In the last episode, we talked about learning how to learn, and so we provided people with
a few tools that they could use to try to learn information and remember that information
for a longer period of time¡ªthings like retrieval practice, interleaving, desirable
difficulties, more generally. Hopefully, people will be able to use those skills to be able
to help them improve their learning across the board when it comes to learning a new
language, a new skill like the guitar, or a sport, or even formal training like calculus
or computer programming or everyday thinking.
We're going to continue on that theme today in providing people with skills that they
can use in their everyday lives. We're going to be borrowing something from science, specifically
some of the tools that scientists use in the lab that we can use every day.
Yes, I agree. In fact, I don't think there's anything particularly special about what scientists
do in the lab. Yes, they're performing experiments; they're doing data analysis; they're using
statistics, but these are just formal ways of finding things out, of detecting strangeness,
of picking up whether something fishy is going on. Now what we do in our everyday lives,
we may not realize it, but we're actually using some of the tools of science as well,
but we use these informally; we use these intuitively. This idea came up in my conversation actually with Tom Gilovich.
Can you tell me about the intuitive scientist?
Sure. That's a metaphor that people have used to draw a parallel between what scientists
do, which is try to understand the world¡ªand there are some formal tools for doing that¡ªand
what scientists try to do professionally and of course we all try to do in our everyday
lives: to figure out the world around us. There a lot of similarities between what we
do as people in our everyday lives and what scientists do. In fact, science developed
out of the kinds of mental habits that we had. We, over time, recognized what the problems
are and what are the things that allow the most powerful conclusion. So it would be odd
if regular thinking was just radically different than scientific thinking. It's different but
there are some parallels between them.
We're trying, just like the scientist does, to identify: what are the phenomena out there?
Okay, there are the phenomena. Why are they that way? We ask why all the time. You know,
there used to be this beer commercial in the United States of, "Why ask why?" It's a brilliant
little tagline because by raising it, it's illustrated: we just do that all the time.
Something happens, and we just want to know why. That's what scientists do, and that's
what we do in our daily lives.
This idea of applying the formal tools of science to our everyday lives came up in my
conversation with Michael Brenner and Pia S?rensen, who are teaching another edX course
called Science and Cooking. Here's what they have to say.