Don't bother.

I need to give some credit to Drew Miller for this one. We were walking back from English on day last week and we started talking about the sounds of science videos we had watched that day (the octopus and similarities between length and time). We both thought that the octopus was pretty damn cool, but Drew decided, and I agree, that it is tougher for us to understand octopus than similarities between length and time (if that's not the correct title, I apologize). we figured that this is because the human brain understands linear relationships and ideas better than naturally occurring things, that is, the body of an octopus is not very linear, nor is say, the inner workings of the human body. We both found this pretty interesting since this idea of something being linear, measurable, or otherwise solved is a human idea that came about after human evolved the large brains we have come to love so well. I figure this adaptation to the linear must have been trained into the human brain over hundreds of years. Personally I figure it probably started at about the same time agriculture did, but I could be way off. What is the basis of linear thought though? In some senses I feel that its just a means to see the patterns of things in the natural world, those patterns build on each other and you end up with physics and calculus. If that is correct, than the human body certainly has pattern to its functionality. (patterns being something that can only be recognized after being seen repeated a few times. Otherwise its just a speculation). While humans are undoubtedly the most pattern obsessed creatures it seems to me that many other forms of life can recognize patterns. I think that Pavlov's dog is a good example of this. Indeed it seems that intelligence is judged by one's ability to learn and decipher patterns. Chimps are taught to count, numbers being yet another pattern, than they are put in front of a computer screen with numbers, say one through ten, on it. They get to look at it for a few seconds then the numbers go away and the chimp has to touch the blank squares on the screen where the numbers used to be, in order. Chimpy wins, chimpy gets a banana or a marshmallow or whatever, and most of them do it better than most humans too, which I find funny. In reality, I feel that our measures of "intelligence" are pretty absurd. These days I feel like its just another way for people to judge each other. As far as I can tell, intelligence is determined by two things, your grades, early in life, and your paycheck later in life. Grades are pretty nasty, everything you do is rated. I feel like in a lot of cases its just a way for the education system to force their ideas on you, tell you what is "correct" as they see it. In the best cases grades are used in the hopes to get students to improve themselves, but I have found said cases to be rare indeed. Then there is standardized testing, which is just wonderful. For those of you who don't know, that's where they line you up like robots and compare you to everyone else. If you don't function the way you're "supposed" to, well they don't kill you, yet, they just sort of pretend you don't exist. They are plenty of people out there, though, that are more than willing to "fix" you for a few bucks. What good does being able to regurgitate all your knowledge onto some damn scantron? Then you get older and if you manage to get a high paying job, people will think you are smart. If you end up doing what you actually want to do, despite a lower paycheck, society will most likely consider you a failure on some level. "look at him, he only owns one car, he must have done poorly an his SATs, quick kids, study study study, in fact why not just have schools teach soloey how to take this test, that will surely lead to success and intelligence." Washington had this problem with the WASL, but I think we got rid of it, not that the same problems don't occur with the SAT. Most highschool students pay extra to take prep classes for the SAT and the ACT... should that really be nessecary? Not that I'm saying I know a better way to run it, I think I'm more for abolishing it completely. Can't we just accredit our various education institutions and let the diploma's speak for themselves? I'll accept the current grading system as the lesser of two evils here; just that teachers should be wise about how they grade things, and not base classes on a few silly tests. than we're just back to the whole standardization process. So somewhere down the line, I guess this turned into quite a rant, and got way off topic from class. oh well.