This is more about how we humans learn and how we “learn how to learn” in comparison to what computers do to “learn how to learn” than it is about changing a light bulb, but bear with me.
A bulb burned out in our bedroom and I didn’t have any spares in the basement storage closet. So as I was about to start looking around the house for one that could be borrowed from a less used location and put in the bedroom fixture I had the distinct impression that there would be a bulb in an old lamp in the back storage room. I followed my intuition and there was an old floor lamp we hadn’t used in 3 and a half years. I reached in under the shade and sure enough there was an incandescent bulb.
I tested it in another wall lamp where I often read, it worked fine. But in my greater “wisdom,” (sarcastic tone) I decided to put the florescent curly shaped bulb from the wall lamp into the ceiling fixture of the bedroom. Ha! It didn’t fit. The fixture was enclosed by a small dome that was not large enough for a curly florescent bulb but would only allow the incandescent bulb that I had found immediately after checking the empty supply closet’s shelf.
This had happened while I had taken a break from puzzling over how to write about the concept of heuristic learning. I decided to walk about the house, check the dryer because it had buzzed at me, when I discovered the burnt out bulb in the bedroom and begin my intuitive adventure.
And previously, Webster’s Dictionary was helping me write by telling me:
heuristic |hyoōˈristik|adjective enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves : a “hands-on” or interactive heuristic approach to learning.• Computing proceeding to a solution by trial and error or by rules that are only loosely defined.
I conclude that there is an intuitive link we humans have that can lead us to solving a problem quickly and efficiently but we still have the free will to second guess ourselves, waste time, pursue the trial and error method. However since we do not have the lightning speed of a computer running through the trial and error method, it would be wise to accept that our rules for solving the problem can be “loosely defined” by what I will now call intuition.
Here’s your tip for the day:
Step one, while believing in intuition, intend to have an intuitive break by changing your action from puzzling over something and do something else instead.
Step two, enjoy doing that something else because it is allowing your intuition to work in the background without interference from your foreground conscious thought process.
Well, I’ve taken away a little more wisdom from this adventure in learning how to learn. Though I may revert to walking around in the dark guided only by my less wise personality’s free will, I intend in the future to go with the light first found.
By the way our classical Greek friends gave us the word heuristic from a root word that means “find.”