From: Brad Jensen (brad.jensen@eufrates.com)
Date: Wed 14 Jan 2004 - 07:00:23 GMT
> I know of some words by artist Frank Zappa:
> "information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom,
> wisdom is not love, love is not music. music is the best".
That's a pretty funny idea, Zappa always was a comic.
Music is basically a virus operating in the
speech recognition centers of the brain.
We evolved these wonderful tonal filters and pattern matching
algorithms, and as part of the evolution, pleasurable responses
were programmed into paying attention to tone rhythm, and repetition.
I'll bet we could teach foreign languages much more quickly, even to
adults,
if we taught the speaker to sing the words and phrases - which in effect
is what native speakers do.
It's no wonder the popular songs are all reworkings of clichés.
Even instrumental melodies are activating those same centers.
(This is my crackpot theory number 17, but I expect it
to be validated in time.)
And if you want to learn a language, you need to hear yourself say it.
The more you do, the faster you will learn it.
> Does the final revelation bring to our discussion the power
> of emotions in communication? Is emotional communication like
> music powerful because of its psychological impressions or
> "imprinting", which are, in specific conditions like ones based
> less on concepts than in more complex meanings, prompted by
> personal experiences more than formal elaborations?
There's no question that our polity is driven by the 'sore toe'
effect wired into our brains, which is why we ignored the massive voter
fraud in Palm Beach County (you push a steel rod thru a deck of punched
cards,
through the hole for your candidate, invalidating votes for opposing
candidates.
You have to turn the cards in a little late (as happened in Palm Beach
County)
and the invalid vote percentages for the other candidates will be way
out of
line compared to other polling locations, but people are wired to look
for
hanging chads, not massive fraud.)
Science News reported on an experiment showing the sore toe effect
several months before the 2000 election.
It's only information when someone sees it, and information only occurs
in a conscious mind.
It would be more accurate to see information as a perceived deviation
from randomness, rather
Than a reduction of uncertainty.
Brad Jensen
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