[FRIAM] are we how we behave?

[Nick Thompson]

Did I really REALLY have to learn Latin to be an Educated Man.  Read in two languages to get a PHD?  Do you really have to get an A in organic chemistry to be a good doctor?  In Calculus to be a dentist?   

How do we tell the difference between hazing and education? 

n

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2019 2:40 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] are we how we behave?

I can't help but tie these maunderings to the modern epithets of "snowflake" and "privilege" (shared by opposite but similar ideologues).  I have to wonder what it means to "learn" something.  The question of whether a robot will take one's job cuts nicely to the chase, I think.  How much of what any of us do/know is uniquely (or best) doable by a general intelligence (if such exists) versus specific intelligence?  While I'm slightly fluent in a handful of programming languages, I cannot (anymore) just sit down and write a program in any one of them.  I was pretty embarrassed at a recent interview where they asked me to code my solution to their interview question on the whiteboard.  After I was done I noticed sugar from 3 different languages in the code I "wrote" ... all mixed together for convenience.  They said they didn't mind.  But who knows?  Which is better?  Being able to coherently code in one language, with nearly compilable code off the bat?  Or the [dis]ability of changing languages on a regular basis in order to express a relatively portable algorithm?  Which one would be easier for a robot?  I honestly have no idea.

But the idea that the arbitrary persnickety sugar I learned yesterday *should* be useful today seems like a bit of a snowflake/privileged way to think (even ignoring the "problem of induction" we often talk about on this list).  Is what it means to "learn" something fundamentally different from one era to the next?  Do the practical elements of "learning" evolve over time?  Does it really ... really? ... help to know how a motor works in order to drive a car?  ... to reliably drive a car so that one's future is more predictable?  ... to reduce the total cost of ownership of one's car?  Or is there a logical layer of abstraction below which the Eloi really don't need to go?

On 3/5/19 11:04 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> Interesting to see the "new bar" set so low as age 30.  Reminds me of 
> my own youth when the "Hippie generation" was saying "don't trust 
> anyone over 30!".  Later I got to know a lot of folks from the "Beat"
> generation who were probably in their 30's by that time and rather put 
> out that they couldn't keep their "hip" going amongst the new youth culture.
> 
> ...
> My mules are named Fortran/Prolog/APL/C/PERL and  VMS/BSD/Solaris/NeXT 
> and IBM/CDC/CRAY/DEC and GL/OpenGL/VRPN/VRML.   I barely know the 
> names of the new 
> tractors/combines/cropdusters/satellite-imaging/laser-leveling/???
> technology.
> 
> Always to be counted on for nostalgic maunderings,

--
☣ uǝlƃ
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