If a system is rich in diversity, it can respond to changes in its environment in a nuanced way. In agriculture, the practice of monoculture, or monocropping, can leave the enterprise as a whole quite susceptible to environmental insults, whereas the biodiversity associated with polyculture can result in a more resilient farm. Even if an environmental […]
When people hear things they think are simple, they rarely make a point of thinking about them. On the other hand, when people hear things that are seemingly complex or confusing at first, they may make a point of thinking about them. Maybe we are genetically predisposed to do this. After all, our minds have […]
Problems are instances of being stuck. “Problem solving” is supposedly what we’re doing when we’re getting unstuck. I teach a couple of courses on problem solving, and I can guarantee that “problem solving” is something that is neither easily taught, nor easily learned. The main reason this is so has to do with how our […]
We humans tend to use categories a lot, at least as adults. Having a category allows us to save space in our brain; it’s like a compression system. By “compression system,” I just mean that it takes less brainpower to remember “a number whose six digits are eights” than to remember “eight hundred eighty eight […]