Puzzling activities

FROM: mclaren
TO: The new Alternative Wanking List
SUBJECT: Puzzling activities

What Carl Lumma thinks he accomplishes by making
posts on this discussiong group remains a mystery. Carl
does not produce microtonal music and consequently
Carl doesn't know what he's talking about. Carl is a nice
guy and he's very smart and he has a substantial store
of isolated facts in his head. None of this counts for diddly
when it comes to microtonal music, since music is one of
those activities in which you can only gain meaningful knowledge
by hands-on experience.
There exist many fields in which simple memorization of
facts or the ability to cleverly manipulate abstractions or
sheer charm count for a lot. For example, in various
fields of pure mathematics, the manipulation of abstractions
surpasses all other issues in importance. In certain other
areas, such as numismatism or philately (coin collecting
and stamp collecting), the ability to hold a stock of isolated
facts in your head counts for a great deal. And in salesmanship
and cult religions and politics, charm and charisma count for
quite a lot.
But when it comes to music, if you haven't got hands-on
experience you can't speak with any significance about the
subject. In this respect music proves similar to surgery or
automotive repair or currency trading on Wall Street. No matter
how much you think you "know" by absorbing isolated facts,
your so-called "knowledge" remains meaningless without
hands-on experience to back it up.
For this reason I have not read any of Carl Lumma's posts
since the third message he posted some time back. Until
Carl Lumma actually produces some microtonal music, I
don't intend to read any of Carl's posts, because without
hands-on experience to back them up, Carl's statements
are meaningless -- they are mere idle speculations floating
free of the earth, like so much swamp gas.
Why Carl Lumma continues to make posts remains a
mystery. Nothing Carl has to say proves of any significance
until and unless he gets some actual experience in the
subjects he's talking about, and all the people on this tuing
list who have created microtonal music know that. Does
Carl think he's going to impress anyone? How? Would
someone who memorized "Gray's Anatomy" impress a
group of surgeons by trying to argue with them about
what a liver is?
It doesn't make sense.
Carl Lumma nad Paul Erlich represent personality
types that our modern Western society produces in
great superlfuity. Highly intelligent people with a great
stock of declarative knowledge who nonetheless cannot
or do not actually accomplish anything in the field they
purport to demonstrate expertise in.
"...All this data and information that is so readily
available electronically today does not necessarily
make us better informed or wiser.
"That is beacuse data and information are merely
ingredients for knowledge, not knowledge itself.
Before they can become useful knowledge, they need
to be absorbed, classified, appropriately applied, then
related into other relevant data and information."
"(..) ...knolwedge does not necessarily lead
to wisdom. All of us have in our everyday lives run
across knolwedgeable, well-informed persons who seem
somehow unable to convert their knolwedge ito wisdom.
"The term `fuzzy-minded' describes that kind of person,
who appears to know just about everything, but who is
unable to apply this knowledge in any useful of practical
way." [Dileschneider, Robert L, "The Coming Age of
Content and Critical Thinking," in Vital Speeches of
the Day, July 1 2001, pg. 207]

The internet crawls with such people. These folks are
bright, articulate, armed with a vast store of isolated facts,
and they are totally unwable or unwilling to actually create
or produce anything out of all that intelligence and
loquacity and storehouse of factual knowledge.

This brings up the important distinction between
delcarative and procedural knowledge.
Cognitive psychologists over the last 70 years have
belatedly recognized that knowledge comes in two
varieties -- isolated facts (What is the capital of
Kansas?) and knolwedge of procedures (How do
you perform a kidney transplant?).
Knowledge of isolated facts can be obtained
relatively easily and quickly, while knowledge of how
to perform a procedure takes a very long time and a
great deal of time and effort to attain.
However, when it comes time to apply these 2
varieties of knowledge to the real world, declarative
knowledge (i.e., isolated facts) prove far more
difficult and take a lot more time and effort to draw
together and relate to the real world than procedural
knowledge.
A good example of this is memorizing the periodic
table of elements as opposed to learning the way
in which electron orbitals get filled. Learning how
electron orbitals get filled takes a long time, and
involves a lot of deep background knowledge
of chemistry and quantum mechanics and math
and so on. Memorizing the periodic table of
elements is a rote chore that can be accomplished
in much less time.
However, when it comes time to answer such
real-world questions as: "Which elements of the
periodic table form ionic bonds and which elements
form covalent bonds, and why?" the person who has
merely memorized the periodic table will find hi/rself
at sea.
By contrast, someone who has learnt how the
atomic orbitals get filled will be able to figure out
which elements form ionic bonds, and so on. From
these deducations you can make good guesses and
melting and boiling temperatures for the various
elements, band gaps, conductivity, and so on.
Another example of the difference between
declarative and procedural knowledge involves
someone who has emmorized the flight operations
manual for a 747 as opposed to someone who has
actually flown the aircraft. Which person would you
rather see sitting in the cockpit on your next transatlantic
flight?
Unfortuantely the internet thoroughly erases the
visible distinctions between people with declarative
knowledge and no prcoedural knowledge, and people
with actual procedural knowledge. In person, of course,
we instantly notice the difference -- the person with
procedural knoweldge typically does what s/he talks
about. A surgeon performs surgery, and may discuss
the operation while s/he is performing it -- but performing
the operation is the main thing. Talking about it is
entirely secondary.
Likewise, a microtonalist with genuine knowledge of
the subject composes microtonal music -- s/he may
discuss it afterwards, but that's secnodary....actually
making the music is the main thing.
On the internet, however, we cannot observe people
actually doing things. As a result the vital distinction
twixt declarative and procedural knowledge gets erased,
and there arises the serious problem of what Robert L. Parks
called "false symmetry" in his book "Voodoo Science."
"False symmetry" involves a situation in which someone
with genuine expertise in a subject gets sucked into a "debate"
(so-called) with a person who has no standing and no credentials
and no competence in the field. We often see this on the evening
news -- INVENTOR CREATES PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE!
The "inventor," who typically has no expertise in physics or
thermodynamics, makes various unsupported claims, and then
a reputable physicist gets interviewed to debunk the claims.
The problem here is that the TV viewer does not realize that
the physicist has genuine expertise, while the "invetor" is just
a charlatan (or best self-deluded). Instead, the TV viewer merely
sees two people -- one talking head making claims for 30
seconds with the caption INVENTOR under his face, and another
talking head making claims for 30 second with the caption
PHYSICIST under his face.
The TV viewer shrugs and says, "Well, gee, I guess there
must be something to that perptual motion technology, if
that Nobel-prize winning scientist had to debate him!"
The problem is that the unwary onlooker makes the mistake
of assuming that there is some kind of "debate" going on,
when in actual fact there is merely a person without credentials
and without competence whose false claims are being debunked
by a physicist with genuine expertise.
Competence doesn't show up visually on TV. And competence
also doesn't show up as text on the internet.
As a result, the intern and TV are both riddled with con artists
and poseurs, dillettanti and self-proclaimed "experts" whose actual
expertise consists of nothing more than the equivalent of reading
a 747 flight operations manual...rather than 5000 hours of hands-on
flight experience.
because of this chronic problem of "false symmetry" on the
internet (and on TV), both the internet and television abound with
people who give the illusion of expertise but in fact have none. This
makes TV and the internet absolutely lethal for people searching for
solid relaible knowledge -- particularly people who want to gain
*procedural knowledge* of a subject, as a opposed to mere isolated
facts (that is, declarative knowledge).
Many websites exist which catalogue some using sets of isolated
facts -- websites about the symptoms of various diseases, for example,
or websites giving the Morse Code for each letter of the alphabet,
etc.
But there exist no websites which convey solid reliable knowledge
on, say, how to perform a kidney transplant hands-on.
In the same way, there exist many websites which discuss the facts
surrounding Chopin etudes -- there there exists NO website which
conveys the hands-on knowledge of exactly how to play one.
The reason for this is that procedural knowledge -- genuine
expertise -- cannot be conveyed by words. It can only be gained by
hands-on experience in a dynamic real-world environment.
As a result, the internet is a potent means for destroying
procedural knowledge and replacing it with that useless substitute,
delcarative
knowledge.
This brings us to a comment John Starrett made severa days back.
He mentioned that it proved unexpectedly difficult to describe in
words exactly *how* he composed a piece of music.
This is the problem we face when we try to convey procedural
knowledge on the internet. It proves all but impossible. Procedural
knowledge is typically hands-on, context dependent, idiosyncratic,
intuitive, body-centric and non-verbal. By contrast, declarative
knowledge is typically abstract, independent of context, objective,
rational, left-brain-centric and entirely verbal.
The two forms of knowledge do not interchange easily. A person
can build up a lifetime of detailed expert procedural knowledge, but
may still not be able to verbalize it. In fact, procedural knolwedge
is often conveyed in s ocial setting non-verbally -- "Watch what I do
and imitate" seems a typical method, or in some cases the teacher
will actually do something "hands-on" with the student, placing the
student's hands or limbs. If you've ever seen a ballet class you'll
have seen this gong on constantly (one of my girlfriends used to
take ballet class) -- the teacher will typically say something like,
"No, like this" and actually move the student's arm or the student's
leg, or simply do it hi/rself: "See? LIike this."
If you were to sit in a ballet class with a computer and write
down verbatim the verbal instructions used by the abllet teacher and
post them on the internet, you woul get completely worthless
gibberish: "Yes, but more like this." "No, like this." "More over
here." "Yes, but more like that -- see?"
This is problem we face trying to convey knowledge about
microtonality on the internet. It is essentially a verbal transcript
of a ballet class.
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--mclaren