02 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Consider the Longevity of the Knowledge You Consume
While most of us focus on consuming information that we won’t care about next month, let alone next year, Buffett focused on knowledge and companies that change very, very slowly or not at all. And because the information he was learning changed slowly he could compound his knowledge over time. And as Schroeder notes, Buffett has been in business for a long time, giving him incredible opportunities to create a cumulative base of knowledge.
Expiring information is sexy but it’s not knowle...Folksonomies: mind hacks
Folksonomies: mind hacks
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notes21 APR 2017 by ideonexus
How Our Grandparents Perceive the World as Unchanging
Men can know a thing and yet know it quite ineffectively if it contradicts the general traditions and habits in which they live.
[...]
ONE of the most striking differences between the outlook of our grandparents and that of a modern intelligence today is the modification of time values that has occurred.
By the measure of our knowledge their time-scale was extremely shallow. They had scarcely any historical perspective at all. They looked back to a past of a few thousand years and at the v... 1 notes
notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Parental Resistance to Educational Change
The greatest challenges facing parents stem from their own school experiences. Every adult has been educated in some way, and the methods their teachers used usually shape the values they carry with them and color their perceptions of how education “should be.” These learned values are very powerful and can be seen in the ongoing controversies that manifest in social media regarding the Common Core State Standards and math instruction, for example. The notion that there is a critical-thin... 1 notes
notesThis explains resistance to the Common Core as well.
15 JUN 2016 by ideonexus
How Scientific Thought Differs from Ancient Thought
If we consent for the time being to denude the mind of philosophical and metaphysical presuppositions, and take the matter in the most simple and naive way possible, I think our answer, stated in technical terms, will be that [science] substitutes data for objects. (It is not meant that this outcome is the whole effect of the experimental method; that as we saw at the outset is complex; but that the first effect as far as stripping away qualities is concerned is of this nature.) That Greek sc...
1 Ancient thought saw things as immutable, to be appreciated aesthetically. Science sees the world as an endless series of mysteries to be solved.
12 NOV 2015 by ideonexus
Humans as Self-Domesticating Animals
at the end of the Pleistocene, certain human
groups and their animal associates began progressively
to show parallel reductions in size and stature,
cranial gracilization, changes in post-cranial robusticity,
shortening of the face and jaws, tooth crowding and malocclusion,
and tooth-size reduction and simplification.
There has been no recent attempt to explain the parallelism,
although numerous explanations exist for the
changes as they affect one or other of the parties. Some
of the explana... 1 notes
notesRestrictive environments, artificially constructed give us many of the traits shared with the animals we domesticate.
17 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Orthography Must be Balanced
The orthography of our language is extremely irregular; and many fruitless attempts have been made to reform it. The utility and expedience of such reform have been controverted, and both side of the question have been maintained with no inconsiderable zeal.
On this subject, as on most others which divide the opinions of men, parties seem to have erred by running into extremes. The friends of a reform maintain that our alphabet should be rendered perfectly regular, by rejecting superfluous c...12 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
The Futility of Linguistic Prescription
When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear ...30 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
The Past and Who Has Access to It
What we know about the past—and who has access to such knowledge—has changed dramatically with each such change. The changes run far deeper than the mere proliferation of data points. As written records of large estates held in monasteries in France achieved legal and social dominance, the role of women as the tellers of the past fell into decline (Geary, 1994): The technological and the social were deeply intertwined. The outcome was that different kinds of records were kept. With the in... 1 notes
notesThe past was once only available through memory, then only available to those who had access to records, and now available to everyone.
27 AUG 2012 by ideonexus
Laws of Motion
LAW I.
Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.
Projectiles persevere in their motions, so far as they are not retarded by the resistance of the air, or impelled downwards by the force of gravity. A top, whose parts by their cohesion are perpetually drawn aside from rectilinear motions, does not cease its rotation, otherwise than as it is retarded by the air. The greater bodies... 1 notes
notesThe original source of these laws from Newton.
26 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Everything in Nature is Change
Wherever we seek to find constancy we discover change. Having looked at the old woodlands in Hutcheson Forest, at Isle Royale, and in the wilderness of the boundary waters, in the land of the moose and the wolf, and having uncovered the histories hidden within the trees and within the muds, we find that nature undisturbed is not constant in form, structure, or proportion, but changes at every scale of time and space. The old idea of a static landscape, like a single musical chord sounded fore... 1 notes
notes"Nature undisturbed by human influence seems more like a symphony whose harmonies arise from variation and change over many scales of time and space..."
