Machine Learning versus Learning by Humans

Thanks. Glad to share it with you.

OK Sean. On "true knowledge".

Here's the picture coming to my mind. A forest, you are lost in it, dark, dense and maybe even a little interesting; that is, you've started to become interested in the flora and the foilage around you; but are at the same time moving on, in some direction, and sometimes you ask yourself...where are you going?

There aren't other people sharing this space with you, as this is like the space we find ourselves in when we are alone.

You meet someone now, who points to something, maybe on the trees; some kind of distinctive markings, and tells you ".. in case you're wondering if these trees ever end, then follow those markings. Go in the direction where they appear to increase, where you find more and more trees that have them."

You are in a quandry now, because you had started to develop a sense of your own direction. You're not very sure if it is a way out, but this sense has somehow come to you from these things you've been observing, things which started to interest you. And that is more or less, how you've been guiding your steps. You are asked now to disregard these things which intrigue you, and follow those other markings instead to come out of the forest.

Naturally, you want to know the reason why take someone's word for it that, 'just' these markings lead the way out.

If you like this metaphor, I'll carry on. I want to be sure there isn't anything else of real significance to you - that I'm missing.

Here's another picture. I hope it brings some clarity to the ideas I am attempting to convey.

Imagine a bunch of marbles bouncing energetically on some surface. They don't all have the same path as they bounce, and one can see after watching them a while that they have different energies, and they bound in different directions, some even showing unique traits of their own. All is of course within the bounds of what marbles can do.

Let's further imagine each has inscribed some of our names on it. Now to help me explain the concept I wish to put across, let me say, for this example, that the one with the most energy has your name, 'Sean' on it. So, as observers we all begin to notice that our marble 'Sean' is almost characteristically different. It bounces the highest, with seeming ease, it knocks other marbles off from their patterns, which is all fine because that is the nature of this marble game.

Now imagine we can ourselves 'hear' what each of these marbles is saying to itself. We as observers have the advantage of knowing that every action of this whole collection depends on the force they have picked up until this time. That is, none of their actions is truly random. And this we say with the certainity of our own knowledge of the physics of such phenomenon.

Moving to the next step, we start reading the minds of these marbles, which being more limited than ours, are more about their immediate experience. They have little knowledge of how they acquired the force from previous encounters. Follow along with me now, and tell me if what I read sounds plausible to you as well. Every jump Sean makes, he tallies in his mind. Every encounter he sees coming up, his face lights up and he puts himself entirely into delivering the soundest of blows. He is our favourite marble here, the most exciting one to watch and we applaud the skill he uses and his many capabilities, as a marble, to create so much action.

What although we begin in time to notice, since we can read his mind, that though entirely predictable to us, every time he launches himself, he thinks himself as drawing his energy and his direction from somewhere deep within. He seems as though to have little or no knowledge of the many energies he picked up during his lifetime; at various times, for being at a particular place, at a particular time. He does not see how the trajectory he finds himself on, which seems so appropriately to counter another marble's play, lies in the hands of the one whose hands he was flung from. This time the player chose him, at another, the player will pick another - for just these moves.

I so want to make a pun here about your losing your marbles, but politeness forbids it. That, btw, is an example of paralipsis.


Of course I have an awareness of what experiences and influences in my life have shaped my current beliefs. I just see no reason to go into them in most cases. For instance, in discussing, say, the arguments in an essay about abortion (a topic that rarely comes up here, praise whatever deity you believe in), I see no reason to explain how I came to embrace a pro-choice position, despite having, when I was in my undergrad, a very strongly pro-life position. The shift in my thinking would probably be interesting to my close friends who wanted to get to know me better, but it wouldn't be particularly interesting to random students trying to figure out the pro-choice/pro-life arguments for their essay.


You believe in determinism, then. What an interesting outlook to choose to believe in. :-)

What I believe in, as I mentioned earlier, is in Sanskrit; though parts of it may appear similar to "determinism".

I really wish you to relate with the rest as well. Aside from the slightest of jesting, all light heartedly intentioned in the two posts above, I was quite sincerely answering your question on the test of "true knowledge" - whether it stands up to empirical test or is simply faith. I wondered if all my metaphors conveyed their sense. The primary question in my mind being, whether you or anyone seeking such answers recognizes where he must begin. I think people are likely to brush aside that " space like when you are alone" as a temporary lapse in their mind. More so because it is accompanied by a sense almost like fear. But this moment, according to where I am coming from, is more real than our perceptions, and even our thoughts. And even further, this is where we cognize, and wherein lies the "reality" of things we "see" and "understand".

My sense is, you usually go through these posts too quickly to respond at the level I am talking with you.

If you are confident you do know what I mean, then surely that seemingly dark space is where we are all lost. Finding our way out should be, and actually is, our only desire.

I find many of your posts a bit obscure, actually. The past couple have been okay, but a lot of the original material deals with very abstract ideas. Usually,you should ground this sort of writing in concrete examples. So, when you talk about learning, instead of just going on about learning a subject and integrating ideas, you might give some concrete examples involving a particular subject (say, physics) and a particular concept (say, acceleration), and then talk about how one might pick up that concept by studying, say, videos of cars in motion.

Also, much of what you are writing edges into mysticism of some form or another, as when you write this: "So in this bed of conscience, characteristics come afloat on losing the physical coherence of a body, existing as a potential or many potentials, and no single identity." I don't know if this sentence actually says anything meaningful, but my suspicion is that it probably does not. Part of this may reflect your own issues with English (I'm almost certain you mean "consciousness" rather than "conscience," for example), but even allowing for those sort of errors, I am not certain what characteristics of consciousness you believe could exist without the physical coherence of a body, or what it is you think they have potential to do.

That said, many of your metaphors are quite well-written. I especially like the one with the marbles, and even the one before that, with the forest, was passable, although a tad less clear (what exactly is the goal of the person in the forest? To live in it? To escape it?) In any event, you should certainly keep on writing up your ideas down, as most of your writing shows a lot of promise.

Arguing or illustrating by means of metaphor is always tricky. That's because our responses to metaphors are very personal and our ability to see analogies depends on our own experiences and associations.

What I usually tell students who plan to argue or illustrate a point by means of metaphor or analogy is to test the analogy/metaphor with at least three people, ideally very different people. If even one of them just doesn't see the analogy/metaphor or does not find it compelling, then perhaps it is not safe to use that analogy or metaphor in a piece intended for a general readership, because some subset of readers is likely to just not get it. The more complex the idea and more extended the metaphor, the more room there is for misunderstanding.

Wow, that is superb advice, Simone!!

Yes, doing a pilot study for your use of a metaphor is a great idea! It's funny how something can seem to make sense to me, but then it turns out to be nonsense to everyone else!

Thanks a lot - I take it that you three did get the meaning as I intended to convey in the metaphors. I appreciate your comments nonetheless, and will be really happy to hear more of your thinking on all this written above.

Maya is the beguiler -- let me give her this gender as she often is represented in Indian philosophy, where she is also known as Prakriti, translated as nature in English. Her counterpart is Purusha, a male, and represents consciousness alone.

As it often happens in life, when a male and female meet, come closer, then decide on a life together, the female is very concerned with the life her man has lived until then; and also all his other tendencies. Now if they have come together with a sincere commitment to go through thick and thin, it is not enough for the female to only know what her man is, or weaknesses he has acted by, in the past. For them to live in harmony and for her to continously care for him and love him increasingly by the passing days, she has to tease out those tendencies in him which will make him act in ways detrimental to their conjugal life. In this sense, she becomes of a nature which is the complement of his.

The more sincere are her efforts and keener her own spirit to root out from their lives, his many wilder-ness-es, the more she knows will their life pass in stability and understanding together. So she plays out many roles; and more so in the earliest years of their lives together.

And he gives in to those impulses in himself and plays the part he is unable to keep himself from doing; and she, like some lioness crouched till then on the side, punishes him. Always letting him see clearly that he stands guilty by his own conscience, the laws he asked her to trust him by; so that now, she is really carrying out the purging he has not the discipline to do upon himself. The man may wish to revolt, give up their world together, and think of finding a life in the wilderness without her companionship and harmony; and sometimes he even may, but then she would have erred, and both are sorry with the outcome.