Have you ever used a zipper?
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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. -
@StompyRobot I would think absolutely!!
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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 we keep this around in case anyone ever asks
it's, you know, wrong in a lot of important ways, but it still does a pretty solid job on the first-layer knowledge
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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!
@clew I think we might call that interventionist thinking! A classically important way that we build causal models in our thinking!
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@grimalkina we keep this around in case anyone ever asks
it's, you know, wrong in a lot of important ways, but it still does a pretty solid job on the first-layer knowledge
@grimalkina we realize that sharing this misses the point of your thread
it's just that hardly anybody ever does ask and we wanted to share the image....... -
@grimalkina we realize that sharing this misses the point of your thread
it's just that hardly anybody ever does ask and we wanted to share the image.......@grimalkina (but seriously, excellent thread)
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@scy niiice, I love the physicality of this
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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!
in re zippers: been studying interwar sewing books, especially 1920s, exactly because they DO NOT deal with zippers. they weren't cheap until after WW2.
the zippered bomber jackets of WW1 were expensive to make at home. it’s why they became a status symbol among the moneyed classes.
on the other hand, after WW2 they were cheap army surplus. hence the 1950s poverty coda of the leather jacket, tshirt & jeans ―which, as cheap surplus clothes, didn't have zippers yet.
so zippers…
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@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.
Right, and there's some slip knot magic that happens. I'm not too concerned about not knowing how a sewing machine works in depth, it was just on the list.
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@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)?
@grimalkina that IS fun! An old school one I think, sure, assuming it's opened up so you can see it (bit of a cheat but), sure, you can probably see that the springs spring back when you push them, and the wheels roll so it doesn't scrape or get stuck... and maybe that pressing that button pushes down a thing that's holding the spring back...
but that's like 20 concepts away from what it's for and how it actually functions, let alone how you'd make one. And even that depends on "wheel" and "spring", which you might only understand that "this spins / this pushes", not how or why, certainly not on a theoretical physics level
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@grimalkina assuming this is about software I've always found "how do you fix a stuck zipper" more valuable knowledge than how a zipper works.
@deech one can be conditional on the other though!
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Right, and there's some slip knot magic that happens. I'm not too concerned about not knowing how a sewing machine works in depth, it was just on the list.
@NuclearOatmeal @grimalkina I just said it mostly for the last bit, I wasn't curious about everyday things when younger. Thought everything worthwhile had to be specialised, science, somehow uber important.
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@grimalkina that IS fun! An old school one I think, sure, assuming it's opened up so you can see it (bit of a cheat but), sure, you can probably see that the springs spring back when you push them, and the wheels roll so it doesn't scrape or get stuck... and maybe that pressing that button pushes down a thing that's holding the spring back...
but that's like 20 concepts away from what it's for and how it actually functions, let alone how you'd make one. And even that depends on "wheel" and "spring", which you might only understand that "this spins / this pushes", not how or why, certainly not on a theoretical physics level
@sinvega he talks about how you might derive functional rules too (eg that identical items in a grocery store should always be the same price every time you ring them up) given the right components and observations!
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@grimalkina we realize that sharing this misses the point of your thread
it's just that hardly anybody ever does ask and we wanted to share the image.......@ireneista please!! It's the best kind of reply! I love how many kinds of knowledge and teaching threads like this elicit
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@sinvega he talks about how you might derive functional rules too (eg that identical items in a grocery store should always be the same price every time you ring them up) given the right components and observations!
@grimalkina any time I've been in a job interview, for basically any job, if they do the "what's most important / what does this job need" question, I said "empathy". And this is empathy to me! You're conceiving of another person, that they might want and intend things, independently but potentially just as you would
At heart I suppose I think of empathy as "why?", and one of many reasons the idea of "emotional vs logical" is bollocks
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@ireneista please!! It's the best kind of reply! I love how many kinds of knowledge and teaching threads like this elicit
@grimalkina oh, well, good! yeah that particular illustration was super helpful to us as kids, and it's not a topic that is taught nearly as widely to children anymore, so a while back we decided we wanted to have it handy and went and found a scan
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in re zippers: been studying interwar sewing books, especially 1920s, exactly because they DO NOT deal with zippers. they weren't cheap until after WW2.
the zippered bomber jackets of WW1 were expensive to make at home. it’s why they became a status symbol among the moneyed classes.
on the other hand, after WW2 they were cheap army surplus. hence the 1950s poverty coda of the leather jacket, tshirt & jeans ―which, as cheap surplus clothes, didn't have zippers yet.
so zippers…
so zippers are really interesting as something people take for granted in clothes but they weren't always there.
it’s why i wanted to study the logic of crafting pants in a zipperless world.
well, for starters, pants aren’t trousers because pants are held up by a belt whereas trousers are held up by a fly.
a zipperless world forces you to fit the pants with just enough ease to keep the pants up without a belt or with an open fly.
it’s technique over tech. /🧵
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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 there was an article I read on this long ago that I can no longer find that talked about how your grandma's recipes are simple, but you can't make them because of the context she left out. She was an expert and wrote down the details she needed to remember the recipe, but not enough that a novice could make it. Then it compared the differences in what would need to be said for the levels of expertise. Really made it hit home for me. Wish I could find the article again.
