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Temple Grandin Talk
Dec. 5th, 2018 02:23 amOn Monday, Professor Temple Grandin gave a talk at the Patent Office, and I viewed and heard it via livestream, from my office in the next building. I took an hour of annual leave, so I wasn’t cheating America’s taxpayers, or patent fee payers. She’s a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, and she is autistic.
She said that people need to touch in order to perceive. She designed a curving lane for cattle to walk through in an abattoir.
She said that education should include things like art, sewing, and cooking; playing musical instruments, woodworking, theater, welding, auto shop, and creative writing. These days, smart kids get babied, and become their label. She talked about brain variability: people are not all the same, and should not be forced into one mold.
What would happen to innovators like Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Albert Einstein in today’s schools? They would likely have been labeled autistic or ADHD, and drugged. What they and others did was to learn from books, learn by working hard; they had mentors; and they achieved career entry by internships.
Nobel prize winners are 50% more likely than other scientists to have an arts and crafts hobby.
She showed us a picture of a slaughterhouse facility, and asked what cattle notice. She said they would notice chains hanging down, yellow tape, etc., and these would make them nervous.
She had poor grades, except for biology and writing.
Different kinds of minds complement each other. Skilled trades call for visual thinkers. These days, visual thinkers are often in the basement playing video games, instead of learning craft work.
She devised an objective scoring system for meat plants: percent of animals rendered unconscious on the first attempt; percent 100% unconscious before further processing; percent vocalizing during handling; percent falling down during handling; and percent prodded with electric prods.
She said that we must see that educators don’t screen out different kinds of minds. Giving every kid a laptop doesn’t fix education! Children need to learn programming, and skilled trades.
She’s autistic, and commented that the mental health people keep changing the definitions of autism and other ways of not being in the middle of the bell curve. No one changes the definition of tuberculosis!
She is a visual thinker. She said that when she was growing up in the 1950’s, grandparents taught social rules and social skills. Grown ups corrected children.
She couldn’t have learned to drive on a busy road, but she worked on her aunt’s ranch, where the mailbox was three miles from the front door, so she got practice driving on a lane with no other cars for distractions.
She reminisced on how, as a child, she distinguished dogs from cats by size, and then a cat-sized dachshund made her revise her understanding, and distinguish by nose shape, the sound the animal made, etc. This is how artificial intelligence systems learn.
AI is an autistic brain in silicon.
Later, there was a book signing. By the time I came, her books were sold out, but she signed an inventor’s card for me. We talked for a minute or three; I told her that I had been diagnosed with Asperger’s, although by acquaintances, not mental health professionals, and that the Patent Office is a haven for high-IQ introverts. I also said I had read about her years ago in The Animals’ Agenda, and she said that had been many years before.
She said that people need to touch in order to perceive. She designed a curving lane for cattle to walk through in an abattoir.
She said that education should include things like art, sewing, and cooking; playing musical instruments, woodworking, theater, welding, auto shop, and creative writing. These days, smart kids get babied, and become their label. She talked about brain variability: people are not all the same, and should not be forced into one mold.
What would happen to innovators like Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Albert Einstein in today’s schools? They would likely have been labeled autistic or ADHD, and drugged. What they and others did was to learn from books, learn by working hard; they had mentors; and they achieved career entry by internships.
Nobel prize winners are 50% more likely than other scientists to have an arts and crafts hobby.
She showed us a picture of a slaughterhouse facility, and asked what cattle notice. She said they would notice chains hanging down, yellow tape, etc., and these would make them nervous.
She had poor grades, except for biology and writing.
Different kinds of minds complement each other. Skilled trades call for visual thinkers. These days, visual thinkers are often in the basement playing video games, instead of learning craft work.
She devised an objective scoring system for meat plants: percent of animals rendered unconscious on the first attempt; percent 100% unconscious before further processing; percent vocalizing during handling; percent falling down during handling; and percent prodded with electric prods.
She said that we must see that educators don’t screen out different kinds of minds. Giving every kid a laptop doesn’t fix education! Children need to learn programming, and skilled trades.
She’s autistic, and commented that the mental health people keep changing the definitions of autism and other ways of not being in the middle of the bell curve. No one changes the definition of tuberculosis!
She is a visual thinker. She said that when she was growing up in the 1950’s, grandparents taught social rules and social skills. Grown ups corrected children.
She couldn’t have learned to drive on a busy road, but she worked on her aunt’s ranch, where the mailbox was three miles from the front door, so she got practice driving on a lane with no other cars for distractions.
She reminisced on how, as a child, she distinguished dogs from cats by size, and then a cat-sized dachshund made her revise her understanding, and distinguish by nose shape, the sound the animal made, etc. This is how artificial intelligence systems learn.
AI is an autistic brain in silicon.
Later, there was a book signing. By the time I came, her books were sold out, but she signed an inventor’s card for me. We talked for a minute or three; I told her that I had been diagnosed with Asperger’s, although by acquaintances, not mental health professionals, and that the Patent Office is a haven for high-IQ introverts. I also said I had read about her years ago in The Animals’ Agenda, and she said that had been many years before.
