Five Learnings - by Ransom

When we think of “learning” we usually think of the acquisition & retention of facts and ideas but there is more to learning than that. This article breaks apart five ways we process information that you can use to get more out of your life.

What is Learning?

For this article I will define “learning” as the integration of information into a system. That system is usually but not always an individual's mind. Information may be processed and retained in other ways, and not just books or other reference material. Nearly every aspect of our lives includes information is a processed state.

Facts

The most obvious and least interesting form of learning is the kind we've all done in school; acquiring facts and committing them to memory. Facts are the information you know that you know. History, math, architecture, all these things and many more are constructed from facts we have learned.

You already know this stuff, let's leave it behind.

Character

“Character” as I use it here includes but is not limited to the moral dimension. Character is your beliefs and values, your frames and biases, your nature. If Facts were vehicles they would drive on the infrastructure of Character.

Two men hearing the same facts would process & respond to them differently. Learning that a building is on fire, one might inquire what business would be impacted and the other might run to help. Learning that a cougar has been sighted, one might reach for a gun and the other for a tie.

Character is the rules and motives that determines how a man shall act and react. These rules and motives are determined partially by genetics and partially by life experience. A man may be born with a capacity for courage but it is his experience – voluntary or other – that awakens that courage, teaches him what it is & means, and guides him to trust in it. A childhood acquainted with poverty may lead a man to grasp at money all his life while the same man having enjoyed a secure upbringing may hold money more loosely & give more generously. Suffering the stomach flu after eating a new food may tie the two experiences forever in his mind and disincline him from choosing that food again.

Our experiences contain information about the world and its navigation. That experience forms & reinforces pathways in our minds that define how we weigh & frame our perceptions.

A man's character is often a mystery to himself until it is tested, and he will certainly entertain many fantasies about own his nature that, while pleasing, either dissolve in the daylight of experience or are augmented with subtle complexities to ensure their continued enjoyment.

Our genes and our experiences build the infrastructure of our minds in ways that mere facts cannot. This is why a grizzled fisherman is often far more interesting than the most accomplished of academics. We as a culture seem to confuse the two things and elevate education far above experience.

What's it To Me? Experience and education are not substitutes. Experience is not just a different or more reliable way of acquiring the facts so cherished by education. Experience builds a man's character by pushing him to learn real things about his real self and the real world. His character determines what he shall do with these mere facts.

Get out and get into trouble. Doing things that matter teaches you what you can and cannot trust about yourself and forces you to arrive at answers you would not otherwise have learned or earned.

Habit

The human mind is a great fan of habits and builds them all the time without notice or permission. Tying environmental cues to repeated behavior saves attention and processing power so our minds can focus on more novel problems.

An alarm clock & the smell of coffee triggers beginning-of-day behaviors. A gym bag in the passenger seat prompts exercise behaviors. A component of a specific color & shape prompts assembly line behavior. None of these things happen randomly; they are done and reinforced – consciously or not – by humans. That which is counterproductive is dismissed or modified. That which is useful is retained.

We usually think of habits as action prompts but they can be inaction prompts as well. I have found that stepping over a pile of laundry three times is enough to render it invisible for days. Habits can be unconscious as well – the location of sugar cubes at the workplace coffee station can develop into a reliable but detrimental prompting.

Unlike facts and character, which despite their external origins are retained internally, habits reflect a form of learning that is both inside and outside the human mind. It is a synthesis, a cooperation of the mental and the environmental. The habit structure “learns” by updating to reflect the changing needs of the user.

We all know the power of habits in our lives, but how often do we consider the accrued information embedded in those habits? Our habits both reflect us and create us.

What's it To Me? Are your habits helping or stultifying? Can you shake them up so they learn rapidly and settle into a more optimal system?

Environment

The physical environment, artificial and natural, is full of recursively-processed information. The path of a riverbed is an ongoing process of optimization based on rainfall, geography, and its own current state. The placement of a road reflects travel at the time of its creation & expectations of future use interpreted through the lessons of previous construction, and it modifies the development of future travel & construction by influencing the cost of movement.

Unlike facts and character, which are internal, and habits, which are a synthesis of internal and external, environmental learning is exclusively external to the human mind experiencing it. This does not exclude human intent – much of our environment is in some measure artificial – but the human subject is not the store of information. The environment is. The environment learns by being modified through its interactions with itself and with humans. The changes made affect us & our behavior, setting the stage for the next iteration of learning.

Our environment heavily influences our decision making by presenting or obscuring information, defining behavior costs (time, exertion, etc.), and forming, reflecting, & reinforcing social boundaries in ways that we often do not question. A busy freeway may serve as a barrier between high- and low-income neighborhoods. A well-designed walking path routes pedestrians towards storefronts. A golf course signals status and brings decision-makers together.

What's it To Me? Everything is designed. Why? Who benefits? What are the unintended outcomes? How can you challenge the design to maintain yourself?

As an aside, parkour subverts environmental design by invalidating the designers' assumptions of accessibility. This information isn't very useful, but it is kind of interesting.

Tradition

 

Facts and Character rely on learning that is internal to the individual. Habit and Environment utilize the physical world to process information. Tradition constitutes learning on the cultural level.

Traditions tend to be heuristics rather than attempts at true understanding. A tradition is a practice that has demonstrated staying power. It is not always obvious why it works, but it does. It may not even be the best solution for the job but it has proven to at least be successful. Of all the practices and experiments a culture has made over its history, the ones that became traditions are the ones that survived.

This is a darwinian form of learning. That which is tradition did not get killed off. The culture upon which the tradition operates survived, so the tradition has at the very least demonstrated that it hasn't killed its adherents off entirely. Considering all the stupid things human beings have done over the millennia this suggests that traditions deserve at least a respectful second glance.

Traditions rarely operate in isolation though, so a tradition that worked well a hundred years ago may have become obsolete or harmful due to changes in environment, technology, or other traditions and practices. Rapidly-changing environments will tend to kill off traditions. A tradition is a suggestion, not proof; something that worked in the past well enough to popularized.

Just because something doesn't make sense doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

What's it To Me? Our culture places an historically unusual emphasis on individual (perception of) knowledge. Other cultures have lasted far longer with less knowledge and more rules of thumb in the form of tradition. Consider what may be of value from your own ancestral past and keep an open mind towards what my at first seem ridiculous

Conclusion

Learning is a richer and more varied field than our educational system would have you think. Our emphasis on fact acquisition sometimes comes at the expense of other lessons, lessons that keep the world spinning in far more critical ways than the internal combustion engine. Becoming aware of these other methods of learning will help you take better advantage of them and avoid some of the pitfalls that attend inattention.