I believe what is missed here is that the brain assimilate things outside of it (not in the physical sense of course). Use a hammer for some time and the brain start to dedicate some networks to simulate the hammer internally and to integrate the hammer as parte of your body. The brain starts using the hammer in the same way it uses your hand. It becomes part of what the higher level processes use to read from and to manifest into the world.

Nothing new here, this is called tool embodiment. A little time after assimilation, you stop consciously thinking about the tool. You are the hammer, the hammer is you.

So what is being missed here is that the brain operates on, well, mental constructs. Ideas and ways of thinking. But those are not the world or the brain, those are tools.

The higher level processes into your mind use ways of thinking the same way it uses the body. Its unconscious (because it has been doing this for enough time) and automatic. The brain just gets guided by the tools. It wants to hammer that nail.

So, what does it have to do with crossing the street and not being able to transmit this knowledge?

You can’t transmit the incorporation. You can describe how to do things, how to think about things, but you can’t reconnect other people’s neurons to establish a way of thinking or a tool as part of the brain image of the self. Yet.

You can’t teach a baby how to embody his spine. You can’t teach someone how to become his thoughts. But you can’t certainly guide then on the use and this usage will build the neural networks. Once established, they’ll get it.

When I was 17 I was hired by a startup to write a book. The end product was a complete disaster (don't hire a 17 year old to write a book, also don't enter into contracts with 17 year old high school students w/o informing parents.)

The book was on 3d modeling in Rhino 3d. I was really good at Rhino3d at that time, to the extent that using it felt like a natural extension of my hands. IMHO every other 3d modeling program has a trash UI compared to the absolutely amazing UI that Rhinoceros 3d has.

I had to learn how to translate my absolute love of Rhino3D onto a page and explain it to other people. It was hard. It made my brain work in ways it was not used to, but it was an incredibly valuable experience.

The only remaining copy of the book sits behind me on a bit rotted CDR.

I have had 3 types of math teachers in life. American teachers, who generally teach rules from a book according to a curriculum. Russian teachers, who have a passion and a love for the field and who teach how to intuitive the answer to math problems first before going all in on the formulas. And East Asian math teachers who show off the beauty of the equations themselves.

I had one math teacher who couldn't speak English. He didn't need to, he had an incredible ability to communicate math through pure equations. It was lovely, one of the best math classes I've ever had. Math was truly used as a universal language.

I had another teacher (Russian) who got so excited solving equations and explaining DiffEq that he'd break his chalk in half and he'd go diving under desks to pick up the pieces.

But it is artists who are some of the best at transmitting intuitive knowledge. They have centuries of best practices of how to train students to rewrite their brains to literally see the world differently. (And yes a lot of it does involve drawing boring still lives of fruit bowls! But, hey, it works)

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