Facts on Humans

Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)

Learning is a critically important survival tool of our species and to express the limitations on the process the following quotes are provided. If nothing else, it should get us thinking about how we study, learn and, as Sensei, teach our disciplines - how we mentor those who follow our lead. In my past articles you may remember my inferences toward the natural evolutionary process where in takes lifetimes, even hundreds to thousands of years for influences to make changes in our DNA, our very genes, as to evolution. The following quotes also speak to this perception with some variances toward the years vs. decades vs. Millennia  necessary for our species to adapt. 

My thoughts are that along with a plethora of other factors these must be takin into consideration when teaching especially if you want to encode and make use of that teaching. 

“Natural selection sculpts human thought across generations and at geologic time scales. Fitness is its tool, and human nature, our shared endowment as members of a species, is among its key effects. Although the thought life of each person is unique, one can discern patterns of thought that transcend racial, cultural and occupational differences; similarly, although the face of each person is unique, one can discern patterns of physiognomy — two eyes above a nose above a mouth — that transcend individual differences.”

“Natural selection acts over generations; Over time, as the Internet rewards certain cognitive skills and ignores or discourages others, it could profoundly alter even the basic patterns of thought that we share as a species. The catch, however, is ‘over time’.”

“Learning sculpts human thought across the lifetime of an individual. Experience is its tool, and unique patterns of cognition, emotion and physiology are its key effects.” 

“There are, of course, endogenous limits to what can be learned, and these limits are largely a consequence of mutation and natural selection.”

“Within the endogenous limits of learning set by one's genetic inheritance, exposure to the Internet can alter how one thinks no less than can exposure to language, literature or mathematics. But the endogenous limits are critical. Multi-tasking, for instance, might be a useful skill for exploiting in parallel the varied resources of the Internet, but genuine multi-tasking, at present, probably exceeds the limitations of the attentional system of Homo sapiens.”

“Epigenetic’s sculpt’s human thought within a lifetime and across a few generations. Experience and environment are its guides and shifts in gene expression that trigger shifts in cognition, emotion and physiology are its relevant effects. … a mother's anxiety can change the expression of the NR3C1 gene in her child, leading to the child's increased reactivity to stress. Childhood abuse can similarly lead to persistent feelings of anxiety and acute stress in a child, fundamentally altering its thought life.”

Bibliography (Click the link)

Hoffman, Donald D. “The Sculpting of Human Thought.” In How has the internet changed the way you think?  (John Brockman, Ed) New York: Harper Perennial, 2011, 90–92.

“In order for any life to matter, we all have to matter.” - Marcus Luttrell, Navy Seal (ret)