There are so many similarities between Smallsteps and I, that I feel sorry for her. However, this morning while we were making some puzzles, I realized that in one way she is quite different.
She really enjoys putting the puzzles together, but once done, she has no sentiment toward keeping them. For example, we spent about an hour building one but once we were finished, she took a moment to admire it, gave me a high five, grabbed the box and disassembled it, heading to her room for the next.
I think that when I was a kid, I would have had some attachment to the finished product, because of the work put into it. A sunk-cost fallacy perhaps, as essentially what I had built was worthless.
This is something I will keep an eye on as she ages, as it could be that she is more interested in the process than the result, which could be a benefit for her. Building good processes is required for consistent results and while it doesn't guarantee good results, it is more likely to hit the mark than randomness. It is why athletes train and work on building muscle memory.
But as Vince Lombardi said, Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.
Due to the way we get comfortable and acclimatize to conditions so fast, we tend to do what we do repetitively, even if it doesn't get us to where we want to go. Process is important, but if we also have dome kind of goal in mind, the process has to fit the needs.
For example, when my daughter is doing a puzzle, she takes different strategies depending on whether she has done the puzzle before. If it is a new puzzle, she will start from the edges and work her way in. But if it is something she has done before, she will make components of it she knows and put them into position, joining them up as she finds connectors.
She has a very good spatial awareness and memory, far better than mine. I think that she has been helped in this by her largely analogue life, as nothing is spelled out for her, she has to deal with the reality of it, no shortcuts.
I think that when it comes to cognitive ability, a lot of what we consume makes us feel like we are thinking, but it is actually heavily guiding us. It is like watching a murder mystery, where all the clues are already laid out in the scene, highlighted for the audience in some way. While there are some red herrings in the plot, using the information included, the mystery has already been solved, the solution found.
A real murder mystery is quite different, as imthe investigation starts from scratch and a whole lot of superfluous information is available and has to be included, investigated and excluded from the evidence. Finding the solution can be much harder, because of the pool of information is yet to be sorted.
Having a good process for filtering environmental information is a core part of investigative work. While there is still the chance for luck to have an effect as always, process trumps random.
I think we tend to forget about how much of what we consume has already been put together for us, where we do not have to think about what to include or exclude. It becomes more like the puzzle my daughter has done before, where we feel clever by connecting up large chunks of information provided us to find the solution to something already solved.
I think that the Internet gives people a sense of accomplishment too, where people can argue using a Google search result, but don't actually add anything to the conversation themselves. We can always be right, and still know nothing about how to get there ourselves. People notice this using GPS navigators, where they can get somewhere unfamiliar, but if they have to go there again, they need the navigator again. They didn't learn the process, they followed the directions.
We have built a world of many competitive cognitive artefacts and while we are able to find answers, I think we are losing the ability to solve problems. As new problems arise, we are getting less and less capable to deal with them on average. While the availability and visibility we have might make it look like there are more clever people than before, I get the sense that the pool of problem-solvers is reducing.
I also think that on average, we are getting less capable to observe, evaluate and understand our environment, making us increasingly poor at dealing with conditions. I think a lot of the social unrest and the rise of victimhood mentality is due to inability to accurately identify real influences and causes of suffering. Rather than find the real solution, it becomes a blame game.
People can disagree, but I believe our processes are getting worse the more we consume, because we do not have to solve for ourselves, since we are living the consumptive life in an engineered environment, that excludes the randomness of real life. We are given directions on what to do and do not need to discover our own path, as it is laid out before us.
Again on my opinion, this leads to a consolidation of solution and a reduction in experience, as information and process becomes fed from a decreasing number of sources and therefore, more homogenous. This doesn't mean there isn't polarization, just far less nuance and inability to consider nuance. We see this now, where society has become bipolar in its approach to conflict, constantly on or off.
I don't know how much influence I have over Smallsteps, but I am hoping that she will spend time building good processes, instead of wanting to only have access to the "back of the book" solutions. I think the difference is that while she will be wrong a lot, she would be a creative force, rather than someone who just plugs the provided information into the provided formula. But, at the end of the day, all I can really do is provide her with an environment that allows for and encourages creativity, rather than one that supports consumption - room to discover the world, rather than a chair from which to stare at the world go by.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]