
Computational Thinking Benefits Society (2014) - sonabinu
http://socialissues.cs.toronto.edu/index.html%3Fp=279.html
======
unabst
Thinking is already computation. Computational is redundant.

We just need to incorporate what we've begun to understand through computer
science into our own common sense.

This is the correct approach, except, it is the only approach and is and will
happen anyway. It happened as we better understood objectivity and
subjectivity, as we understood mathematics and logic, and as we understood
science and factuality. With computers, it's abstractions and execution of
languages, expressions of logic, etc. The beauty of it is it's more relevant
to how we compute, so it's like understanding how we understand. And that's
the field of AI.

Give kids a computer and things to build, and they will naturally learn from
the experience. No need to bring up the term thinking, or science, or even
computers. We think, we learn, we understand. Saying we need to somehow do
these things is redundant. Encouraging more open source open hardware
computers in classrooms is what we need to be doing.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
There's a very important distinction between computation your brain can do,
and computation you can describe in words and communicate to other brains that
then do operations that follow the same rules. With the former, the only way
to verify, reproduce, or modify the thinking is to go to the brain that had
that thought and think it again. With the latter, you can look at the verbal
descriptions and can largely ignore which brain is thinking the thoughts.

That's the fundamental distinction. It's not that the thinking is more or less
computational. It's that the thinking can be put down in words as a
computation without great loss in fidelity.

~~~
unabst
> and computation you can describe in words and communicate to other brains

But we think in words. Thinking and speaking come from the same place, and
when we are thinking, most of it is us talking to ourselves. It's our inner
dialog. It's "communicating to other brains", where "other" is "our". The only
difference really is who it's directed to, whether we've voiced it or wrote it
down, and whether we self-censored some of it in the process.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
We use words to describe our thoughts. This is different than "thinking in
words" in subtle, yet important ways. There are ways of "just knowing", much
like you "just know" that three times four is twelve, or where to put your
hand to catch a thrown ball. Probably the most salient example is Eugene
Gendlin's "focusing". You can likely also access many of these through various
meditation disciplines.

There may also be a lot of personal variation in things. I know that I am very
much not on the "verbal thinking" side of brain design space - to the point
where thinking of things to say distracted my visual processing and made me
practically incapable of doing eye contact in conversations.

~~~
unabst
Yes, to be more precise, the expression would be "we articulate our thoughts
with words". Words are not equal to our thoughts, but they are the product,
and the interface, and used to represent, and treated as if they are it. So we
share our thoughts with words, not with "focusing" or "knowing". And we do
this even with ourselves. Notes to self are in words. We may start with
something else, but to be able to express whatever that "was" or "is" is where
words come in.

But why words are important here is also because we are talking about
computation. To reason, we need something to hold on to and reason with. We
need to be able to move things around and then feed back into our minds or
minds of others. This is the computation. And computation is done with
abstractions. Words are all abstractions. And abstractions are constructed
from experience. And that is how they all connect, and why words, even though
they may just be words, can be asserted as true or not true. But the truth
value of a statement can only be known by computation. Truth is the result of
computation which requires abstraction.

We could make the distinction between intentional computation and computation
done under the hood. Our brain does a lot of prep work before we even see
anything. But for the most part, when we say "thinking" it is safe to say we
are referring to the deliberate kind (or maybe not, and that is where we
aren't quite meeting eye to eye). The deliberate kind will conclude with words
to be shared and be computable.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Aside: from the sorts of internal experiences you seem to pay attention to,
I'd be extraordinarily surprised if you enjoy or are any good at dancing.

>Notes to self are in words.

I've planned things without ever using words, even to myself. I've done things
with only nonverbal thought driving my behavior. I have specific non-verbal
handles for these thoughts, although obviously they are hard to communicate
verbally. You don't need to be able to express them if you're capable of, you
know, just doing it.

>To reason, we need something to hold on to and reason with.

You can do this with visualizations, as well as other abstract non-verbal
structures. I can rotate shapes in my head, or non-verbally figure out a
mathematical proof and then go back and fill in the verbal steps.

~~~
unabst
"Non-verbal thought" is fine, but that's not the opposite of what I mean by
"thinking".

> I have specific non-verbal handles for these thoughts,

Right. But you have handles. Just assume by "words" I mean handles, and we're
talking the same language. You may not like my choice of words, but the reason
is that as long as we have handles, words are easy to come by. In fact,
they're just convenient labels. "I don't label" is no substitute for "I don't
think". But "I have nothing to label" is. By "non-verbal" you're not saying
you have nothing to label. You just don't bother with names.

> just doing it.

Right. But that's intended also to mean "without thinking about it" and that's
exactly how I was using the word "thinking".

I'm assuming you're considering the computation of dancing as a counterpoint
to my statements regarding words, but if we are to go that route, I would
consider the language dancers use. Different "moves" are clearly abstracted
and used to convey various emotions and inferences. At this point we have the
language of the dance. And most styles have a dictionary of moves. They then
practice so that those moves become second nature, so that they can just do
it, without thinking about it. But I would posit that the thinking is done
during practice, so that it's all baked into the output which would be the
performance.

I'm not good at dancing. You're right about that. (I do enjoy it though)

------
Everhusk
"Abstraction gives us the power to scale and deal with complexity".

Until things are abstracted to the point where the human brain has literally
no ability to understand what is actually going on. Other interesting
parallels to this post in this talk:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world?language=en)

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booleandilemma
I never imagined how much focus and fascination society would place on
computer science when I chose it as my major over a decade ago. There were
under 5 CS majors in my graduating class of hundreds of students. This has me
wondering about the future. What will be the next big thing with which we will
see articles claiming

"Soandso is the first president to do X"[0]?

or "...X will be a fundamental skill—just like reading, writing, and
arithmetic..."[1]

Are there any so-called fundamental skills left for us to discover?

[0]: [https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/12/10/president-
obama-f...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/12/10/president-obama-first-
president-write-line-code)

[1]:
[http://socialissues.cs.toronto.edu/index.html%3Fp=279.html](http://socialissues.cs.toronto.edu/index.html%3Fp=279.html)

~~~
Jtsummers
It's probably time for us to rediscover logic as a fundamental skill. But
that's a prerequisite or corequisite to computational thinking.

~~~
zingermc
Yes! Propositional logic and conditional/indirect proof strategies should be
taught before any kinds of "proofs" are taught to students (I'm looking at
you, trigonometry).

~~~
Jtsummers
Right. It's briefly introduced in geometry (or used to be) in the typical US
high school curriculum, but not thoroughly and not as a distinct concept from
geometry. It deserves its own sequence of material, and it should be applied
to multiple areas so students can see the value of it more easily.

When the only application is geometry, and they hate geometry, they won't care
about the "tool" being used.

~~~
ooqr
Aristotelian logic can and should be taught at the elementary school level.
Bring back the Socratic method while we're at it! And Euclid's Elements! The
Greeks contributed well to education.

------
js8
It would benefit society if people understood that people are not computers.

There are so many processes for humans that are based on assumptions that
humans have large and perfect memory, that there is no cognitive overhead in
task switching, and that humans can repeat the same task exactly over and
over. On the other hand, I also see foolish people who try to automate
processes designed for humans with computers, for example, manual entry of
data into database.

~~~
Jtsummers
Computers are any thing that computes. People are quite capable of computing.
To restrict the concept to machines (and only certain classes) makes it
difficult to talk about the fundamentals and models of computation.

~~~
js8
See - that's exactly what I point out in my other comment. It's perfectly
logical (or rational) to think of humans as computers, yet doing so in
practice is a terrible idea. You're basically advocating a certain model
because it is simple, disregarding that it is a bad model of reality. It's one
of the reasons why so much of economics really sucks.

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carapace
(Tiny thin grey sans-serif font!? What the point? Why bother writing an
article, why not just use lorem ipsum!? Do you hate my eyes?)

I think they're making a very important point, although the definition they
give of "computational thinking" is woeful.

~~~
neves
Try this bookmarklet:
[https://www.readability.com/bookmarklets](https://www.readability.com/bookmarklets)
It will allow you to read almost anything in the web.

Also you can use the "Article mode" of your favorite browser (like Firefox).
But, I don't know why, it doesn't always appear.

~~~
carapace
Cheers! I usually hit just F12 and turn off the offending CSS rules.

