win wenger feed the loop

8/10/2019 Win Wenger Feed the Loop

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Approaches Toward Our Feed-the-Loop Model

and Theory of Hum an Development, Learning , Creativity and Genius

by Win Wenger, Ph.D.

Gorgeous, beautiful Mandelbrot sets, such as you and I, have as part ofour definition that we take in some part of our feedback into our ongoingevolution. Yet we're still stable, still recognizably the same system, butevolving. You and I are fractals, but we are standing in a landscape notmathematically dense and so not actualizing in fine-grain detail all thedifferent possibilities. We are outcroppings of the possibilities matrix:we choose, and the resulting difference is real.

In a changing world, living systems of any complexity, to survive for long,always have had to monitor and respond to how their surroundings arereacting to them and to their actions. Thus, all such surviving systemsbecomeand aresusceptible to feedback as behavioralreinforcement, known in psychology as the famous universal natural Lawof Effect: You get more of wh at you reinforce.

As organisms become more complex, more intelligent, one more andmore has to monitor one's own output behavior, to coordinate better

between goals or intentions and outcomes.

The more intelligent a system, the more complex are its actions whichmust be coordinated with its (often likewise complex) intentions. Thisfeedback-directly-from-output becomes ever more important.

In humans, this dimension appeared to reach critical mass about threemillion years ago, in developments of speech, of hands with opposablethumbs, of cross-torso lateral musculature (which allows dance), andeventually of the phenomenal human brain. In just speech alone: tonality,nuance, phraseology, sequence, timing, gesture, context, and subtlemarginally conscious side-associations became a rich tapestry waybeyond any formal analysis. And one offshoot of speech musicholds incredible and otherwise inexplicable power for us.

Environment is only a small, though essential, part of the feedback whichreaches us and shapes us. Nearly all of our feedback is from our ownoutputs, to the point where, contrasted to the usual models of teaching


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and learning, the reality is that such learning as does happen has to ridein on the output-feedback loop almost as on a carrier wave, rather than asa meaningful input in its own right.

Everything does still get in, but outside the focus of attention, and nearly

always goes to the unconscious. It usually takes some sort ofengagement with the loop before the datum gets attended to orconsciously learned.

Even without the clear and cogent findings to the same effect throughoutthe last century by Maria Montessori, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Omar K.Moore and Marion Diamondand even without what was earlier sodramatically demonstrated to us by the Socratics we are ledinescapably toward the Feed-the-Loop model, in which:

All complex systems in a changing world require feedback in orderto survive.

The more intelligent a system is, the more that feedback directlyfrom its own outputs becomes more important than even itsfeedback from the environment.

Nearly all learning and growth occur at that point in the loop wherewe are taking back in some of that feedback some portion ofwhat we've been putting out.

Such exterior-derived learning as occurs has to ride in through thatpoint on the loop as on a carrier wave modulating that feedback,

rather than directly in its own right.

Why have we needed such a model before we, as a society, begin finallyto see that what's taught in schools doesn't matter a bit; it's what' slearned in schools (and/or elsewhere) that matters!

We clearly have not learned as a society, or as educators, that ourbusiness is not really that of accounting for what's taught in a politicallyand bureaucratically determined curriculum; that, instead, we must indeedbe accountable for what's learned across such a curriculum. So little have

we learned that when our students fall unacceptably short onstandardized tests relating to that curriculum, we've moved even fartheraway from engaging the student's learning by trying to teach the tests,stripped even of any pretense of conveying the larger context of meaning,civilization, culture or career.


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Minimum requirement for survival in a changing world:

feedback from the environment.

Our schools are in the position of assuming that if the kid doesn't get whatwe are throwing at him so didactically, it's his fault and not the school's.Or if that seems too harsh, we spread the blame among parents,television, peer pressure, and environmental conditions. And budgets.Always budgets.

What we teach the student doesn't matter. What the student learns, does.Until WE learn that, we are going to continue to lose our children tounacceptable failure rates.

Complexity theory shows a defining condition of Mandelbrot sets andfractals of all kinds to be that of an evolving system which incorporates aportion of its own feedback into its evolvement. It is this adaptability whichmakes it possible for us to survive and to evolve, while conserving ourunique identities. Simply put, nothing less will do.

More about this rich loop model:

Make friends with this loop. It's not only a generalization about learning.

It's what enables YOU to survive. At the very least, notice that you can'teven sit in a chair without feedback telling you up and down and whereyour body parts are. That is how universal this model and physical laware, even if until now we had not conceptualized it.

Most current teaching assumes teachers should put information directlyin. But vir tual ly none of that teaching can b ecome learning unless i t


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r ides in on the feedback o f the learner 's own act ions as on a carr ier

wave.

Until now most human development models, and most therapies, haveseen matters in terms of putting in stimulus and interventions just as

teachers have seen matters as putting in information, in what can now beseen as a hopelessly static model of the learner, patient, person. Instead:Touch the flow. Build the flow. Feed the flow.

Build what's coming back in through the Action Point: Nearly all learningand growth occur at that singular point in this loop model where one istaking in and processing the feedback on what s/he has put out.

Nearly all actual learning and growth have been only incidental, becausewe hadn't conceptualized this model and learned to feed the flow.

What can we do now, directly, to build the flow of learning and growthcoming through the Action Point as feedback?

Consider: like with many other circuits, when you improve or inhibit thiscircuit at any point, you improve or inhibit that whole circuit, including theflow of what's reaching that crucial point of action for learning and growth.So.....

With complexity and intelligence, coordinating throughfeedback from one's own output

becomes much more important...


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...to the point where environment is only a small but

essential part of what's going on. Any external learninghas to ride in as on a carrier wave.

It's necessary for best results that these outputs be externalized intosome sort of definite action. Our immediate external sensory feedbacksare much more immediate than our internal feedbacks, and force a muchcloser relationship between the respective parts of the brain involved.

Once you see this whole Feed-the-Loop model, you can begin to asksome useful questions of it and get some useful answers answerswhich may be truly surprising in terms of how greatly can be improved thequantity and quality of flow through that point of action. With this model

before us, we can now usefully ask:

1. What are some ways to improve the learner's OUTput alongthat flow?And get a hundred answers, ANY ONE of which canimprove by several times what's coming back to that crucial point ofaction...one simple example of which is use ofDynamic Formatinthe CPS Techniques section of this website.

2. What are some ways to improve the feedback from theenvironment?And get back a hundred answers, ANY ONE ofwhich can improve by several times what's coming back to thatcrucial growth/learning-point. (Examples: Omar K. Moore and MariaMontessori....)

3. What are some ways to improve the feedback coming directlyfrom the output as such?And get many answers, ANY ONE ofwhich can improve by several times what's coming back to thatcrucial point of action, growth and learning. One of many, manypossible starting points is the"Mutual Lives"article, WinsightsNo.33. Another is a 1954 article by R.W. Peters, "The Effects ofChanges in Side-Tone Delay and Level upon the Rate of OralReading of Normal Speakers," inJournal of Speech and HearingDisorders, XIX.

4. What are some ways to improve the characteristics of the flowitself?And get many, many answers, ANY ONE of which canimprove by several times what's coming back to that cruciallearning-and-growth point of action?
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You can start with Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi's Flow: the Psychology ofOptimal Experience; or with rapid-flow processing and ProjectRenaissance's torrential-description methods; or with ProjectRenaissance's current efforts to assemble a scienceofIntermodulationin the Mindfield section of this website.

5. What are some ways to improve how one takes feedback inand re-integrates it into his or her own ongoing perception andsubsequent outputs?And get back many answers, ANY ONE ofwhich can several times improve what's coming around the flow.(Found, among other places, in Brain-Gym, in Psychegenics, inNLP, and in various Project Renaissance strategies....)

Putting together from the five questions

these many answers

If each of these hundreds of apparently useful answers is factoredtogether....

The development of these useful answers renders feasible a rathersubstantial improvement or increase in learning and in personal growth.

This Feed-the-Loopmodel itself is new, and nearly all of its developmentand application still lie ahead of it. Retrofitting the model with some

existing practices may also result in some improvement of results of thosepractices. Let's to it!
http://www.winwenger.com/intermod.htmhttp://www.winwenger.com/intermod.htmhttp://www.winwenger.com/intermod.htmhttp://www.winwenger.com/intermod.htm

win wenger feed the loop

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