The most amazing thing about the mind is that it can learn infinitely complex information with only a finite amount of input. The English language is infinitely complex, because no matter how many English sentences you've heard, there'll always be sentences you've never heard. And yet, the mind learns to understand the infinitude of English sentences. How is that possible?
Whenever we learn something infinitely complex, like a language, or how to drive, or how to interact in society, we learn by interpolation and extrapolation. Our minds are built to take a finite amount of input and deduce the underlying infinite structure.
Weather maps provide the best analogy. To construct a weather chart, a meteorologist plots a relatively limited number of observations on a map, mostly from airport or ship weather
reports. Then the meteorologist infers everything else by interpolation and extrapolation. If it's 85F in San Diego and 80F in Las Angeles, it must be 83F somewhere in between. In this way the weatherman deduces the infinitely complex structure of the total weather picture, based on just a finite amount of data.
Learning something, like a language, is the same way. A child hears finitely many sentences, and suddenly the child is fluent. A native speaker can't possibly have heard every possible sentence in their language, and yet they can understand them all. This works because the speaker has heard nearby sentences, and can infer how the meaning changes due to changes in the words. In the same way a meteorologist can infer that the temperature near the San Diego airport is similar to the temperature at the San Diego airport.
A professional pianist can't possibly have played all possible piano pieces. Yet, give her any musical score, and she'll play it. By practicing piano, what she's been doing over the years is
collecting a lot of input, and her mind can eventually fill in the gaps. If I give the same musical score to a great pianist and an amateur... and neither of them have ever seen it before... the great pianist will far outperform the amateur. Not because she's practiced that particular piece-- she's never seen it before! Rather because she's practiced other pieces and her mind has enough input to interpolate.
A Don Juan seductor character can't possibly have seduced every girl in every scenario. But he's seduced enough that his mind can connect the dots, and that's how he'll adapt and thrive in any social situation.
This interpolating power of the mind makes television and computer graphics possible. When we watch a movie on the television or the computer, we're really just watching a bunch of tiny colored squares called pixels, which clunkily change colors several times a second. Those colored pixels grant us a finite amount of information about the pictures which we actually "see" once our mind connects the dots. The mind is so adept at this interpolation business that we can watch complicated films with absolutely no effort, even though mathematically the problem of turning a finite number of pixels into a continuous image is extremely complicated.
The mind goes even further and enjoys "robustness" properties: it's not just good enough to connect the dots, it can even correct the dots if some of the input is flawed. Thus, a child doesn't lose their ability to speak perfect English just from hearing some ungrammatical sentences. The mind immediately detects the sentences are ungrammatical, and discards them as invalid data, at the same time even making a damn good guess what is really meant. If half the pixels on a computer screen are broken, the mind will still effortlessly "see" what's shown.
EXPLOITING THE MIND'S INTERPOLATIVE POWER FOR FUN AND PROFIT
How do you exploit the mind's amazing interpolative power to your benefit? When you want to learn something infinitely complicated, just start by picking up pieces wherever you can. When it comes time to make an inference about a piece you haven't "studied", just let your mind effortlessly make its guess. Once you've collected enough input, your mind will be right every time. Even though the structure is infinitely complicated and you've learned only finitely much stuff.
For example. If you want to learn a language to native fluency, the best way is to just listen to it and read it a lot. Eventually, you'll just "know" it. Even if you never study formal grammars or verb conjugation rules and so forth. Formal verb conjugation charts are tools for the conscious mind, and the conscious mind is puny and weak compared to the unconscious mind. Noone will ever become fluent in any real world language by studying grammars and vocabulary lists and verb conjugations. But just absorb a sufficiently large, finite amount of input, relax and let the mind's natural interpolative power go to work, and the language will come as easy as your native tongue.
Another example: if you want to learn to play the piano, just learn enough pieces, and, like magic, you'll suddenly be able to play anything. Finite ---> Infinite.
CONCLUSION
It's a well-known fact that we learn better when we're having fun. Maybe, just maybe, this is because when we're having fun, our mind is free to make the deep associations it's programmed to make, without the interruptions of the clumsy, analytical, conscious mind.
-------------
Here are some other posts I've written. Read enough of them and eventually your mind will fill in the gaps so you'll understand the infinite badassness which is GlowingFaceMan.
Skills And Metaskills
What is language fluency anyway?
The Joys of Change
Autodidact: Be A Self-Teacher
Whenever we learn something infinitely complex, like a language, or how to drive, or how to interact in society, we learn by interpolation and extrapolation. Our minds are built to take a finite amount of input and deduce the underlying infinite structure.
Weather maps provide the best analogy. To construct a weather chart, a meteorologist plots a relatively limited number of observations on a map, mostly from airport or ship weather
reports. Then the meteorologist infers everything else by interpolation and extrapolation. If it's 85F in San Diego and 80F in Las Angeles, it must be 83F somewhere in between. In this way the weatherman deduces the infinitely complex structure of the total weather picture, based on just a finite amount of data.Learning something, like a language, is the same way. A child hears finitely many sentences, and suddenly the child is fluent. A native speaker can't possibly have heard every possible sentence in their language, and yet they can understand them all. This works because the speaker has heard nearby sentences, and can infer how the meaning changes due to changes in the words. In the same way a meteorologist can infer that the temperature near the San Diego airport is similar to the temperature at the San Diego airport.
A professional pianist can't possibly have played all possible piano pieces. Yet, give her any musical score, and she'll play it. By practicing piano, what she's been doing over the years is
collecting a lot of input, and her mind can eventually fill in the gaps. If I give the same musical score to a great pianist and an amateur... and neither of them have ever seen it before... the great pianist will far outperform the amateur. Not because she's practiced that particular piece-- she's never seen it before! Rather because she's practiced other pieces and her mind has enough input to interpolate.A Don Juan seductor character can't possibly have seduced every girl in every scenario. But he's seduced enough that his mind can connect the dots, and that's how he'll adapt and thrive in any social situation.
This interpolating power of the mind makes television and computer graphics possible. When we watch a movie on the television or the computer, we're really just watching a bunch of tiny colored squares called pixels, which clunkily change colors several times a second. Those colored pixels grant us a finite amount of information about the pictures which we actually "see" once our mind connects the dots. The mind is so adept at this interpolation business that we can watch complicated films with absolutely no effort, even though mathematically the problem of turning a finite number of pixels into a continuous image is extremely complicated.
The mind goes even further and enjoys "robustness" properties: it's not just good enough to connect the dots, it can even correct the dots if some of the input is flawed. Thus, a child doesn't lose their ability to speak perfect English just from hearing some ungrammatical sentences. The mind immediately detects the sentences are ungrammatical, and discards them as invalid data, at the same time even making a damn good guess what is really meant. If half the pixels on a computer screen are broken, the mind will still effortlessly "see" what's shown.
EXPLOITING THE MIND'S INTERPOLATIVE POWER FOR FUN AND PROFIT
How do you exploit the mind's amazing interpolative power to your benefit? When you want to learn something infinitely complicated, just start by picking up pieces wherever you can. When it comes time to make an inference about a piece you haven't "studied", just let your mind effortlessly make its guess. Once you've collected enough input, your mind will be right every time. Even though the structure is infinitely complicated and you've learned only finitely much stuff.
For example. If you want to learn a language to native fluency, the best way is to just listen to it and read it a lot. Eventually, you'll just "know" it. Even if you never study formal grammars or verb conjugation rules and so forth. Formal verb conjugation charts are tools for the conscious mind, and the conscious mind is puny and weak compared to the unconscious mind. Noone will ever become fluent in any real world language by studying grammars and vocabulary lists and verb conjugations. But just absorb a sufficiently large, finite amount of input, relax and let the mind's natural interpolative power go to work, and the language will come as easy as your native tongue.
Another example: if you want to learn to play the piano, just learn enough pieces, and, like magic, you'll suddenly be able to play anything. Finite ---> Infinite.
CONCLUSION
It's a well-known fact that we learn better when we're having fun. Maybe, just maybe, this is because when we're having fun, our mind is free to make the deep associations it's programmed to make, without the interruptions of the clumsy, analytical, conscious mind.
-------------
Here are some other posts I've written. Read enough of them and eventually your mind will fill in the gaps so you'll understand the infinite badassness which is GlowingFaceMan.
Skills And Metaskills
What is language fluency anyway?
The Joys of Change
Autodidact: Be A Self-Teacher
Posts
2 comments:
Thanks for submitting this post to our blog carnival. We just published the 34th edition of Brain Blogging and your article was featured!
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Shaheen
Great post about learning! Good summary and definitely useful since its a subject I love!
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