Learning – Page 2 – Harmonia Philosophica

Counting parts. Seeing the whole. Small prejudices… [Against numbers?!]

We can assume that children learn to count starting with one and followed by the lists of numbers in ascending order of cardinality (one, two, three). But besides numbers, in languages there are more words that express quantity such as all, some, most, none, etc., the so-called quantifiers.

A recent study into childhood language in 31 languages, in which UPV/EHU researchers have participated, has reached the surprising conclusion that in all the languages studied, children acquire the quantifiers in the same order, irrespective of the properties of the language in question. The children acquire the words referring to totality earlier than the ones covering only one part of the set. (1)

Babies learning the notion of total. Then growing up. Learning the notion of numbers. Then the notion of infinite. How logical is that sequence? We learn numbers and we only meet “infinite” when we are graduate students. And yet, we accept it with no effort against all odds. We find it difficult to understand numbers and yet easy to accept a notion that is not even close to be observed or experienced by our “limited” nature. And yet here we are. Talking about the One, about infinite. Infinite is supposedly a “difficult” advanced notion which is part of university curriculum and yet we had already learnt it. When we were kids. When we thought about “totality” as a notion only because we already knew it…

We are hardwired to see the One.

We are then forced to see the parts.

We fight against ourselves every day.

We learn to deny our nature every day.

In order to learn, we must unlearn what we have learnt.

1, 2, 3, … ∞

1, ∞

Silence. Master. Student.

Only when the student is ready, the master appears.

Οἱ δὲ οἰκέται, καὶ εἴ τις ἄλλος ἐστὶν βέβηλός τε καὶ ἄγροικος, πύλας πάνυ μεγάλας τοῖς ὠσὶν ἐπίθεσθε. [And seal your ears to whoever uninitiated comes to you]

Φθέγξομαι οἷς θέμις ἐστί· θύρας δ’ ἐπίθεσθε βέβηλοι. [Θα απευθύνω τους λόγους μου προς εκείνους, προς τους οποίους είναι θεμιτόν να μιλήσω· αλλά είς τους αμύητους κλείσατε τας θύρας.] [I will speak to those who are ready to listen to Me, but to the uninitiated I will close the doors]

Ού τα πάντα τοις πάσι ρητά. [Not everything can be said to everyone]

Μὴ δῶτε τὸ ἅγιον τοῖς κυσὶ μηδὲ βάλητε τοὺς μαργαρίτας ὑμῶν ἔμπροσθεν τῶν χοίρων, μήποτε καταπατήσωσιν αὐτοὺς ἐν τοῖς ποσὶν αὐτῶν καὶ στραφέντες ρήξωσιν ὑμᾶς. [Do not give the saint to dogs, nor throw away pearls to pigs, because they will tramp on them and then will turn on you to tear you apart]

Welcome Circle of Athens!

Learning machines. Unlearning humans. Void. Arkanoid.

“We present the first deep learning model to successfully learn control policies directly from high-dimensional sensory input using reinforcement learning. The model is a convolutional neural network, trained with a variant of Q-learning, whose input is raw pixels and whose output is a value function estimating future rewards. We apply our method to seven Atari 2600 games from the Arcade Learning Environment, with no adjustment of the architecture or learning algorithm. We find that it outperforms all previous approaches on six of the games and surpasses a human expert on three of them”. (1, 2, 3)

Scientists who created a learning algorithm which managed to successfully learn how to play video games. Like a baby learning how to live, machines can do that too. Everything can be learned.

We are all eager to learn. We like it when something/ someone learns. We like to teach someone/ something how to learn. But is life about learning? Is life about adding more data, more information into our brain? Or is it about removing everything from it? If a machine can learn, could it be that humans should not? Consciousness should be free from limitations. And every piece of knowledge poses a new limitation.

Listen to the void.

This is where all knowledge lies…

Unlearn what you have learnt.

Fail to do so and you will soon be inseparable from a machine playing Arcanoid…

Learning rules. Having false memories…

Our tendency to create false memories could be related to our ability to learn rules according to new research. New research suggests that individuals who are particularly good at learning rules and classifying objects by common properties are also particularly prone to false memory illusions. (1)

Forget whatever you have learned. It is the only way to learn…

Tortoises. Heart. Brain.

Tortoises are using their cleverness to do more than just win long distance races against hares–now they’re moving into the field of touchscreen technology.

Researchers from the U.K.’s University of Lincoln have successfully trained four red-footed tortoises (native to Central and South America) to touch different objects on a screen. In a video from the university, one of the test tortoises can be seen using his head to tap either a blue circle or a red triangle as they appear on a monitor. (1)

Tech savvy turtles.
And we believe WE are advanced…

Is there anything that any living beaing with a brain cannot learn?
Does it really matter what can we learn?

Or could it be that more important is what we feel?

Start feeling proud of your heart.
You brain is nothing special.
Ask your nearest tortoise.