Sunday, October 28, 2007

The meta-effect

Alan Turing, the mathematician, and father of computer science, died trying to prove somethings are fundamentally unprovable[1].
Finally this long-awaited article comes to light. People who read it might actually think I am really crazy. But I will write it anyway. I don't actually know if this is an already-defined theory with another name or not, but I've been thinking in it for a while now.

The meta-effect happens in every day life, and in different ways, but we never notice it. I've been able only to know 2 instances of it, one of which only exists in the meta-effect itself.

I don't know how to start but through an example, and I have one example as said above. You learn how to sum 2 numbers. Your teacher taught you how to sum two numbers, and he had learned how to teach you how to add 2 numbers. The guy who taught him how to teach you how to add two numbers have learned that too! I don't actually care about any of these facts, only do notice that I can go for ever.

How do humans learn things ? How do humans learn how they learn things ? How people analyze how they learned about they learning things ? Common fields facing that particular effect are psychologists, sociologists and natural language programmers.

That meta-effect things needs a lot of studies to know its true nature. For example, to which level should we go ? Or can we know a level without the other ? At which level there is no more useful information ? Do we need to advance to another level ?

The most fascinating aspect of all that, is how human mind can elevate in meta-levels like that. Studying the effect of how human analyze how their mind are in a higher meta-level, lets call it: meta-cognition-level-2, for short MCL2. In my last article what I was speaking about is MCL2. While we analyze MCL2, we are elevating to MCL3. As a rule-of-thumb, when you give a level a name, say MCL(n), you are actually at level MCL(n+1). In MCL2 we talk at MCL1. And when we talk about MCL2, we are at MCL3.

Warning, the next is much more complex!

We talked about meta-effect in learning, or some topic. What if that topic was the meta-effect itself ?! There is meta-levels, in a single topic. Each level analyzes the level beneath it. But what about analyzing the meta-levels itself (like in differentiation in calculus*). Let's call that, meta-meta-effect. Is there is a single meta-meta-effect for all topics, or there is separate one for each topic, or there is both ? Is the former a higher (another kind) of meta-meta-effect ?

Generalization

If we give a thread of cognition stream the name m/l/t, where m is the differential meta-level, l is the ordinary meta-level, and t is the topic, where t* is applicable to all topics. Normal everyday talk or thinking is 0/0/t*. Some advanced experience of learning activities involving consideration of previous learning experiences, is 0/1/t*. M/L/T (big letters are free unbound variables, means applicable to anything) where M > 0 is only applicable when talking about meta-effect.

Well, I might go more analytical next post isA.

[1] http://bestdocumentaries.blogspot.com/2007/09/dangerous-knowledge-full-documentary.html
* Cool, this might lead to some new science called cognitive calculus :D

3 comments:

Mostafa Salem. said...

yasalam yasalam ...
aywa we ba3deeen ya3nyy
bos anna ha2olaak nase7a te7otaha 7ala2a fe wednaaak
lazem teroo7 le tabeb naafsyy dah doctor zay doctor el senan 3ady gedan
anna a3raf wa7ed sa7by kan zayaak keda bas el 7amdoleah tamam now

Mohammad Alaggan said...

tab doctor el senan 7ay7'la3ly ders, tab el doctor el nafsy dah 7ay3'la3ly eh :D borg men 3a2ly :D

Mostafa Salem. said...

taaaammam mant 3aref ahoo anta keed stafdt menel meta-effect anta be2et doctor nfsany kamn
belzabt keda anta hatro7lo hayshelk shewaya men el mo7` elly zayed 3andk 3shaan teb2a normal la2enaak masha2 allah 5555555 :D
3andaak wafraa fe el mo7` momken tedenii sandwish mo7` mgaanan we 3alehom me7`alel (leefft yeb2aa kewayes)