2006

There’s an old story about two men on a train. One of them, seeing some naked-looking sheep in a field, said, “Those sheep have just been sheared.’; The other looked a moment longer, and then said, “They seem to be— on this side.” It is in such a cautious spirit that we should say whatever we have to say about the workings of the mind.

Two Englishmen are going by train. A conversation isn’t getting on. The train passes a meadow, on which a herd of sheeps pastures. One of the passengers says:

—1356.

The other man is surprised, but gives no answer. In some time the train passes another pasture. The first passenger says:

—1693.

His neighbor brakes and asks:

—Sir, our train moves at speed 60 miles per hour. How can you count so quickly?

—Oh, sir, it’s very simple! First I count a quantity of legs in a herd and then I divide this number by four.

Above-average manual dexterity Flavor focusing No stress in noisy environments Clear, quick note-writing (and reading) Different food cues Sign language is a noiseless language More accurate people-reading

Let’s share a brief moment of guilty pleasure for proving them wrong, then move on to the longer lasting pleasure of simply sticking to it for our own sake. And have understanding for those conditioned by past disappointments to classify all that is new and ripe with passion to be uninteresting, to be all hype, no calories.

We’re past the point of infatuation, this is love, and love is inclusive. Happy birthday Rails, happy birthday Railers.

In a book aptly called New Bottles for New Wine, Julian Huxley^WP quotes his grandfather, the great nineteenth-century scientist Thomas Huxley^WP, on the subject of belief: ”Everyone should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him. My faith is in human possibilities.”

Teaching can be done in a much more conditional way.. Children are usually taught “this is a pen,” “this is a rose,” “this is a car.” It is assumed that the pen must be recognized as a pen so that a person can get on with the business of writing. It is also considered useful for the child to form the category “pen.” But consider an alternative: What happens if we instruct the child that “this could be a pen”? This conditional statement, simple as it seems, is a radical departure from telling the child “this is a pen.” What if a number of ordinary household objects were introduced to a child in a conditional way: “This could be a screwdriver, a fork, a sheet, a magnifying glass”? Would that child be more fit for survival on a desert island (when the fork and screwdriver could double as tent pegs for the sheet, near a fire made by the magnifying glass)? Or imagine the impact of a divorce on a child initially taught “a family’ is, a mother, a father, and a child” versus “a family could be…”

A dolphin’s ability to invent novel behaviours was put to the test in a famous experiment by the renowned dolphin expert Karen Pryor. Two rough-toothed dolphins were rewarded whenever they came up with a new behaviour. It took just a few trials for both dolphins to realise what was required. A similar trial was set up with humans. The humans took about as long to realise what they were being trained to do as did the dolphins. For both the dolphins and the humans, there was a period of frustration (even anger, in the humans) before they “caught on”. Once they figured it out, the humans expressed great relief, whereas the dolphins raced around the tank excitedly, displaying more and more novel behaviours.