Clever, Sophie. I like it. I am not sure that I am particularly creative, but I do know I have flagged every computer course I have ever taken. Perhaps, I lack that binary aspect. Sure feel out of step with my time. No, not better but painfully obsolete.
Phil, Christopher & Ned, I suspect the imbalance between linear, either/or computer-code thinking in our schools (and much of our society at large) that you decry is a product of the biological bicameral structure of our brains with left side which harbors most of the activity for speech and "scientific" factual analysis and the right side wherein we perceive larger patterns and meanings and which can hold both sides of paradox, like faith, at once [see The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist]. This battle between the different ways of thinking between the two sides has been and will likely remain a source of difference between and among educators and all of us to some degree. Your brains have obviously been more able to synthesize the perspectives of both sides of your brains better than most! "In The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, the product of 20 years of research, renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist delves into the world of difference between our two hemispheres and argues that the formal structures of modern society significantly -- and dangerously -- prioritize the left brain, resulting in a culture shackled by rigidity and bureaucracy, driven by self-interest, and ultimately incapacitated by its own imbalance."
I once took a test for right-vs-left brain thinking. Came out hare-brain. 😉😱🥳 Seriously, John, thank you for taking the time to write out a thoughtful and compelling response. ✌️😇🤝
P.S. Just re-took free samplers. Still strongly right-brained and strongly introverted (i.e., anti-social with a good vocabulary 😉). The point you make, John, really is what left-brainiacs would be prone to declare presumptively: that it is mission critical.
💡
Three and a half years ago, I re-read 'Theodicy' by Leibniz to see if I could better understand this best-of-all-possible-worlds scheiße.
To my surprise, the second time through, after a generation of my stepping away from the bog, made sense when I applied the framework of the 17th century tome-aine poisoning to modern financial thinking about optimization of investment portfolioes.
😯
What came clear to me -- and this is where your valuable insight comes in, John -- is that free-will is out of balance. In Modern Portfolio Theory, idiosyncrasies (e.g., the personalities of C.E.O.s or H.R. policies) among companies cancel each other out in a portfolio of fifteen-to-twenty diverse stocks or bonds.
🤔
That is to say: in the 'real' world (i.e., the tug-of-war between individualism and determinism), the free wills of individuals tend to cancel each other out to yield a determined and balanced collectivity of will.
⚖️
The problem with our NOT-best-possible -- or sub-optimal -- world may lie in these idiosyncratic factors NOT cancelling each other out. This imbalance occurs in times like this one where left-brain thinking super-ordinates other modes of mind (e.g., the repeated failures of technocrats) or when an ideology seduces a large majority of the people (e.g., nazism / stalinism).
😳
That imbalance creates problems to be redressed, often passively (e.g., crawling into climate change mitigation), always painfully (World War II). The world will re-balance with or without us. That is our choice. 😱
The digital technology of the information revolution conditions one's world-view toward the binary thinking coded into programming. 🤢
Or the binary thinking of humans cut off from creative thinking led to the development of binary coding.
Clever, Sophie. I like it. I am not sure that I am particularly creative, but I do know I have flagged every computer course I have ever taken. Perhaps, I lack that binary aspect. Sure feel out of step with my time. No, not better but painfully obsolete.
Phil, Christopher & Ned, I suspect the imbalance between linear, either/or computer-code thinking in our schools (and much of our society at large) that you decry is a product of the biological bicameral structure of our brains with left side which harbors most of the activity for speech and "scientific" factual analysis and the right side wherein we perceive larger patterns and meanings and which can hold both sides of paradox, like faith, at once [see The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist]. This battle between the different ways of thinking between the two sides has been and will likely remain a source of difference between and among educators and all of us to some degree. Your brains have obviously been more able to synthesize the perspectives of both sides of your brains better than most! "In The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, the product of 20 years of research, renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist delves into the world of difference between our two hemispheres and argues that the formal structures of modern society significantly -- and dangerously -- prioritize the left brain, resulting in a culture shackled by rigidity and bureaucracy, driven by self-interest, and ultimately incapacitated by its own imbalance."
Interesting thoughts here, John. Thanks for sharing the work of McGilcrist.
I once took a test for right-vs-left brain thinking. Came out hare-brain. 😉😱🥳 Seriously, John, thank you for taking the time to write out a thoughtful and compelling response. ✌️😇🤝
P.S. Just re-took free samplers. Still strongly right-brained and strongly introverted (i.e., anti-social with a good vocabulary 😉). The point you make, John, really is what left-brainiacs would be prone to declare presumptively: that it is mission critical.
💡
Three and a half years ago, I re-read 'Theodicy' by Leibniz to see if I could better understand this best-of-all-possible-worlds scheiße.
https://nedmcdletters.blogspot.com/2020/12/letter-167-free-will-and-determinism.html (no expectations of your reading; simply available)
🫣
To my surprise, the second time through, after a generation of my stepping away from the bog, made sense when I applied the framework of the 17th century tome-aine poisoning to modern financial thinking about optimization of investment portfolioes.
😯
What came clear to me -- and this is where your valuable insight comes in, John -- is that free-will is out of balance. In Modern Portfolio Theory, idiosyncrasies (e.g., the personalities of C.E.O.s or H.R. policies) among companies cancel each other out in a portfolio of fifteen-to-twenty diverse stocks or bonds.
🤔
That is to say: in the 'real' world (i.e., the tug-of-war between individualism and determinism), the free wills of individuals tend to cancel each other out to yield a determined and balanced collectivity of will.
⚖️
The problem with our NOT-best-possible -- or sub-optimal -- world may lie in these idiosyncratic factors NOT cancelling each other out. This imbalance occurs in times like this one where left-brain thinking super-ordinates other modes of mind (e.g., the repeated failures of technocrats) or when an ideology seduces a large majority of the people (e.g., nazism / stalinism).
😳
That imbalance creates problems to be redressed, often passively (e.g., crawling into climate change mitigation), always painfully (World War II). The world will re-balance with or without us. That is our choice. 😱
In addition to Iain McGilchrist, John, there is Robert Lustig.
The latter wrote "The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of our Bodies and Brains."
A neural scientist, he's very good especially on how "they" know how to breed and exploit people's addictions to dopamine.