1 hour ago, Luke said:

While those other tasks may have been a pleasant distraction or good break in the day to reset your brain,

Mabey those other tasks and distractions were why I never woke up in the morning not wanting to go to work.   We are not human automatons trained to do only one thing.  We need variety.  I feel for those working on assembly lines who do the same rote job day after day.

I'm a firm believer in gestalt psychology.

Gestalt psychology is a school of thought that looks at the human mind and behavior as a whole. When trying to make sense of the world around us, Gestalt psychology suggests that we do not simply focus on every small component. Instead, our minds tend to perceive objects as elements of more complex systems.

Variety is the spice of life; especially in the workplace.

1 hour ago, Luke said:

What would you have done if he preferred Milton or Walter Scott?

I might have been able to follow him depending on the quote.  But the point I was trying to make is that nothing you have learned is wasted even if it is never use.  Like the tool in the toolbox that you might or might not ever have a use for. 

I have visited Gettysburg several times and even if I had never been asked what the date was I was comfortable knowing it.

A liberal arts degree along with a ME or EE makes you a more well rounded person than the ME or EE who can just work out Laplace Transforms in his head.  

There's more to life than just the workplace.  Literature and art should have a place in that mental toolbox along with the job training.  Coming home after designing a digital control circuit for some mechanical device and reading a chapter of a Tale of Two Cities or Kidnapped or more recently Michener's The Source and Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain.  None of those contributed to my job or to flight simming now or to anything in my life except the pleasure of reading them.

I got a lot of pleasure out of designing a test device, acquiring the parts for it, assembling and testing it, and writing the instruction manual for it.  It would have been boring indeed just to have designed it.

Noel 

 

 

On 3/19/2022 at 5:23 PM, Luke said:

I'm curious what you feel the value knowing the date of the Gettysburg Address is, relative to a lot more interesting and valuable ideas around the Civil War and Reconstruction. We made children memorize and regurgitate a ton of facts without ever explaining the reason why or the value, and then we wonder why we have raised generations that are uninterested in learning and education. I really don't blame them.

I agree with your point to some extent, but there’s still nothing wrong with knowing things, even if it’s as simple as important dates in history.

Even though I’m only a fraction of Noel’s age, I come from what is probably the last generation of kids who was a product of public education (in the US) that graduated high percentages of kids that were proficient in reading, writing, math and science.

Imho, there’s still a need for people to know things or be able to solve problems without having to either google it or use a calculator. Granted some things that one might learn could be trivial and/or not used in a work place but at least you’ll have a vast knowledge of many things and would be able to carry on a conversation with an educated personal without being clueless of what they are talking about.

You’d be surprised these days how many young people I’ve spoken with who don’t even have a grasp of world geography and often times don’t even know the capital city of the state they live in. It’s mind boggling talking to some teens these days who don’t know things that kids from my generation knew by the time we finished 6th grade and were ready to start JR high school.

Then again I think a lot of it comes down to different parenting styles these day vs what parenting was 30 years ago or longer in regards to education and acceptable social behaviors/skills.

Different pressures on both the kids and parents these days.

Rote learning still has a place imo. If  memory is a learned skill and I think it is, then the exercise from the process is helpful even if the facts learned aren't........just don't over do it😂

 

 

 

 

16 hours ago, birdguy said:

nothing you have learned is wasted even if it is never use. 

 

That's an oxymoron. If its never used then its useless, and by definition, wasted.

Your point I think is that its worth knowing "just in case" you might need it.

Trouble is, if we human beings subscribed to that philosophy in its totality then we would spend ALL our time filling our minds with all manner of useless junk. Put another way, if we subscribe to the "it might be useful one day" philosophy and cram our minds with information that's highly unlikely to be useful, then we are wasting time and cerebral capacity. We have a limited capacity to store information and then retrieve it, thus, human beings discriminate.

What's more appropriate I would say, is to consider the probability of that which is leaned being useful. If there's a very low probability of usefulness then don't bother wasting your time. If the probability is above a perceived threshold, go for it.

 

Edited March 22, 20224 yr by martin-w

I think all philosophies and principles become absurd if taken to the extreme but that's just my view.

A time to every purpose.........or as Noel put it: another tool in the toolbox to be used as and when it's required.

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

If there's a very low probability of usefulness then don't bother wasting your time.

I take it you don't read fiction?  I'm an avid reader.  I spend a couple hours a day reading books.  I'll never use anything I learned from them.  But I get a lot of enjoyment something one might call useless.  What do I get out of reading McMurty's The Berrybender Narative.

What did I get out of taking a dead language, Latin, for two years in high school?  Some people would call that useless.  But I can recognize a lot of French, Spanish, and Italian words since they are Romance languages that evolved from Latin.

Time spent learning is never a waste of time even if you will never use what you learned.  And how do you know it won't be useful some day?

I never had a lifelong career.  I did many things.  All of them interesting.  All my life I was learning something new, even self-teaching myself.

Ever since I retired I started taking The Great Courses...mostly history.  Will I ever use any of it?  Probably not.  I just like learning.

Unlike yourself I don't think learning something 'useless' is a waste of time.  The thread on electric cars I find interesting and I am learning something 'useless' because I will probably never buy one.  But I don't consider it a 'waste of time'.

Noel 

2 hours ago, GaryK said:

I think all philosophies and principles become absurd if taken to the extreme

 

That's my point. Its about a balance. As I said... 

 

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

If there's a very low probability of usefulness then don't bother wasting your time. If the probability is above a perceived threshold, go for it.

 

I'm saying determine if you think it has a reasonable probability of being useful. If the probability is small, then why waster your time learning it when you could be learning something with  a higher probability of eventual usefulness. 

10 minutes ago, birdguy said:

I take it you don't read fiction?  I'm an avid reader. 

 

Not relevant. The primary reason we read fiction is for entertainment not education. Although fiction can be educational. 

12 minutes ago, birdguy said:

Time spent learning is never a waste of time even if you will never use what you learned.

 

Again, that doesn't make sense. If you never use it then you wasted your time because you gained nothing from it.

 

12 minutes ago, birdguy said:

And how do you know it won't be useful some day?

 

You don't. But you try to asses what the degree of probability is. I'm not spending my time this morning studying how to apply lipstick. But I did spend some time studying the PIrc opening in chess. (My favourite) . The former I am extremely unlikely to ever need, unless I decide I'm female. That latter I will need in my next game. Who knows, applying lipstick might be required one day and I may decide to never use the Pirc opening again... but its about PROBABILITY.

Where we decide that probability threshold is, is personnel choice. You may set it lower than me, which is your right to do so if you have time to waste on less probable eventualities. 

Basically I'm saying you are right to suggest that something learned "may" be useful one day, just that we would be wise to consider the probability it will be useful one day.  There are only so many hours in the day. Use them wisely and concentrate on subjects that either entertain you or have a reusable probability of being useful. 

Assign your days leaning a "probability density". 😺😁 That's what cats do.

29 minutes ago, birdguy said:

The Great Courses...mostly history.  Will I ever use any of it?  Probably not.  I just like learning.

 

That's fine then if it entertains you. 

OK, guys!  Back on topic!  Moon Mission!  Enough of the memorizing!

Why is it that all topics now MUST stay bang on topic and can not evolve in another direction? What's the reason for that? If all participants are behaving themselves and the original topic starter is happy with the direction its taking, why is that now an issue?

Just wondered. 

Not just wondering but a bit put out.

I had spent 30 minutes relying to all of Martin's comments and the found I could not post them for fear of the thread being closed.

Nothing untoward was going on.  We were polite and respectful.

Mostl conversations, be they face to face in real time or threads on a forum naturally drift off.  If any of the participants wants to go back to the original thread he just has to post what he has to say and it NATURALLY goes back on track with some moderator forcing it back.

And as long as the thread doesn't die or become belligerent it should be allowed to continue.

I've been to a lot of meetings and parties and just discussions in my living room and in the classroom where conversations moved off the original topic.  Why is it not allowed here?

Looks like you got the last word on the LEARNING conversation Martin although I still disagree with you on several points.

Noel

I was wondering what we had learned as individuals about the Apollo missions and the moon.........and whether it was useful to us as individuals? 



Edit I have since learned that Buzz Aldrin doesn't like Moon Landing Deniers
 

 

Edited March 22, 20224 yr by GaryK