Subject: Re: command line shells From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2001 23:14:28 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3216928466294716@naggum.net> * kaz@ashi.footprints.net (Kaz Kylheku) | Funny how some people have a one-shot trigger for accepting information. | Why is it that he didn't reject what his professor was saying? Is some | statement A more true than a statement B, simply because A was heard | before B? It appears that my current .signature applies a lot more than I thought. Indeed, many people believe the first statement they hear in some area, because there is no cognitive dissonance when there is no information in that area. When a later statement comes along that corrects a previous statement, it does create cognitive dissonance, and many people have never been taught how to deal with that feelilng, so they merely reject that which causes it, instead of examining it. According to the theory of cognitive dissonance, most people work hard to get rid of the feeling and completely fail to understand how it works or why they experience it. I have tended to believe that the ability to deal with this feeling in a productive manner is a mark of intelligence. | After a typical undergraduate program in computer science, it takes | several years of active research and thinking to expunge the bits of | misinformation you have been fed among the good information. Unfortunately for me, I started the process of expunging the junk before I had finished my studies. Working while studying to avoid student loans has the side effect of giving you real life experience prematurely. That can just _ruin_ an academic carreer. /// -- The past is not more important than the future, despite what your culture has taught you. Your future observations, conclusions, and beliefs are more important to you than those in your past ever will be. The world is changing so fast the balance between the past and the future has shifted.