Michael Mitchell: Archive

I watched this video yesterday. About all I remember is electric vehicles lose power when it's extremely cold. I don't remember why or the solutions recommended, but I don't need to because I can always just rewatch the video or find another one or whatever. The only reason I watched it was I was curious if electric vehicles lose power when it's extremely cold, a possible fact I found very interesting which the title merely subsumes.

Now, while I learned what I wanted to learn, someone could criticize this approach to learning by saying it's inefficient or unappreciative, cavalier even, that I can't be sure I'll always have such convenient access to anything I need to learn, that I should make the most of the opportunity or privilege, but then, not only would my methods be impossible, there also wouldn't be anything I needed to know. Without the modern technology that makes the information I wanted so accessible I can safely ignore or forget most of the media I consume every day, there'd also be no information about electric vehicles to which I needed access.

As long as we know where it is when we need it, and can access it, how much knowledge do we really need to store in our brains? The value of this accessibility is obviously more than the information itself, but It's only wise, I think, to take advantage of this convenience if you also accept the responsibility. Information is not knowledge.

Most people on the Internet today grew up with access to it. Are we better or worse at retaining what we learn? It appears like we're better, smarter, due to the volume of information available, but anyone who existed before the Internet can see how bizarre it is what we know, things we couldn't possibly know without it, especially knowledge from direct experiences we've never personally experienced. If I actually had to maintain and rely on an electric vehicle, for instance, the information in the video below would not only be more useful and important to me, it would also be familiar, relatable more to my daily life, rather than mostly abstract facts I have to imagine myself potentially using in reality, if I don't simply memorize them with no regard for understanding them. It's a different form of learning. The way we've learned most of what we know is more the product of sharing than earning. (😁) And while I certainly agree it's immeasurably beneficial even to know something you're unsure if you'll ever find a practical application for, understanding when we don't fully understand what we know is more important now than ever before.

When I was growing up my elders constantly challenged my intelligence, by which I mean my ability to think, not the content of whatever they thought I thought I knew better than them. It was rarely you're wrong about this or that. It was mostly trite shit like "write what you know" or "you can't believe everything you read in books" or that I'd never be a good writer if I didn't get out an experience life! Etc. And I always took offense to it, of course, even before I knew what inference was, responding with shit like I'm not that kind of writer, the "naturalistic" kind. It was beyond annoying to me because they were guilty of the same mistake they were charging me with: facetiousness. It took a long time and a lot of research and introspection to understand their hypocrisy wasn't obvious, that the conflict was philosophical, that we simply had different concepts of writing and knowledge and thinking and even reality.