Learning

I wrote this sometime in January 2011. The image will be available when I scan it.

Update: Image is up now!! The scan is badly taken (page too far away from the glass) and the image is reaaally noisy because the graphite from the opposite page smudged on this one. That's what I get for drawing with a 2B pencil.

Newness, freshness, when created, a thing is flexible, prone to change, using its environment to be nurtured and to grow. A seed itself is determined, but during its initial growing time, it absorbs what it finds from the environment. Changeable, morphable, eager to learn, to absorb.

The as it grows further, it will learn to form its own... traits. It will summarize what it has absorbed from the world into essential concepts, patterns, ideas. They solidify from being mere observations to definable ideas, even beliefs.

The speed and the manner by which these ideas are solidified depends on the individual, and the context. There are different ways of merging data into the prior to form the posterior believed "distribution". For some, ideas and beliefs are solid and set, hardly ever to be budged, like a rock. Tradition and conservativeness are associated with this. Solid, steadfast, stubborn.

For some others, novelty is of higher value, and they are easy to forget the lessons of the past in favor of new observations and ideas. For them, change is common, desirable, and they can easily adapt to novel situations. The adapt to the shape and needs of their environment, like water to its recipient. Curious, accepting, wishy-washy.

It might be said that there are also those who are and behave in their own manner, and have their own thoughts, fairly irrespective of what their environment displays. And then those who change their environment to fit their own ideas. Like air and fire, respectively. Not that sure about those, though. Anyway, in general:

Part 1: Consists of newness, freshness. New ideas of a context come as something of a shock to a person, and all he knows about that context is what he has initially observed.

Part 2: The person now has some information, knowledge against which to compare any new data against. This allows him to choose which part of the data to accept, to reject, or to filter noise out of. It allows for smoother changes, though change is still happening. The person is still not set in his beliefs. Still searching for the factual, or the satisfying, truth, he struggles to stabilize his ideas into something recognizable. At this point he is informed, but unknowledgeable.

Part 3: A few core ideas about the concept have been set, proven by sufficient time and data. A full, steady concept has not yet formed inside him, but there is certainty about some things. He probably has reduced the truth to a few possibilities, and he goes through them, either mentally or physically, and juggles his certainty between those. New data is still accomodated to support belief and decision-making, but personal experience and **prassarring* has an increased effect on the final belief. At this point he is knowledgeable, but not fully certain.

Part 4: Settlement of beliefs. Enough time has passed or enough data has been accumulated that the person is able to form his own *ponlusand* about that particular concept. F****** change, at this point, is at its lowest, and certainty at its highest. At this point, he is an expert.

The speed at which these phases progress is ma*ken by the water/rock analogy a few paragraphs ago. "Rock" individuals will be quick to solidify their concepts about something new, while "water" ones will easily be swayed by new data, remaining in the initial phases for longer times, unsure of whether their will eventually solidify.