Quotes About Learning

We are not consciously aware of most of the predictions made by the brain unless an error occurs. Trying to understand how the neurons in the neocortex make predictions led to the second discovery.

To predict the next note, you can't just look at the previous note or the previous five notes. The correct prediction may rely on notes that occurred a long time ago.

We have learned a tremendous amount of knowledge and facts about the brain, but we have little understanding of how the whole thing works.

To this day I still hear people claim that computers should adapt to users. This isn't always true. Our brains prefer systems that are consistent and predictable, and we like learning new skills.

There are neurons in the old part of our brain that are known to learn maps of the places we have visited, and these neurons have been under evolutionary pressure for so long that they are fine-tuned to do what they do. In mammals, the old brain parts where these map-creating neurons exist are called the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex.

we needed to understand what "understanding

As inspired by Alan Turing, intelligence equals behavior.

incorrect assumptions keep us from seeing the correct answer.

Discovering a useful reference frame is the most difficult part of learning, even though most of the time we are not consciously aware of it.

But what could I do? Be stupid for a while? I wasn't sure I knew how, even after so many years of careful observation.

Of course, having information to use is one thing. Knowing what it means and how to use it is a different story.

My God, I said. You move so silently. So you have had ninja training. I have two older brothers, Vince said. It's the same thing. I held up the white paper bag and bowed. Master, I bring a gift. He looked at the bag curiously. My Buddha bless you, grasshopper. What is it? I tossed him the bag. It hit him in the chest and slid to the floor. So much for ninja training, I said.

At nineteen, I certainly didn't know the answer, although I already knew more about death than most of the other pimple-ridden pudding heads in my sophomore class at the University of Miami.

This was all foreign turf to me, ideas that were in the syllabus for Advanced Marriage, a postgraduate course in the area of human studies, and I knew almost nothing about it. But

My story is simple, straightforward, and unassailable. I learned

He gave me his terrible phony smile, which looked like something he had learned to do by studying a government manual on facial expressions. "The ways of the jungle are hard, Grasshopper," he said.

I could sit here and tell you that I was the perfect child that followed all the rules and never got in trouble, but I would be lying up a fierce storm. Engaging with the younger you who made those mistakes helps you give some grace to the children of today who are making their own.

I cannot make my kids obey. But I can control my responses to their disobedience—that is, I can respect their choices and provide wise consequences for their actions, so they can learn just as much about wisdom from disobeying as from obeying. And I can respond in ways that create an environment in which their poor choices are their problem.

There is no true substitute for good education.

Remember, people hassle you in all sorts of different ways. Don't assume they're right and you're wrong just because they know something you don't. The question is: Do you need to know it to do a better job? Then learn it. If not, it's a distraction and to hell with it.

Some clever children don't discover how bright they are until after they've left school,' continued Mr Holcombe, 'and then spend the rest of their lives regretting the wasted years.

You'll remember Mark Twain's comment about his father," said Beth as they stepped off the bus. "'When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he'd learned in seven years.

I find I don't learn a lot while I'm talking

there are defining moments in one's life when you learn a lot about yourself, and you deposit that knowledge in the experience account, so you can draw on it at some later date.