The Subconscious Influence of the world:
I had thought of this quite long back, and now I stumble on a TED video (
David Brook's talk "Social Animal") that touches the fact.
We are constantly absorbing knowledge, at every moment. It doesn't have to be conscious. Every interaction with a person, every movie, every TV show, every internet video, we subconsciously absorb something.
[This is a very important point when it comes to education, these ridiculous never-ending lectures and solving sums on the black board are not the only way of learning (in fact it is pathetic), experiencing, thinking, being stimulated in so many ways could enable us to learn and appreciate subjects so much more. A far fetched dream in a vicious sadist system of course]
Anyway, back to what we were discussing.
These subconsciously learnt traits effect us in many ways.
A simple example to elaborate. I have been watching a lot of crime/murder related TV Shows and movies (Fascinating story lines and the love for thrillers and psychological thrillers). If I were kidnapped, and held at gunpoint and forced to blurt out an ingenious way to kill someone, my mind would automatically use the TV Shows as "experience" and probably come up with a way to do that (I'm already thinking of Ricin poisoning, takes hours to come in effect (Enough time to escape/cover tracks), difficult to trace).
At the end of the day this sub-conscience (very similar to "feelings") matters, because we use to reason/take decisions and lead life as driven by them. We aren't thinking of an optimal mathematical equation when taking decisions in life, we are trusting our so called "instincts" "gut feelings".
My teacher, Krishnaraj PM condemns the ideas of "gut feeling" in Engineering.
His famous quotes are:
"
One solution is no solution", - means there have to be choices, and each of them must be carefully/mathematically weighed (some procedures were elaborated in his Information System classes)
"
Ask questions until no further questions can be asked" - This is his obsessive design technique, he considers possibilities, permutations and combinations to deliver a software which are compliant with all the funky jargons in the true sense [Fault tolerant, Robust etc.]
I love these quotes, because if I apply them, I feel the gratification of having designed a well engineered solution - It's an art.
And my favorite quote that follows this is:
"
to raise programming to the level of art,
it is necessary that we encourage learners to solve problems on their own rather than forcing them to apply known solutions"
So learners should solve problems on their own, be creative - in a sense move with their sub-conscience.