To think clearly, come up with new ideas, make and truly understand things, we need to put marks on the blank page ourselves, and not just repeat what teachers or textbooks tell us like the majority of students Richard Feynman had during his time in Brazil — https://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education
LLMs/AIs are useful to help us get farther, faster, like witty, skilled, intelligent friends who sometimes take too many magic mushrooms during conversations.
Forgetting about our own agency and individuality is bad for us, and dangerous for society.
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will.” —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
―Primo Levi, If This is A Man
To create and be free like an animal outside a cage, ask, write, and draw your own questions. Look, and find out for yourself, rather than blindly believing what others tell you.
For anyone put off by the dubiousness of the left/right brain thing, rest assured that Drawing On the Right Side of The Brain is no less useful as an introduction to abstract visual creativity because of it.
This comes back to my initial thought on the effect of AI on the "producer" rather than the "consumer".
I do a lot of things badly because it helps me develop skills and makes me happy. I wouldn't outsource this to an AI even if it did all these things better and the world benefited more from it. This is for me.
There's something deeply human about putting thoughts into words (or images) and shaping them into something tangible. AI might help speed things up or spark ideas, but if we rely on it too much, we risk losing that process of real discovery.
feynman-brazil-education was an amazing read. Thank you.
I am from India, and I have a similar experience with my education — one that forces you to memorize, never experiment, and never connect the dots. It felt like reading about my own past and realizing just how bad it was.
I have seen the same in Sri Lanka. It was not as bad in my day and I was mostly educated in Britain.
Sadly, now the UK is becoming more like that. Schools are judged by league tables based on exam and test results. My daughter's sixth form college (school for 16 to 18 year olds) has deteriorated quite a bit since her older sister went there five years ago and its pretty clear to me that is the cause. A lot of other schools seem to be the same or worse.
As a general rule, any kind of explaining done with the intent of making the recipient understand the _concept_ will require oneself to have though and understood the concept. Explaining could be in the form of writing, drawing (as you eluded to), verbal etc.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is discredited pseudoscience bullshit. The exercises will make you a better drawer but not for the very stupid reasons the author claims, but because they are drilled exercises.
Care to substantiate? If the contention is on specifically which hemisphere of the brain is responsible for drawing ability, this is besides the point. The author even says
> Since
the late 1970s, I have used the terms L-mode and R-mode to try to
avoid the location controversy. The terms are intended to differ-
entiate the major modes of cognition, regardless of where they
are located in the individual brain.
The entire left brain/right brain premise that the book is based in is totally bogus. The author constantly refers back to this nonsense theory throughout the book (yes I have read it). What she refers to (constantly) as "R-Mode thinking" simply isn't real. The book works as a learning aide because she largely takes regular learning techniques and drills, and dresses them up with nonsense scientism.
To think clearly, come up with new ideas, make and truly understand things, we need to put marks on the blank page ourselves, and not just repeat what teachers or textbooks tell us like the majority of students Richard Feynman had during his time in Brazil — https://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education
LLMs/AIs are useful to help us get farther, faster, like witty, skilled, intelligent friends who sometimes take too many magic mushrooms during conversations.
Forgetting about our own agency and individuality is bad for us, and dangerous for society.
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will.” —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” ―Primo Levi, If This is A Man
To create and be free like an animal outside a cage, ask, write, and draw your own questions. Look, and find out for yourself, rather than blindly believing what others tell you.
Two useful books:
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards https://archive.org/details/DRAWINGONTHERIGHTSIDEOFTHEBRAINH...
The Hand - How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture by Frank R. Wilson https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/191866/the-hand-by-...