124 Teaching Minds

124 Teaching Minds repeated exposure and analysis. It always involves a lot of talking. And therein lies the problem. Since appreciation and enjoyment are sub- conscious processes, it stands to reason that these processes are best addressed by a methodology that is less conscious. Telling me why I should like something is not likely to do much more than teach me how to talk about something as if I liked it. I can point out the finer points of baseball to you, but if you don’t care, I won’t be able to get you to go to the next baseball game. On the other hand, of course, you certainly won’t like baseball if you have never seen it played. Exposure is the key to teaching subcon- scious processes. Add to that an enjoyable atmosphere surrounding the experience, especially if it is early on in one’s life, associated with the artistry you want to teach, and it is likely that the learner will learn to like whatever he is being exposed to. So, evaluation, which starts out as a subconscious process, must be taught by enabling copying and repeated practice, but cannot easily be taught verbally. HOW TO TEACH DIAGNOSIS Diagnosis is the same and it is different. Many different people do di- agnosis under many different circumstances. But, the process is always the same. So it seems normal to ask why an expert in doing diagno- sis in one area cannot do diagnosis nearly as well in another area of knowledge. Why can’t a doctor fix his own car? Why can’t a detective figure out why a business is failing? It is all diagnosis after all. Diagnosis is best taught early on but it can be taught at any age. In the end, it is just about knowing what counts as evidence and how to create and rule out hypotheses. The general process of gathering evidence and testing hypotheses is the same no matter what you are doing. This is true in principle, of course, not in actual fact. In reality, doctors cannot rule out hypotheses by tests that might harm the pa- tient. Businesspeople cannot rule out hypotheses by running control businesses that may lose money while others make money. Detectives cannot spoil a crime scene by altering the evidence. Mechanics cannot try something that might make things worse. Investors cannot control world events that might make a seemingly correct hypothesis still not work out all that well. To teach diagnosis, simple problems can be worked on that lead to more complex problems. What is being taught, apart from the process HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023870