gordonliddy
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2023
- Messages
- 789
I broke down the human art of problem solving into two categories, physical and mental. Problems can be solved physically, mentally and perhaps other ways.
Physical activity was in fact too much to think about this morning and I was wondering about a friend of mine who goes through ....large parts of his day and just spaces out, like he's not sure what to do. Like you know the sort of guy who wants go out for beers around December, and when he bumps into you he glances around town and says, "Oh wow, Holiday time already?" as though he hasn't had 12 months advance notice that the Holidays are pretty much always in December. It's not a time zone thing. It's not a physics thing, it's a calender thing. Shouldn't be surprising.
Or the type of dude who wants to walk to the store with you, but the second he gets outside with you he says, "Whoa, it's starting to rain...?" and the dude just frowns up at the sky. You know, staring? As though someone didn't explain to him when he was six what he was expected to do in the rain.
But I love my fellow humans, perhaps too much. But I couldn't help but wonder, do humans de-emphasize memorization in their daily life? Like to a point of sillyness?
I went ahead and broke down thinking, from the standpoint of practical problem solving, into four realms:
Calculate - You stare at something scratching your head, trying to figure out what's best. Improvising.
Memorising - You take a set of facts or a procedure and commit it to active memory.
Archiving - Writing it down. Cool sometimes but everyone knows the guy who can't remember his bank's address and has to look it up twice per week every week because he treats it as something inscrutable.
Ask Somebody - Which to me is probably the best thing to do if it's important that the information you need is current or technical in nature and requires judgement, but is a poor idea if you end up needing a lot of some other person's time.
Seriously, wouldn't you say that most people you know try to hack through situations by pondering (even where they're not an expert), researching or bugging people, rather than learning a set of facts? Like take me for example. I don't know how many days are in each month, and in fact I waste lots of time because I have to look that up pretty much every month. Why are humans like this?
Physical activity was in fact too much to think about this morning and I was wondering about a friend of mine who goes through ....large parts of his day and just spaces out, like he's not sure what to do. Like you know the sort of guy who wants go out for beers around December, and when he bumps into you he glances around town and says, "Oh wow, Holiday time already?" as though he hasn't had 12 months advance notice that the Holidays are pretty much always in December. It's not a time zone thing. It's not a physics thing, it's a calender thing. Shouldn't be surprising.
Or the type of dude who wants to walk to the store with you, but the second he gets outside with you he says, "Whoa, it's starting to rain...?" and the dude just frowns up at the sky. You know, staring? As though someone didn't explain to him when he was six what he was expected to do in the rain.
But I love my fellow humans, perhaps too much. But I couldn't help but wonder, do humans de-emphasize memorization in their daily life? Like to a point of sillyness?
I went ahead and broke down thinking, from the standpoint of practical problem solving, into four realms:
Calculate - You stare at something scratching your head, trying to figure out what's best. Improvising.
Memorising - You take a set of facts or a procedure and commit it to active memory.
Archiving - Writing it down. Cool sometimes but everyone knows the guy who can't remember his bank's address and has to look it up twice per week every week because he treats it as something inscrutable.
Ask Somebody - Which to me is probably the best thing to do if it's important that the information you need is current or technical in nature and requires judgement, but is a poor idea if you end up needing a lot of some other person's time.
Seriously, wouldn't you say that most people you know try to hack through situations by pondering (even where they're not an expert), researching or bugging people, rather than learning a set of facts? Like take me for example. I don't know how many days are in each month, and in fact I waste lots of time because I have to look that up pretty much every month. Why are humans like this?
