Stuff that inspire me

2022 / 02 / 21 | "...the ability to ask the right questions is probably the greatest talent one can have."

The Upright Thinker (Leonard Mlodinow, 2015)

... One of Köhler's experiments was especially telling. He nailed a banana to the ceiling and noted that the chimpanzees could learn to stack boxes in order to climb up and get it, but they seemed to have no knowledge pf the forces involved. For example, they would sometimes try to stack a box on its edge, or, if stones were placed on the floor so that the boxes toppled over, they would not think to remove the stones.

In tan updated version of the experiment, chimps and human children, aged three to five, were taught to stack L-shaped blocks to obtain a reward. Then weighted blocks were surreptitiously substituted for the originals; these toppled over when the chimps and children tried to stack them. The chimps persisted for a while, employing trial and error in failed attempts to earn the rewards--but they did not pause to examine the off-balance blocks. The human children also failed the revised task (it wasn't actually achievable), but they did not simply give up. They examined the blocks in an attempt to determine what the problem was. From an early age, we humans seek answers; we seek a theoretical understanding of our environment; we ask the question "Why?"