Simfish/InquilineKea's Thoughts

after all, WHICH necessary and sufficient conditions do we need to determine?

I’ll have to write more about this

it’s kind of related to treating symptoms and treating the root causes

teaching kids to learn a subject through things like colorful posters and projects isn’t going to help them later (since they aren’t going to be designing colorful posters later). They may PRESENT what they’ve learned through posters, but those posters are likely to fall under the domain of computers, not handwriting.

Does it help them retain the info better than if they just learned the facts straight? There isn’t an iota of proof in it. And sure it might motivate some more than others, but that doesn’t justify forcing everyone in the same class to learn by the same means.

It’s possible that learning by that means could potentially help students learn by helping them do similar things that could help them in the future (transfer) but we can’t prove this

That being said though, there are some specific ways to help students learn info that ISN’T going to help them learn info later, but would at least help them learn VITAL information better than an approach that they would have to use later (but such an approach would be less aided)

varies a lot.

usually my attention scope (and scope of memory) is so limited that I can only think of a few specific chunks of info without trying to find a general underlying trend that could potentially categorize them all under specific rules that would facilitate further discovery and categorization.

but there are a few times when i feel more inspired. i must capture those moments and identify them (and prepare for myself when I have such moments)

agents of creativity:

I previously commented on the difference between “intrinsic” behavior and “externally motivated” behavior, with the consideration that “externally motivated” behavior can only come through some form of evangelicism, which could include coercion (psychological or physical). Of course, sometimes it is difficult to measure which form of behavior is desirable but when one tries to change the behavior of another, it’s usually a form of external motivation to change an intrinsic behavior.

In any case, we can say that intrinsic behavior is behavior that falls under a steady state. Externally motivated behavior can also fall under a steady state (but you cannot 100% convince a person that the NEW behavior will necessarily be a steady state for HIM). Of course, this steady state also explains why some intrinsic behavior can be less efficient than externally motivated behavior (and why people may have convictions in the efficacy of their intrinsic behavior [and thus resistant to modifying their behavior to another desirable behavior with a more potentially stable “stable state”])

One of the problems with libertarianism is that discrimination may be a “stable” strategy in a libertarian state. As in, when the government does not prevent private companies from discriminating, it’s possible for those companies to discriminate against the “colored”. Even though one argument in favor of the free market holds that companies have a natural interest in serving the “colored”, the problem is that oftentimes when discrimination is rampant, the “colored” are especially poor in which case such companies wouldn’t increase their profits by much if they alone tried to end discrimination (moreover it’s safe to say that the dominant group’s prejudices may make it less likely to go to a company that serves the “colored”). “Separate but equal” systems are a stable state because they provide services to all (while non-dominant persons who are bold enough to try to take advantage of the services exclusive to the dominant group would drive away members of the dominant group – thus potentially reducing profits for companies producing services to the dominant group. In this case the government may have to intervene. Moreover, people have an intrinsic propensity towards discrimination but they also have a propensity towards non-discrimination and mere exposure may make it more likely for some members of dominant groups to accept the presence of members of non-dominant groups (often when initially under non-intrinsic motivation-induced-by-observation)

So inspections can measure either intrinsic or artifically motivated behavior.

IQ tests can measure either intrinsic intelligence or artificially motivated IQ-test studying.

Knowledge tests can measure either intrinsic knowledge or knowledge gained artificially.

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All three measurements are designed to test intrinsic qualities (inspections = rule conformance, IQ tests = intelligence, knowledge = breadth of knowledge). But all can be affected by behaviors artificially suited to affect results but not intrinsic qualities.

Getting answers for the test prior to the test may ensure that you get a 100%, but then the test fails to test the breadth of your intrinsic knowledge. Probabilistically, if you relied only on intrinsic knowledge, you would have to be *extremely* lucky to get extremely high marks on a test when you only know, say, 50% of the material and all of it happened to appear on the test (but not the other 50%). But most people do NOT encounter such situations.

Inspections: they must be unpredictable because if you intrinsically do something “undesirable”, then you face an increased risk of getting caught. But if you learn about inspection patterns ahead of time, then they end up sampling your artificially motivated behavior rather than your intrinsic behavior and such samples become useless.