It might come as a surprise to learn that the brain responds to training in much the same way as our muscles, even though most of us never think about it that way. Clear thinking, focus, creativity and good judgment are built through challenge, when the brain is asked to stretch beyond routine rather than run on autopilot. That slight mental discomfort is often the sign that the brain is actually being trained, a lot like that good workout burn in your muscles.
What someone thinks is basic can be novel to someone else. Calling something “Common knowledge” when someone tries to share what they think is interesting is kind of a dick move, it deters people from sharing AND asking questions — making it less common knowledge.
I’m not sure what I’m can say to that. Call me a bit of a dick if you like, I guess?
Taking on challenges helps us grow. That seems so utterly fundamental to the human experience that if it’s not common knowledge then we need to work to hammer it into the few remaining people able to grasp the concept.
I’m not trying to shutdown discussion, I’m giving my perspective as a point of reference and inviting others to provide context of what they’ve encountered. To me it seems self evident that doing stuff helps us grow and avoiding doing things sees us stagnate and atrophy.
It might well shutdown discussion, but if so that’s an unintended side effect. To turn it back on you though - this doesn’t feel like a discussion, it just feels like your response is goading me into an argument, which isn’t any better for discussion.
I’m opening a discussion about communication styles and how they, in turn, facillitate discussion.
I’m not a bot posting articles, I read them all. When I post something, I’m saying “I read this and I found it interesting.” I knew about neuroplasticity but hadn’t read about it from this perspective before, a scientist who explains basics of how and why and how to use that information.
Isn’t it important to re-examine ideas we think are self-evident? There are no inherent truths, after all. We all had to learn everything at one time or another.
Just imagine sharing an idea and the first response is something like “that’s obvious.”
Sure, but you and I are not humans sampled at random from across the globe. We’re here on the Fediverse and we’re literate to a fairly high level, amongst other limiting factors.
Of people that meet those criteria, which by definition all the people reading these comments do, I would expect it to be self evident. I wouldn’t say it if I was addressing a group of six year olds questioning as to why they have to learn about oxbow lakes!
What’s an oxbow lake?
An isolated body of water derived from a meandering river. It’s one of those things that never seems to come up outside geography lessons.
And yet I’d never heard that term in my life when geography was a significant portion of my anthropology courses. Luckily, I’m not opposed to asking questions even when a fact is framed as something six year olds should know. Most people just don’t say anything.
For instance, in a group of 100 people, 60 people clapping for you can make it seem like the whole room is on your side. You don’t hear the 40 who stay silent.
If you really want to get into it, there’s some interesting psychology around learning environments with applications across different industries. Basically, every single person has a unique background, strengths, weaknesses and gaps in their knowledge.
It wasn’t something six year olds should know, it was a comedic example of something that many people remember from geography lessons but have no idea why it was worth teaching. It comes up in British comedy from time to time because we were all taught it and can’t for the life of us tell you why.
I didn’t just choose it for comedy though, I chose it as an example of something that could be taught for the sake of challenging a young mind, despite it being fairly irrelevant on a factual level. I would not expect a small child to understand that implicitly and so would consider explaining it, should they be receptive to the idea.
I would not expect to have to explain “challenging your brain helps you” to someone on Lemmy because the context is different, to the point of it being realistically perceived as patronising by a significant proportion of likely readers.
So when I said “common knowledge” I meant in the sense of “anyone with a modicum of metacognition, of any age”.
Context is important and the amount I feel you’re expecting me to supply seems bizarrely huge. My messages are tailored to whoever I feel is likely to read them, based on my previous experience with a platform. I don’t expect to need to explain all the assumptions any more than I would when talking to other reasonably intelligent adults.
I’ve been talking to people on forums and the like for literal decades at this point and this level of explanation is a massive outlier, so I’m fairly sure it’s not me being a wee bit odd. I mean, I’m often a bit odd, just not in this particular interaction!
…that last sentence was in jest, in case even more context is needed. Sigh. Christ, given the criticism was that I was shutting down discussion it doesn’t seem to have worked!
My first response was five words. I wasn’t asking for context.
Luckily, we are willing to totaly replace people with AI, even if it is far inferior, it is not a fucking dick.
Oh man. Try one with the filters off, copy-paste the character bio into its persona for any irredeemable comic book villian, and enjoy the insults with every request. Loads of fun.
Then again, my kinks are indifference and haughty intellectualism so your milleage may vary.
I would, but I don’t like that kind of competition.
I’d argue its inability to be a dick is genuinely why it sucks. Its go-to behaviour is “yes, and” which is great for improv but not so much for critical input. Still, I suppose this means we’ve managed to make the role of Yes Man redundant!