It's not so much "expected to study" as "made to jump through fifteen years of hoops of dubious use" at school, isn't it?
I think willingness to think is a brain chemistry thing; it doesn't feel, to me, wilful when I run out of headspace. I'm much more conscious than I was at the time of how lucky I was that it didn't hit at school; at the time, I took ease of thought for granted.
I think geeks tend to take ease of thought for granted. I clearly remember being roundly patronised by an uber-geek who watched me lose at Othello and explained that I'd been in a strong position but I *needed to think ahead*. My problem wasn't that I didn't know I needed to think ahead. It was that I ran out of focus and headspace. I was in the sleep-deprived-parenthood state that a friend describes as being like those polar bears in Eastern European zoos who pace up and down repetitively and try to eat themselves.
I wonder whether there's a spectrum of ease of thought, and whether geeks occupy a significantly further-flung part of it than they think. I agree strongly that thought is good, but if you're a minority preaching to a majority you won't encourage them not to disparage you by disparaging them.
It's not so much "expected to study" as "made to jump through fifteen years of hoops of dubious use" at school, isn't it?
That too. (But it applies equally much that many people are turned off studying by it, and apply that dislike to others.)
I think willingness to think is a brain chemistry thing;
I know what you mean. The thing with Othello rings completely true. I remember vaguely with chess or bridge, trying to form an overall picture, and just not being able to hold it all in my head at once, and finding myself repeating analyses because I couldn't follow every line of thought to the end at once. And at some point giving in and picking one. And how tired, how practised, and how intelligent you are affect where this point is.
But I think I was trying to say there were perfectly valid reasons for not thinking, and that Simon's rant was against against people who disapproved of thinking (but maybe spilled over in some places and might have sounded like it was against any forms of not thinking, even though it wasn't supposed to be).
And certainly, there may be a problem with lumping together any reasons for not thinking as bad: not in Simon's post, but in geek culture.
I think the disapproving of thinking may well come from having got fed up, many years ago, of being berated for not thinking enough. I've been wondering all day about the parallel with recreational running, which is the same kind of doing things well for fun which other people don't want to be involved in, and I think the difference is that while runners may be in-your-face and enthusiastic and fitter than you they tend not to be proselytising and dismissive (and paid for it). But if your pub was taken over by people ostentatiously doing press-ups you might think about going somewhere else.
Sigh. (Intrusive video game going on in background.) I'm still in favour of thinking, I just can't do it tonight 8-(
Ah, I've got it. It's easy for me to be in favour of thinking, because I have had and still do intermittently have ease of thought. But I now see that it's contingent and not under my power, and I see that if I hadn't had it at school my life would have been very different. It's not clear to me that if I had never had it I would be very sympathetic to this manifesto, and it's not clear to me that the people this manifesto is targeted at are necessarily going to have ease of thought. (That's particularly, but not exclusively, ease of geekoid mathmo-technical thought.)
For an extreme example, I know a contemporary of Kathy's who had a brain haemorrhage at birth in the maths-area, and now has great difficulty with plus and minus one, while Kathy is loving everything numerical. It seems extraordinary to me that something as fundamental as number should be so localised and biological and vulnerable, but it clearly is.
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I think willingness to think is a brain chemistry thing; it doesn't feel, to me, wilful when I run out of headspace. I'm much more conscious than I was at the time of how lucky I was that it didn't hit at school; at the time, I took ease of thought for granted.
I think geeks tend to take ease of thought for granted. I clearly remember being roundly patronised by an uber-geek who watched me lose at Othello and explained that I'd been in a strong position but I *needed to think ahead*. My problem wasn't that I didn't know I needed to think ahead. It was that I ran out of focus and headspace. I was in the sleep-deprived-parenthood state that a friend describes as being like those polar bears in Eastern European zoos who pace up and down repetitively and try to eat themselves.
I wonder whether there's a spectrum of ease of thought, and whether geeks occupy a significantly further-flung part of it than they think. I agree strongly that thought is good, but if you're a minority preaching to a majority you won't encourage them not to disparage you by disparaging them.
That too. (But it applies equally much that many people are turned off studying by it, and apply that dislike to others.)
I think willingness to think is a brain chemistry thing;
I know what you mean. The thing with Othello rings completely true. I remember vaguely with chess or bridge, trying to form an overall picture, and just not being able to hold it all in my head at once, and finding myself repeating analyses because I couldn't follow every line of thought to the end at once. And at some point giving in and picking one. And how tired, how practised, and how intelligent you are affect where this point is.
But I think I was trying to say there were perfectly valid reasons for not thinking, and that Simon's rant was against against people who disapproved of thinking (but maybe spilled over in some places and might have sounded like it was against any forms of not thinking, even though it wasn't supposed to be).
And certainly, there may be a problem with lumping together any reasons for not thinking as bad: not in Simon's post, but in geek culture.
Sigh. (Intrusive video game going on in background.) I'm still in favour of thinking, I just can't do it tonight 8-(
For an extreme example, I know a contemporary of Kathy's who had a brain haemorrhage at birth in the maths-area, and now has great difficulty with plus and minus one, while Kathy is loving everything numerical. It seems extraordinary to me that something as fundamental as number should be so localised and biological and vulnerable, but it clearly is.