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Thursday, April 20, 2006

The actual matrix

Just saw this fascinating post. It is more interesting than the first few paragraphs would suggest. The part about "mirror neurons" is one of those things everyone already knew, but we didn't know we knew it: we all tend to become like the people we are around. I've been pondering something along these lines lately, that you can't underestimate how really really social humans are -- "anti-social" youngsters notwithstanding, because you'll notice one kid, no matter how spiked his hair is, etc., he's always hanging around with at least one other similar peer. There are no total rebels, everyone is plugged into others. (The only people who aren't are true anti-socials, psychotics, who are in a sense not human.)

We can learn by doing, or by watching others do. Elias demonstrated this to me tonight: I read Animal Orchestra to him, which we've done about 30 times before, but I left out a word or two of every line -- and he filled in every one with seemingly no effort, it was right there on his tongue. Even I was impressed, and I've been getting used to his abilities for 20 months. Some of these words he does not even know. And if the tables were turned, I could not do what he did, I don't know the book that well. It is just astounding how well he listens and learns.

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