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100 pages into On Intelligence and.... wow
If this guy is right, and he sounds right to me, our constructivist friends should quit while they're ahead. They are sooooooo not 21st century.
The book is a manifesto for a theory based on an elegantly simple premise: that intelligence is rooted in the brain's ability to access memories rather than in its ability to process new data.Access memories.
Not process new data.
That would mean.... knowing stuff is the essence of intelligence.
Hawkins complains that thinking machines do not exist because scientists have been sidetracked. Too many subscribe to the widespread view that the brain is essentially a powerful computer, constantly processing and integrating incoming data. [ed.: processing and integrating incoming data - kind of like Piaget! except that's not what makes you smart! knowing stuff makes you smart!] Many computer experts believe that thinking machines will arrive once there are processors as powerful and as integrated as human neurons. There is a problem with this brain-as-computer analogy, however: Computers are already faster than brains. A neuron can manage 200 operations per second; a modern computer can race through 1 billion per second.
fast and stupid
Processing speed doesn't matter in the brain, says Hawkins, because the basis of thought is not data manipulation but memory retention and prediction. The brain, he says, accesses previous experiences, compares them with existing circumstances, and predicts what is most likely to happen next. When a ball is thrown, for example, we know from experience where it is most likely to land and move our hands to that spot. It's a simple action, but it has proved nearly impossible to build a robot smart enough to perform it. "The brain doesn't compute the answers to problems," he says. "It retrieves the answer from memory."Very cool.
Intelligence, posits Hawkins, is essentially the capacity to remember and then predict patterns in the world.
Source:
Redefining Smart
Business Week
November 8, 2004I joined the mailing list.
Jeff Hawkins' Bold Brainstorm
21st century skills
On IntelligenceWayne Gretsky explains the world to you
14 comments:
Wow!
That makes the constructivists and their war on memory look ridiculous.
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Did you see the new blog by a fierce defender of constructivism? http://rationalmathed.blogspot.com/
That link is Michael Paul Goldenberg or Paul Michael Goldenberg, or oh whatever the he** is name is.
In any case, I'm more tolerant than most but I had to ban him from my board and from all comments on my blog.
He's a vitriolic maniac. I suggest that no one link to him and no one comment on his blog. Give him no traffic, and Google will not smile kindly on him. Then his blog will die on the vine.
"Did you see the new blog by a fierce defender of constructivism?"
He's been around for ages. I noticed that his new MO is to position himself as the put-upon defender of truth and justice, using strawmen and very many pejorative comments to put an edge to his commentary.
Of course, it's easy to pick and choose your battles, and it's easy to argue at a general or philosophical level. There is no proof when you argue at this level. I managed to send him off on a sarcastic political tirade years ago on a math forum, which at least let me know where he was coming from. As many people have found over the years, he isn't worth the effort, and he doesn't matter.
If you want to argue over the generalities of constructivism, go for it, but I can assure you that it won't work. I learned long ago that some vague definition of constructivism is not the problem, implementation is. It's all about the details.
But even if you get to the details, people can still argue until hell freezes over. One big one is that the problem is not the curriculum, it's the teachers and the training. My review of fifth grade Everyday Math could be seen as an indictment of the teacher and school, not the curriculum. Then again, I don't think that EM uses constructivism very much. Maybe one could call it directed (as opposed to discovery) constructivism, but I really don't care. What I want to see are specific skills mastered at specific grade levels. Otherwise, do all of the constructivism you want.
When research can't show any convincing evidence of success, then good luck trying to prove anything. At best, one can argue strictly on content or amount of practice, but that requires a lot of implementation details, not generalities. There is lots of room for plausible denial.
The real battle is over choice. I know of few people who want to impose Singapore or Saxon Math on everyone. This may not seem like the case in practice because schools are not set up to offer two math curricula. However, once a school gets above a certain size, then the difficulties of two curriculum paths are minimized. The onus then falls on the schools to prove that one curriculum is substantially superior to the other to avoid offering only one curriculum.
The usual situation is that the school picks the curriculum and the parents have to "prove" that another curriculum is better. It can't be done. The onus has to be shifted to the school to prove that choice is not needed.
Choice is happening, but it's often only for those who can survive math in the lower grades; the math brains. We just have to convince schools that all kids are math brains and offer a curriculum choice in the early grades. Let the parents decide.
The schools have the burden of proof to show that choice should not be allowed.
KTM is a practical resource for parents who know that something is not right. These are the people who matter. They are ones who need the practical information to save their kids. I would be more than happy for parents to go to that other blog and read all they want. In fact, it would be quite enlightening.
Shift the onus. Choice!
The real battle is over choice. I know of few people who want to impose Singapore or Saxon Math on everyone. This may not seem like the case in practice because schools are not set up to offer two math curricula.
Absolutely.
I think Linda Moran posed the hilarious query: Where are all the parent blogs trying to get rid of Saxon and/or Singapore Math??
Which I realize is a slight non sequitur.
Ed suggested, at a board meeting, that the district offer two math curricula.
Everyone was scandalized; can't be done!
Of course it can be done.
I would like to see curricular choice offered as a natural experiment.
For one thing, you'd have a chance of seeing which kids did better - but you might also see interesting things about elements of each curriculum & pedagogy that would "cross-fertilize" well... you might in fact find kids who are more compatible with one than with the other ... you might find all kinds of things.
Friendly curricular choice!
A *good* thing!
KTM is a practical resource for parents who know that something is not right. These are the people who matter.
That's exactly right - and it's also been an enormous help to me (and I know to others) in terms of understanding our situation and developing the arguments we do need to be able to make in our school districts.
Shift the onus. Choice!
Absolutely! I was thinking about how this can and does happen, only much too rarely.
New Milford, CT embraced the math debate by engaging in rational discussions that included parents and teachers into the fold. Although the results may be imperfect (as perfection is anything but a common result), it was certainly a huge improvement on anything I've seen going on in districts across the US lately.
Details of their pilot program here: http://www.new-milford.k12.ct.us/curriculum/math/index.html
thanks, instructivist, for bringing
MPG's new blog to my attention.
i used to take him on at great length
in various e-mail discussion groups
but neither one of us seemed to be
getting a whole lot out of it
so i quit. eventually quit reading
the discussion groups altogether,
in fact (MPG is not to blame...).
an interesting coincidence:
i also recently started a math ed blog.
vlorbik on math ed
good grief
I'm just now reading Vlorbik's comment
I MUST get the "recent comments" feature fixed, which apparently I can do, if Monsieur "Hackosphere" is to be believed.
Talk about a confirmation bias ...
You all seem awfully eager to believe a book that wasn't peer reviewed and doesn't include primary research but rather the speculative synthesis of an avid hobbyist.
Although the ideas may be attractive, they are vague and not fully tested. If a manuscript with the same ideas had been submitted anonymously, I doubt they would have made it to print.
Peer review in education is close to meaningless.
This is the industry that has a peer-reviewed journal, Reading Research Quarterly, in which 2 of the 3 words have a meaning that is different than the meaning that the rest of the world uses.
wait - we're talking about Hawkins' book?
This is the book that should be peer-reviewed before we read?
If so, that's incorrect.
Hawkins is laying out his theory of intelligence, a theory that will guide his research. For a variety of reasons having to do with "converging lines of evidence" I'm inclined to think he's right.
That doesn't make him right, nor does it make me right.
Research doesn't get peer-reviewed until it's been done; this isn't a book describing research.
Theories per se are only peer-reviewed when researchers apply for grant money.
As for whether "On Intelligence" would have been published had it been submitted anonymously, no it would not.
That's neither here nor there.
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