Learning is fun!

I'd forgotten until my Digital Logic Tuesday morning the immense pleasure I obtain from lecture, on occasion.

The teacher, Dr. Singh, was explaining a method for designing a particular machine using some simple binary operations. It was very abstract and high level (i.e., right up my alley.)

It's probably somewhat gross psychologically, in that competition and therefore pride play a role. I catch on to abstract, numerate, or verbal things pretty quick. (Ah, the joys of unspecified scope in comparators. Quick relative to what population, Will?)

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Learning is delightful, and some folks don't believe that. How utterly tragic. Nothing is simpler or humbler than our capacity to learn from every situation. It is the root of social relations, prediction, abstraction--so much that I'm abashed to have begun a list.

Frank Herbert writes of Paul Muad'Dib in Dune that he never forgot that one can learn from every situation.

(The learning/growth distinction is one I'm still working on--feel free to throw a comment down if you think you can add light [or, I suppose, heat].)

(Learning is our dyadic relation with All, oneself and the world at large. Surely there is no more basic joy. If you can think of a counterexample, I'll ask Thomas to send you brownies.)