"The main trouble of the modern child in conceited parents." What, how and when to teach children
“Children have a huge variation in the speed of development. One at the age of 7 calmly goes to school, and the second one has to play at home for another 1.5 years. More than 40% of children have difficulty reading and writing by the end of grade 4.”
“Professions are disappearing. New unemployed will be engaged in creativity? Come on, they'll get drunk soon"
“People are like children, to whom it rushes from every iron: “You deserve it.” And she deserves a lotion to clean her nose - that's right, only she deserves it.
“If a child under 6, and preferably up to 3 years old, does not get into the right environment, it’s all over for him”
Tatyana Chernigovskaya: “Access to any information does not necessarily lead to the fact that we began to think better. We think we are getting worse. This is a profanation of working with knowledge, because it is easy to get it.
Tatyana Chernigovskaya: “The brain is not a sieve, nothing spills out of it”
“No two brains are the same, just as there are no identical fingerprints. Your life is written on the hemispheres, so you need to take care of them, do not beat your head against the wall, for example. New facts about how the brain works.
Tatyana Chernigovskaya: “Pumping yourself up on the topic “I must be successful” is a failed thing”
“We know for sure: a genius can only be born. But, having been born a genius, one may not become one. For example, if foolish parents or teachers are caught. These people pay dearly for their genius.”
Tatyana Chernigovskaya: “Why do we raise children as if they will have another life?”
“The last person I would like to hire is an excellent student who counts well, now everyone has computers for this. We do not understand this and live a postponed life.
Tatyana Chernigovskaya: “Alas, the brain has become fashionable, everyone wants to understand its work. But they can't"
“We believe that the kings of nature are the best on Earth and we will be like that. But our existence is not even a millisecond on the evolutionary scale, so there is nothing much to be proud of here. In fact, why do we need nature?
Tatyana Chernigovskaya: “If a person is completely confident in himself, he is mad and will be punished”
“Mature people understand their intuition, and mind and maturity are often not connected in any way. For example, what an infantile person takes for intuition may turn out to be a banal anxiety.
Tatyana Chernigovskaya: “Genius is a terrible pathology, but we cannot refuse it”
“The norm is strange, it is not clear why existing thing. Step to the right gives people with low intelligence, step to the left gives geniuses. We can't control the brain, and that's especially scary."
Tatyana Chernigovskaya: “People with independent thinking start having problems already at school”
The feeling that this crazy, crazy, crazy world is going even more crazy before our eyes is getting thicker all the time. This is connected primarily with the carriers of consciousness, homo sapiens. And a torn, contradictory picture of life as it is reflected in the brain of contemporaries. We are discussing the aggravated problems of the brain, the latest scientific fashion and the diseases of civilization of the 21st century with the largest Russian specialist in the field of the theory of consciousness, head of the Department of Convergence of Natural and humanities Petersburg state university Professor Tatyana Chernigovskaya. man, scientific interests which combine psychology, biology and semiotics.
- Tatyana Vladimirovna, what Dostoevsky called "the disease of consciousness" - is it the greatest human need or, perhaps, a curse?
- From which side to look. You can call it a test or a gift. If you are a spiritual person - one answer. If not, it's just the opposite.
— What are your fellow cognitive scientists busy and concerned about in the world today?
- Busy with different things. But world fashion is a bet on the brain. The huge project "BRAIN" is American. Giant money is given to decipher the mechanisms of the brain and its modeling. Here, let's say, we would be lucky and we would find out how the brain really works, how it manages to work. This could have implications on a civilizational scale. The means of communication would change, education, medicine, all technology would change - everything in general. Therefore, they do not spare money for this.
European project - "Human brain project". Also a lot of money. It involves best universities And scientific centers Worldwide.
These things don't happen by accident. Brain research is perhaps the most important right now. Even those who are engaged in any kind of war understand that electronics wins: whoever makes a more powerful high-speed system will win.
But brain research isn't necessarily negative—that's an alarmist position. First of all, they will bring a huge positive effect in medicine. This is the first thing: the magnitude of the disaster is enormous. Brain diseases are coming out on top in the world, already outplaying cardiovascular diseases and oncology. I used to allow myself a stupid joke: what will we do when most of the people inhabiting the Earth go crazy? I joked! This is already a very serious thing! American statistics show that half of the population is depressed. Strokes are getting younger. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's... how many autistic people! It's all about the brain.
Is there something in him that distinguishes between good and evil? A device that scans black and white?
“There is no scientific answer to that. I can answer semi-philosophically, semi-scientifically and start from the other end. It is important to understand how programmed we are. There has been a lot of talk about this topic lately. Well, this is how I was born, freak. But it's not my fault that I was born like that?! I will answer for the bazaar, but not for genetics.
Yes, it is ridiculous to underestimate the role of genes. Genetics is a powerful science, and it is becoming faster and faster, and the price of research is getting cheaper: before, say, deciphering the genome of an individual cost a million dollars, now it costs a thousand. And almost everyone can afford it. Genes are baggage that you are born with, but in order for it to play, it must be turned on ...
- And what does the button do?
Everything that happens to you! Where did you study, who are your parents, friends, teachers - experience, the outside world. So if we say: “But what do I have to do with it ?!” — this position is not only immoral, but also scientifically incorrect. Because we transfer responsibility for our actions to the brain tissue. If we start to look at life in this way, we need to close the shop altogether.
- if you believe American psychologist Philip Zimbardo, we don't know at all how we will behave in certain circumstances?
— It can be even tougher to say: we don’t know who we are at all. Not as humanity, not as a kind that inhabits the Earth, but each one is about himself. Are you sure you know yourself?
- Of course not!
What a world we have entered! And got there recently. Sometimes the impression that we are in a psychiatric hospital. The world is filled with terrible lies, and extremely stupid lies; you show a cup to a man, and he says that it is the Andromeda Nebula. And this is happening across multiple continents. The world has increased nervousness, anxiety, approaching the clinical. A lot of people live in border states.
- Our poor classics believed that Russian people in 200 years would become much better, but two centuries have passed, and we see that the complex becomes more elementary, the subtle becomes coarse, the intellectual becomes mass ...
- Yes it is. Although some studies show that IQ is rising. I believe that IQ is a complete moore, it only takes into account the ability to calculate in the broadest sense, and there are many types of intelligence. All the same, the supercomputer will have the highest IQ.
There are millions of neurons in our brain. Could it be that this subtlest engineering was created for some higher task?
— I would like to think so! But complexity in itself, complexity as such, does not yet guarantee self-awareness, reflection, the ability to evaluate oneself. Modern computers, carriers of artificial intelligence, thank God, do not yet possess any consciousness. But personally, I am very afraid that just the rapidly growing complexity of artificial intelligences at some point may cross a certain threshold, and then these, I dare say, creatures, will have an awareness of their strength.
- And then fantastic films-forecasts will come true literally?!
I don't see why not. There is a serious scientific question that I ask many colleagues. Here it is: Is consciousness a consequence of complexity? Is it possible to say that the brain, starting from primitive creatures on the planet, becoming infinitely more complex, comes to a certain threshold when consciousness arises? If so, there is no reason why the rapidly growing technologies in the field of artificial intelligence do not achieve this result.
But if it is an intellect resembling a human type, then this “being” must have some semblance of a body. Not necessarily a body, like ours, but at least sensors that give a variant of physicality. We are who we are because we have such a body. Now in the world this problem is called "embodiment", corporality. It is being seriously discussed. After all, there are a lot of our neighbors on the planet who hear and see other ranges, and the worlds in which they live are different for them.
You could ask a terrible question: what is the world like? So, I don't think anyone has an answer to this question. Except fools. In principle, there is no single picture of the world. We see only what is allowed to us by the Creator.
I once thought: maybe sit down and write a fantasy novel?.. It's a pity there's no time! But remember "Solaris" - this thinking broth; from the fact that we have not really met with such a person, only one thing follows: we have not yet met with this!
If you were to write a sci-fi novel, what plot would you choose?
- Of course, about intelligence! What could be more mysterious and interesting? By the way, we recently interviewed an American scientist who started a program to study extraterrestrial civilizations a long time ago. He said something that struck me: it is possible that the signals of extraterrestrial civilizations directly fly around us - we just do not have the tools that could catch and decipher them. In order to do this, you need to have a common code.
Or another "dangerous" topic - extrasensory abilities and telepathy. Only a fool would dispute their existence. And intuition, insights? We have no idea what it is. To stand in a pose and say that this is not the case is simply stupidity. But what to do about it? Methods modern science unsuitable. Because science necessarily implies three things: testability, repeatability and statistical validity. Let's say you got some facts, described them, published them in a serious scientific publication, and some Michael Dorfin from Guadeloupe should be able to repeat them and get the same result, you understand? The rules of the game are like this. And here we are talking about a single phenomenon that cannot be grasped in any way. What repetition is there in insight?!
- Levi Strauss, not the last intellectual of the 20th century, predicted, as you know, that the 21st century will either be a century of humanitarianism, or it will not exist at all. But here it is, the 21st century, has come, we have lived in it for 14 years, there are no signs so far that it is becoming humanitarian, but what is it becoming, the century of what sciences?
“Everything is moving towards artificial life, I would say so. The most fashionable idea is immortality. Hope for devices, artificial intelligences. There is a huge request for this from many, including those in power. And there are options. Not just to freeze your body and brain, but to transfer everything to a computer - that's the hit of the season!
- How is that?!
— And so! Create a powerful artificial neural network into which the contents of your entire brain will be transferred. It is not clear, however, at what point they are going to make this copy ... But your great-grandchildren, if they want, will press the button, and - please: the whole great-grandmother's life.
- Ai! But what about privacy, the secret of identity, after all?
- That's it. There are many unanswerable questions. And, it seems, it will be possible to make new perfect children. The eyes are blue or bright green, the legs are from the ears, IQ is 200. We will order everything and do it! This is me, of course, yelling. But I don't see any formal obstacles.
“But what kind of immortality do we seek when, if everything goes like this with education, we will soon be surrounded by crowds of Huns without any idea of grammar?
— Yes, how to organize education now is a huge problem. What should people be taught? Considering that every Google in your pocket, the number of "facts" is growing every day, and the excess of information wears out a person?
The question for a long time is not to accumulate knowledge, the question is to teach to think, to find information, to classify it, to teach to learn. In my opinion, the whole system should change in general. Not here, everywhere.
- You personally, Tatyana Vladimirovna, what are you doing now?
— I always deal with different things, but including the brain in connection with language: how does the brain manage to cope with such complex system like human language; deal with syntax, with words; what happens to people who simultaneously use different languages? By the way, this is a situation of extreme stress! Simultaneous interpreter - it's hard to imagine a more stressful job. Is that the rescuers during the tsunami. Switching from code to code is extremely fast, with predictions and predictions - interesting as a model of what the brain does.
Now we are researching the brain and creativity with the Human Brain Institute. What happens in the brain when a person creates? That's why I don't really believe in artificial intelligence and its capabilities: it is not clear that any of the supermachines has created something like Mozart, Beethoven or Pushkin.
- Naturally! There is no divine spark!
What happens in the brain when it makes a discovery? Is it going in a non-trivial way? Finding the perfect rhyme? In general, consciousness is the brain, and memory is the brain, and language is the same. Brodsky said that "poetry is the highest form of language, a special accelerator of consciousness and our species goal." That is, we, as a species, are able to do more than these iron bookkeepers who drive ones and zeros. We are doing something completely different… If tomorrow students will be taught just technical things (how to turn on such and such a device, what to get, where), then don’t expect anything good: consciousness is formed and develops from reading smart books, talking with smart people, listening to smart and lovely music.
What do you think about the generation of your students? What are they?
They are, of course, very capable. One is more capable than the other. Lots of talented young women. They are still somehow skillful: they drive jeeps, dress well, look good, go everywhere. Several of my younger co-workers have two kids and that doesn't stop them at all. scientific life. They took the children in an armful, went to London for a conference or to Italy to visit museums, where children feel at home. I am happy for them. They are independent, above all very competitive. They compete with the West, and with whomever you want, they receive grants.
They live their own lives, but we all live together. And if some work is going on, it goes on day and night. Nobody ever looks if it's a weekend or a vacation. Of course, we don’t like many things: the bureaucracy is terrible, all sorts of rubbish falls on us, but it’s like a payment. But we get money for Scientific research, we can buy very good equipment for ourselves - we understand what we are suffering for.
— Is the material situation favorable?
“I would say she is good. At least that's how it is with us. There are always different grants, not one or even two, but three or four, and all of them are large. We won a big grant from the Russian Science Foundation, which allows us to do a lot of things. This is equipment, and the opportunity to travel to various conferences, but also a salary. Naturally, the money that people receive from grants is more than what they receive from the state.
— What equipment helps you in your research?
— For example, we have a device that registers micro-eye movements, the so-called eye-tracker. They are really quite expensive if a good model. And we have a good model. From her, the students who just came, fresh, are now just in a rush. These devices allow you to record what is happening with your eyes, what they do, let's say, when they look at some image or read. This means you can keep track of where your attention is, what is causing you difficulty, where you are making mistakes, what is happening to your memory. A very powerful tool. There is a huge problem in the world right now with reading and writing. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of millions of dyslexics and dysgraphics. By the way, these are also brain disorders from the category of minimal dysfunctions. Violations are small, but sufficient to ruin a person's life. People with high intelligence who win, say, Olympiads in physics, or chemistry, or mathematics, have a solid A in Russian. And nothing can be done about it. They write terribly, read terribly, slowly, with great difficulty, skipping, returning. So these devices make it possible to see what happens to a person while reading, what is wrong. They also have applied benefits, because the results of the work provide methods that can be used to help people.
— You have always been avidly engaged in knowledge in different areas and disciplines. What secrets of this world seem to you the most significant today?
The brain is number one. I also don't understand what music is. Not in a banal sense, but in general, what is it - just from other spheres, something wonderful. And close to that is mathematics. I often pester mathematicians and physicists, asking the question: if people disappear from the planet, will mathematics remain? It confuses people. But I'm not deadlocked, I want an answer! Because mathematics is “a property of the world,” as Galileo said. He believed that "The Creator built the world in the language of mathematics." That everything is subject to mathematics ...
- If you had absolute power and could carry out any decision, what would you do for the good of earthlings?
What terrible questions you ask! I believe that if the spiritual life, which includes religion, art, literature - serious things that humanity has created during its difficult and not very long history - if earthlings do not have a close, serious attitude towards them, then, I think, not for long us to live on this planet. This is the most important thing in a person - the spiritual sphere, the only thing that other creatures do not seem to have.
Does that mean you need to reform your whole life?
- Substantial reformatting. The technocratic road is a dead end. My previous coffee maker that broke down was much simpler than the one I have now. Why should I study these buttons, waste my strength? You can also take a cezve, pour water into it, put coffee, put it on hot sand and sit quietly, look at the starry sky above your head. Kant told us everything...
I think we will pay the price for neglecting such things. If children at school are given a digest - summary Dostoevsky's novels, what is this? Dostoevsky's novels are not detective stories. They cannot be shortened, not a single letter can be removed from them. What educates the soul? complex literature. Complex art. But if a person looks at Leonardo's painting and does not understand what exactly is perfect in it, because his video camera captures the world even more accurately, then consciousness is disintegrating...
Doctor of Philology and Biology - the face and ambassador of modern science in St. Petersburg. Professor at St. Petersburg State University, she not only introduced psycholinguistics into curriculum, but also popularized this discipline, which studies the relationship of language, thinking and consciousness, for the shirnarmass. Only Tatyana Vladimirovna can so easily and simply talk about the principles of the brain - and this makes her both the most beloved lecturer at her native philological faculty and a welcome guest in the Pozner program on Channel One.
After your lectures, it is clear that the brain is impossible to comprehend. Therefore, allow me to ask you everyday questions? For example, how does your research experience help in everyday situations?
It seems to me that I have a strong intuition, because when I did not trust her, but acted as my rational brain told me, I made big mistakes. I know for sure: if the inner voice - this is without any mysticism, metaphorically - tells you not to do something, then it always turns out to be right. The major decisions of my life are of an intuitive sort. I don't calculate moves, although I know how to do it.
Mature people understand their intuition, but mind and maturity are often not connected in any way. For example, what an infantile person takes for intuition may turn out to be a banal anxiety.
It is important to listen carefully to your feelings. Even those who constantly speak in public, to the question: “Are you worried?” - almost always answer: "Yes, I'm worried." Many years ago, at a conference in Germany, I met the famous scientist Karl Pribram. To be honest, I was sure that this classic of neurophysiology had died long ago ... But he turned out to be not only alive, but an exceptionally cheerful, tanned man in a red sweater with another young wife. In the morning we had breakfast together, and one day I decided to ask him an important professional question, and he asked: “Tatyana, after my lecture! I'm terribly worried! Then I thought: I have to leave! If Pribram himself is worried before the performance, then everyone else needs to crawl into a hole and not open their mouths. Fact: a person of sound mind and solid memory is worried. If he is so distraught that he is completely confident in himself, then his nature will punish: he will forget something, lose the thread of reasoning, or miss the drive. Drive is a very important word. I cannot foresee whether the lecture will be successful, although I have great experience. I know with my liver what I’m going to tell, I can read under anesthesia, and sometimes the lecture doesn’t go at all - there is no drive. Sometimes such a complex topic that I myself do not know how to present it - but the thought flies, sparkles! I myself see how it sparkles - and everyone sees it! How does it come out?
You are so amazing in public that you have more acting than some actors.
I will answer you without cunning - there is no merit in this. Again, either it works or it doesn't. A real actor is trained, trained, this is professional for him - he pumps himself up with a role: this is how Smoktunovsky lived as Hamlet, did not go out of character at all. I can't do it and I don't need it. Glitter can turn on successfully - and this very much depends on who I'm talking to, on whether we have a common field. And if I don’t like something, there is no contact, then I start to get angry with myself. I don't outside world dissatisfied, but with herself: why agreed to the conversation?
It seems to me that you have such a quality that allows you to master anything - curiosity.
Absolutely right! I'm lazy, I'll tell you frankly. I only do what interests me. Otherwise, I turn into a terrible bitch. It's clear that I can do what I don't like - we all have to sometimes. But not in serious matters: not in science, not in an important conversation.
Is that why you chose a field where everything is constantly changing?
Yes! And it is interesting for me to teach, because I periodically refuse what I myself said two years ago. Listeners are having fun! Some go to lectures in Moscow and St. Petersburg from year to year: “You,” they say, “tell new things all the time!” I don't have a textbook, and probably I will never write one: in the morning I think one thing, and in the evening it turns out that all this is no longer true. I'm a real working scientist and I'm aware of everything that's going on. Recently, we thought that Neanderthals were not relatives to us, a dead branch, but it turned out that these genes are alive in modern people. Moreover, perhaps they spoke and even had rituals. All this completely changes our understanding of the history of Homo sapiens. Science is getting brand new information all the time.
Are we close to a global discovery that could change our lives?
Everyone is waiting for sensations, but no discoveries can be predicted. They happen on their own, including in a dream. You can walk in the woods or fry cutlets - and then you will be hit.
Most often this is what happens.
It only happens this way and nothing else! The opening cannot be done according to plan. True, there is a significant addition: they come to prepared minds. You see, the periodic table was not dreamed of by his cook. He worked on it for a long time, the brain continued to think, and it just “clicked” in a dream. I say this: Mendeleev's table was terribly tired of this story, and she decided to appear to him in all its glory.
That is, the discovery also chooses who to appear?
Even if these incredible data appear to a random person, which is impossible, he will not understand them! It's useless to show up. Everything requires preparation. As for sensations, although physics is not my area, the discovery of gravitational waves blows the roof: tricks with space and time begin there, completely dangerous. I am also terribly passionate about what is happening in genetics, I am terribly sorry that I am not an expert in this field. I admire how they learned to work with ancient material: five years ago it was almost impossible to examine the remains of people who died ten years ago, and now they are working on samples that are two hundred thousand years old. This changes everything drastically.
It turns out that now the main focus of scientists on who we are. What about inexplicable abilities?
I take such provocative topics calmly. Just because we don't know something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The trouble with people is that they think too much of themselves. With this I am completely in order: I do not consider myself too smart, although it is obvious that I am not a fool. And I have no illusions about the fact that I know a lot: the further, the more horror seizes me from the realization that I not only don’t know much, but also don’t understand something at all. When people ask me if there is telepathy, I answer that I fully admit it. If you see a person who looks with a satanic eye - and moves an object at least three millimeters, this is the end. All our knowledge of the laws of nature suggests that this cannot be. If this happened, we should exhale, go pray to Nikolai Ugodnik, knock over horseradish and eat a load of sour cream.
Are you a believer?
Yes, but not churched, I was baptized in traditional Orthodoxy in infancy. I take faith seriously. In any other religions, I do not see anything interesting for myself, except for the philosophical aspects.
Your parents are Leningrad scientists, faith in those years was quite a taboo topic. How did it happen that you got it?
Then everything happened secretly, there were no conversations on this topic in the family. I think this happened not without the influence of grandparents. I had a wonderful and touching grandmother. She did not live three months to a hundred years and was eight hundred times smarter than me.
How did you fit into our Procrustean education system with such vivacity?
Technically, it was like this: immediately after graduating from the department of English philology at the university, I started teaching, and I quickly became terribly bored. I can't even describe how much. Such melancholy took! I thought: Is this what I will spend my only life on? And she left. Not just from teaching, but in general from this area. I was already married then, came to my parents and told them that I was quitting my job and leaving for the Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry. They looked at me with such regret... It was difficult, I had to study sensory physiology, biophysics, bioacoustics. I passed the PhD without a specialized education: how does Shelley's poem fit into the biophysics exam?
Just like Walt Whitman, perhaps? That is, from the unbearably feminine realm of philology, you are a beauty ...
Beauty - and clever, you forgot! (Laughs.)
And smart, of course, you find yourself in a more male society.
In fact, there are many smart and beautiful women in the academic environment. I am often told that it is difficult for women, because men deliberately do not let them in - this is not entirely true. I have never encountered this. The difficulty is different. A man can afford the luxury of coming to work in a wrinkled jacket, a tattered sweater and a hangover.
Especially the Russian man.
Yes, and what to take from him: he proved such a formula that hold on! A woman should always look decent and dress. These are additional costs, mental and physical - to be in good shape all the time. You need to be a wife, a mother, cook dinners. For example, I love to cook. So I went to you and thought about a new version of onion soup, I will have to try it in the evening.
You once mentioned that you do not like psychotherapists, but is this also a way of knowing yourself?
If I do not need them, this does not mean at all that others do not need them: a lot of people cannot cope with themselves. It is known that in order not to be torn apart from the inside, you need to speak out. For this, there are confessors, girlfriends - and psychotherapists. A splinter, if it is not removed in time, will arrange blood poisoning. People who are silent and keep everything to themselves are not only at serious psychological or even psychiatric risk, but also at somatic risk. Any professional will agree with me: everything will start with a stomach ulcer. The body is one - both mind and body. By the way, many people think that I am a psychologist. And I have many friends and colleagues in this profession. But who I can’t stand is psychoanalysts. Here I join Nabokov, who did not even utter Freud's name, but called him nothing more than "this Viennese charlatan." I agree with him - he confused the head of mankind for a century.
How do you regulate yourself?
Nothing could be better than talking to interesting interlocutors, although in my relationship with close friends there is no manner to spread everything to each other. I like to look at the sea, mountains or forest - nature brings me to life. Conversations with myself do not help me, and rational analysis of situations does not console me. I already understand that somewhere it was necessary to act differently, but since everything has already happened, there is no point in reflecting - it turns out a vicious circle. I can analyze the situation and decide to behave in a certain way, and then in four seconds everything breaks down. This speaks of a serious thing: how much we are not masters of ourselves. A really frightening thought - who is really the boss in the house? There are too many of them: the genome, the psychosomatic type, a lot of other things, including receptors. I would like to know who is the decision maker? In general, no one knows anything about the subconscious, it is better to close this topic right away.
Do you analyze your dreams?
I can't remember them well. But I wake up in a certain state, and if there is an unpleasant sensation, this is where I need to be on my guard. Maybe you yourself have not yet caught the danger signal, but your brain has already caught it.
Can the brain boil?
Maybe! You need to listen to yourself. Sometimes it’s worth dropping things and going to Venice, taking a walk, not waiting for the brain to say: “Hi, my name is Alzheimer! Remember? Oh, don't you remember? I repeat ten more times. We would not like to finish the game, but it is not in our power. It is in our power to slow down the rate of change - people should work with their heads, this saves the brain. The more it is on, the longer it is saved. Natalya Bekhtereva wrote shortly before leaving for better world scientific work"Smart people live long." And when I look at the shelves with books, I even get angry: they will stand here, and I will go to the forefathers, without having read them all, because there is no time for this. I sincerely do not understand people who say that they are bored with life. How is that? There are so many films, books, music around - and what an incredible nature! If you are bored with life - you are a complete fool.
A fiction you are reading?
Certainly! This is the greatest joy for me. If I had the opportunity, I would lie on the couch and read Nabokov or Gogol. Here Major Kovalev looks into the water from the bridge and thinks: “Are there many fish running around there?” Only a genius could write that, a diamond in every sentence. Or Brodsky: the whole organism freezes with delight.
If you could right now get carte blanche from fate to master absolutely new area, what was that?
Music and maybe math. But I don't have any data for either. They require completely different brains. When you listen to Mahler or Brahms, it just blows your head. Geniuses. Genius can be predicted? No. It happens that a genius is not recognized, but in this case we will never know about it. Is it possible to build an education system in such a way that it gives the child maximum tools for discovering abilities? I see a problem: education will break up into elitist and ordinary, which will lead to social troubles. A good education will be very expensive and will lead to the absolute stratification of society.
But maybe that's the way it should be?
It's not liberal or democratic, but that's how life works, whether we like it or not. The bunny does not become an eagle.
The problem with a bunny is that he can put his whole life into becoming an eagle.
Then it's bad for him. It would be better for him to become the most beautiful, fluffy and nimble bunny.
That's what psychotherapists are for.
This is true. People have wrong attitudes, they think that, for example, a cook is worse than a conductor. This is not so: a brilliant chef will block all the conductors, I tell you as a gourmet. Comparing them is like sour and square - the question is incorrectly posed. Everyone is good in their place.
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THE SHOOT PLACE Bobrinsky Palace The mansion of the favorite of Catherine II Platon Zubov, built by the architect Luigi Ruska, was presented by Empress Maria Feodorovna in 1797 to the illegitimate brother of her husband Paul I, Count Alexei Bobrinsky. In the first half of the 19th century, the city estate of the Bobrinskys was one of the centers of the social life of St. Petersburg, where Alexander I and Nicholas I visited the uncle’s balls, and then his widow. Now the palace, the interiors of which have recently been restored, houses the faculty of St. Petersburg State University - the Smolny Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences. |
text: Ksenia Goshchitskaya
photo: Natalia Skvortsova
style: Roman Kanjaliev
makeup: Anna Krasnenkova
Thank you for your help in organizing the shooting St. Petersburg State University
We listen with our ears and we hear with our brains. We look with our eyes, but we see with our brain
What children need to be taught
When you receive a letter, are you sure that it was written by a person? What is one person, not 200?Well-known linguist and biologist Tatyana Chernigovskaya tells why computers, even with their superpowers, cannot replace our brain, what to teach modern children and how to survive in a non-human world.
Tatyana Chernigovskaya, Doctor of Science in Physiology and Theory of Language, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Education, Head of the Laboratory for Cognitive Research and the Department of Problems of Convergence in Natural Sciences and the Humanities, St. Petersburg State University:
The field I work in is called cognitive science. It is multidisciplinary - it includes psychology, linguistics, neurosciences, artificial intelligence and, of course, philosophy. We need philosophy not for beauty and not because every decent person should know who Descartes is, but because good philosopher thinks well and asks the right questions.
It is very important to have expensive equipment - this is the whole science, but if there is no brain that understands how to ask a question, a brain that understands what to do with this giant pile of data that we receive every second, then everything else is useless. I swear to you, because I face this every single day.
I was asked the question: “There are so many, how to remember all this?”. My answer is simple - no need to remember. What you need to remember - computers have already remembered. We should not remember, but understand. And in this regard, the tale of Little Red Riding Hood comes to mind. When she comes to her grandmother and sees a wolf there, she begins to ask: “Why do you need such big ears?”. "Grandma" replies: "To hear." "Why are your eyes so big?" - "To see." And this is about artificial intelligence in its simplest forms, namely: we will make ears that will be miraculously good, eyes that will be miraculously good. All this is great, but ears, eyes, noses, skin, all sensory systems are nothing more than windows and doors to the brain. We listen with our ears and we hear with our brains. We look with our eyes, but we see with our brains.
No wonder the world is now spending huge sums on brain research. American BRAIN, European and Asian programs - all of them include the best universities and the best intellectuals from different fields, not only from neuroscience. No one will give a single cent just like that, so why such gigantic money - both public and private? Because everyone understands: if at least in some doses (I assure you that we will never do this 100%), if at least somehow we manage to unravel what is happening in human brain, it will change our whole civilization: economy, communication, education - it will change everything.
And this is done not only to simulate the brain in artificial intelligence systems - the story is much simpler: we need to know who we are. We are who? We really depend on how our brain thinks. Therefore, the game is worth the candle.
For example, where did you get the idea that using big data, big data, you will predict my behavior? My behavior is not predicted by Descartes or Aristotle, by anyone. It can be hysterical. For example, Nobel laureate in economics, psychologist Daniel Kahneman described how a person makes decisions and concluded that decisions are made JUST. “And I’ll go like this, and that’s all - I want it because.” How are you going to predict this?
I have two favorite characters. The first is Schrödinger's cat. I think most remember that this is the hero of [physicist] Schrödinger's thought experiment, which boiled down to the fact that the cat is either alive or dead - depending on whether they look at it or not. This is a very important point for all the science that I do. And for science in general. After all, how is it arranged? It is believed that scientists are spectators who sit in the hall and look at the world. This is a very big mistake, because the audience is in the same place as the world, and they directly depend on it. And this means that there are no rigidly objective things. That is, of course they are, but I want to say that the same facts will mean different things depending on the context in which they are placed.
We say, “The world will change,” but the world has ALREADY changed, period. We live in a world that is radically different from what it was even five years ago - it is changing all the time. This is not to the fact that it evolves all the time, but to the fact that it is always different - depending on which side you look at it from, what your ideology is, what your scientific or life position is, and more on thousands of factors. He is not the same. This time. Two - it is transparent: everything is known about each of us, and this is unpleasant.
One more thing (and this requires philosophers, and I don't even know if we can handle this at all): is there still a person? I don’t even want to talk about social networks, but even if a letter just comes to you, are you sure that it [wrote] a person? Are you sure it's the same person? Are you sure it's one person and not 200?
Blurred the boundaries of personality, including ours with you. I'm wondering where I end up? My articles hang God knows where, in the clouds - a bunch of my data, a lot of functions that used to be in my head, now I have it in my laptop, tablet, phone, and so on. There is even a term distributed mind (“distributed brain”): that is, is it like ants, or what?
Moreover, we found ourselves in a situation… I singled out a new term for myself: the world has become “inhuman”. Devices that, as they say, almost control the world already, operate at speeds in which people do not live - these are nanospeeds. The dimensions in which a high-ranking civilization occurs are the dimensions in which humans do not live. These are nanoscale. We are in a world we don't know what to do with.
Therefore, the role of education is extremely important. I understand how trite this sounds, because everyone talks about it all the time. But we have to come up with something with education that will be different from what we did before. Perhaps children should be taught meta-skills: how to learn, how to keep attention, how to keep memory, how to deal with information flows, how not to be moved by the mind from all this.
And my second favorite character is Alice [Lewis Carroll]. Everyone knows her phrase that if you want to stay in place, you have to move very quickly. But it's not about running fast - because those we overtake are also running. You see, if we are catching up with Silicon Valley, or the US in general, or whatever, then this is a crazy step. I repeat: the rest are not lying on the stove at this time - they also run and they are skillful runners. You don't need to catch up at all - you have to run another way. Therefore, you need to look for other moves. This is exactly what our brain does, by the way.
I see a way out in what big companies are doing now. I kept thinking why they invite art critics, musicians, actors to their meetings. Well, not for a general banal education, so that people know who Vivaldi is.
It's not about that, it's about people of art have a different type of mental activity. They make those very other moves, these are not the moves of algorithms, they are very difficult to peep, because it is never explicit. This is already explicated in a work of art, and what he was doing while he was doing it, we do not know. It seems to me that the road is in this direction. published
Written based on Tatiana Chernigovskaya's speech at SPIEF, prepared by Polina Borisevich.
Our guest: Tatyana Chernigovskaya, Doctor of Biological and Philological Sciences, Professor of St. Petersburg State University, Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation.
Our world has never been so complex and information-rich. And the children who grow up in this world are completely different children. When I was writing my Ph.D. thesis, there was a question of where to get the literature. Now the question is how to get rid of it. Every day, dozens of good scientific articles are published in any field of knowledge, which are not something to comprehend - there is no time to read. It turns out that information is what is, what is not. You can't take advantage of it.
In this regard, it is not clear what to do with education. We cannot keep children in school for 16, 20 years. On the other hand, we cannot pretend that everything ended with Newton. Because after Newton there was a lot more. It turns out that we are deceiving children. Humanity already has far-reaching knowledge, but we do not talk about them to children. So we don't have to talk about everything. Somehow squeeze this knowledge. But how to squeeze, on what basis? No one knows.
The Unified State Examination is like elephants, dolphins and seals passing the “climb a tree” test. It is clear that they can not climb there. But we need to evaluate them objectively somehow! And Pushkin and Lermontov - if they were offered to take the exam, they would definitely fail. That does not negate their genius. Then why do we need this exam? What can he show?
A friend of mine once adapted an IQ test for a Russian-speaking audience. He gave me a diskette. I plug it into my computer, and she throws out a question for me: “A dress in the state of Texas costs - conditionally - $ 154.34, sales tax is 4.75. And in Iowa, the same dress costs so much. Where is the best place to buy a dress? I will not solve this problem, even if I am boiled in oil. Because I don't think well. But if in response to this the creators of the program say that I have a low intelligence, I will laugh maliciously. Because I know that I have a tall one, and, despite my natural modesty, I announce this publicly
Maybe there is no need to pump so much information into children at all. Why would they - conditionally - know the table of logarithms? Or when Napoleon married Josephine? Maybe it's better to Google it to find out in 1.5 seconds? But if we retreat to the other pole, we will have total dilettantes everywhere. They will know nothing but general ideas, which is also bad. I, for one, don't want to go to a surgeon who knows general ideas. I want to see a surgeon who knows anatomy well. Maybe then it is necessary to teach children to extract information? For example, we often tell our students, “Go to Google if you forgot how to make sauce. In general, this is not the place where serious information is sought. And we give a list of sites that we trust. It is necessary to teach metathings - where to get, where to look. Children must be taught to learn.
How to teach to classify and correctly pack information? I get articles about the brain all the time. Where to put them? On one computer I have a folder "Other", and on the second - "Other". And there, believe me, is a real dump, you can’t disassemble it. That is, I play a game with myself, as if I had saved it. It's still impossible to find anything.
The same thing is happening in our heads. The memory capacity of the brain is gigantic. You can watch all sorts of nonsense for 300 years, and still there will be enough space. But sorting it all out, and then finding, remembering is often very difficult, and sometimes impossible.
The ancient Greeks trained their memory in this way. They, going to bed, tried to remember the last day in great detail. What did they do when they woke up. Where did they go, whom did they meet, and so on. Very good way tested for centuries. In general, there are many of them.
Some, in order to remember something, love signs. Movement helps others. An additional factor is included: at that time I was jumping or riding a bicycle. And others, like me, when they need to figure out where it was written, they remember: “It was such a yellow little book. I also put a cup of coffee on it, and on that page my cup was imprinted! Ah, that's what was written there. I didn't promise anyone that I would memorize like a computer. As much as I can remember.
Forgetting, blackouts, breaks and sleep - not a hindrance in the possession of some material, but a help. They say: "He is distracted, so he cannot learn some material." Actually distracted - and thank God. In general, it is best to learn and go to bed. During sleep, the knowledge you received from the hippocampus passes into the frontal zones of the brain, from where you can then withdraw it.
I think everyone remembers situations when you really prepare for an exam, come in, pull out a ticket, you know exactly what you studied - and emptiness. You get a deuce, you come home, you go to bed in grief, you wake up in the morning. You did not learn anything the second time, but suddenly you know everything! Where was it? In the brain, you just could not get to this information. To get there, the brain needs to be given time and opportunity. Time is understandable. And the possibilities are to go to bed. Never study anything the night before an exam - sleep in!
If a child wants to lie upside down on the floor and devour kilograms of sweets, good luck. What difference does it make where he will learn something? Why does he have to sit right at the table? These are individual things. One needs music to work, the other does not need it.
In addition, the student must realize - is he learning this in order to pass the test tomorrow? Or to become a professional in this field? Or wants to show everyone how cool he is?
It is also very important to understand whether you are an owl or a lark. If I sit down to do something meaningful before 10 pm, it's a waste of time. I know people who get up at 5 am and work like crazy. But I can't do it, and I never will. Therefore, I often tell my students: the best thing we can do for ourselves is to get to know ourselves as early as possible. What am I? Do I love being on stage and I love applause, or do I like to sit in the corner and not be touched? Then I have to work in the archive. Why do I climb onto the stage? Why am I stressing myself out? Am I smart or stupid? Well, you can say that to yourself. Who I want to be? Maybe I want to be beautiful and smart - that's all. I want to be a wife, give birth to 18 children. I don't want to go to university. But I bake pies like no one else. It is necessary to decide - my goal is to wipe everyone's nose? This is one task. To advance in science, to be applauded, is another. Doing science because I'm terribly interested is the third. It depends on how we learn.
Learning changes the brain. The brain with which we came into this world, and the one with which each of us will leave it, is completely different structures. In the one with which we end our earthly life, our personal text is written, no one else has it. This text changes every millisecond. Everything we now say or listen to changes our brain physically. The quality and quantity of neurons and their connections are changing. Value nerve fibers and even the environment in which these neurons lie varies depending on what and how we learn.
The brain remembers everything that it passed by, that it tried, smelled, touched... The brain is not a sieve, nothing spills out of it. Therefore, one should not listen to bad music, read bad books, eat all sorts of nonsense, drink all sorts of rubbish. No need to communicate with bad people. It all remains in the brain, all this poison lies there. You simply do not know about him - for the time being.
Music lessons speed up and activate the brain. People who started singing and playing music early - they push their Alzheimer's aside. Because music, if you start doing it in early age It's a very intense workout. These longitudes, longitudes, accents - they improve the quality neural network make the brain more plastic
STRATEGIES FOR EDUCATION IN CHERNIGOV
* It is very useful to plan the process, dividing it into reasonable and feasible parts - by days, weeks and months.
* Change the environment, poses (why not lying down and not in a cafe), environment and accompaniment (music).
* Take 15-minute breaks to “stabilize” what you have learned (after it has been learned in concentration).
* Movement can improve memory (“body helps”).
* Verbally reproduce what you have learned to others or to yourself.
