When has society advanced?
We’ve had technology advances.
We’ve had more repeatable answers to questions that we can then build tangible things with.
But has society advanced?
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Before we measure though, should we not define our terms?
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Define society. What is and is not society.
Define gossip. What is and is not gossip.
Then we can get to metrics 
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[I guess I’m a “qualify before quantify” kinda guy 🙂 ]
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Ok. So it’s set up akin to a closed deterministic thermodynamic system with a Laplace’s demon in place. I’ll check it out.
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Much better. Gotta have those heat sinks.
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I finished reading the paper. Great way to introduce graph theory, much more interesting than contamination / disease spreading (as those deal with massive numbers anyway, rather than a smaller, more closed set of people as in a murder mystery)
Having watched many mysteries through the years with my mother, graph theory (with the bits of information (whether true or false – it doesn’t matter for graphing as it’s information) labelled properly) is perfect for the task.
In murder mysteries, there’s usually a few moments which ‘tie the graph together’. The police chief or news reporter gives a report that _everybody_ hears – except usually for one or two key people whose behaviors aren’t influenced by the announcement, whatever it was.
Yeah, I could see it getting fun to graph them.
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The most interesting person in a murder mystery though is the person reading/watching it.
I think that’s what makes them especially interesting graphs. You have to include how much the viewer knows and what they can deduce to make a proper graph.
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“that takes me to my fav definition of a bit of information: a minimal distinction between a pair of systems/processes/etc that makes a difference to a third. That ‘third’ is the winess…” -SK
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I like that definition. Too often these systems are treated as-if we’re not also parts of these systems. [that’s one of the things I love about systems-thinking in general : one is constantly compelled to consider how one’s own position fits into these systems and affects them]
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I think it was going to use this for a course though (the ‘gossip’ graph, I would state it as:
“You are designing artificial intelligence non-player characters for a video game.
In this game, they will be gossiping.”
and they go on from there.
The reason I would go a step removed from humans is because of one of my issues with some kinds of thoughts experiments as presented in mathematics texts : they often ask us to assume unrealistic scenarios and ignore what we already know in order to solve the problems.
I complained about this in elementary school. My 6th grade ne has been complaining about them since he was in elementary school.
Better to have them a step or two removed from real people but instead use artificial people of some kind : might help in getting students to care more.
Another possibility other than artificial intelligence might be “You are creating a new children’s show called the Gossipy Bears. They’re cute, colorful and LOVE to gossip”…
..and then move forward from that.
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Caring about the way the problem is stated and involving one’s self in the solution in an open, creative manner could assist in teaching.
If I had a teacher using Clue as an example, I’d be one of those students who says, “Yeah, who cares about Clue? The mystery’s solve on the back of the card. Just flip it over”.
[I wouldn’t say it but I’d think it]
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A live answer with students might help, but for that, you couldn’t use talking because words “spill over”.
If the class all had tablets with privacy (can’t be viewed beyond certain angles) and were forced to only look forward at their tablets (you’d need a few assistant teachers watching them and remove students from the experiment who tried to communicate in other ways), you could do a live demonstration of a gossip chain graph theory.
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No it’s not. You need complete thinking to have clear thinking.
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There’s something blinking in the woods right now as I looked away from my computer, inbetween your message and me writing this one.
It flashed a few times, about 6 seconds apart. Bright white flashing.
Finally I just saw it: It’s a white moth. The sunlight is hitting it in such a way that it looks like a flashing light.
I definitely have a bit of ADHD, which somehow is related to lateral thinking. I have to take that into account when I’m determining decidability, as those lateral pathways can sometimes contain critical information that will be rolled up in a solution that has decidability which otherwise might be missed if the model is too skeletal.
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Same. It’s what keeps me chatting online : extending my own mind into other people’s and incorporating their thinking processes into my own at some level. Finding people worthy of being extended neurons also makes me grateful to have this ability to possibly be extended neurons in their networks.
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oversimplifying yet not entirely off the mark. I don’t care much for the either/or split between “those who do vs those who think” as I was always a bit of both even as a kid, but I agree that either excessive abstraction *or* excessive automation in physicality is not good for development.
what you’ve identified to me is “Give me a reason to care about the work I’m doing here.”
That’s my ongoing complaint with a lot of the abstractions used in schools.
Past couple of years, incorporating Minecraft has been excellent for teaching because it’s something the kids know and care about at some level. Even if they hate the game, they know it and they’re involved.
But “Larry goes 7 km east while walking at 50 feet per second and Sally goes 2 miles on a train going 36 km per hour west, When will they meet? A conversion chart is below.” is REALLY annoying shit.
[that’s the kinds of things they’ve been doing – I might have the numbers wrong but Larry and Sally were a part of my ne’s homework when he was in 4th grade, and boy, you should’ve heard his ranting over it. Same rants I had at his age]
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Tendencies, yes. Wired? No. They’re preferential and yes it’s noticeable even in babies but “wired” is putting too much absoluteness to it. Educational psychology, for what it is, suffered from (and continues to in some areas) an over-reliance on garener’s multiple intelligences as if it was hard fact rather than a personality-type sorting tool, which is all it is supposed to be for.
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I’ve heard _some_ work done in that area by a guy who works with severely autistic patients in Sweden I believe. I’ll have to look further into that.
He has practical techniques he’s developed through the years in that area.
The thing is this: How much is learned or wired? [nature/nurture stuff].
Example: By the time time a baby is 6 months old, they’re already understanding (responding) to words and are able to use tablets.
If the study is for 5 year olds, it’s too late. You acquire all of your grammar knowledge by the age of 4 years old, the rest of the time is spend learning exceptions to the grammar rules.
By around 3 years old, nearly all children know the difference between fantasy and reality. [they used to set it at 3.5 but now they realize it’s lower].
At the age of 2, you can have basic full conversations with most children.
So the idea of wired is a bit fishy to me.
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It’s intellectually irresponsible imo to ignore brain plasticity in the learning processes of young children as causation.
For me it’s also personal. I was born with cerebral palsy. 1/2 deaf / 1/2 blind. I was lucky to have had a Cerebral Palsy center nearby and that my mother had the foresight to put me there from age 2.5-4.5.
When I was 21ish I wasn’t working so I went to volunteer there full time and I got to see and do the things that were done to me for others.
I did it for a year and was very satisfying, closing the circle like that and getting to see the ‘other side’ of it.
You wouldn’t know I had it. No signs you can see or measure. I’m 6′ tall, strong, very physically fast [although my heart/lungs now tell me when I’ve pushed the speed too fast although they always did]
I entered school as a regular kid at 5 years old.
Do I have preferential learning styles? Yes. I’m introspective, so appealing to introspection works. I’m musical. I work well with language and metaphors. (everything’s an analogy to another thing to me).
I’m tactile. I need to “touch” stuff. Yet I also learn visually – I’m doing it now. I don’t do so well with spoken words because deafness yet I’m able to ‘fill in the blanks’ when people talk, like an ongoing game of “Mad Libs” in my mind where I have to fill in the missing pieces.
How much is wired?
You’d have to go WAY back in time to find that out in me.
I have preferences and areas I’m not as strong at and it’s likely a brain scan will show strong development in some areas and weaker development in others.
But where did that development come from? A genetic propensity for certain learning styles?
A result of being premature?
Physical / occupational therapy at the cerebral palsy center?
My own introspective processes trying to puzzle things out?
You guess. But hard-wired arguments don’t fly with me unless you have something air tight.
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I don’t buy that for a second. Are there natural limits? Yes. I reach them all of the time.
For example: My typing speed is 110 wpm average. While I can do bursts faster, 110 wpm is my average 100% accurate speed. I mechanically can”t go any faster than that without some kind of modifications or judicious use of the backspace key.
You’re trying to fit a square into a circle here btw:
Deafness and musicality often go hand in hand. I suspect it’s a result of having missing information and having to fill it in.
Example: I have both kinds of perfect pitch: relative and absolute. Yet the hearing in my good ear only goes to 5000 hz,, left ear is functionally useless outside of ambiance.
But I can imagine perfect stereo. It’s an internal mathematical function when you think about it.
I can also hear octaves far higher than my good ear ever heard. It can go higher than human hearing. It’s mathematical and it forms inside of the brain itself, despite limitations of input mechanisms.
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[algorithmic not mathematical… I should clarify]
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Your basic points I agree with. Let kids follow their natural learning styles instead of forcing “The Same” so they fit into a bell curve model.
I agree with that 1000% if that’s possible.
The relevance has to do with the concept of hard-wiring, not the other stuff.
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Nope. Hard wired is a metaphor. It’s the wrong metaphor.
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The brain changes shape and form throughout your life span.
The “circuitry” to use your model disconnects and reconnects to new areas constantly throughout life, and the very connection areas move and shift. The brain is like warm jello.
Is there a “bad nugget” of brain tissue that’s “wired around” now? Probably. But it’s irrelevant. It’s been “wired around” long ago and functionally no longer exists.
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Imagine a power outlet in your house. It’s bad. You disconnect it from the system.
Then you remodel and put drywall over the power outlet.
IS the disconnected dead power circuit still there? Yes. Does it matter? No.
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Your denial of the power of brain plasticity has led you to some erroneous ways of thinking about the mind.
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I agree with you that the way education does things is wrong. Let kids follow their interests and let the learning take place from within their interests. If they like Minecraft the learning will happen there. If it’s fixing their bike, it’ll happen there.
I agree with you _completely_ in this.
But basing it upon a hard-wired model is a bad way to get there.
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This is the model I follow over hard wiring.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectionism
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think we’re narrowing down towards an agreement point but we’re not there yet.
The brain isn’t tabla rosa. Agreed.
I’m not arguing the brain is 100% plastic. I’m arguing that it’s not hard-wired. Hard wiring is a shitty metaphor and needs to go away.
Emergent systems form within a set of allowable tendencies may *seem* like hard wiring from a far away perspective, but get close enough and there’s a lot more going on.
You seem to have this delusion of fixed-ness of things.
I’m not deluded in believing in a silly putty brain. I don’t believe in a silly putty brain. We’re not starting from 0.
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Example of possible future directions: Insert stem cells in the motor cortex and maybe that’ll give more pathways for plasticity to do its thing and allow the circuits to be completed. The templates are within the DNA. The limitations *are* physical and we’ve gone far with our current level of technology, but it’s not a hard stretch to see how we can give nature a further helping hand.
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For example, “I can’t fly”. It’s a physical limitation.
Oh look, we’ve invented planes. Now we can fly.
See? Easy.
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Bad metaphor. I understand what you’re saying. There are constraints on the system. I’m not arguing against that.
But we’re not like a car.
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You might need to update your research. Even Wikipedia is more advanced than that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_plasticity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
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I’ll be around later to continue when you’re back. Internet’s “store and forward” works great.
We’re very close to agreement on a host of issues but this sticking point is a big one.
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“Contrary to conventional thought as expressed in this diagram, brain functions are not confined to certain fixed locations.”
Not hard wired. Not car engine. Bad metaphors.
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Why do patients have to stay awake during brain surgery?
All the maps are wrong. They’re pedagogical but not actual.
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