THE DEFAULT STATE OF LEARNING

November 4th, 2019

Everyone claims to love learning.  But this is mostly untrue.

The reason is that people fail to think about what the state of learning – what the actual verb – is referring to.

Everyone loves having new skills and knowledge.  But having skills and knowledge is not learning.  Skills and knowledge are the end result of learning.

The verb ‘learn’ refers to the process of acquiring these skills and knowledge.

What sort of state floods a person’s mind when they are trying to acquire a skill or some kind of knowledge?

Confusion.

Learning is what’s going on before we have the skill, or before we understand the knowledge. 

The default state of learning is confusion. 

Once the skill is acquired or the knowledge is understood, then it’s no longer learning, it’s just a skill you have or some knowledge that you can use.

Learning is that difficult transitional phase when things don’t make sense.

Few people actually enjoy, let alone love this kind of state.

Just think for a moment:

How many times have you heard a person say that they love to be confused?

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: THE MOMENT'S MOOD

November 3rd, 2019

Lucilius was slumped over a computer, staring into the bright screen.  A giant list scrolled on and on as his fingertips brushed the track pad again and again.  He was looking for something to watch, a movie, or a show, but none of the titles he read registered with what he was feeling.

He didn’t want any of those actions movies, none of that drama.  He was a little tired, but calm.  He felt easy and relaxed, if still yearning for something to watch.  He scrolled some more.

There had to be something he could watch.  Something steady, something almost quiet.  Whatever it was, it was probably a movie where not much happened.    It was just a mood really that he was hunting for.  Something meditative, contemplative, passive almost.

But each and every title his eyes scanned held some unwanted spark, something loud, and disjointed almost.  None of these movies were . . . smooth, he thought.  Perhaps he was looking for something that’s only in music, he wondered.  It was about time, he realized.  Something to mark the minutes, but not with the staccato of a second hand, nor the frenzied beats of a song. 

He scrolled further, and then finally sighed and sat back from the computer, his eyes drifted off to a corner of the room.  There was nothing there but the sight held him, like a trance.  He felt himself breathe, the mood of the moment washing over him.

A corner of his mouth pulled away slightly.  He slowly closed his laptop, and sat staring at nothing, feeling himself persist through time.  The mood he’d been looking to match was still there, but now without the list of movies, it seemed to expand, until he could see it in the blank walls of the room, the closed computer, and his hands hanging in his lap.  Dimly, he could hear his slow breath and tried to catch the moment when the world seeping in started to rush out, but the switch was too sly, as each moment seemed to unfold seamlessly into the next.

COMEDY'S POINT

November 2nd, 2019

First, a distinction:  good comedy requires a clever element, but things that are merely clever do not constitute comedy.

There are some comedians who merely craft and perform clever puns, but much comedy goes far beyond this and incorporates extreme subjects.  And comedy does this for a vital reason,

namely:

it’s generally not polite to bring up extreme topics.

Comedy enables us to entertain a discussion of difficult topics without social awkwardness.  It’s the pleasure of comedy, often delivered by the mechanism of cleverness that balances the unpleasantness of the subject.

With these competing emotional forces in balance, we are able to fluidly explore difficult subjects together.

Comedy is a way to hack our own emotional system in order to move forward when something feels too horrible or serious to talk about.

This is a case where the combined effect is more than the sum of its part.  The synergy of cleverness and extreme topics allows forward movement.

It’s not just something we do to have a good time.

It’s how we keep society healthy by keeping the Overton Window as wide as possible.

DOUBLE TIME

November 1st, 2019

Time for a little behind-the-scenes house keeping.

Starting today, Tinkered Thinking is going to embark on another 1-month experiment to create future posts.  Two a day, for a month, which will create a month’s worth of episodes in advance.

The purpose of this is more practical than experimental.  Technical difficulties with recording equipment have put Tinkered Thinking behind schedule several times, and with no episodes ready in advance, these sorts of problems are very visible.

Not so with some sort of advance.

The experimental part of this is to once again invoke the architecture for installing a new habit.  Last time this was attempted, a series of special rewards were planned in accordance with the habit-forming thresholds.

If you haven’t encountered this sort of thing before, it’s well worth the time to repeat it.

For any new habit that we’d like to adopt, the first month is the most difficult.  Within that month there are thresholds where things seem to get noticeably easier.  These thresholds are 3 days, 7 days, 21 days, 28 days and 30 days.  James Clear and Charles Duhigg have written fantastic books about the structure and formation of habits and both authors are highly recommended.

It follows that discipline is only really required to create a habit.

Once the habit has taken root, the behavior is automatic and the arduous experience of willing one’s self to act is no longer necessary. 

Discipline is only required for short bursts, when we thirst for a system upgrade.

This is one of the reasons why rewards, or treats planned with each habit threshold during that first month are so effective.  We incentivize ourselves towards each one, and in so doing we chunk the month into smaller, more digestible portions that we actually can will ourselves through. 

This technique, along with many others that both James Clear and Charles Duhigg examine, are very effective. 

It’ll be curious to see how this plays out with the production of advanced episodes.  Will two episodes become the norm of production for Tinkered Thinking? 

Maybe, maybe not. 

We’ll see.

THE REDUNDANCY OF THINKING WITHOUT TINKERING

October 31st, 2019

How many times have you had the same thought?

Naturally, this is an impossible question.  Countless thoughts have been repetitively run in the sound booth of our minds.

It’s quite similar to asking:  how many times have you made the exact same dumb mistake again?

We are all victim to this repetitive malfunction.

Left to its own devices, the brain is a repetition machine.

The study of habits only exemplifies this.  The fact that the brain is a repetition machine is what makes good habits so valuable and easy once installed, and bad habits so insidious and entrenched.

Much of the self-improvement world revolves around the notion of installing good habits and then simply waiting for the results to compound into large, noticeable benefits. 

It holds that we are all broken records, and that it’s just a matter of making sure we are singing the right song. 

There’s a lot of truth to this.

We may even go so far as to say that all thinking is mere repetition if we are not actively tinkering with the way it works.  And if that’s the case, is it even thinking without the tinkering?

One perspective can see that the name tinkered thinking, is a bit redundant: i.e. can we really call it thinking if it’s not actively seeking to evolve some new thoughts?

But take habits -both good and bad- into account and thinking might simply be defined as brain activity. 

Tinkering with that activity is how we improve it, switching up habitual patterns and most importantly, making a habit of seeking a better way to think.

This is a process that can be never ending, making life always fresh and full of possibility.

It is the realm of the autodidact, the person who doesn’t simply figure it out, but teaches themselves how to figure it out.

We think of a tinkerer as someone fiddling with some mechanical gadget, like a pocket watch, or an automaton,

but the supreme object of someone who tinkers is their own self.