Have you ever used a zipper?
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Have you ever used a zipper? Odds are you have. Are you pretty good at it? Odds are! You've probably successfully used a zipper many, many times. You probably can't even remember when and where you learned how to operate a zipper. If you're a good zipper user and we sat you down in a room and gave you ten zippered garments, you'd probably fluently and flawlessly be able to zip them up and down.
Now......can you explain how a zipper works?
@grimalkina @b0rk Someone said they and their partner often play a game where one of them points at a normal household item and says, “How does that work?” They pretty quickly realized that “The power comes from the wall, and then it makes tiny dots light up” wasn’t a very good explanation of how a TV actually works.
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Also just as a PS, it's neither possible nor very adaptive to ask yourself to have an overwhelmingly detailed explanation of mechanisms for everything you encounter, so that's not the goal. Groups of people need to fluently work at many different levels of abstraction.
The key is matching the level of understanding to the tasks and problems that we have! And often, coordinating different depths of expertise!
But we can benefit from having metacognitive skills!
@grimalkina I'm currently reading your book, stumbled upon this thread, didn't look at the author and was like »huh people are really interested in the psychology of how people work and learn these days, nice«
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The vast majority of zipper users -- skilled, successful zipper users! -- can't explain how a zipper works.
This is a charming, famous example that comes from cognitive science/psychology work on The Illusion of Explanatory Depth: "Most people feel they understand the world with far greater detail, coherence, and depth than they really do"
Rozenblit, L., & Keil, F. (2002). The misunderstood limits of folk science: An illusion of explanatory depth. Cognitive science, 26(5), 521-562.
@grimalkina I don't know how old I was when it began to truly dawn on me how few people understand the concept that you had to learn everything that you know. And poetically enough, I couldn't tell you how I learned that, it feels like something I just figured out at some point
but yeah, I think that's a key part of why I was pretty good at teaching people things at various jobs. I can imagine not knowing!
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- if you're interested in becoming an expert -- if you're a student, starting a career, or just picking up a hobby or skill, you might try asking yourself "what are the zippers here." Everyone can use a zipper, but few people can fix broken ones and design unimagined new ones. If you want to become one of those people in an area, find the zippers and learn their mechanisms.
I wouldnt think “what are the zippers” first but “which zippers keep breaking”
Then you have zipper things to learn
How fix?
What kinds?
Expected failures?
Zipper alternatives?Am trying to phrase the metacognition of “notice where you keep patching your beliefs”
Probably it’s in your book!
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Have you ever used a zipper? Odds are you have. Are you pretty good at it? Odds are! You've probably successfully used a zipper many, many times. You probably can't even remember when and where you learned how to operate a zipper. If you're a good zipper user and we sat you down in a room and gave you ten zippered garments, you'd probably fluently and flawlessly be able to zip them up and down.
Now......can you explain how a zipper works?
@grimalkina sure
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@grimalkina Cat, I can't even explain where I am
@jawnsy @grimalkina It's okay, Jonathan, I can't explain where you are either
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@grimalkina It's like, I knew graphite was a dry lubricant. But I don't think I would have ever thought to just use a pencil on a zipper. And now I know that I can apply dry lubricant to all kinds of assemblies by just jamming a pencil up in there. Thanks, metacognition!
@sidereal @grimalkina Yep, and you put graphite on a violin’s nut when changing strings, so they don’t catch.
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In this study, the researchers asked about a range of stimuli, which in my humble opinion* are really fun to quiz yourself on. Can you explain:
- how a sewing machine works
- how a can opener works
- how a flush toilet operates
- how the heart pumps blood
- how piano keys make soundSome of these are far more elaborate, haha:
- how the aqualung regulates air-pressure
- how a transistor works*granted...I became a psychologist so maybe my sense of fun is warped
@grimalkina I know how a transistor works because of a middle school science fair project!
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@joepie91 "rabbithole georg" hahahahaha!!! Don't worry I suspect you are among a lot of us
@grimalkina
Is there a collective noun for a group of outliers?
@joepie91 -
In this study, the researchers asked about a range of stimuli, which in my humble opinion* are really fun to quiz yourself on. Can you explain:
- how a sewing machine works
- how a can opener works
- how a flush toilet operates
- how the heart pumps blood
- how piano keys make soundSome of these are far more elaborate, haha:
- how the aqualung regulates air-pressure
- how a transistor works*granted...I became a psychologist so maybe my sense of fun is warped
@grimalkina we had a fun discussion at work about this years ago (which I turned into an article when the editor told us to stop fucking about (not unreasonably)). At what point does technology become magic?
I felt like on some level, even going back centuries or thousands of years, there are some machines or items that people could intuit some understanding of if allowed to examine them for a while. You might not know the processes or tools used to make a table, or a pottery wheel, but I think you can understand the concept and have a rough idea of what it needs to work. But many, many things, definitely not
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@sidereal @grimalkina Yep, and you put graphite on a violin’s nut when changing strings, so they don’t catch.
@culturednyc @sidereal @grimalkina
Same for guitar nuts and bridges. -
Have you ever used a zipper? Odds are you have. Are you pretty good at it? Odds are! You've probably successfully used a zipper many, many times. You probably can't even remember when and where you learned how to operate a zipper. If you're a good zipper user and we sat you down in a room and gave you ten zippered garments, you'd probably fluently and flawlessly be able to zip them up and down.
Now......can you explain how a zipper works?
@grimalkina I am famously terrible with zippers. To the extent my children actively seek out other people to help them if they get stuck, and say things like "oh god, no, not dad.. zippers"
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- if you're interested in becoming an expert -- if you're a student, starting a career, or just picking up a hobby or skill, you might try asking yourself "what are the zippers here." Everyone can use a zipper, but few people can fix broken ones and design unimagined new ones. If you want to become one of those people in an area, find the zippers and learn their mechanisms.
@grimalkina this works for processses, too! Bureaucracy is an invention, and as mad as it is, it had a function, or intended function, at some point, and that became frustrated because of observable things!
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In this study, the researchers asked about a range of stimuli, which in my humble opinion* are really fun to quiz yourself on. Can you explain:
- how a sewing machine works
- how a can opener works
- how a flush toilet operates
- how the heart pumps blood
- how piano keys make soundSome of these are far more elaborate, haha:
- how the aqualung regulates air-pressure
- how a transistor works*granted...I became a psychologist so maybe my sense of fun is warped
@grimalkina
This wants to be a poll - I'm betting that since this is Mastodon, there will be a significant number of "Yes to all" answers. Maybe:Yes to all
More than half
A few
One
WutThat said, this is all an excellent point, thank you!
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@grimalkina we had a fun discussion at work about this years ago (which I turned into an article when the editor told us to stop fucking about (not unreasonably)). At what point does technology become magic?
I felt like on some level, even going back centuries or thousands of years, there are some machines or items that people could intuit some understanding of if allowed to examine them for a while. You might not know the processes or tools used to make a table, or a pottery wheel, but I think you can understand the concept and have a rough idea of what it needs to work. But many, many things, definitely not
@sinvega there is a fun example Tom Griffiths (a computational cognitive scientist) talks about using in his classes/and in his book: imagine that you are far removed from our civilization a thousand years into the future and you've dug up a cash register. How would you go about trying to learn how it worked? What it was for? What could you infer from it (for instance, could you understand the rules of arithmetic given a cash register)?
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Hm. Sewing machines. I've _seen_ the diagrams, I've stepped through the process on my great-grandmother's pedal sewing machine.
It's still cursed magic.
I've dived into a lot of those, and some, nope, I dunno. I'm not 100% sure what an aqualung even is, for Pete's sake.
I'm about to start on that PDF. I have minor in Political Philosophy, so I'm gonna put that hat on to read it. I'll come back later.
@NuclearOatmeal @grimalkina Gearing pulls the sewed fabric forward in step with the needle movement, with the use of the curved metal bit that locks the fabric in place just enough that fabric does not bunch up but still moves freely. Usually helped by guiding the fabric with your hand, for manual sewing machines.
Used to be I didn't think about these things, as I learned more about how to model something in my head I've gotten much better just looking at a thing and seeing how it works.
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@grimalkina I know how a transistor works because of a middle school science fair project!
@culturednyc so fun how these things can stick with you!!
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@grimalkina Cat, I can't even explain where I am
@jawnsy you just trying to get through the day and me throwing existential questions at you
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Have you ever used a zipper? Odds are you have. Are you pretty good at it? Odds are! You've probably successfully used a zipper many, many times. You probably can't even remember when and where you learned how to operate a zipper. If you're a good zipper user and we sat you down in a room and gave you ten zippered garments, you'd probably fluently and flawlessly be able to zip them up and down.
Now......can you explain how a zipper works?
@grimalkina yes, 'cos I loved these books as a kid in the 70s
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@prism I think that's probably a very strong signal of understanding when you see it but not perfect in that it probably is conditional on some other things, like verbal and social skills! So not every case where you don't see it means understanding is lacking. So kind of a specificity vs sensitivity question there
I'll add that a great way to learn something deeply is to explain it to a newcomer, or prepare to do so, or rehearse doing so. When preparing to teach you often hit those "how does that work again" or "hmm, I know that part but never even considered that other part..."
Plus the whole "what has somebody else found out since I learned this" rathole to research down.
