that confers a favorable behavior, you pass it on. If the mutation confers a disadvantageous behavior, you don't pass it on (because you die). Thus behaviors become encoded into our genetic code.
  • Memory: If you do something that results in bad consequences (short of death), you don't do it again. If you do something resulting in good consequences, you do it again. That is how you, as an individual, learn.
  • Intelligence: Based on experience, you deduce general rules of cause and effect. In specific situations, you induce a course of action based on these general rules. You predict which actions yield good results, and which ones lead to bad ones, even though you might never have been in such a situation before.
  • Culture: You learn from someone else's experience, and others learn from yours. Furthermore, knowledge doesn't disappear with the individual, but instead lives on. In conjunction with the previous, you can also learn from the speculation of other people.

It is, of course, obvious. But people tend not to think of culture as a form of learning. Tradition exists for a reason. Culture is rapid selection of favorable behaviors.

¶ 31 Posted at 11.42 PM ⇒ No Comments ( theorizing )

Tuesday, May 08, 2001

I have a theory. The last few episodes of "The West Wing" have dealt with the process of revealing secret of the President's multiple sclerosis. There's talk of lawyers, conspiracies, and coverups. They throwing around phrases like "perpetrated a fraud against the American public." It's all very sad, because we know that President Bartlett is a good man and had only the best intentions at heart, that his condition never caused any real danger, et cetera et cetera. It seemed like just another May sweeps climactic story arc. Then it hit me. Aaron Sorkin (the writer of the show) is using his fantasyland White House as a bully pulpit. This is his way of joining the ranks of Clinton apologists. There are many similarities. In this case, though, the integrity of the President is (ha ha) inimpeachable. So we take his side. We make excuses for him. We rationalize. And then the next time we think about Clinton, we're a little softer on the guy, because at some level, we've realized that the other side of things is a little harder and more complex than we thought.

What did you expect? It's called jaded.

¶ 125 Posted at 07.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | theorizing | tv )