tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6762928.post8592758747409222944..comments2024-01-03T05:23:36.046-08:00Comments on The Citizens: Learning and Persuasion: Rationality and Experiential LearningUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6762928.post-60389601658163447992009-04-29T18:04:00.000-07:002009-04-29T18:04:00.000-07:00LTG: I would clarify that I certainly did not teac...LTG: I would clarify that I certainly did not teach myself calculus, but I was ready for it when we got to it in school. The point is I believe I would have had a much harder time learning the subject if I had not had prior experience that pointed the way.<br /><br />USWest: As I understand it, few people doubt the CIA did most of the things detailed in the torture memos. Many applaud the CIA for doing so, especially right-wingers. The trouble is that most Americans still believe torture is the only rapid and reliable way to extract critical information from terrorists. (Of course, torture is neither rapid nor reliable, and there are far better methods.)Dr. Strangelovehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14407042105777411150noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6762928.post-25443387609105847212009-04-29T16:51:00.000-07:002009-04-29T16:51:00.000-07:00It's worth noting pehaps that Alcoholics Anonymous...It's worth noting pehaps that Alcoholics Anonymous has 12 steps, not just one (i.e., stop drinking). <br /><br />Dr.S - teaching yourself, as you explained it, is a very powerful but rare experience for most people.The Law Talking Guyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17886791396468512490noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6762928.post-46314242865433425302009-04-29T16:32:00.000-07:002009-04-29T16:32:00.000-07:00Dr. S, you are such a nerd. Loveable, but a nerd!
...Dr. S, you are such a nerd. Loveable, but a nerd!<br /><br />I encounter this relationship between learning and persuasion all the time. <br /><br />I try to explain to an employee why her actions are counterproductive, and she is so trapped in her way of thinking that no persuasion or learning can take place. So I think about what my dad use to say to us when we were not persuaded or ready to learn , "you'll grow up one of these days."<br /><br />I am not sure where this applies in this discussion, but we also learn differently as we age. In my world, we talk about the difference between adult learning vs. childhood learning. <br /><br />Adults are, by nature, more independant and this, more likely to doubt. So until you can prove to them that torture took place, you can't persuade them about how to deal with it or teach them why it is bad.USwestnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6762928.post-77752983336596817512009-04-29T12:34:00.000-07:002009-04-29T12:34:00.000-07:00If I understand you, then experiential learning is...If I understand you, then experiential learning is not really a substitute for persuasion but a necessary prelude to persuasion: person often must digest a new framework before they can be persuaded within the terms of that framework--and that process usually requires gaining new experiences. In this context, the process of teaching someone is a process of affording them new experiences that will allow them to understand a different frameworks--and the rational syllogism comes later.<br /><br />A professor of mine once observed that one of the problems with how physics is usually taught is that we, "teach forward but understand backward, "by which he meant academics tend to structure their lesson plans as a semester-long exercise in the deduction of real world phenomena from first principles, even though most students learn better inductively, abstracting first principles from real world phenomena.<br /><br />I remember in High School (this is so geeky of me--forgive me...) I was trying to understand how the same gravity that governed the motion of everyday objects could also govern the motion of the moon. What bothered me was that when you throw every day objects, they fall in parabolas, while the moon moves in a stately circle. (I had just learned about parabolas and how to graph them.) And then one day it hit me: "What if the moon keeps trying to fall down, but the direction of 'down' keeps changing--because 'down' means toward the center of the earth?!"<br /><br />I still remember that moment of insight with great clarity. So I got out my quadrille graph paper and tried to draw tiny little bits of parabolas strung together. The smaller I drew it the better it looked. I actually did the calculations, to try get the plot exactly right--but it ended up as a complicated endless summation of little bits. I remember thinking that if I could just get the parabolic pieces small enough, then it would magically become a circle. I showed this to my father who said, "You really need to learn calculus."<br /><br />It would be another year or so before I finally did. The formalism of epsilons and deltas proved a formidable obstacle for me. I actually argued with the teacher repeatedly that what he was doing was "dividing by zero" and made no sense. (I am not by nature an argumentative student. But I argued so much he ended up putting a question on the final exam, to explain why it was *not* dividing by zero.) And then one day I saw through the veil of weird notation and realized calculus was actually that magic of smallness I had been looking for: it lets you make those parabolas infinitesimally small, and the circular orbit truly does emerge as the limit. <br /><br />All that is to say, both learning and persuasion were required. But I could only be persuaded by the formal logic until I realized the right framework--until I realized that by luck I already knew the shape of the hole in my understanding that calculus was meant to fill. I wonder if I ever would have understood it otherwise.Dr. Strangelovehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14407042105777411150noreply@blogger.com