Kragen Javier Sitaker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Thanks for the link --- I'd heard about the project some years ago, > but didn't know what they were up to these days. Do you have > hypotheses for this difference between children and adults?
Have you read about Ritual Addicted on reciprocality.org? The website appears to be down, but it's in google's cache[1]. It reads like the website of an internet crank, and the first few times I ran across it I immediately dismissed it for that very reason. But the basic principle as I see it is that most people don't learn new things unless they are forced to do so. In general, workers will not put in any effort to learn new things unless their survival depends upon it. Relevant points are * the popularity of http://www.whomovedmycheese.com/ * The Pragmatic Programmer specifically covers learning portfolios * Hamming's "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, Learning to Learn" * Disruptive change. When trying harder is part of the problem[2] In my experience, most people do not know how to handle a situation unless they've been told how to do so by someone else. My theory is: When a group of people is confronted with a situation that none of them have ever even conceived of before, most of them are lost, but a few of them come up with a new response. In most cases, that new response quickly spreads and becomes the approved social response. I also hypothesize that most people operate with little more than an internal lookup table of situation -> response. Psychological research into learning has shown that a conscious effort to improve is the only requirement. I suspect most people don't stand back and look at their lives from that perspective. I'm biased, I've come up with new and improved responses to known situations for many years. My suggestions for change have been rejected because "that's not how things are done." I think translates into "change is hard, let's go shopping." Change takes work, people are lazy. [1] http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:Eqr9M7dRadgJ:www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/+ritual+addicted&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1 [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12024762&dopt=Abstract -- I've tried to teach people autodidactism, | ScannedInAvian.com but it seems they always have to learn it for themselves.| Shae Matijs Erisson
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