It feels great to know someone--many caring someones--in your life cared and insisted that you do the right thing.
Parents and teachers asked that I read when I have questions
and that I figure things out the best I can
by searching for sources to parts of answers and
by learning to combine parts into higher level of organization partial wholes, and then again
do the same with these new parts, and
use chain inferences
and just find more questions to ask
and start all over again with answering the new questions.
Yesterday in class I realized along with my students how thankful we need to be.
They were laughing reading the news on #covfefe.
We figured that Charles Lindblom and Stephen Cohen were great with their book on Usable Knowledge. They coined the term "cognitive impairment" that essentially means that where you stand today depends a lot on where you've been coming from. A physicist will ask and answer physics questions of the world. An accountant accounting questions. A biologist biology questions. We have inherent biases that come from how we got where we are. Unless we acknowledge them it's generally hard to eliminate them and free ourselves of those anchors.
Then we figured:
It dawned on us why the current President of the United went to Brussels and asked everyone for back pay.
His dad took him to work since he was 14 or so. Their work was collecting rent.
That is what he's been doing since--collecting rent. The perception the President has on NATO is not one based on curiosity and a desire to learn how it works first. It is based on Lindblom and Cohen's cognitive impairment applied to the President. He is the rent collector in chief. Just as a physicist will see the world with the eyes of a physicist and an economist with the eyes of an economist or a parent through the eyes of a parent. The rent collector--without other factors enhancing the outlook of their path in life--sees the world as tenants who need to pay or be evicted or both and be sued as well.
Meanwhile my students have the curiosity to study, to ask meaningful questions, to go seek out complex answers, and to stay curious.
To want to learn new things about the world. Not just for the tests they need to take in life, but for their own fulfillment as curious human beings with the satisfaction of knowing more and more every day. Just because the more we learn the less we know.
Stay curious friends. You'll be richer than you can imagine. And wiser too.
Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.
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