Tag Archives: Express

Nurturing insight

I want to try something, and I am hoping some of you readers will participate.

In a nutshell, the idea is that we spend a little bit of time during a week (even if it is just 20 minutes) in a situation that nurtures insight.

It is possible for ideas to deeply change our world. How can we nurture the development of the ideas that might be game-changers in the coming months/years/decades?

My approach has two parts:

  1. Learn deeply and broadly about the world, including the major problems and proposed solutions. Useful insights generally require that they be based on accurate perceptions of reality.
  2. For some period of time, create the conditions under which deep insight into issues becomes more likely.

The central thrust of this ‘experiment’ has to do with what constitutes the conditions in part 2).

I imagine that there is a fair bit of individual variation on this front, but I am going to throw out some broad statements that I believe are reasonable based on what I know about human attention and education.

  • Our culture is becoming increasingly dominated by subject changes. Our attention is being chopped up into smaller bits as we interact with increasingly fast and engaging social media. I claim that deeper insights are not likely to come about through spreading our attention more thinly or by multitasking more. Whatever advantages this culture change offers, we are hopefully already taking advantage of them.
  • Teachers often complain about the quality of students in schools today. A central concern is the student’s ability to concentrate on one thing and to demonstrate the fact that they are capable of insight into the material at hand. Psychology has shown that our attention span is getting shorter. I believe these facts are all closely related. I believe the lack of insight in current students is due in part to the fact that they are not used to simply rolling an idea around in their heads for many minutes at a time. In short, I believe that the shortening of our attention spans is connected with reduced abilities to garner deep insight.
  • Distraction seem to have a complicated relationship with insight. While distractions do represent a fragmentation of attention, they can also be the foundation for connective insights – where we put different ideas together in new ways. These connections can help us understand the ideas and the relationship(s) between them.

I propose that each of us spends some amount of time this week (I suggest at least 20 minutes) in a situation that is well-suited to the development of our personal insight. For me this might be walking through Parc Mont-Royal, sitting at a desk with a blank piece of paper in front of me, or even meditating. I suggest that people do what they are comfortable with, but again I have some specific ideas that might help:

  • Get comfortable.
  • If you have a burning desire to interact with something else like friends, the Internet, a book, social media, etc, write down what you want to do on a piece of paper, tell yourself that you will do it later, and continue with your efforts to gain insight. In light of this, it can be helpful to have somewhere to write nearby.
  • Be content. Getting upset probably won’t help.
  • Be your own person. Don’t bother thinking about what other people might think of what you are thinking.
  • Embrace the fact that your thoughts may be mostly about your own mundane concerns. Let them go where they will. Your thoughts will eventually turn to the things you care about most.
  • Follow your trains of thought wherever they may lead. Don’t be afraid of thinking anything. We might like some thoughts more than others, but any one of them might hold the key to a deepening of our understanding of ourselves and our world.

I would like to hear from all of you about what your insights were and in what circumstances you achieved them.

Reading on the Internet – Good, Bad?

Reading on the Internet has its ups and downs. In this piece I will first go through some of my favourite aspects before I dig into the things that bother me.

Positive Qualities

Searching Power

It is easy to find information on topics that I know I am interested in. If I know what I am looking for, I can generally find it. The only problem sometimes is one of wording or word choice. For instance, in a recent example with my friends, we were looking for a specific topic using the search terms “loss of forests” rather than “deforestation”. Until we looked for the latter, we were floundering.

Skimmable

Internet material is often very easy to skim so that you can pick out the useful facts and ideas. Many people who write for the Internet realize that their readers are not likely to read every word.

Speed

News on the Internet is astonishingly fast and interconnected. I can learn more from the Internet in the same amount of time than I can from either Radio or Television.

Levels of Depth

You can read the Internet at many levels of depth. For instance, if you are reading the Google News headlines, they will give you a snapshot of some of the major events that are going on in the world.

Want to learn a bit more? Open up the major news items and read them. If your thirst for knowledge goes deeper yet, it is time to start following more links and searching for related terms. You can tailor your information gathering to both your level of interest and the time you have available.

Dialog

On the Internet, you can end up in a direct discussion with the creator(s) of the content that you are consuming. Unlike most other mediums, on the Internet it is often possible to directly engage the author of a piece of information. No other medium has such vast powers for connection and discussion.

Dangers

Confirmation Bias

You tend to find what you are looking for. This can contribute to the confirmation bias, the natural tendency of people to feel that information that agrees with their preconceptions is somehow more trustworthy than the information presenting the opposite side.

The Well-Informed Illusion

The speed of reading and the brevity of writing on the Internet can lead to an illusion of deep understanding. Many people fall prey to the often mistaken conception of themselves as well-read because they keep up-to-date with Google News or a social bookmarking site such as RedditSlashdot, or Digg.

While Google News provides an overview of some world issues, the social bookmarking sites generally highlight sensational, inflammatory, and opinionated works of note on the Internet. Neither of these approaches is necessarily well-suited for the acquisition of high-quality information about the world.

This topic is particularly close to my heart, since I am the founder of Vision of Earth, a website attempting to provide high-quality information to the general public about practical ideas for developing the unrealized potential of human societies.

You might also be interested in my broader article about the misleading nature of all media forms.

Getting a Feel for Kinesthetic Learners

For a presentation during my Master’s studies I brought along some objects to use as learning aids. I was anticipating the multiple learning styles that may be in the classroom. Just prior to my moment in the spotlight, I looked at some of the more tactile items and said, “These are for the kinesthetic learners, although I doubt they made it this far.”

There is a large amount of truth in this statement, but not for the reasons you may predict. Kinesthetic learners are not inferior in learning capacity, nor are they poor at grasping or retaining concepts. The issue lies in the current teaching methods used in university and school classrooms.

Modern lectures, at best, are comprised of slideshows accompanied by ongoing explanations from the teacher. At worst, lessons may be presented only from a textbook – again, a visual medium. These two ends of the spectrum show how prevalent the visual and auditory learning styles are in today’s classroom. But what about the kinesthetic learners?

Kinesthetic learners gain knowledge through doing and feeling (e.g. some learn best on their feet). If they are to understand the concept of addition, they would rather add physical steps than images on paper. If they are to grasp mechanics, they would rather take a motor apart than study how it works in theory. If they are to memorize anatomy, they would rather touch, feel, poke and prod a dummy.

And when you think about it, wouldn’t you rather do that? Imagine learning geometry by acting out shapes. Or understanding DNA replication by being a nucleus. Or grasping neurotransmitters by turning your classroom into a big brain.

In a TED talk by Ken Robinson, he points out that we tend to educate children first from the waist up, then the neck up, then a little to one side, the left side – where mathematics, logic and language are located. Our education systems fail to incorporate the power of learning through physical motion and touch. Not only that, we systematically educate our children away from this method of learning and expression.

This is a major oversight. After all, the major neurological unit of movement (the cerebellum) is biologically one of the oldest and most important parts of the brain. All of the deliberate actions we make involve the cerebellum.

Due to the lack of support for their learning style many kinesthetic learners do not reach their full potential. But they can.

The incorporation of methods that could benefit all learners, especially of the kinesthetic style, is easy. Here are a few tips for aiding the kinesthetic learner:

  1. Bring appropriate objects to touch and interact with.
  2. Avoid sitting when possible – movement is healthier.
  3. If sitting is necessary, use chewing gum as a backup motion.
  4. Review material while dancing, walking, running, showering, doing the dishes, etc. (associating an action with a subject may help your memory).
  5. Doodle.
  6. Remember that this learning style is the most easily forgotten. Classrooms were not made for kinesthetic learners, but classrooms aren’t the only place to learn. Find a space.