Well ... by "built up" I mean the collecting of examples. Yes, each example is part novel and part pattern. So I do get what you are saying, in regards to how these specific examples allow a sort of mental pruning, down to the essential aspects.
In Blink, Gladwell uses the example of an art expert who is able to see - immediately - that a particular statue is fake. The expert's judgement is immediate, without even articulating - at first - exactly *why *he knows it is fake. But he has crafted this expertise over time, with thoughtful and particular study of many, many examples of real and fake statues. What's wonderful about this is that many of the rules *remain *unarticulated. The brain somehow manages to piece together many of these patterns - these 'essential' aspects - unconsciously. But it still requires intense study, and foreknowledge of what is real and what is fake. By giving years of study to these particular examples, the art expert is allocating more of his brain to record all the patterns he needs. This is very similar to how, for example, a blind person has more expert hearing or touch. It's not that your ears are magically better because you are blind, or your fingers more sensitive to touch for reading braille. The blind simply devote more time and study to interpreting these particular patterns of touch and sound ... more brain area for processing a greater number of patterns in this realm than a sighted person would use. Then eventually, a blind person can read while hardly aware of the individual dots felt by his fingers. Perhaps it would be better to say these skills are "developed" rather than "built up." But they do, I believe, require a larger chunk of mental space, to accommodate the larger number of specific patterns that are remembered in the domain of expertise. For myself, I can assure you the amount of space in my brain dedicated to statues is much smaller. It's pretty much restricted to "Yes, that's a statue." -Ted On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 9:47 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES <[email protected]> wrote: > It's strange that when Gladwell says this stuff, it sounds attractive, but > when a behaviorist says the same thing people think it sounds crazy: > > "Intelligent" behavior is not caused by "thinking", but rather it is simply > attunement of the body to the correct environmental variables. There is > nothing "built up" about it, quite the opposite, it is pared down and > simplified. It is "selective attention", in terms purely of one's behavior > being dependent upon only the essential aspects of what is going on around > you. This shouldn't lead us to think the mind even more wonderful, but > rather to question the usefulness of mind-talk and mind-focused-learning in > the first place. > > Sigh, > > Eric > > > On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 06:50 PM, *Ted Carmichael <[email protected]>* wrote: > > > > On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Merle Lefkoff > <[email protected]<#12ba86c08669b3f2_> > > wrote: > >> Merle Lefkoff wrote: >> >> [snip] Even so-called "experts" are hard-wired for "loss aversion". They >> are likely to form their predictions based on how recently they predicted >> wrongly and NOT on the statistics they've studied. > > > Well, the point in Gladwell's book was that a LOT of learning and > experience is built up, so that predictions or assessments, etc., become > immediate, knee-jerk reactions. The processes that inform such decisions > occur below the level of consciousness, but nevertheless require years of > study. > > So it's not just statistics that are studied, but rather thousands and > thousands of instances of learning that are remembered, and thus aggregated > below conscious awareness. Even though the process of training one's brain > for many different examples requires conscious thought and reflection, the > end result becomes a reflexive action. > > -Ted > > -- Ted Carmichael, Ph.D. Complex Systems Institute Department of Software and Information Systems College of Computing and Informatics 310-A Woodward Hall UNC Charlotte Charlotte, NC 28223 [email protected] [email protected] Phone: 704-492-4902
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