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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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TEd
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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clear as a bell
Perfectly clear! The only thing that's *perfectly clear is a vacuum.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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...and besides paramnesia (deja vu), there is presque vu (nearly seen), the feeling that you are on the edge of grasping something very, very important, and jamais vu, the denial of something actually seen. http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/
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old hand
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old hand
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This filing system is ..temporal in nature, that is, it files by date. -milum I rather question this hypothesis. From my experience, the mind constructs "search trees" by association, weighted by emotional loading. -wsieber Dear wsieber, Yes  I fear my remarks were poorly stated. What I think is that -events in time have a commonality that the mind stores by that association, so associated thoughts can be said to be packaged in Time Units. This is one way to enhance recall. Of course, there are many other ways as well. Now will you please explain what you mean by "emotional loading"? milo
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veteran
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veteran
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(I typed a message similar to this yesterday, but I must have forgotten to actually post it.)
I haven't read "The Language Instinct" yet, but it's on my list. Meanwhile, the author (Steven Pinker) has another book that I have read called "How the Mind Works."
His view is that there are numerous autonomous agents that perform very specialized functions in the brain, very much the same as Marvin Minsky outlined in his much earlier "The Society of Mind." This view, predominant among cognitive scientists and AI experts, is crucially different than what many people intuitively believe about the brain. Previously people believed that the brain was a general purpose computer. (In fact, I've read a number of articles over the years that refered to the brain as a general purpose computer.) The new view is that it is actually a highly specially computer composed of a conglomeration of highly specialized, autonomous agents.
Heavily used neural pathways get stronger. In youth, new neural pathways can form (possibly in adulthood as well, but doubtfully so quickly).
We speak for the most part what we hear and what we read and what we have spoken and written previously. I imagine it's analogous to chess, but vastly more complicated. Players play speed chess to burn in the traps in the openings and to have a feel for the possibilities where certain paths will lead. Maybe they do a similar thing in, say, a creative writing course. I can imagine an exercise in such a class where a teacher presents a topic and the students have to think of as many ways as they can of describing the topic.
We can't even follow every path in advance, let alone memorize it. But we don't have to play chess or to write well. With a lot of practice we can gain an understanding of how certain words fit together and of where they might lead us. A good chess player, doesn't consider anywhere close to every possibility. A good writer doesn't consider every possible word. But some combinations (of movements or of words) are right at the tip.
Some people will have astonishing natural ability. They will play a relatively few games and become class B or A or maybe even expert players. It's doubtful that even the person with the greatest natural ability, though, could become a master, much less a grandmaster, without considerable study and practice. And some people will just have a knack for words, but will still have to practice to be really good.
At the other end of the spectrum, in either venue, some people will practice and practice and it will never come to them. They might become capable, but they won't become artists.
The vast majority of people will have a range of abilities that are neither very low nor very high. If they practice hard, they'll become highly proficient.
I think the different things that one does with words, the people with whom one converses, the topics that one discusses, the books one reads, the problems one addresses, the solutions one pursues, all of these things and probably much, much more will have some effect on one's diction, grammar, and overall style.
Things like repetition, reaching (stretching one's limits), failure (exceeding one's limits), reflection (hopefully understanding the points of failure) all increase the repertoire that one has at one's disposal.
I reckon there are agents that collect and classify, some that select and mask, some that organize, some that test, recognize, filter. I think as well there must be some kind of uber-agents that tell the other guys what to do by fiat or perhaps by voting. Agents and uber-agents and uber-uber-agents get stronger by getting used. And the roles of agent and uber-agent can be reversed and augmented, because agents are not arranged in a hierarchy, but in a tangled web.
Well, this is a vague, non-answer from someone reading at and beyond the periphery of his expertise. I'm guessing if we really knew how our own brains selected just the right words (or just as often, just the wrong words), we might expect that AI would have progressed a bit farther than what it has.
k
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old hand
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old hand
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The only thing that is perfectly clear is a vacuum. -Faldage Can a word like "vacuum", defined as the absence of everything, have a quality such as "clear"? and jamais vu, the denial of something actually seen. -tsuwn Too true, Mr. tsuwm. Here,s one, but I don't know the French... How does a ignorant man recognize a wise man when he sees him? 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Can a word like "vacuum", defined as the absence of everything, have a quality such as "clear"?
It has the quality of the absence of everything.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Both wsieber and TheFallibleFiend have described one of the most successful ways I've experienced teaching music... quite similar to the way I learn it.
With a piece of music in mind, the focus of the student, the skill or idea to get accross to the student, and a bit of an insight to the difficulties not specific to the student, we start the lesson!
Were off! I don't have a chronology of what to teach in what order. I certainly can't anticipate precisely the troubles a student will be having. Knowing the "hard parts" it gives me the ability to praise at a moments notice (we *all know the momentum of that) and knowing the goals of the student I can direct them toward acheivement... but the specifics of the lesson are improvised! The connections are made through preparation internally and just *happen externally... I am just there to experience it with the student.
'Random events' breed as well as enable creativity!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Repetition can be valuable in the learning process.Everbody knows it, and old education systems relied too unimaginatively on it. I was night switchboard operator in a hospital, and after a couple months was surprised how much my ability to learn phone numbers increased, so that I needed fewer repetitons to remember names and phone numbers associated with them. But after I left the switchboard job, that ability withered rapidly.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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of Troy writes of traffic ... neatly collating..."collating? what do mean collating? how can cars collate?"...but isn't that what they were doing? what word would you use? and why can't cars collate?
I think the standard designation is "alternate feed." (and no wise remarks about strange things to give the animals, thank you!) (unless, of couse, they're very, very clever) :-)
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