I was accosted in France with a Flamboyant Question:

I was sitting outside of some deplorable Parisian café after a meal of frogs, mice, slugs and roasted pigeon, sipping some coffee, and engaging in people watching. This was on a narrow street with multiple cafés and other street eating establishments with herds of human rabble sashaying and surging about. It was a weekend day, tourists like me and the usual suspects mingling in tolerant ambivalence. Occasionally a family or couple would stop and gawk at the café menu that is ubiquitously displayed in the street for the viewing pleasure and gastronomic perusal of potential patrons. Not to mention the monetary information. Hence, the people watching and musing on the passersby was even more delicious than my meal.

I noted a particular fellow that passed by a few times as if looking for someone or something. He was well dressed with a dark suit and white shirt, no tie, dark dress pants and a black hat, resembling a homburg. He had a rather longish, scraggly beard and dark eyes but a pleasant non-threatening manner and I sensed he was inquisitive about something. This is part of the fun of people watching, subjecting persons to quick and dirty profiling to see if they worth more scrutiny, or can be jettisoned as just so much shallow fodder and ignored.

This fellow then approached and addressed me, “Pardon me”, he said, “May I ask you if you are Jewish”. I was taken by surprise but formulated a response that I liked. “I don’t think so but the possibility does exist”, I responded. I hoped for a continued exchange as I thought a conversation with this fellow would be interesting and satisfying. But, he seemed a bit put out, whether by my response and/or embarrassment I could not tell, and he was very apologetic. As if he had done me some offence. “I’m very sorry for bothering you”, he said, and repeated a similar phrase before ambling off into the human river. “No bother at all”, I called after him as he entered the stream of human bodies tumbling about the cobblestones.

I was honestly sorry our conversation was so short. I mused about this for a long time, sipping my coffee, no doubt like Sartre always did when contemplating nothingness. Why did this gentleman think I was Jewish? Was it the supercilious smirk I always have plastered on my face when observing my fellow beings? Was it something about my staring and my goatee? I was dressed casually and would not stand out any on that account. Did my overall bearing suggest Jewishness? - Whatever that means? Of all the odd things I have experience in my travels this little event will always standout. On that I’m quite proud and satisfied. It is not every day that you are asked so profound a question from a complete stranger while sipping coffee outside a café in Paris.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I posted this in my European travel report thread in the Lounge. I set it here for the gawking pleasure of the SMP denizens. You are welcome.

I am pretty sure I don't understand the question. Are you unaware that things have actually happened unexpectedly in the past, Charlie?

Blaming oneself for not having possessed knowledge acquired through experience before one has had the experience.

So basically like a self-guilt belief about something that may be beyond one's control.

Self-blame is hardly clinical itself , but it is open that one may gain experience questioning their own self-blame and reasoning for it. Perhaps even deciding to let it go. Thus, making an effort of developing some basis for hindsight on the situation. Two birds, one stone of self-examination.

I did use the word blame, but guilt is too emotive, although it might be an interesting topic to discuss anyhow.

I mean more after one has spent years learning something, e.g. academic, so that one has mastered it and now finds it easy, the irrational wish that one could have had that information uploaded into the brain in a matter of minutes, like in Joe 90. What's that irrational wish called?

The irrational part is called wishing. There's a rational learning for the future part as well as too often people take no account of what they don't know they don't know despite the fact that they should know there are things that they don't know that they don't know and are in a position to know more about what they didn't know that they didn't know before they commit.

The secret is to conflate hindsight with foresight. When you combine that with revisionist history you need never have been wrong about anything.


PairTheBoard

I think PTB won that round.

Oh, and Brian - not understanding a question is not a good reason to not answer it. This is the internet, every question has an answer and you are never wrong with whatever answer you give. Two ironclad rules for internet forum posting. See the Politics Forum for quintessential examples if you still do not understand.

Lemon meringue pie with orange spice tea is very grand.

Burger King, where you can have it your way, with the app deals are crazy delicious!

I think this particular wish is called, "the irrational wish that one could have had that information uploaded into the brain in a matter of minutes, like in Joe 90." No one has come up with a shorter name for the phenomenon yet.

Do you also wish you were a bit taller before you were your current height?

Answering a question with a question is a bit amateurish, but oftentimes effective. PtB did have a nice pithy answer that summed up the human condition.

Allow me another go.

After one has learnt something and it has become easy, one tends to forget how difficult it was before. This might have practical consequences, e.g. when trying to teach it. It seems reasonable that better teachers tend to have a better recall and understanding of this initial difficulty.

I'm trying to get at the idea that the process of forgetting the initial difficulty can create an illusory view of how simple the thing is or was to learn.

Ah, losing touch with how hard it is on the streets after a difficult struggle of getting out.

Locally, that's called the North Alabama Method.

I wouldn't discount emotional involvement in situation that can be described as like self-blame, but the strength and quality of any emotional involvement can only really seen and heard from on an individual by individual basis where the action is happening.

I figured it out - you are posting while sober. One more go should do it - post from some pub somewhere after five good Ales.

I set the line of Zeno having one of these at 85:1.

I would be somewhat surprised if he did. Any decent description of Zeno would include the word "dapper" in it. I doubt that he looks slovenly or unkempt even when he is doing work on the ol' homestead.

It might help them diagnose where kids are getting stuck, maybe.

I'm apparently not the first one to think that teachers who were once excellent happy students aren't particularly fit for teaching since they have difficulty understanding and relating to normal kids. This is, I think, at least loosely related to your wonderings.

That's right, teaching = teaching kids. Now we're getting somewhere.

What if those that were great students hold the secret to making every kid happy and confident eventually and changing the world to the happy place of tomorrow that is scientific society... What if the secret is unlimited optimism, self confidence produced out of reasonable effort and "finally decoding" that the true purpose of education is... to become educated of course, to become a stronger thinker, to witness the world from a richer perspective and see what is possible with endless ideas and clarity about how to solve problems all the time around you, instead of the pessimism, insecurity and the selfishness of endlessly creating problems for others in order to feel better.

What if education is an investment, the ultimate vote of confidence for your future self, what if every seemingly boring repetitive and tiring project you engage in today is preparing you for a greater unimaginable value battle of tomorrow that you would be happy to have. What if then when a lot of effort has taken place the student finally starts witnessing little victories daily and realizes that the breakthrough that finally makes the brain happy, the gift of clarity is here. Who can stop them then?

What if winning the game comes with the wisdom of what worked before.

The secret to winning young students is to defeat the hypocrisy and resigned cynicism they see in adults every day. To show them what you would have loved to have known at their age, the true purpose of what they have to endure in learning things, the strength little coherent education can lead to and the value of patience which removes frustration when things get harder. What if the truth about what the world is about as you age is what they need to be told, about how the entire game is about making the brain happy and the trap of feeling not being good enough is the result of laziness, lack of faith in effort and poor examples of the true power of knowledge.

Endless students abandon math and science never realizing that it is truly an investment in themselves. Nobody is good at math for example. Because those that are good at it the way others perceive "good" know better, know that its endless, the more you know the more you feel you needed to have known, the power is unimaginably potent and still elusive in a pre sentient AI world.


I could use this as an example of what it is really to put effort in understanding math and science. If you were given the chance to be inside a treasure filled room with endless little gems and riches and you were offered the opportunity to take as much in your hands as you could in the next ten minutes, albeit with some obstacles there, would you stop trying to pick up more treasures because you let some or all fall from your hands or would you ever give up the effort to get something the very last second you were allowed there if faced with endless failures to keep anything at all. Then why treat math for example differently? Why give up on it?

They don't. Even if they did, we'd have to consider the strong implication that they must be *******s for withholding the secret.

Ah, mis-estimating difficulty kids may face when they are being taught is a specific context. I start with the supposition that It's matter of encouraging and discouraging learning, rather than being taught.

The Old Windmill in Coventry is an excellent pub (Landlord straight from the Barrel achieved the rare 10/10). Superb Sichuan restaurant there as well.

Delighted to see it's been recognised by making it the UK City of Culture.