Using Your Brain —for a CHANGE

If you think that you need more data, you'll probably ask lots of questions. If the answers just contain raw data, they won't help you much, and you'll have to keep asking. The more answers you have, the less you will examine the questions you are asking. But if the answers help you organize the data you already have, it may help you to understand. That is what's often called "passive learning," someone who's always going, "Spoon–feed me." Other people can take in a large amount of data and organize it themselves without much help from outside. That's what's often called "active learning."

Now, Bill, I want you to try it the other way. Take what you originally understood and make it into a smaller, more distant, still picture and erase the sound track. . . . Bill: Now I'm tense and confused.

So now we could take anything you're sure of, and confuse the hell out of you. You're all laughing; you don't realize how useful that can be! Don't you know someone who is sure they understand something, and they don't? . . . and that false confidence gets them into a lot of trouble? A good dose of confusion could get them motivated to listen to people around them and gather some very useful information. Confusion and understanding are internal experiences. They don't necessarily have anything to do with the outside world. In fact, if you look around, there usually isn't much connection.

In order for Bill to have the experience he calls "understanding," he has to go through a process in which the information he has is represented as a large movie with a sound track. This happens randomly sometimes, and at other times other people may induce it. However, now that he knows how it works, he can deliberately engage that process whenever he is confused about something. If he hasn't got enough data, he may not come to full understanding; his movie may have gaps in it, or the sound track may fade out from time to time. But it will be the best representation for him of what he knows. Those gaps in the movie will indicate precisely where he needs to have more information. And whenever he's bored with what he already understands too well, he can confuse himself as a prelude to coming to some new and different understanding.

Now I want you all to take turns doing what I did with Bill. Pair up with someone you don't know, because that will make it easier.

1. Ask your partner to think of a) something he is confused about, and b) something similar he understands. Your partner is not allowed to tell you anything about the content.

2. Ask,"How are these two experiences different?" You don't care about how they're similar, only how one is different from the other,

3. When you have at least two differences, ask your partner to change confusion to be the same as understanding.

4. Test what you've done by asking if he understands what was previously confusing. If he understands, you're done. If he doesn't understand, back up to step 2) and find some more differences. Keep going until either he understands, or he has identified what specific lack of information is preventing full understanding. Keep in mind that no one ever totally understands anything. That's OK. It keeps life interesting. Take about fifteen minutes each. . . .

Most of you have probably noticed that your partner did something different inside than you do, in regard to the words "understanding" and "confusion." Let's first hear some of the differences you found, and then deal with any questions,

Man: My confusion is like a TV set with the vertical hold out of adjustment. The pictures keep rolling over so fast I can't see them. When I slowed it down and steadied it, it all made sense. But for my partner, confusion was a close panorama. So much was happening so close around her that she couldn't take it all in. She had to slow it down, and then physically back up and see it at a distance to understand it.

Man: My partner is a scientist. When he's confused, he just sees movies of things happening — what he calls "raw data." When he starts to understand, he sees little diagrams superimposed on the movies. These diagrams help him condense the events, and the movies get shorter and shorter until he gets what he calls a "moving still picture." It's a still picture with a superimposed diagram that indicates all the different ways that still picture can turn into a movie. That still picture sort of wiggles a little bit. It's very economical.

That's a great one. Do these make sense to the rest of you? We've got quite a variety already.

Woman: When I really understand something, I have five different clear pictures all at once, like a split–screen TV. When I'm confused I only have one picture, and it's fuzzy. But when my partner understands something it's always over here on her right side. Things she's confused about are in the center, and something she doesn't know anything about arc over on her left.