Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / How Big Tech Destroys Learning

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How Big Tech Destroys Learning · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a Humans. Welcome to Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas. It's a dangerous question for anyone
• 0:09
  who is trying to teach themselves a new skill or help their kids to learn. How exactly
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  are humans hardwired to learn best? How do you feel most naturally drawn to learning?
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  Does it come easily or is it hard? Are you drawn to e-readers or to physical books? Are
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  someone who prefers typing or handwriting? Do you like duo lingo or do you like moving to a
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  Tuscan villa and drinking wine and arguing about epicurionism? Look, to each their own, I'm not
• 0:39
  here to judge. I just feel like we're all kind of aware of the problem of smartphones and social
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  media and kids and screen time, but the problem may be deeper according to today's guest. We may
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  actually be hardwired in our brains and even in our bodies to learn in tactile, low-fi, even
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  luddite ways where hardwired to learn in ways that technology just can't reproduce. So educational
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  technology has been rolled out in schools all over the world at a massive pace. Tablets and
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  Chromebooks are everywhere and they're supposed to tailor education specifically to the child.
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  Was the entire thing a giant scam? And is it actually causing schools to fail? Today's guest
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  is Jared Kuni Horvath. He does education related to brain and behavioral research. He's a
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  neuroscientist and he's the director of the science of learning group and of neuroeducation
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  where he tries to take his research and apply it to the education space. He's lectured and
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  researched at Harvard University. He's been published in the New Yorker and the economist and
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  the Atlantic and the New York Times and Scientific American and New Scientist. I could go on and on
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  and on. He's got a new book. It's called The Digital Delusion. How classroom technology harms
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  our kids' learning and how to help them thrive again. I don't know if that subtitle is long
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  enough. I think you have to have at least 100 words in your subtitle of a book these days.
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  So I loved talking to him about multitasking and wrote learning and memorizing and how to
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  learn skills that are actually transferable, especially in an age of AI and the fragility of
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  Gen Z and how you can learn better. I hope you enjoy as much as I did. The one the only Jared
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  Kuni Horvath. I'm so far away from where how schools actually operate now that I didn't even
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  realize the extent to which technology was in schools. So like I, for me it's with having
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  eight-year-olds that they're not really there yet, but how like how widespread is actual
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  tech for learning as opposed to older who hire about smartphones and Instagram and
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  TikTok and everything. Frightening. It's funny for, yeah, you're absolutely right. For all the
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  talk of smartphones in the school and getting them out, which we should, people seem to forget
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  that well there's another device sitting right there in their pocket that they're going to be
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  using quite a bit. So most of the data is going to come out of the US. So for the Australian audience
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  sorry about this, but you're looking at an average of at least 90 minutes a day on computers
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  for kids. We're going K through 12 now with over a quarter of spending over four hours every single
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  day on screens at school. 88% of school districts in the US are now one to one that includes primary
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  years. So we're talking about now even preschoolers are basically one to one main eight-person
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  age child has a tablet or one computer. The first country that well two first countries to hit
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  true one-to-one status was New Zealand was number one. They bought everyone a computer. They
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  crossed the threshold. Australia was number two. It was by 2012. You already had as many computers
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  as students and then it just gone haywire from there. There are way more computers in schools now
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  than kids and it's it's weird because the more tech more computers there are in a country school
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  per capita the lower your scores become. It's like this weird seesaw that we keep investing more
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  more in it but the heavier the computer side gets the scores are just dropping along. Is that right?
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  And do we know that that's causal or they are the could there be other things going on that the
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  kinds of countries that are the ones that invest in tech are the kinds of countries that are fumbling
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  education for other reasons. That's what you'd think. So if you look at like international tests and
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  stuff the big dogs are always going to be Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore. Those are always
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  going to be your top scores. If you look at those countries data those are the highest tech
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  infrastructure countries in the world yet the lowest percentage of kids using computers in schools.
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  So it's one of these weird cash 22s where you would think they're high tech countries they are
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  but they don't use it in schools. So you've got a lot of this data which is just kind of showing the
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  tech is a driving force in this of course there's going to be other forces absolutely because they're
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  think about like the converse the second tier level of countries that don't use tech very often
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  are places like Mexico, Nigeria places that don't have access to tech and they're not scoring as high.
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  So there's something about the infrastructure good the social capital good the actual use of it
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  bad lose both of those might be interesting but and just to tease that out again do is there
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  a way of knowing whether or not it's the fact that there's technology in schools that's a problem
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  or could the corollary of technology in schools be that those kids are likely to have devices at home
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  and be distracted and be using social media and watching TikTok in their downtime and that could
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  be dragging their scores down yeah so you're helping them in the classroom. These are great questions
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  so that's the good news is with most of these tests or the most of these most of these exams
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  we're talking about they will ask questions on both of those fronts how often do you use a computer
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  at school how often to use a computer at school for homework how often to use a computer at school
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  for blank how often to use a computer at home how often to use it for this for that for that so they
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  will differentiate between those two so we can clearly say kids using computers at school for these
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  purposes here's the process we're seeing but exactly as you said too kids use computers at home
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  do worse as well so there's going to be massive overlap well so that's where I think you can go
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  cool this is you've got to somehow move beyond correlation into causation and how do you do that
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  research that's where now you move beyond tests and world data and you say let's actually
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  lock some experiments down and go so what does the research say well we've been doing that for 60 years
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  tech harms learning anytime you bring a screen into learning learning by and large is going to go
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  down it just doesn't seem to be suited to our learning so when you've got the correlation data
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  and you've got this kind of causative angle over here those come together you start to get what's
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  called triangulation of data that's getting us much closer to the causative argument and what is it
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  that these devices are being used for that their proponents would say is useful like what let's
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  in my kids in grade three they're just starting to learn to type at school yeah strike me as a
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  useful skill to have sure differ about that one of the so one of the things that are problematic
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  that people are doing with tablets and computers in the classroom that advocates think is
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  advantageous that you don't oh gosh that's everything basically what you just said is a very good
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  accusation point is there's teaching about tech and then there's teaching through tech if you're
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  going to teach typing that's a tech tool use it I guess technically you could use a typewriter
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  but it just seems to be cool that's the skill you're you're learning go for it if you're learning
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  about excel spreadsheets maybe the best way to do it is on excel go for it but that's very
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  different than learning through technology if I want to teach you math why would I teach that
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  through a screen if I want to teach you writing handwriting why would I teach that through a screen
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  and that's where the kind of pendulum has swung where I think arguments that we we need to teach
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  certain computer skills has morphed into we need to teach all skills now through a computer
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  and that's the biggest mistake people are making is now computers are they exist in every class
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  they interface in every way and it's like yeah I'm fine if you have a computer lab and you teach
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  typing that's very different than having every kid have a computer and you're bringing it out
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  during civics class why does it need I see I see so you're learning about animals or you're learning
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  about science or something then it's not optimal to have some gamified app on a device that teaches you
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  about you know mammals that's where you know don't want to be touching it yeah I see and so what
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  we can do is we can do moderator so we know all up if you just take the entirety of ed tech
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  it sits this is going to probably bore your listeners to tears but let's go with it anyway why not
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  we got to talk statistics here so when we talk about the impact of of things in the world in
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  research we're going to give something an effect size that's kind of the number we use to tell
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  you what's going on so an effect size will usually sit between negative one and positive one negative
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  one is as bad as something can be then it gets up to zero where it's neutral up to positive one
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  the best something can be now there's caveats all that but that's a good window so when we look
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  at the entirety of ed tech it has a positive effect size on learning of points 29 which sounds really
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  good and in most fields of the world it would be really good but one field of research has to act
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  differently it is education because learning is biological learning would happen even if you did
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  nothing if you just locked a kid in a closet for 10 years they would still learn so every
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  one strategy with my twins by the way I have them locked in a closet under the stairs and I'm like
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  biology will take care of itself stop searching learn I don't say they're gonna learn a lot but
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  they're gonna learn something so by by all means that is so do not make this man angry
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  it was so we don't use zero in education as our standard because zero means nothing to us so
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  our standard in education will differ depending on who you're talking to but realistically it's
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  going to sit around point four two so anything a point two oh oh what that's how you can so
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  technically what it affects eyes is it's a standard deviation shift so we're saying point four
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  two of a standard deviation growth and a standard deviation is what is if you give me a cohort
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  of individuals learning something what is the average change we're seeing amongst them and then
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  what is the spread of that change so if you give me a hundred people and on average they all
• 11:01
  grow one foot this year you wouldn't believe that every single one of them grew exactly one foot
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  some will have grown two feet some will have grown nothing some will have grown a foot half so the
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  the standard deviation is basically the variance across which all these changes are happening
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  so where do 66% of all changes fit in that's what we're going to call our first standard deviation
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  around zero i sound so stupid i'm so sorry no that makes sense that makes us a thousand sorry one
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  third one third above and one third below the zero the bingo and then then you can and so you
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  can assume 66% of people are going to sit in that window so that's where we kind of say cool if
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  you grow one standard deviation so if we say you have an effect size of positive one that means
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  you are one full standard deviation ahead of everyone else you are now sitting in the 66th percent
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  tile no that's the wrong 74th percentile my math is for crap whenever one else would be sitting in
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  the 50th percentile so that's why we we kind of have windows on technically effect sizes can go
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  all the way up to plus 10 and negative 10 is just no one will ever get there that's insane so in
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  education because learning happens naturally if you did nothing per annum you would expect kids
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  to grow about 0.44 of a standard deviation that's if you put them in any general classroom and
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  didn't worry about anything going on or whatever's happening we're just going to get this natural
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  growth curve so that's why a lot of people will hover right around 0.42 to 0.44 some people say to
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  0.5 that's our natural so if you want to say your tool is good you have to be better than nothing
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  and nothing is 0.42 so now when we go back and we say just to clarify that's because kids go into
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  school at the age of five and they leave school at the age of 18 and obviously 18-year-olds are
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  more competent than five-year-olds so you have to adjust them nothing obvious biological fact
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  when you're assessing the utility of any educational tool which by the way is pretty funny when you
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  think it's there's a school here a system called alpha schools I have you heard of those at all
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  so it's basically just an AI school kids come in they use AI tutors and then they go away
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  and their claim to fame is we 10x you're learning which I'd never heard that
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  that sounds like doesn't that it sounds like yeah so we're gonna 10x it baby
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  woo but if you think about it so if you could 10x somebody's learning that means exactly as you
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  just said someone going into the second grade should now have the same knowledge as someone who's
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  graduating high school if I could make you're learning 10x faster you should be able to cram all
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  of k-12 in one year and two months yeah does that make any could you imagine a six-year-old coming
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  out with a high school you're not gonna do 10 years of education in one year and that's where you
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  start to so there's there's gonna be natural growth occurring in the background that we have to
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  account for that you can never expect a seven year old to do what this is and so we account for
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  that by having a different effect size value so our average is 0.42 that's where we sit so when
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  you hear that ed tech has an effect size of 0.29 in every field that's great in education that's
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  bad that means you are actually doing worse than just generic nothing methods things that kids
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  wouldn't done anyway without that tech and in countries that are more I don't want to say
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  lot I'd but let's say they haven't hopped onto the big tech bandwagon and they still believe in
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  face-to-face teaching and personal relationships between teachers and teacher and student what kind
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  of effect size do we see in in tech there in those countries no no in like in non tech environments
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  like what would a great outcome be for the for the increase in learning that is plausible we'd always
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  we'd always say 0.42 or 0.44 is going to be the outcome you want to see at the end of every year you
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  want everyone to shift 0.44 with standard deviation that's the average now to be fair that data
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  comes from us Australia UK outside of these three countries I've never seen any data that looks
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  at that what is the average year on year growth so that's the that's the average when a when a
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  child is being taught under a good public education system it's not the average of what the
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  child would learn if you lock them in the basement no but they would still learn something
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  to learn something so that's another reason so we that's why we say because a kid will learn
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  naturally we can't use zero so what do we use and we tend to hover around what's the average year
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  on year growth regardless and so that value comes from okay I think 1960 all the way through 2000
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  that seems to be where they've kind of coalesced this and come up with that number to say that's
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  so let's let's talk about what's going on neurologically and then we're not how people learn because
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  I think we've been focused a lot like in 2019 Jonathan Hart came to Australia he and I did a tour
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  together we would travel around and I would we would have these conversations in town halls and
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  things it was really interesting got to know him and then he was back on the show in 2021 and so
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  I drank the cool aid quite early on like being anti devices anti social media anti like and now
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  obviously Australia has come up to speed on that and we've passed the social media ban for
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  anyone under the age of 16 there are no phones in schools in my state which is the most
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  popular state in the country and I think everyone's on that page now like nobody is nobody is
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  suggesting that it's great for you know primary schoolers or even adolescents to have social media
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  and devices anymore but if you honestly until I came across your book and your work if someone had
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  just sort of asked me like should kids have Chromebooks in schools and should they be learning should
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  they be familiarizing themselves with digital life I would have been like well yeah I mean I spend
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  all of my work on a computer yes my kids should learn handwriting sure they should I mean my
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  daughter's learning butterfly and backstroke like that's because she's a kid I never do butterfly
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  or backstroke but I'm glad that I learned it when I was a kid because now I kind of know what they
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  are and I suppose they should know handwriting for that reason but in reality they should just do
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  all of their work typing because they'll end up doing that out of computer anyway right yeah why
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  is that what what was I missing I think one of the biggest mistakes we make as adults is it's called
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  the expert blind spot is the better we get at anything we forget what it took to develop that skill
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  we just assume the skill is the skill and that's where you start so things we're doing as adults we
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  assume that then must be what kids need to do to learn how to become an adult right wrong the tools
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  methods techniques and I would say by large technology we use as experts as adults to make our
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  lives easier are the absolute wrong tools and methods you need as a novice to learn how to become
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  an expert and so I it's say you're good at the computer like you said you live your life on
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  the computer we're doing it right now that's wonderful were you ever explicitly taught the computer
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  in school yeah like did you did you yeah yeah teach your seat down to teach you Riverside FM no why
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  no no not this but I mean we had we had a computer and even in pretty computer in the lab we had
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  what we had a compute yes we had a computer for the class and we would learn how to type on it
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  and how to open files and things like that yeah yeah what that's fine that's the curriculum question
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  but notice you're using Riverside now without ever being explicitly taught how do you do it how
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  do that fortunately I have a very good producer who does it all for me I would essentially be a
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  monkey with a machine gun if I was unleashed upon the particular app that we're using to record this
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  on but no I take a point yes I can pick up a piece of technology and I can use it intuitively
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  yep yep and so that's where people how did we our generation ever figure that stuff out
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  it's because a K-12 education is not a skills-based education it is not there to teach you how to do
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  things it is there to teach you how to think it's there to teach you how to address and solve
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  problems the idea being that now you can adapt to whatever comes your way so we're not teaching
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  you history because I expect you to become a historian I'm not teaching you math because I
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  expect you to be a mathematician we're teaching you these things as conduits they are there are
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  vehicles to help you think through knowledge to learn the processes by which we maneuver and
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  adapt in this world now when you get out of K-12 congratulations welcome to the real world you
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  can solve problems now when a new technology comes your way you can go I was never trained on this
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  done matter I know how to think and that's one of the biggest problems coming out of
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  graduates now is someone just did well two two groups did two big surveys with hiring managers
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  across the US ask them about new hires and all this stuff one of the biggest complaints they all
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  have is unless you explicitly tell these kids exactly what to do Gen Z new graduates going into
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  the workforce they don't know what to do they can't solve problems they can't adapt easily
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  because we've locked down their thinking so hard in a skills-based thing you taught me this now
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  you're asking me to do this I don't know how to do that you have to teach me that no we've always
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  been so good at using K-12 to teach you how to think and now with tech we're teaching you what to
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  do and that's a very different proposition when it comes to schooling so I would say that if we
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  teach them the tools don't be surprised when you don't see any of that ability off of the tool
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  but if you teach them how to think and learn get ready no one taught me how to type I can type
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  just fine I'm not an idiot because you taught me how to figure things out that's what we're kind
• 20:55
  of gunning for in a K-12 that it's interesting that you mentioned the you know the complaints that
• 21:00
  hiring managers have about Gen Z or Gen Z and it's something that you know I feel as I enter
• 21:08
  middle age and work with younger staff as well not now because I'm independent and I get to choose
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  them but when I was working for you know big media organizations and had to work with the people
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  who I was assigned with I always described the issues that I had with that generation as being
• 21:23
  a sociological one there was more of a you know the coddling of the American mind and like Greg
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  Luquianoff's work and Jonathan Hyde's work and the sense of I suppose self entitlement and self-victimization
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  that perhaps a particular generation has that is not as maybe jaded as me and my older millennials
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  or Gen X Gen X's are where it was like we hadn't taught resilience we had taught vulnerability and
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  we taught them to elevate what we would previously have regarded as fairly petty concerns as being like
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  very very damaging to them and that the sun shone out of their ass and those were that that was
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  the context in which I was understanding the riff between older workers and younger workers
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  how much is to what is your hunch about the extent to which it's a sociological thing and the extent
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  to which they literally don't have the cognitive capacity to work in an innovative and hard working one
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  I think you I think it's your spot believe it or not the coddling of the American mind argument
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  is the exact same argument it's just instead of using teaching typing it's we're teaching them
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  resuming it's as once we started so why is Gen Z I'm sorry for Gen Z listeners we're just saying
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  because a lot of good ones there are a lot of good ones I would understand it to be a
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  66.67% you're better that says we're just saying on average why are things shifting is
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  so Gen Z is considerably less resilient than millennials and Gen X despite the fact that they have
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  spent over 400% more of their school time being taught about well-being resilience mental health
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  why if I devote all this time to teaching you about something why can't you do it out here and
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  that's the transfer problem when you teach a skill that skill will become locked to the context within
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  which you teach it and unless you explicitly help me learn how to transfer it moving into new
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  context it will forever be stuck here so in a very real sense when we teach kids about resilience
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  that is very different than teaching them in a way that forces them to be resilient when I
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  teach you about being happy that's very different than teaching you in a context which allows you to
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  be happy probably the best way to kind of think about it is what was a good while hunting when
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  the dude was like you could tell me everything about the Sistine Chapel but you never stood in it
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  and smelled it and looked up at that ceiling so you really don't understand anything
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  that's the problem as K through 12 education is kind of shifted into this model of
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  we're going to teach you skills skills for work skills for tech skills for life
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  cool you get into life you don't have any of those things you can so long as you put me on my computer
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  I can show you what I can do but if you ask me to do the same thing over here I can't anymore because
• 24:30
  I locked my skills down to what you taught me so instead of teaching generally you taught so
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  specifically that nothing really moves outside of that so believe me it's the same argument it's just
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  I do it because I think there is a wrinkle in the argument that you're missing which is also
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  that we were teaching not just that we were only teaching them facts about resilience rather than
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  putting them in situations that actually fostered resilience itself but also that we were
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  teaching them the wrong facts about resilience that there was a there was a shift from you know
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  suck it up life is hard you know you've got a pretty good to you know you live in a society that
• 25:08
  is inherently unjust where you are being you know oppressed and you know the best thing to do is to
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  is to pick at the at all of the scabs that you feel and to resent the people who who have
• 25:20
  wronged you and to resent the man so they may be but you know the chance of just white into that
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  using the daylights out of you is I was talking about this with someone earlier say so I live in
• 25:29
  Portland Oregon if for those who are listening which is probably the best example of that
• 25:34
  yes right made this whole show pulled land yeah about that phenomenon which you watch the show
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  and you think that's funny and then you move here and you go that was a documentary that was pretty
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  much they overdid it in some skits but not not by much but so it's it's one of the more interesting
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  things about that phenomenon is it shifts your identity into things you hate and I'm very clear
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  on what everyone in Portland hates I know what they don't like I know they don't want to be
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  happening I know what isn't good for them the one thing I've never been clear on is what the
• 26:11
  hell do you like and when it comes to personal identity drizzle I would say I like I like miss
• 26:19
  in the air if they if they haven't left then they love drizzle and love great
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  mediocre cold okay gotcha but it's there's there's a difference in a negative identity versus a
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  positive identity and I just I feel like that when when we kind of focus on the victim hood and
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  we people very much focus on the negative and they're very clear on what they don't want to happen
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  in the world but they've never planted their flag inside themselves as to wait a second who am I
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  what do I actually like what am I fighting for what do I want to build and in my estimation that
• 26:58
  is a stronger identity and so if you've never built that aspect of yourself you're kind of
• 27:04
  waffly and you're right that will absolutely translate into the workforce where now you go
• 27:09
  younger kids and you're like wait why can't you do I figured out dude I don't got to hold your hand
• 27:15
  for everything but we kind of do at this stage it's it's also harder to do I mean it's harder to
• 27:19
  figure out what you want to do and what to do to get it and how to be constructive and how to
• 27:25
  build than it is to you know it's quite nice to wallow in your complaints it's it's you know it's
• 27:31
  easy it's an easy way to construct an identity I mean it's funny you say that I'm just remembering
• 27:35
  a friend of mine works at a major tourist piece of tourist infrastructure in Australia that I
• 27:41
  won't mention and they had a promo where an American football company for the what's the big sports
• 27:50
  event that you guys just had you call up the world oh the Superbowl that's right not the world
• 27:55
  not the world series of baseball the world series is basically yeah yeah I do like that it's
• 28:02
  the world series between only American teams and the Superbowl so for the Superbowl I have two
• 28:08
  Canadian teams that's why it's world we opened our border to they right that's amazing very
• 28:15
  magnanimous and worldly and pluralistic of you so that the they there was this American
• 28:20
  team mascot for just commemorate to celebrate the Superbowl who came to this tourist place and
• 28:26
  was doing all these funny things and like you know sort of grabbing people and hugging them as
• 28:30
  they went on the rides and like high-fiving people and everything and yeah my friend who works in
• 28:36
  HR at the at the place just had to we had a terrible data following day because there was so many
• 28:42
  complaint like everyone over the age of 28 thought it was hilarious and half the people on the
• 28:48
  age of 28 were coming with complaints that you know they didn't appreciate being physically touched
• 28:53
  and they hadn't provided their consent over being hugged by a mascot so there is yes they've
• 28:59
  obviously learned that there's a way of being in the world that rewards or encourages that behavior
• 29:06
  on the on the unrelated question I think which is the deeper one that you're pointing to which
• 29:10
  is there's a difference between learning facts and actually embedding them in yourself as a way
• 29:16
  of living through the experience segment like the goodwill hunting anecdote it reminds me of there's
• 29:23
  a thought experiment that you do in a epistemology 101 in philosophy about Mary's room have you heard
• 29:31
  Mary's room Mary is it Mary is a is a a character in this thought experiment who is raised from
• 29:39
  the age of you know since she was born in a black and white room where she doesn't have the
• 29:45
  ability to either see herself or to see any colors yeah I'm not quite sure why she can't see
• 29:50
  herself maybe she has like one of those dog you know the things that sick dogs wear where they
• 29:54
  are there's like a cone around their head so she can't well they shouldn't see the black and white
• 29:59
  either she somehow she's somehow never seen I never quite understood it's like all these philosophical
• 30:04
  thought experiments always fall apart like the trolley problem and stuff you're like why does the
• 30:07
  trolley why is it going to kill is it definitely going to kill a man can't they get a is someone
• 30:12
  driving it today's yeah I can't picture this trolley anyway so Mary's for some reason has never
• 30:18
  seen a color but she's read up all of this information about the wavelength of light and what
• 30:24
  colors are called and she knows every she knows more about colors than any human being alive
• 30:29
  she's like the world's leading color expert she knows all of the shades and all of the wavelengths
• 30:34
  and everything but she's never seen one and one day they open the door and she walks out into a
• 30:40
  field and she sees butterflies and she sees the blue sky and she sees you know flowers um to people
• 30:49
  who think that data is what makes your mind your mind there should be no difference because she can
• 30:56
  identify all of those colors and she knows it she knows them all perfectly but yeah obviously
• 31:02
  she's gonna be overwhelmed by the extraordinary inputs that she's seeing and that difference between
• 31:10
  the information like there is what's interesting for the philosophy is there's for the especially
• 31:14
  in epistemology which is about how we know what we know what's the extra thing that she's getting
• 31:20
  she's not getting anything what there's nothing that you can point to that is the extra thing
• 31:23
  that she has in that scenario that she didn't have when she was reading the books so that is the
• 31:29
  thing that people call quality or the or the experience of being alive the experience of experiencing
• 31:34
  something in addition to the knowing of the thing and you're just sort of reminding of that and it
• 31:40
  I hate to tangent here but I'm going on it um there's an this is where philosophy and neuroscience
• 31:49
  started to collide and we started to go oh you guys were quite right was so long story short I
• 31:57
  could tell you a story now I'm gonna tell you in two seconds here the color blue doesn't appear
• 32:03
  in any piece of ancient Greek writing in the Odyssey in the Iliad and any of Homer's contemporaries
• 32:08
  blue just never appears so if there was always this big debate on did they see blue or did they
• 32:15
  just not have a word for it how are they describing it well did they what's going on there
• 32:21
  cut to today we now get to interact with tribes all around the world who haven't one of them is in
• 32:26
  far north Queensland um one is is over in Africa they're called the himba and we know their languages
• 32:33
  we can start to test these things himba is one of their one of the few tribes that do not have a
• 32:37
  word for the color blue so now we can actually test the quality of concept and say okay
• 32:44
  you don't you know the word doesn't exist the concept doesn't exist if you show them a green
• 32:50
  square and a blue square and you say which one of these is different or like 10 green squares
• 32:55
  in one blue square they won't see the difference they'll say they're all green and so they're
• 33:01
  somehow their brain is shifting their perceptions into their stories for how they think the world
• 33:09
  should be if I was never taught a and now I'm shown a my brain will change the input so that a
• 33:16
  either doesn't exist or squishes into how I think a should have been off I go so this is where
• 33:21
  we're starting to find the neuro neuro scientific feedback mechanisms we call it top down processing
• 33:27
  here some people call it bottom up depending on what field you're in fine where by and large we
• 33:32
  do not live in this world we live in our head but our head is filled only with facts but those
• 33:40
  facts have to be then met with experiences as well if exactly as you said if I knew the color blue
• 33:47
  but never saw it as soon as you showed me blue I would have no clue it exists if I saw the color
• 33:52
  blue but didn't know it was a concept I also would not see the color blue I would just see gray
• 33:56
  or something else so you've got this sweet interplay between I need knowledge and I need experiences
• 34:02
  to come together to help me drive my own perception amazing we're really good at giving people
• 34:09
  teaching them concepts like resilience and I the ideas of well-being but we've exactly we
• 34:17
  bubble wrapped them so hard that they've never had to actually experience it so it goes nowhere in
• 34:21
  the system well the fact that cultures didn't have a word for blue makes me feel good about the
• 34:25
  fact that I only seem to know about six colors and when people say oh look at that teal dress I'm like
• 34:33
  I'm sorry I have no idea what you're talking about go with that but that may be there's a tribe
• 34:38
  up in it the one up in in in Queensland oh no they were in the northern territory excuse me
• 34:45
  that was interesting is heck so their language is based only on spatial on the cardinal points
• 34:51
  northeast southwest they never have any self-referential language so like whereas you and I would say
• 34:56
  ooh that B is close to my toe they would say that B is north northeast of my pet or whatever
• 35:02
  the heck it happens to be they don't use themselves as a reference point so some researchers ran a
• 35:07
  really cool experiment with them where they showed them a table with a bunch of objects on it and
• 35:13
  said memorize the position of these objects they took the objects away they turn the table around
• 35:18
  so their body would shift and they'd say now replace those objects and you and I with self-referential
• 35:25
  we just put them exactly how we saw them the first time they would always invert them or if they
• 35:29
  move the table sideways they've put them sideways across the table and they say why are you doing that
• 35:34
  they go because it align northeast southwest they never use themselves as a reference point in
• 35:38
  their language and so when you realize that that's basically a memory game can you remember how
• 35:43
  these things sat here they were changing their memory to their story of the world so not only is
• 35:49
  changing our perception and also shifts our memories of what has happened in the past so we yeah
• 35:56
  and they probably don't even feel like they were changing their memory they probably just thought
• 36:00
  of course they point that way because they're pointing you know yeah south southwest same way that
• 36:05
  they were the last time I said maybe we changed our map who's to say I mean that's where he
• 36:10
  started to see I don't know where the truth is going to lie are they right are we right are they
• 36:14
  wrong who knows yeah but it's exactly it's the I wouldn't notice I wouldn't think I changed my
• 36:20
  memory I would just be doing exactly how no that's yeah it's really it's interesting the um I wonder
• 36:27
  when you said that the ancient Greeks didn't have a word for blue if you've been to the
• 36:32
  Greek islands there's a very there's a lot of blue right there's no I mean the the sea is very blue
• 36:39
  and the sky is very blue and I I wondered whether it was one of those things where if something
• 36:45
  it's almost like the fish that doesn't know what water is like you almost don't need a name for
• 36:50
  the thing that's everywhere like they're so surrounded by it sort of maybe colors are things that
• 36:55
  differ from the norm and if the if if neutral is blue then maybe you don't need a word for
• 37:02
  neutral it's just the zero it's the new it's like the color zero so Homer used to call in most of
• 37:09
  the Greek lit this this sky was white and the sea was gray those are the two colors they picked
• 37:15
  for those two objects and our argument would be once we met the himba we would ask what colors
• 37:21
  the sky they would say white and now that we knew they couldn't actually pick out blue we assume
• 37:26
  maybe they just see the sky as white and so we were the himba has been reading a lot of a lot of
• 37:32
  Homer which is really that's it just why did they get there but it's funny so the paint they use
• 37:38
  that comes much later but you're right that one of the researchers who does this work he said I
• 37:42
  don't think the coat does or was ever not a zooer it's just somehow that was not an important
• 37:48
  feature for them so they never really teed into it they were okay so brightness I guess the so
• 37:55
  just coming back to education then the this idea that creativity sort of emerges from the practice
• 38:02
  of learning how to learn things rather than roads learning does bump up against what I thought
• 38:10
  like we had absorbed over the past few decades about East Asian cultures and like tiger moms
• 38:16
  and the success of like the Chinese education system and even the success of like Asian migrant
• 38:23
  communities in western countries like Australia where there seems to be an enormous amount of
• 38:28
  road learning and road is not bad creative okay road is not bad no so it wrote is is definitely not
• 38:37
  a bad we're not saying you shouldn't learn stuff the are in bio so if you go to creativity what is
• 38:42
  creativity creativity is nothing more or less than the mixing and matching of your current memories
• 38:49
  to an unknown problem set how do I represent my angst using this guitar how do I clean up trash
• 38:55
  from the ocean here's all the things I know how can I rearrange them to fit this to solve that problem
• 39:02
  so facts become the stock and trade by which creativity occurs the more information you know
• 39:10
  the more creative you will be 100% of the time and the important aspect of this is
• 39:16
  it's the amount of information you have embedded within you you have wrote memorized or at least
• 39:23
  locked down it's not the amount of information you have access to so a lot of people made the
• 39:28
  argument that tech means you don't have to learn stuff anymore you can just jump right into
• 39:32
  creativity because you can look anything up most of creativity and critical thinking and what we
• 39:38
  would call these higher order skills most of the the heavy lifting happens when you stop paying
• 39:44
  attention it's subconscious so believe it or not when it comes to creativity what you'll do is
• 39:49
  let's say you want to tackle a problem you're going to get to work on that problem I'm going to
• 39:53
  start strumming my guitar after a couple hours you're going to get exhausted you're going to be like
• 39:57
  this isn't working I'm not doing the right song I'm out of here you're going to go cook dinner
• 40:01
  take the dog for a walk when you leave that's when your brain gets to work now what your brain is
• 40:06
  going to do completely subconsciously without any input from you it's going to take all those things
• 40:11
  you were just consciously doing and it's going to try and find matches in your memory that you never
• 40:17
  even realized you had it's going to say remember in fourth grade you did that that's kind of like what
• 40:20
  you're trying to say here remember that time you petted that dog that kind of felt like what you
• 40:23
  want to do here and it's going to come up with its own combinations and every once in a while your
• 40:28
  brain with no input from you is going to say I found a match and you're going to get what's called a
• 40:32
  moment of insight so you're going to be washing the dishes and all of a sudden you're going to go
• 40:36
  oh I got an idea for that song give me the guitar let's go on in on it so you go through these
• 40:40
  periods of focus thinking diffuse thinking focus thinking diffuse thinking when you're in focused
• 40:46
  mode by all means you can access the internet and look things up but as soon as you enter diffuse
• 40:50
  thinking mode which is probably more important than the focus part your brain can't access the
• 40:54
  internet so it is stuck only with those things you know that's why memorization is still absolutely
• 41:00
  key so trickle just push back quickly on the on the this idea that creativity is dependent on
• 41:08
  knowledge or facts yeah there are you know there are many instances of creative geniuses who
• 41:15
  dropped out of school and went into their garages and either formed a novana or some other
• 41:22
  great band or they did a Bill Gates and invented personal computers or whatever it might be
• 41:28
  and there are lots of cultures where nobody does wrote learning and nobody learns facts and memorizes
• 41:33
  things but they produce great music they produce great art why why why doesn't that disprove your
• 41:39
  correlation so if you you're thinking about facts in terms of names and dates which is absolutely
• 41:46
  an aspect of facts but think about music a fact for music is how do you hold the guitar how do I push
• 41:52
  this finger down how do I move my strumming hand there's a lot of different facts that aren't just
• 41:56
  memorize this bit of information so you'll find a lot of you're absolutely right you'll find a
• 42:01
  lot of geniuses that didn't go to school what you will never find anywhere in the world is a genius
• 42:06
  who hasn't spent at least eight to 12 years doing nothing but drilling training and practicing
• 42:11
  and locking down their skills that's that fact kind of part so go back to nirvana my favorite this
• 42:17
  is one of my favorite stories was Dave girl drummer for nirvana leaves nirvana goes into makes a
• 42:25
  few fighters picks up a guitar is like I never played a guitar before so I just played it like I
• 42:29
  play a drum and so that's how I came up with the song the strum for this song at which point his
• 42:35
  mother comes out and says you had a guitar when you were seven here's a picture of you playing a
• 42:40
  guitar when you were seven you have always been playing the guitar you weren't paying attention
• 42:44
  but it was always there and you were always drilling it and practicing musically and there's
• 42:49
  no magic to the system it's it's all work so I'm believe or not I'm working on a documentary right
• 42:54
  now on genius so that's why I'm I'm all over that field as well but what might not seem like
• 42:59
  facts to us is to them Picasso starts studying oil paintings at age nine or excuse me oil painting at
• 43:05
  age seven doesn't produce his first original what we'd call Picasso worked until he was 18 years old
• 43:11
  that's how much just drill drill lock it in get it down there is so there's a lot of practice there
• 43:17
  the the shift that I think we were talking about before is it's not learning stuff is bad
• 43:23
  and learning how to think is good those two are going to go hand to hand if while I'm teaching you
• 43:28
  stuff I'm also teaching you how to think that's when we're getting the bang for our buck when it comes
• 43:33
  to education right right but if I avoid teaching you stuff and I avoid teaching you how to think
• 43:38
  because I'm teaching you a skill that requires you to do basically neither of these things just
• 43:43
  produce work can you make a PowerPoint on the Civil War well yeah I don't have to learn anything
• 43:48
  about the Civil War to do that and I don't have to worry learn anything other than how do I open
• 43:52
  PowerPoint sweet it just narrows everything so dang much that you're left with really
• 43:57
  non transferable skills as you start to get older what if you need to make the PowerPoint about the
• 44:01
  Civil War without being connected to the internet you know we can have it ourselves now we have
• 44:07
  ourselves good about the what is it about the technology because presumably the proponents of
• 44:11
  education technology would agree well they may not but the person like me who was just an idiot
• 44:16
  about this might say yeah of course you need to learn stuff we don't want people we don't want to
• 44:20
  do people just be googling everything and just using AI for everything you got to learn the stuff
• 44:25
  but maybe the best way to learn is what they're not trying to do maybe the kids are trying to do that
• 44:31
  but but what I mean what I would say is why did if my son thinks that he learns more about
• 44:40
  snake reproduction and you know the way that black holes are formed by watching videos on a
• 44:49
  device about that then by learning it from a teacher or in a book what is the impediment what is
• 44:56
  not what am I missing there so now you can here's where we can start to really then get into
• 45:00
  mechanisms impediment number one is going to be your attention impediment is attention is everything
• 45:07
  when it comes to learning a memory where you set your attention that's where you learn how you
• 45:10
  sustain that attention that's how you learn when I am learning from say a book or a person or text
• 45:18
  book or I don't know what did wall hanging there's very little I can do besides that or nothing if I
• 45:25
  have a book I can either read it or not read it there's not much more I can do as soon as I shift
• 45:30
  that onto a device which allows me to access anything I want in the world you can imagine
• 45:37
  I'm now being pulled in myriad directions and yeah I I might really like this video of a snake
• 45:43
  but I'm just going to hit pause real quick and check my males oh and here's another video that's
• 45:46
  on the feet maybe they jump to that real fast when you start this jumping we call that multitasking
• 45:51
  that is hands down the worst thing you can do for learning impediment I don't even pull that punch
• 45:56
  as soon as you start multitasking you go slower your accuracy drops and your memory tanks
• 46:00
  significantly but your confidence goes way up what you think you just learned goes through the
• 46:06
  roof you're like I just nailed it I can do that I'm good right so impediment number one is the
• 46:12
  tool itself is designed to be a parallel processor the reason a computer is a computer is because
• 46:18
  it can do 15 things at once humans are not parallel processors we are serial we can only do one thing
• 46:23
  at a time but anytime I use this device I will start to think like it and I will start to use it
• 46:29
  to its capabilities so believe it or not watching a video about a snake is not a problem watching
• 46:35
  it on a screen cool watching it on a computer you are more apt to learn from the TV screen than
• 46:41
  the computer simply because there was nothing else you could do but watch it from the screen so the
• 46:46
  attention and the the idea that tech exists to do many things at once that already makes it an
• 46:53
  impediment to learning where I can't have you doing 10 things at once I only need you doing one
• 46:56
  thing at once but take it to the next level now okay so let's say I have a kid and he's just
• 47:02
  doing snake video but nothing else is closed it's a locked system now we're doing learning right
• 47:07
  not so fast the next level of learning or a key driver of the next level of learning is what's
• 47:13
  called empathy is so empathy what is it a lot of people think they have empathy like it's an
• 47:19
  emotion like I'm an empathetic person I'm you don't have empathy no one does I don't you don't
• 47:25
  nobody's got it empathy is not an emotion it is not a personal thing empathy is a trans
• 47:30
  personal emergent property so it sounds scary but it's simple think about magnets you got a north
• 47:36
  magnet you got a south magnet where is your magnetic field nowhere it doesn't exist in either of these
• 47:43
  but when you bring them together a magnetic field emerges as a new property it's not in either of
• 47:49
  the poles it is of their interaction empathy is the same way when two human beings begin to interact
• 47:55
  their biologies will start to synchronize their hearts will start to beat at the same time they will
• 48:01
  start to breathe simultaneously they will blink at the same moments if I could image their brains
• 48:06
  their brains start to look the same that is empathy believe it or not we can measure empathy it
• 48:11
  is synchrony between two pairs or more of biology I'm watching my snake video there is no way in heck
• 48:20
  I can develop empathy because there's nothing going on there's no other set of biology it's just
• 48:25
  me in a screen I can empathize with another human being if a teacher is telling me or showing me
• 48:31
  about a snake I can start to resonate and in that moment I am very much thinking like my teacher
• 48:36
  I'm no longer learning from her I'm thinking like her why does that matter go back to our
• 48:40
  exercises an empathetic relationship between a teacher and a student as an effect size on learning
• 48:45
  of 0.68 which is one of the higher things we've ever found which means we are biologically built to
• 48:51
  learn from other human beings we are not built to learn from screens we're not built to learn from
• 48:57
  believe it or not even reading stuff we're built to learn from each other and once we use that
• 49:04
  mechanism learning becomes so much easier screens eliminate that entire learning mechanism
• 49:10
  get a humans well if you've listened to this much of the episode then you must enjoy it
• 49:15
  presumably unless you're just listening from masochistic reasons so you should listen to the
• 49:19
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