Alan Kay: A powerful idea about teaching ideas

Summary

This engaging talk explores the concepts of simplicity and complexity in education, science, and perception. It touches on how our brains misinterpret images and how children can grasp complex ideas when taught creatively. The speaker highlights examples of learning from mathematics to science, using hands-on approaches like computer simulations to illustrate abstract concepts. With insights from famous thinkers like Einstein and Shakespeare, the talk emphasizes that reality is a subjective hallucination shaped by our minds, and that true understanding requires shifting perspectives and challenging conventional education methods.

Takeaways

• 😀 Understanding simplicity and complexity depends on perspective; what seems simple to one might be complex to another.
• 🐶 Animals, like the speaker's dog Watson, may enjoy life simply, yet might miss deeper meanings, much like humans can be fooled in theater or magic shows.
• 🧠 Human perception is flawed, as we often perceive objects not as they are, but based on how our brains interpret them.
• 📏 Artists and scientists use measurement and precise observation to counter the brain's flawed perception, as highlighted by comparing two seemingly different table sizes.
• 🎨 The ability to see and understand the world has evolved through inventions like telescopes and microscopes, which expanded human knowledge by offering new perspectives.
• 🧩 Simplicity can reveal complexity; even simple portrayals, like Hans Rosling's Gapminder, convey profound data accurately without oversimplifying.
• 🔬 Visual representations, like molecular biology simulations, can sometimes oversimplify and fail to teach core scientific principles like molecular movement.
• 📐 Simplified mathematical proofs, such as Pythagoras' theorem, should be taught before diving into more complex versions to aid better understanding.
• 👶 Children can grasp complex ideas when taught creatively, as seen in a classroom where six-year-olds derived mathematical progressions intuitively.
• 💻 Technology, like educational software on low-cost laptops, can help children grasp fundamental concepts like variables and acceleration through interactive learning.

Q & A

What is the speaker's view on simplicity in relation to TED?

The speaker believes that understanding complex ideas can be presented in a simple way, as TED does, but notes that simplicity does not always capture the full complexity of a topic.

How does the speaker compare different perspectives on simplicity?

The speaker contrasts how a dog (like Watson) might find simplicity joyful but miss the point, while a sophisticated speaker like Hans Rosling finds complexity in simplicity, using his sword-swallowing act as an example of conveying complex ideas in an engaging way.

What role does illusion play in understanding the world, according to the speaker?

The speaker emphasizes that humans are often fooled by illusions, both in theater and in life. We enjoy being deceived in entertainment, but this tendency complicates our ability to accurately perceive reality.

What insight does the speaker provide about how the brain perceives images?

The speaker references Betty Edwards' teaching on how the brain perceives images by converting them into objects, which can distort what we actually see. This demonstrates a flawed perception that artists overcome through careful measurement.

What is the significance of the Talmudic quote 'We see things not as they are, but as we are'?

The speaker uses this quote to highlight the idea that our perception of reality is shaped by our own biases and perspectives, suggesting that reality itself might be more of a hallucination influenced by our internal states.

How does the speaker explain the use of 'brainlets' in human progress?

The speaker refers to 'brainlets' as powerful ideas and tools humans have invented, such as telescopes and microscopes, to help us perceive the world more accurately, driving significant progress in the last 400 years.

What does the speaker say about the complexity in teaching science?

The speaker criticizes simplistic portrayals of scientific concepts, like the molecular biology simulation, for failing to convey the chaotic, high-speed interactions between molecules, which are crucial for understanding cell functions.

How does the speaker use an example from kindergarten math to demonstrate a key teaching approach?

The speaker discusses a first-grade teacher who encouraged her students to discover mathematical patterns through creative projects, leading them to understand complex concepts like square numbers through hands-on activities.

What does the speaker suggest about how technology can aid in learning?

The speaker demonstrates how using interactive tools, such as drawing a car in educational software, can help children grasp difficult concepts like variables and acceleration through practical experimentation.

What final message does the speaker leave regarding education and children?

The speaker quotes Marshall McLuhan and Einstein to emphasize that children represent the future, and that while technology is advancing, there is a critical need for mentorship to ensure deep, meaningful education for future generations.

Outlines

00:00

🐕 Understanding Simplicity: TED, A.I., and Perspective

The speaker opens by comparing the simplicity and complexity of understanding situations like TED talks. Humans grasp the meaning effortlessly, while advanced A.I. would struggle, and a dog might find joy without comprehension. The speaker references Hans Rosling’s sword-swallowing performance, which illustrates the complexity faced by TED speakers. Shakespeare’s view of fools, artists' methods of perceiving reality, and the idea that we interpret the world as we are rather than as it is are discussed. The speaker emphasizes that understanding reality involves acknowledging flaws in perception, comparing reality to a waking dream.

05:11

🔄 Complexity in Simplicity and Emergence

The speaker dives into the concept of simplicity becoming complex when more actions are performed without thoughtful design. Referencing Murray Gell-Mann's talk, they discuss emergent properties in nature that arise from simple interactions of particles. The speaker praises Hans Rosling's ability to present complex data simply while critiquing a molecular biology simulation for oversimplifying the chaotic, probabilistic nature of molecular interactions. They argue that such simplifications can lead to misunderstanding, especially in science education.

10:14

👶 Learning Through Creation and Discovery

This section focuses on how children learn by doing. The speaker shares an anecdote about a teacher who has first graders create and study shapes, leading them to discover mathematical principles. One child, Lauren, noticed patterns in the number of tiles needed to expand shapes, leading her to a deeper understanding of square numbers. The lesson culminates in the realization that all shapes, regardless of form, follow the same growth law. This approach allows children to grasp advanced mathematical ideas through hands-on exploration and reflection.

15:18

🍏 Experimentation and Understanding Acceleration

The speaker shifts to discussing the importance of experimentation in understanding physical concepts. Children drop objects of varying weights and observe how they fall, leading to the discovery of acceleration. Galileo’s historical experiment on gravity is mentioned, noting how he approached it with childlike curiosity. The speaker emphasizes that students grasp acceleration through both direct observation and using tools like movies to analyze motion. This practical approach to science leads to a deeper, more accurate understanding of acceleration.

20:23

💡 Technology, Mentorship, and the Future

The final paragraph ties together the importance of mentorship, technology, and education for the future. The speaker quotes Marshall McLuhan, emphasizing that children are not just messengers but the future itself. They highlight the importance of supporting children’s education, especially through technology like the $100 laptop project, which aims to provide millions of children with access to learning tools. However, the speaker warns that without mentorship, technology alone won’t foster deep understanding. They conclude with Einstein’s reminder that simplicity is key, but oversimplification should be avoided.

Keywords

💡Simplicity

Simplicity in the video refers to the idea that complex concepts can be conveyed in a straightforward manner without losing essential meaning. The speaker reflects on the importance of making intricate ideas, like those in science or mathematics, more accessible and understandable. For instance, Hans Rosling's Gapminder is praised for simplifying complex data in a way that retains its significance.

💡Perspective

Perspective is the ability to view things from different angles, both literally and metaphorically. In the video, it is discussed as a critical tool for understanding the world, particularly in science and education. The speaker highlights how changing perspective, like through the use of telescopes or microscopes, allows humans to see the world differently, a key theme in how humans have advanced intellectually over the past 400 years.

💡Epistemology

Epistemology refers to the study of knowledge—how we know what we know. The speaker discusses the epistemological challenge humans face in understanding reality, noting that 'we see things not as they are, but as we are,' emphasizing how our perception of the world is shaped by internal biases and limitations.

💡Emergent properties

Emergent properties are complex traits or behaviors that arise from the interaction of simpler elements. Murray Gell-Mann’s concept of emergent properties, mentioned in the video, explains how simple materials can combine in non-obvious ways to create intricate systems, like those seen in nature or in scientific phenomena such as fractals.

💡Pythagorean theorem

The Pythagorean theorem is a fundamental principle in geometry about the relationship between the sides of a right triangle. The speaker uses it to illustrate how overly complex teaching methods can hinder understanding. By showing a simplified version of the theorem, closer to Pythagoras' original proof, the speaker emphasizes the importance of starting with clear, intuitive approaches in education.

💡Children and Learning

Children and their innate curiosity are central to the speaker’s message about education and learning. The video showcases examples of how young children, like six-year-old Lauren, can grasp complex mathematical concepts such as square numbers when they engage in creative and hands-on activities. This emphasizes the need for educational systems that encourage exploration and understanding from a young age.

💡Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is mentioned in the context of understanding complexity. The speaker humorously contrasts the capabilities of A.I. with those of a dog, suggesting that while humans can easily comprehend situations, advanced A.I. might find them confusing. This contrast highlights how A.I., despite its sophistication, can struggle with the nuanced understanding that humans or even animals possess.

💡Reality

Reality, as discussed in the video, is a constructed perception rather than an objective truth. The speaker delves into the idea that humans experience a 'waking dream' and that what we perceive as reality is influenced by our internal biases and limitations. This theme ties into the broader discussion of epistemology and the limitations of human perception.

💡Brainlets

Brainlets refer to 'little additional parts for our brain' in the form of tools or ideas that expand human understanding. These include sensory tools like telescopes or microscopes and intellectual frameworks that allow us to perceive the world in new ways. The speaker suggests that these brainlets have helped humans make more progress in the last 400 years than in the rest of history combined.

💡Acceleration

Acceleration is used in both scientific and educational contexts in the video. In one instance, children learn about acceleration through a hands-on experiment, measuring how an object falls faster over time. This is tied to a broader message about learning scientific concepts through exploration and experimentation, reinforcing the video’s theme of accessible education.

Highlights

Understanding why reality might not be as simple as it seems, and how our perception is shaped by our own cognitive limitations.

Artists, like scientists, measure carefully to overcome our brain's faulty perception of images.

The Talmud's observation: 'We see things not as they are, but as we are.'

The world is a waking dream, a hallucination, filtered by our own biases and limitations.

Over 400 years, human beings have invented 'brainlets'—tools like telescopes and microscopes to expand our understanding.

The importance of changing perspectives in making scientific progress.

Emergent properties as discussed by Murray Gell-Mann can simplify complex architectures.

Hans Rosling's Gapminder presents simplicity while maintaining the integrity of the data.

Molecular biology's true complexity, often missed in simplified educational models, was highlighted.

Six-year-old children discovering mathematical principles and equations through creative projects.

Using technology in education, such as creating models to simulate acceleration and variable control.

Children's natural ability to think scientifically, as demonstrated in simple experiments mimicking Galileo’s approach.

The challenge of scaling effective mentorship for children, especially in developing countries.

The need for a new kind of user interface that can help children go from basic technology usage to deeper understanding.

Einstein's reminder: 'Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.'

Transcripts

A great way to start, I think, with my view of simplicity

is to take a look at TED. Here you are, understanding why we're here,

what's going on with no difficulty at all.

The best A.I. in the planet would find it complex and confusing,

and my little dog Watson would find it simple and understandable

but would miss the point.

(Laughter)

He would have a great time.

And of course, if you're a speaker here, like Hans Rosling,

a speaker finds this complex, tricky. But in Hans Rosling's case,

he had a secret weapon yesterday,

literally, in his sword swallowing act.

And I must say, I thought of quite a few objects

that I might try to swallow today and finally gave up on,

but he just did it and that was a wonderful thing.

So Puck meant not only are we fools in the pejorative sense,

but that we're easily fooled. In fact, what Shakespeare

was pointing out is we go to the theater in order to be fooled,

so we're actually looking forward to it.

We go to magic shows in order to be fooled.

And this makes many things fun, but it makes it difficult to actually

get any kind of picture on the world we live in or on ourselves.

And our friend, Betty Edwards,

the "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" lady, shows these two tables

to her drawing class and says,

"The problem you have with learning to draw

is not that you can't move your hand,

but that the way your brain perceives images is faulty.

It's trying to perceive images into objects

rather than seeing what's there."

And to prove it, she says, "The exact size and shape of these tabletops

is the same, and I'm going to prove it to you."

She does this with cardboard, but since I have

an expensive computer here

I'll just rotate this little guy around and ...

Now having seen that -- and I've seen it hundreds of times,

because I use this in every talk I give -- I still can't see

that they're the same size and shape, and I doubt that you can either.

So what do artists do? Well, what artists do is to measure.

They measure very, very carefully.

And if you measure very, very carefully with a stiff arm and a straight edge,

you'll see that those two shapes are

exactly the same size.

And the Talmud saw this a long time ago, saying,

"We see things not as they are, but as we are."

I certainly would like to know what happened to the person

who had that insight back then,

if they actually followed it to its ultimate conclusion.

So if the world is not as it seems and we see things as we are,

then what we call reality is a kind of hallucination

happening inside here. It's a waking dream,

and understanding that that is what we actually exist in

is one of the biggest epistemological barriers in human history.

And what that means: "simple and understandable"

might not be actually simple or understandable,

and things we think are "complex" might be made simple and understandable.

Somehow we have to understand ourselves to get around our flaws.

We can think of ourselves as kind of a noisy channel.

The way I think of it is, we can't learn to see

until we admit we're blind.

Once you start down at this very humble level,

then you can start finding ways to see things.

And what's happened, over the last 400 years in particular,

is that human beings have invented "brainlets" --

little additional parts for our brain --

made out of powerful ideas that help us

see the world in different ways.

And these are in the form of sensory apparatus --

telescopes, microscopes -- reasoning apparatus --

various ways of thinking -- and, most importantly,

in the ability to change perspective on things.

I'll talk about that a little bit.

It's this change in perspective

on what it is we think we're perceiving

that has helped us make more progress in the last 400 years

than we have in the rest of human history.

And yet, it is not taught in any K through 12 curriculum in America that I'm aware of.

So one of the things that goes from simple to complex

is when we do more. We like more.

If we do more in a kind of a stupid way,

the simplicity gets complex

and, in fact, we can keep on doing it for a very long time.

But Murray Gell-Mann yesterday talked about emergent properties;

another name for them could be "architecture"

as a metaphor for taking the same old material

and thinking about non-obvious, non-simple ways of combining it.

And in fact, what Murray was talking about yesterday in the fractal beauty of nature --

of having the descriptions

at various levels be rather similar --

all goes down to the idea that the elementary particles

are both sticky and standoffish,

and they're in violent motion.

Those three things give rise to all the different levels

of what seem to be complexity in our world.

But how simple?

So, when I saw Roslings' Gapminder stuff a few years ago,

I just thought it was the greatest thing I'd seen

in conveying complex ideas simply.

But then I had a thought of, "Boy, maybe it's too simple."

And I put some effort in to try and check

to see how well these simple portrayals of trends over time

actually matched up with some ideas and investigations from the side,

and I found that they matched up very well.

So the Roslings have been able to do simplicity

without removing what's important about the data.

Whereas the film yesterday that we saw

of the simulation of the inside of a cell,

as a former molecular biologist, I didn't like that at all.

Not because it wasn't beautiful or anything,

but because it misses the thing that most students fail to understand

about molecular biology, and that is:

why is there any probability at all of two complex shapes

finding each other just the right way

so they combine together and be catalyzed?

And what we saw yesterday was

every reaction was fortuitous;

they just swooped in the air and bound, and something happened.

But in fact, those molecules are spinning at the rate of

about a million revolutions per second;

they're agitating back and forth their size every two nanoseconds;

they're completely crowded together, they're jammed,

they're bashing up against each other.

And if you don't understand that in your mental model of this stuff,

what happens inside of a cell seems completely mysterious and fortuitous,

and I think that's exactly the wrong image

for when you're trying to teach science.

So, another thing that we do is to confuse adult sophistication

with the actual understanding of some principle.

So a kid who's 14 in high school

gets this version of the Pythagorean theorem,

which is a truly subtle and interesting proof,

but in fact it's not a good way to start learning about mathematics.

So a more direct one, one that gives you more of the feeling of math,

is something closer to Pythagoras' own proof, which goes like this:

so here we have this triangle, and if we surround that C square with

three more triangles and we copy that,

notice that we can move those triangles down like this.

And that leaves two open areas that are kind of suspicious ...

and bingo. That is all you have to do.

And this kind of proof is the kind of proof

that you need to learn when you're learning mathematics

in order to get an idea of what it means

before you look into the, literally, 1,200 or 1,500 proofs

of Pythagoras' theorem that have been discovered.

Now let's go to young children.

This is a very unusual teacher

who was a kindergarten and first-grade teacher,

but was a natural mathematician.

So she was like that jazz musician friend you have who never studied music

but is a terrific musician;

she just had a feeling for math.

And here are her six-year-olds,

and she's got them making shapes out of a shape.

So they pick a shape they like -- like a diamond, or a square,

or a triangle, or a trapezoid -- and then they try and make

the next larger shape of that same shape, and the next larger shape.

You can see the trapezoids are a little challenging there.

And what this teacher did on every project

was to have the children act like first it was a creative arts project,

and then something like science.

So they had created these artifacts.

Now she had them look at them and do this ... laborious,

which I thought for a long time, until she explained to me was

to slow them down so they'll think.

So they're cutting out the little pieces of cardboard here

and pasting them up.

But the whole point of this thing is

for them to look at this chart and fill it out.

"What have you noticed about what you did?"

And so six-year-old Lauren there noticed that the first one took one,

and the second one took three more

and the total was four on that one,

the third one took five more and the total was nine on that one,

and then the next one.

She saw right away that the additional tiles that you had to add

around the edges was always going to grow by two,

so she was very confident about how she made those numbers there.

And she could see that these were the square numbers up until about six,

where she wasn't sure what six times six was

and what seven times seven was,

but then she was confident again.

So that's what Lauren did.

And then the teacher, Gillian Ishijima, had the kids

bring all of their projects up to the front of the room and put them on the floor,

and everybody went batshit: "Holy shit! They're the same!"

No matter what the shapes were, the growth law is the same.

And the mathematicians and scientists in the crowd

will recognize these two progressions

as a first-order discrete differential equation

and a second-order discrete differential equation,

derived by six-year-olds.

Well, that's pretty amazing.

That isn't what we usually try to teach six-year-olds.

So, let's take a look now at how we might use the computer for some of this.

And so the first idea here is

just to show you the kind of things that children do.

I'm using the software that we're putting on the $100 laptop.

So I'd like to draw a little car here --

I'll just do this very quickly -- and put a big tire on him.

And I get a little object here and I can look inside this object,

I'll call it a car. And here's a little behavior: car forward.

Each time I click it, car turn.

If I want to make a little script to do this over and over again,

I just drag these guys out and set them going.

And I can try steering the car here by ...

See the car turn by five here?

So what if I click this down to zero?

It goes straight. That's a big revelation for nine-year-olds.

Make it go in the other direction.

But of course, that's a little bit like kissing your sister

as far as driving a car,

so the kids want to do a steering wheel;

so they draw a steering wheel.

And we'll call this a wheel.

See this wheel's heading here?

If I turn this wheel, you can see that number over there going minus and positive.

That's kind of an invitation to pick up this name of

those numbers coming out there

and to just drop it into the script here,

and now I can steer the car with the steering wheel.

And it's interesting.

You know how much trouble the children have with variables,

but by learning it this way, in a situated fashion,

they never forget from this single trial

what a variable is and how to use it.

And we can reflect here the way Gillian Ishijima did.

So if you look at the little script here,

the speed is always going to be 30.

We're going to move the car according to that over and over again.

And I'm dropping a little dot for each one of these things;

they're evenly spaced because they're 30 apart.

And what if I do this progression that the six-year-olds did

of saying, "OK, I'm going to increase the speed by two each time,

and then I'm going to increase the distance by the speed each time?

What do I get there?"

We get a visual pattern of what these nine-year-olds called acceleration.

So how do the children do science?

(Video) Teacher: [Choose] objects that you think will fall to the Earth at the same time.

Student 1: Ooh, this is nice.

Teacher: Do not pay any attention

to what anybody else is doing.

Who's got the apple?

Alan Kay: They've got little stopwatches.

Student 2: What did you get? What did you get?

AK: Stopwatches aren't accurate enough.

Student 3: 0.99 seconds.

Teacher: So put "sponge ball" ...

Student 4l: [I decided to] do the shot put and the sponge ball

because they're two totally different weights,

and if you drop them at the same time,

maybe they'll drop at the same speed.

Teacher: Drop. Class: Whoa!

AK: So obviously, Aristotle never asked a child

about this particular point

because, of course, he didn't bother doing the experiment,

and neither did St. Thomas Aquinas.

And it was not until Galileo actually did it

that an adult thought like a child,

only 400 years ago.

We get one child like that about every classroom of 30 kids

who will actually cut straight to the chase.

Now, what if we want to look at this more closely?

We can take a movie of what's going on,

but even if we single stepped this movie,

it's tricky to see what's going on.

And so what we can do is we can lay out the frames side by side

or stack them up.

So when the children see this, they say, "Ah! Acceleration,"

remembering back four months when they did their cars sideways,

and they start measuring to find out what kind of acceleration it is.

So what I'm doing is measuring from the bottom of one image

to the bottom of the next image, about a fifth of a second later,

like that. And they're getting faster and faster each time,

and if I stack these guys up, then we see the differences; the increase

in the speed is constant.

And they say, "Oh, yeah. Constant acceleration.

We've done that already."

And how shall we look and verify that we actually have it?

So you can't tell much from just making the ball drop there,

but if we drop the ball and run the movie at the same time,

we can see that we have come up with an accurate physical model.

Galileo, by the way, did this very cleverly

by running a ball backwards down the strings of his lute.

I pulled out those apples to remind myself to tell you that

this is actually probably a Newton and the apple type story,

but it's a great story.

And I thought I would do just one thing

on the $100 laptop here just to prove that this stuff works here.

So once you have gravity, here's this --

increase the speed by something,

increase the ship's speed.

If I start the little game here that the kids have done,

it'll crash the space ship.

But if I oppose gravity, here we go ... Oops!

(Laughter)

One more.

Yeah, there we go. Yeah, OK?

I guess the best way to end this is with two quotes:

Marshall McLuhan said,

"Children are the messages that we send to the future,"

but in fact, if you think of it,

children are the future we send to the future.

Forget about messages;

children are the future,

and children in the first and second world

and, most especially, in the third world

need mentors.

And this summer, we're going to build five million of these $100 laptops,

and maybe 50 million next year.

But we couldn't create 1,000 new teachers this summer to save our life.

That means that we, once again, have a thing where we can put technology out,

but the mentoring that is required to go

from a simple new iChat instant messaging system

to something with depth is missing.

I believe this has to be done with a new kind of user interface,

and this new kind of user interface could be done

with an expenditure of about 100 million dollars.

It sounds like a lot, but it is literally 18 minutes of what we're spending in Iraq --

we're spending 8 billion dollars a month; 18 minutes is 100 million dollars --

so this is actually cheap.

And Einstein said,

"Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Thank you.