The Exchanges

Q Are there some activities that are better than other for encouraging that diffuse mode kind of reconciliation, like going to the gym, or are they all very similar as long as they take your mind off?

A Well, I, I always think that something active is, is better than anything else in that, um, what you want to do, let's say you've been writing a report, and then when you're taking your break, you don't want to go onto Twitter or Facebook and continue writing, because you're using sort of the same areas of the brain, and it's not giving that area a little bit of a rest. So the, uh, the best all-purpose break thing is to Uh, move around to some extent. Do something that's physical. And we, of course, as far as exercise itself goes, oh my gosh, that's one of the best things you can do for learning. Um, what exercise does is it helps produce Brain derived neurotropic factor in your, you know, in your brain. And this is kind of like a fertilizer that helps dendritic spines grow. In other words, it helps make new connections. So, and you can see it. I mean, there's some great neuroscience papers, like a nature neuroscience that, that show that That little dendritic spines just popping right out when they've got BDNF, um, you know, uh, they're exposed to that, and so exercise is what kind of brings this all out for you, and it's, it's, um, it is a fantastic learning, um, you know, it's like a medication to help you learn better. Um, my, my co-instructor, Terry Sanowski, um, I'm convinced that he did some of the earliest studies, uh, that showed that exercise is a really helpful tool,…

AI assessment note: “I always think that something active is, is better than anything else”

Q Are there some activities that are better than other for encouraging that diffuse mode kind of reconciliation, like going to the gym, or are they all very similar as long as they take your mind off?

A Well, I, I always think that something active is, is better than anything else in that, um, what you want to do, let's say you've been writing a report, and then when you're taking your break, you don't want to go onto Twitter or Facebook and continue writing, because you're using sort of the same areas of the brain, and it's not giving that area a little bit of a rest. So the, uh, the best all-purpose break thing is to, uh, Uh, move around to some extent. Do something that's physical. And we, of course, as far as exercise itself goes, oh my gosh, that's one of the best things you can do for learning. Um, what exercise does is it helps produce Brain-derived neurotropic factor in your, you know, in your brain, and this is kind of like a fertilizer that helps dendritic spines grow. In other words, it helps make new connections. So, and you can see it. I mean, there's some great neuroscience papers, like a nature neuroscience that, that show that little dendritic spines just popping right out when they've got BDNF, um, you know, uh, that they, they're exposed to that. And so exercise is what kind of brings this all out for you. And it's, it's, um, it is a fantastic, um, Learning, um, you know, it's like a medication to help you learn better. Um, my, my co-instructor, Terry Sanowski, um, I'm convinced that he did some of the earliest studies, uh, that showed that exercise is a real…

AI assessment note: “I always think that something active is, is better than anything else”

Q And what we store in memory, is that the chunking you were talking about earlier?

A Yes, that's the long-term memory. That's what's, um, the pattern that's stored in long-term memory, which is sort of like in the, ah, the outer cortex of your, of your brain. Um, well, the cortex is on the outer part, so What happens is your prefrontal cortex, so that's the really the front of your brain where your working memory is, it's, uh, it works with this stuff and kind of creates these sort of temporary, um, chains or, or patterns in your hippocampus, and then the hippocampus in turn, um, sort of, uh, the sleep spindles when you're sleeping, um, It is transferring that information into, um, sort of, uh, the locations in long-term memory, kind of more scattered around your, uh, your cerebral cortex, and that's where your long-term memories are that you, that you're grabbing when you, uh, when you need to pull on that particular chunk and activate it, or subroutine, so to speak.

AI assessment note: “Yes, that's the long-term memory. That's what's, um, the pattern that's stored”

Q Do we have learning types? Like some people say they're visual learners versus auditory learners versus like, how do you, how do you think about that?

A I think you have to be very careful if you look at the research literature, uh, because, for example, there was a, uh, excellent study done by a woman named Beth Rogoski, um, and what she did was she took one of the standard tests to kind of analyze a very widely used test that is used to distinguish, uh, an individual as to whether they're a visual learner or an auditory learner or kinesthetic learner or whatever. So she had people take this test, and, uh, so then she got categories, right? So she's got her visual learners and her auditory learners and so forth, and so she then took the visual learners and had them take a test that was, uh, through hearing, and then she had the auditory learners, and she had them take a test that was visual, and what she found ultimately was people are Are fooling themselves completely. Those who thought that they were more visually oriented, they just, just fine with auditory. And likewise, those who thought that they were, they only learned best through auditory, they learned the same as, uh, as the visual learners in, in looking at some, some sort of visual thing. So people fool themselves. They, because we're, we're presenting this thing and saying, Oh, yes, there are these categories of visual and auditory learners. Then, um, people think it's actually true, and they quantify themselves that way, and then when you actually test them, it i…

AI assessment note: “what she found ultimately was people are Are fooling themselves completely.”

Q Do we learn different things the same way? Do we learn how to dance and learn a language in fundamentally the same underlying way?

A It depends on what level you look at. If you think of learning as creating a new pattern in your brain, which is exactly what, what new learning is, then yes, fundamentally, we are, um, whether we're learning dance or taekwondo or, um, You know, differential equations, whatever you're learning, you're creating a new pattern in your brain. The thing is, of course, when you're learning different things, you have to get those patterns into your brain in different ways. So, you're, you're practicing with the mandolin, and so you're, you have to practice it that way. You're practicing, which is hello in Russian, so you're practicing with your mouth, and, and, Math and science are a little bit more abstract, so it's harder to see that you're simply creating physical patterns in your brain when you are, uh, learning a new idea, but you are creating a physical pattern in your brain, and so, uh, so that is the underlying commonality, I think, of all, of all learning.

AI assessment note: “If you think of learning as creating a new pattern in your brain... then yes”

Q How do you think about the difference between learning something in serial versus kind of parallel? Like, if I want to master three different things in the next 10 years, am I better off working on them all simultaneously, or focusing intensely on one at a time, or is that too kind of situationally driven?

A I think it's situationally driven, um, because, well, usually the longer you know something, the better you can get at it. So I suppose that, let's say I was trying to learn three different languages. Well, if I studied three languages for five years, um, and kind of on a parallel track, I think, I think I would be better at each of them Than if I studied, uh, you know, three for, you know, one and a half years, or, you know, one of them for one and a half, and then sequentially the next, and then the next. Because if you're totally focused, you'll do great on the first one. And then with the second one, well, the first one's starting to disappear, and with the third one, well, the first two, you're not really focusing on them, so they'll start to disappear, whereas if they're all three kind of in track, you've got more and more time to sleep on it and grow those new neural patterns, and there does, we kind of talked a little bit, you alluded to There can be a point, I think, sometimes when you're learning anything where you kind of just like, blah!

AI assessment note: “I think it's situationally driven, um, because, well, usually the longer you know something”

Q How would you encourage kind of like organizations to allow learning based on like a corporate? So if you had a body like that's making decisions, how would you disseminate information to people so that they could learn what factors are being considered relevant? Or how would you encourage this sort of like corporation becoming a learning, a learning corporation where everybody's learning from each other?

A I think it's a little tough in that I believe this is something that society should be encouraging right from the get-go, and we haven't been doing that, um, not very well. Um, in fact, is, it's amazing to me that people can go through 12 to 16 years of education and never have a single course in how to learn effectively. I mean, that's just boggling. And so, I think that for corporations, Talking about the importance of learning, uh, have the head person, whoever is the CEO, could be modeling the importance of learning, perhaps through learning something and, and kind of sharing it with the, with the corporation and those in the corporation and sharing his struggles or her struggles as, uh, as the new ideas are being assimilated. Um, and showing, if you show from the top that, that you're really serious that, uh, lifelong learning is something that is of great value in that company, I think that is probably the very best way, and then help make it available. Um, I, I, for me, um, my course learning how to learn is through, uh, a Massive open online course provider called Coursera, uh, and so obviously I'm a little biased, but I think they're a fantastic institution, and they, they have plenty of opportunities for corporations to interact with them to, uh, to provide great learning experiences, not only in technical kinds of, or business, or professional, but if you're learning…

AI assessment note: “have the head person, whoever is the CEO, could be modeling the importance of learning”

Q I like that a lot, because I, I do think we need this sort of downtime, and we can't always be on. I want to come back to a little bit more about learning, which is, can you explain to me kind of the, the role that memory plays as it relates to learning?

A Well, memory is integral to learning, and, and we all know that, but we've kind of gone off, I mean, there's this, like, seesaw through history. I mean, we see this, um, in all sorts of ways through history. Some, some idea will take hold, and then everybody will go nuts for this idea, and they go way overboard, and then it goes way overboard, and, like, Freudian psychology, um, or psychiatry, there, There were some points to Freudian psychiatry, but everything got Freudian, and then you couldn't, like, break out of that, and then it went to Skinnerianism, and then you couldn't publish anything that was against, uh, Skinnerian, uh, approaches and so forth. And similarly in education, we've gone on to this thing where memorization is evil. No, never allow people to memorize things because you just want them to understand it. And I mean, it's gone just crazy. And, um, and the, the fact that I even had a student, I remember I had a student come up to me and, um, He flunked this test, and he's like, oh, you know, I just don't understand how I could have flunked this test. I understood it when you said it in class, and he'd heard for so many years that all he needed to do was understand something, and that was it. That's enough. That's like the golden thing, and, and it's not enough. It's not enough at all. Um, sometimes I, I will say to people, like, you'll hear, um, Poets say, mem…

AI assessment note: “memory is integral to learning... if you memorize an equation, you will also understand it more deeply”

Q Do you think that universities who are funding this have, ah, an obligation to make that knowledge public to people about how we can effectively learn online as a means to facilitate A massive global online learning push?

A I think that many universities, um, that there are often great administrators who see it as their duty to help, um, share this information, but as You know, as is sometimes said, um, moving a university is like moving a cemetery. You cannot expect any help from the inhabitants, and, uh, there's a lot of institutional inertia. There's a lot of opposition to online learning at, at many universities, just because, you know, there's a fear that, um, jobs would be lost, and, um, This makes it difficult for some of these visionary administrators to, to get that material out there that they really want to share. And, you know, I, the hardest part, this is the part that I find, that I really struggle with, is the top tier universities are getting information out there with, with massive open online courses. It's the second tier Universities that, um, often kind of go, oh no, we shouldn't have anything online because people will lose jobs. So we're not going to allow anything going on with massive open online courses at our universities because that's bad for faculty and so forth. So what this means is they're shooting that institution, so to speak in, in the foot because, and they're allowing these top tier universities to get all their stuff out there. And then the second tier universities, well, uh, the faculty are often hamstringing the, that, those institutions' abilities to reach …

AI assessment note: “great administrators who see it as their duty to help, um, share this information”

Q I like that a lot, because I, I do think we need this sort of downtime, and we can't always be on. I want to come back to a little bit more about learning, which is, can you explain to me kind of the, the role that memory plays as it relates to learning?

A Well, memory is integral to learning, and, and we all know that, but we've kind of gone off, I mean, there's this, like, seesaw through history. I mean, we see this, um, in all sorts of ways through history. Some, some idea will take hold, and then everybody will go nuts for this idea, and they go way overboard, and then it goes way overboard, and, like, Freudian psychology, um, or psychiatry, there, There were some points to Freudian psychiatry, but everything got Freudian, and then you couldn't, like, break out of that, and then it went to Skinnerianism, and then you couldn't publish anything that was against, uh, Skinnerian, uh, approaches and so forth, and similarly in education, we've gone on to this thing where memorization is bad. Evil. No, never allow people to memorize things because you just want them to understand it, and I mean, it's gone just crazy, and, um, and the, the fact that I even had a student, I remember I had a student come up to me, and he flunked this test, and, uh, he's like, oh, you know, I just don't understand how I could have flunked this test. I understood it when you said it in class. And he'd heard for so many years that all he needed to do was understand something, and that was it. That's enough. That's like the golden thing, and, and it's not enough. It's not enough at all. Um, sometimes I, I will say to people, like, you'll hear, um, poets sa…

AI assessment note: “Well, memory is integral to learning, and, and we all know that”

Q If you were to advise somebody on how to, like, what the steps are to creating a chunk, what would they, what would they be?

A First, to be aware that there's a way of crystallizing what you're doing, um, that creates a pattern that is a chunk. And you can, you can make a, a bigger pattern, right? Just like, just like a chain, and you can add more links to the chain. So it depends a lot on what the subject is that you're learning. If you're, um, if you're learning a language, you'll start with one tiny pattern that you have, which is like a word. The word is pato, uh, which is duck in Spanish. So, oh, you've just got one chunk. Now you might, um, you might add to that. You might say, okay, well, Uh, you'd learn how to say a big duck, or you say, I see a duck. Oh, I see a duck. Well, how does that relate to you see a duck? So you start creating these patterns, um, and then you learn how to conjugate a verb, so you're creating a pattern sort of in a different way. If you want to think of it in a vector, uh, form, you can say, you know, you've got the, you've got a verb The, the different conjugations of the verb are different vectors, um, that point to, uh, the different conjugations and the different words that that word relates to. Um, but in any case, um, whatever you're learning, you just start small. So let's say you're learning the guitar. You learn a chunk, right? Or a chord. That's one chunk. Then you learn several chords together. That becomes a new chunk that's larger that incorporates part of …

AI assessment note: “whatever you're learning, you just start small. So let's say you're learning the guitar.”

Q What's the role of short-term memory versus long-term memory in learning?

A Well, uh, I have a confession to make, and that is that I have a very bad short-term memory, and my husband will agree with that assessment, because he'll be like, well, did you call Fred? And, you know, and he'll have just told me to call Fred, and I really do intend to call Fred, and by the time I get to the phone, I'm like, oh, shiny, you know, I've, I've gotten distracted, and I just forget. So, um, so the great thing, though, is that Um, working memory and long-term memory are kind of different, but they interact with one another, and if you have a really bad working memory, in other words, the things that you hold temporarily in mind, that, that can be a great thing, because number one, there's good research that shows that you're more, um, you're more creative, and another thing is it allows you to simplify, to see some simplifications that, that, People with better working memories simply can't see. And how this happens is, we used to think there are seven slots in working memory, so it's like seven things you can hold in mind. Like seven numbers. That's why, you know, it was four, five, three, seven, two, three, nine, or whatever phone number had seven digits in it, because they thought that's what you could hold easily in working memory. Well, that was wrong. Uh, it's probably more like four slots in working memory. So four things you can hold in mind. So I prefer to …

AI assessment note: “working memory and long-term memory are kind of different, but they interact with one another”

Q Do you, do you think we as a society will learn from all of this coming to light, and change?

A Such a good question. I have, I have really wondered about that, because there are nefarious ones among us, and they are really, really clever. And so, it looks like this is shutting down some of these nefarious individuals. But they're really, really intelligent people, and so it will find other ways to manifest itself, and what I'm interested to see is how, how will that manifest? Because it won't manifest in a way that's as easily detectable as what's going on now, and you know what's going on now is really only the tip of the iceberg, because A lot of people are too afraid to, uh, come forward. And I say this as a, um, you know, as one who is also very cognizant of the fact that there are, there can be, you know, just as dishonest men, there can also be dishonest women who can make false accusations. So, uh, I don't know. I'm just kind of sitting there with my bowl of popcorn, watching everything unfold and going, wow, this is a first really in history that there's been such a solid, um, kind of outpouring like this, and is it actually just the beginning of the Jacobite, you know, um, that it's actually going to go way too far the other way, and, um, I mean, that, that's possible too. We'll, Will decent people start being brought down because they're, because they can find a group of women to, you know, make accusations? Because all it seems to take is you have some, I don'…

AI assessment note: “they're really, really intelligent people, and so it will find other ways to manifest itself”

Q that's a really effective way to kind of test your understanding, uh, through problems and books that you're learning in school, but as adults, most of us are trying to learn from other people, or learn through observation of other people, so we don't maybe make the same mistakes they do, or we learn why they were successful and try to copy that. How does that change how we learn?

A I think it, uh, it depends on what kind of person you are. Um, if you're a little bit extroverted, I think that learning from people is more fun for you and, um, maybe less intimidating. Yeah, uh, if you're a bit more introverted like I am, it's, it's a little bit more intimidating, um, but learning from people, I think you have to, it's, it's the same general idea. You're trying to figure out a pattern from them, whatever that pattern actually is. Um, so you may be struggling with something, um, Related to differentiating, um, and you're really struggling or the chain rule or something, and so then you talk to your friend about it, and you're learning from them as well as from the, the material, and what you get from them can be more relaxing in a way, because you're just both struggling over the same, uh, topic. I guess, um, This is a hard question for me to answer because learning from people has so many different aspects because you can be learning textbook kind of stuff from people or you can be learning stuff that hasn't been written into a textbook and you're just kind of learning it from sort of the master who's been around for a long time and just kind of has it and you want to kind of pick up And intuit what that, what that guru has to, um, to share with you. So this one is a tough one to answer because, um, I, I think it just, it's, it can be so highly variable, but …

AI assessment note: “learning from people, I think you have to, it's, it's the same general idea.”