105: Sugata Mitra | How Learning Emerges Naturally Through Self-Organizing Systems - Self Directed

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Cecilie Conrad (00:00):
Well, we happen to be in our home country,
denmark, and there is nosunshine, and we have not seen
sunshine for a long time.

Sugata Mitra (00:10):
Oh, I'm very happy to hear that.

I think this country is slightly worse than
England, but we have less mudbecause it's cold.

So I don't know if there's you know weather-wise
any place that's worse thanEngland.

Jesper Conrad (00:35):
We spend almost four months in England this
summer when we take the tunnel.
We call it the weather tunnel.

Yeah, okay, we go from sunny, sunny,
wonderfully plants to rain andthen you come out and there's
this curtain of water fallingyeah, but you know there is a
scottish saying which I'm veryfond of.

The scots say there is nothing called bad
weather.

It's all got to do with bad clothing yeah, I've
heard that before the day saythat, but I will say I disagree
so do I.

I mean, what do you do, for example, with the
tip of your nose?
But let's start the podcastofficially give me a very quick
brief please, which is awonderfully form of education if
you choose school.

But our second child said to us it wasn't right
for him, which have sent usdown a path of now 13 plus years
of exploring education indifferent forms.
And we are not the biggest fansof the world on schooling
because it is negatively definedlike not school.

(02:07):
So we try to use the wordself-directed learning more, but
unschooling is the term thatJohn Holt coined all those years
back.
So that is what it's easier formany people to understand.

So that's, we are unschoolers.
Yeah, we do what unschoolers do.
We just don't like the word.

We don't like the word that much.
So what we do is we talk withdifferent people like yourself,
experts in fields of whatlearning is, what education is,
and who have a curiosity aboutlearning.
Course.

(02:48):
We have ended up innormalization of that.
The only way you can learn isgoing to a school and sitting
down, and you need to changesubject every 45 minutes because
that is apparently good forlearning.

So the idea of the podcast is we're very chatty
, just like our conversationabout the weather, and we laugh
a lot and just flow.
We like to meet real people andwe're doing this because we
want to open people's mindsabout different ways of looking
at education.

That's what we usually talk about, but it could
go anywhere.
That makes sense for yourpodcast is that the words
self-directed and the wordsself-organized mean two
different things.
Okay, I wanted to talk a littlebit about that, but even that

(03:43):
was not the real theme of what Iwanted to say.
What I wanted to say was thatself-directed is different from
self-organized and both of themare very different from a
self-organizing system.

(04:04):
You take all the three wordstogether a self-organizing
system.
I wanted to make thatdistinction because what I had
bumped into in those experiments, you know, 25 years ago, was, I
believe, a self-organizingsystem, and people saw the

(04:26):
results and they thought theresults were interesting, but
they would invariably describeit as self-directed or
self-organized and I would say,well, no, we are looking at

(04:46):
something different.

So let's do it.

I kind of want to press record right now Press
record earlier and we candiscuss what should be in and
not in, because I think thisdialogue is very, very
interesting.

Yes, I hope you're recording because we must all
know what Scotland means by badweather.

It's important stuff it's bad clothing.
That's what it means you knowthe Scottish people and the
Danes.
They go back to the Vikings.

It's more or less the same but, if okay with you,
I will keep some of the startof this talk we have had,
because absolutely, absolutely.

I have such fond memories of denmark.

I love that place but let's make an official
start.
Today we're together with sugatamitra and, yeah, as you have
heard in the brief intro wherewe just chatted, then we should
maybe change the name of ourpodcast, because we might have
understood the words wrong and Iwould love to go into that.
But first I would like to thankyou because, as a parent who

(05:55):
come from choosing a path ofhome educating your children,
and as us, using the wordunschooling even though, as we
talked briefly about, we likeself-educated or self-directed
more and or self-organizingsystem is probably even better
for it I have a point.
I have a point Then.

(06:17):
I would very much like to thankyou for the TED talk you did
all those years ago, because inthe start, when I as a parent
felt I needed to defend ourchoice and people was like how
will your children ever learn?
I could take your TED talk upand say please look at this one
first, and here we're talkingabout the hole in the wall.

(06:39):
So, if we can turn back time alittle and I would like to how
did it happen?
How did you get this idea totest this out, and can you say
just a little about it, becauseI think the other dialogue we
had should continue also.

Yes, well, it's not a very long story.
It really was the 1990s whenthose experiments happened.
The location was New Delhi,india, because that's where I

(07:20):
was working.
Where I was working, personalcomputers, as most people of a
certain age will remember, hadjust about come in.
They were expensive and youknow, usually about a month, two
months salary or something likethat to get a PC which you then
bring home to do your work with.

(07:43):
You know, word processing andwhatever.
That PC, that expensive pieceof equipment, was certainly not
meant for children.
So some of my friends who couldafford such equipment, they
bought PCs and they brought ithome, and those of them who had

(08:10):
little children would theninstall the PC in their living
room or in their study.
They would notice a littlefellow staring at them, the son
or the daughter, and they wouldturn and they would say never,
don't touch it.

(08:31):
Okay, this was really thereality of 1990s, because it was
so expensive, you know.
And children, what wouldchildren do with a computer?
The operating system was DOS,disk operating system.
You had to.
You know, type in commands,this.
That.
So there we were.
Then I noticed something else.

(08:51):
I noticed first one friend,then another, then another, all
with little children, seven,eight years old, saying Sugata,
you're interested in education,you know, I have a feeling my
child is gifted.

(09:12):
So I said well, why is that?
Well, you know, the other day Iwas working on my new PC.
I was looking for a file andthe files would scroll up very
quickly.
Working on my new PC, I waslooking for a file and the files
would scroll up very quickly onthe screen.
So I couldn't actually read tosee if the file I wanted was on

(09:35):
the screen or not, it would justgo up.
I was trying again and so on,when I heard a little voice and
it was my little girl there.
She said you know, try D-I-R,slash W, slash E, and when you
do that you get them in pages.

(09:57):
And so I turned to the littlegirl.
This is my friend saying it.
I turned to the little girl andsaid how did you know that?
And she says something verysimple, like well, you did that
yesterday, you've forgotten.
So this was happening acrossone friend, then another, then

(10:19):
another something similar.
And I thought to myself now,could it be possible that all
the rich people's children arebecoming gifted?
Because only the rich peoplehave PC.
All of their children seem tobe very gifted.
Or could it be that children,just by looking at the computer,

(10:44):
looking at someone doingsomething on the computer, have
this photographic memory ofwhat's going on and can
reproduce it?
So if that's the case, then anychild should be able to do that
.
So I decided well, why don't Ijust take it and give it to some

(11:11):
children who cannot possiblyhave access to a personal
computer?
There was a slum right next tomy office, so I built a
structure in the wall thatseparates the slum from my
office, a structure which lookslike today's ATM machines kind
of a hole.

(11:32):
And from my side of the wall Ipushed the monitor In those days
we had these big monitorsPushed the monitor through that
hole and I also pushed in atouchpad Didn't push into a
keyboard because you know itwouldn't pass and then I covered
the other side with a sheet ofglass so that you can't actually

(11:54):
push it back.
And it was three feet off theground and I just turned it on
and it was running.
In those days I rememberwhatever version of Windows was
available, probably, you know,1.0 or something like that.
So just the Windows screensticking out of that dirty

(12:16):
stretch of wall, and because itwas three feet off the ground,
people who find three feet offthe ground a convenient height
approached it, which wereobviously children, and they
didn't touch it, they just stoodthere staring at it.

(12:37):
I was there.
So I said well, and they saidcan we touch it?
And I said, sure, it's on yourside of the wall.
And they said, okay, they stilldidn't touch it.
So I thought this isn't working.

(13:04):
In my friend's home one of theparents was actually using the
computer and the children werewatching.
The child was watching.
Here, nobody's using thecomputer, it's just standing
there and the children are nottouching it.
Is that why?
And now this is a good exampleof how researchers like myself

(13:26):
make big mistakes.
So I said, oh, so it needs anoperator.
So I turned around and walkedback to my office, thinking that
I would send someone across andsay do something on the
computer.
But as I turned around andwalked I heard a lot of excited

(13:47):
voices from behind.
So I turned a little bit and Isaw the computers covered with
children.
So I didn't go back to myoffice and I sent a colleague of
mine.
I said go and do something onthat computer.
Those children, what can theydo with it?
And that fellow went and hecame running back.

(14:13):
I still remember his name is.
He came back and he said thosechildren, they're surfing and
they're teaching each other howto surf.
So I said oh you, you showedthem.
He said no, I didn't even getclose to the computer, they're
already on it.
So I said well, that's verystrange.

(14:35):
They've never, seen a computerbefore.
They don't know what theinternet is, they don't know
what a mouse or a touchpad is,they don't know what browsing
means and they don't knowEnglish.
So what's going on?
And that's the question thepress started to ask, because

(14:55):
the press had landed up by thenand they were saying that these
children know how to, you know,go from one website to another.
I mean, browsing is a big word.
They weren't really browsing.
They knew how to go from onewebsite to another.
I mean, browsing is a big word.
They weren't really browsing.
They knew how to go from onewebsite to another and they
found that really funny.
They would go there, close thewebsite, open another one, close
the other, that kind of thing,and laugh.

(15:17):
So they asked me this questionwho taught them?
And I said I don't know,no-transcript.

(15:47):
And the children were playingit.
It was actually a Mickey Mousegame from the Walt Disney site
Disneycom in those days, and Iasked the children what is this?
And they said it's a game.
I said yes, I know it's a game,but how did you get the game?
And they said it's a game,can't you see?
I said yes, I know it's a game,but how did you get the game

(16:09):
and they said it's in thecomputer.

So I said yeah, I knew there's no such thing in
the computer.

They would have downloaded it.
So I said oh, it was in thecomputer.
And what is it?
And they said it's a funny game.
It's about a rat.
I said a rat.
And they pointed to MickeyMouse and said yeah, see that
it's a rat game.
So I said okay.

(16:38):
And a month passed, and thesewere the days of the first of
the taliban wars in afghanistan,and I found the screen full of
war pictures and news and I saidgosh, what's this?
I went to my, to the children,and I said what's this?
I said yeah, it's about war.

(17:01):
See those planes, they'redropping bombs.
I who is fighting with whom?
And they said the Americans arefighting with the Taliban.
And I said so, who's winning,who's good, who's bad?
And they gave me an answerwhich I guess I'll remember for
the rest of my life.
They said they're both very badpeople.

(17:22):
I said why are they both verybad people?
And they said as're both verybad people.
So I said why are they bothvery bad people?
And they said as though it'svery obvious.
They said well, bad peoplefight you.
I said yeah, I guess so, butanyway, could you be looking at
that?
And they said well, I mean,this computer is standing there
and it's got everything insideit.
So this was the beginning ofthe war.

(17:44):
And by then people started tosay, well, what is this?
And they said I didn't say.
They said this is self-directedlearning.
So who's the teacher?
Nobody, obvious.

(18:05):
So so who's the teacher?
Nobody, obvious, no.
So self-directed means thatthere is a self who is doing the
direction, but I couldn't findany such self in there.
There was no teacher.
So where was the directioncoming from?
Then I thought, no, no, hang on, I've got it.

(18:29):
This is not self-directed, thisis self-organized.
So what's the difference?
Well, let's imagine for amoment that while you're
listening to this, you're doingyour dishes.
Let's imagine for a moment thatwhile you're listening to this,

(18:49):
you're doing your dishes, butyou're self-directed, right?
I mean, you could be not doingyour dishes, you didn't want to,
but you decided to do them, sothat's self-directed.
Suppose your sink was full of,you know, dirty dishes and you
had not decided to feed them.
But some friends landed up andyou said, oh, my sick's full of
dirty dishes.
And your friends said, oh, hangon, let's just take care of it.

(19:11):
And two or three of them gottogether and self-organized and
in a few minutes your dishes areclean.
So two things self-directed,self-organized.
So I decided what was happeningin the hole in the wall.
That's what the press called itthe hole in the wall experiment

(19:35):
.

What was?

happening in the hole in the wall was
self-organized.
It wasn't being directed byanyone, it was being organized
by children.
Like I told you about thesesearches, I had again got it
wrong.
Okay, and the answer?

(19:57):
And?

how do I?

know that I got it wrong Because in another
experiment.
All of this is published and allof this is available on the
internet from years and yearsago.
In another experiment, a groupof children.
I asked them you know, there'ssomething very interesting
called DNA.
They said what, what?
I said D-N-A and I left themthere.

(20:25):
That whole thing is documentedin the Australasian Journal of
Educational Technology.
A month later I went back andsaid guys, remember, I asked you
about the DNA?
And one of them said yeah, wecouldn't understand anything.

(20:45):
It's all full of chemistry andall that.
So I said really nothing, soyou just switched it off.
He said no, no, of course wedidn't switch it off, we didn't
look at it.
So you look at what I mean.
You didn't understand.
I said well, you know.
I mean, apart from the factthat improper replication of the
DNA molecule causes geneticdisease, we've understood
nothing else.

(21:05):
So well, that can't beself-organized either.
It certainly isn't directedbecause there's no teacher.
It couldn't have beenself-organized, because how
would eight and ten-year-oldsorganize themselves to
understand, you know, dnastructures and DNA replication,

(21:28):
so on and so forth.
Where is this learning comingfrom?
I got the answer.
I think I got the answer.
I got the answer almost fouryears later, around 2004.
Almost four years later, around2004.

(21:48):
You know, by education.
My own education is not in thesocial sciences, in education
itself.
My educational background is intheoretical physics.
So I had no means in my headother than theoretical physics
to try and explain what wasgoing on over there in the world

(22:10):
.
And there is, in those days, afringe side of theoretical
physics it's no longer fringe,but it was fringe at that time
called self-organizing systems.
This was an attempt tounderstand creation.

(22:32):
Where does it all come from?
Who made DNA?
Who wrote the programs?
And the answer that physicsgave us was nobody did it
happened by itself, happened byitself.

(22:55):
I mean, that sounds like a badsci-fi movie.
What happened?
How do you mean that happenedby itself?
But then when you go into it,which I did you suddenly find
that nature is full of thatexample.

(23:18):
Imagine some bees building abeehive.
The beehive is made up ofperfect hexagons.
Do the bees know what a hexagonis?
I don't think so.
I don't think they've everstudied Euclid or anything like

(23:40):
that, so they don't know what anhexagon is.
Do they know what they're doing?
Do they know that they'rebuilding a BI?
Well, we don't know, but Iwould guess that the individual
B who's building that littleaccident, and the next one, and
the next one.
He doesn't know what it's doingreally, it's just following

(24:03):
some basic instinct, somethinglike that.
But then how do we get thatperfect beehive with its
chambers and everything insideit?
Physics said it's aself-organizing system.
When things are connected toeach other, like each bee can

(24:26):
see what the other bee is doingand therefore change its actions
accordingly, the system itselforganizes, okay.
Another example Ants.
You know little ants.
You can see them sometimes,particularly in the tropics

(24:50):
during the monsoon rains.
You can see the ants marchingin a perfect straight line Left,
right, left, right, left, right.
Okay, in a straight line there.
So what happened?
Did the ants have a militaryacademy?
Who taught them to do that?

(25:10):
Well, we know the answer tothat from insect specialists.
They do something very simple.
Each bee follows excuse me thebackside of the ant in front of
it.
That's all it does.
It just looks, finds the backof the ant in front of it and

(25:31):
follows that.
When a thousand ants do that,what you end up getting is a lie
.
The ants didn't make the lie.
The ants did not self-direct.
The ants did not evenself-organize.
The system itself was aself-organizing system.

(25:56):
I know it's not the easiestthing to grapple with, but that
line of ants wasn't created bythe ants.
It was a property of thatsystemic rule to follow the one

(26:19):
in front.
And then I read a little bitmore and I found oh gosh flocks
of birds.
They do the same thing.
Does an individual bird knowwhat it's doing?
No, it has no idea.
It just knows it has tomaintain a certain distance from
its neighbors Schools of fish.

(26:40):
Do they know what they're doing?
No, they just know that theyhave to maintain a certain
distance from their neighborsand followers.
The result is marvelouspatterns that people look at and
say how on earth did they dothat?
But they didn't.
Something else did, and Icouldn't get that out of my mind

(27:06):
.
I guess physicists have jasedthis for ages.
If it wasn't done by people,then who was it done by?
But the answer is not.
Is that?
The question is not right.
It's not who was it done by, itis what was it done by?
So one man had, I think, gottenthis idea right.

(27:38):
A Russian physicist who, Ithink, migrated to one of the
Scandinavian countries, won theNobel Prize.
His name was Ilya Prigozhin,and Prigozhin wrote a book

(28:00):
called Order Out of Chaos.
He wrote this book somewhere.
Order Out of Chaos he wrotethis book somewhere in the late
1970s.
In the late 1970s I was doing myPhD.
I had no interest in children'seducation, I was doing quantum
physics and had gone for aconference in New Delhi, and I

(28:25):
must tell you this story, eventhough it's a very stupid story.
I I went to the conference.
I went to the men's room andyou know, we had this line of
men.
I was one of them and next tome, slightly shorter than me,

(28:49):
was a white man, and I turnedand he looked very serious.
I said good morning, sir.
While we were both standingthere and he said good morning,
we finished.
And as we were washing ourhands, I said, sir, I'm a PhD
student.
Sir, my name is Sugata, and hesaid well, I've had to work with

(29:14):
physics too.
My name is Ilya Prigozhin.
So that's how I met Prigozhin.
I'm very proud of this.

It's a perfect place to meet.

So Prigogine won the Nobel Prize for showing that
chaotic systems which appear tohave no order in them, if you
connect the pieces to each otherand let it go on doing its
disorder, then order appearsfrom somewhere, and this is
called a self-organizing system.
Why am I telling you this longstory?

(29:57):
It's because somewhere in 2005,I looked at those children.
I used to look at those hole inthe wall experiments.
By then we had many, many sitesall over India, africa,
cambodia.
So look at those crowds ofchildren.
I used to think of ants, I usedto think of bees, I used to
think of birds.
But one day I thought of IlyaPrykushin and I said I got it.

(30:22):
This is a self-organizingsystem.
One day I thought of IlyaPrykushin and I said I got it.
This is a self-organizingsystem.
No one is teaching them, noteven themselves.
It's order appearing out ofnowhere.
I actually said that in my TEDspeech.
There's one sentence that sayslearning is an emergent

(30:48):
phenomenon in a self-organizingeducation system.
Nobody paid the slightestattention.
What kind of sentence is that?
But I thought I'd got it.
I brought the results toEngland and in 2006.

(31:12):
And tried it out at the schoolsof Gateshead.
You know, gateshead is acrossthe River Tyne, newcastle and
northeastern England.
If you remember the map ofEngland, it's about 2 thirds of
the way from London to Edinburghin Scotland, but 2 thirds of

(31:32):
the way up north, across theriver from Newcastle, is the
town of Gateshead.
It's a poor area of the countryand I went into the schools of
Gateshead and I set up the holein the wall.
You can't set up the hole inthe wall in.

(31:53):
England.
Why?
Because the weather will notpermit it no one's outside no,
nothing happens outside, okay.
So I said, oh, this is a problem.
But how do you do it?
It's very simple.
Okay, for those of you who areteachers, okay, here's how it

(32:14):
goes, very, very simple.
Take a class full of 24children, let's say 24.
Take six computers, just six,not 24, no matter how rich your
school is, no matter how richyour country is.
One computer for every four orfive children.
Give them those six computersand ask them a question Move

(32:42):
back and sit down.
That's all.
When you do it the first day, itwon't work.
The children are going to thinkthat there's a trick.
Sooner or later she's going toget up and yell at us and say

(33:02):
what are you doing Somethinglike that?
The second or third time you doit, they begin to realize that
you're serious.
You're actually allowing themto do whatever they want.
What would they do?
Well, they'll form groups.
Obviously, six computers and 24children.
They have to form groups.
They form groups, they starttalking to each other, they

(33:25):
start looking at each other'scomputers those six of them and
then, in about 30 to 40 minutes,self-organization happens.
They learn.
They learn something.
It depends on what question youasked.
If you got the right questionyou get whatever you wanted them

(33:50):
to learn.
Otherwise they learn somethingin any case.
Remember those children withthe Taliban in the war?
I didn't want them to learnanything.
I didn't even want them to lookat those pictures.
But what did they learn?
Bad people fight.
Would I like my children toknow this?

(34:15):
I think I would.
Bad people fight Just threewords.
Think about it.
So self-organizing systems aredifferent from self-directed and

(34:37):
self-organized.
Self-organized is two separatewords.

It's different from self-organized as two
separate words in differentself-organizing system it's
really, I'm about to say,mind-blowing, but maybe not
exactly, it's just the one thingsome things in my mind and I

(35:04):
mean you were with us on thebeginning of our journey, as
when we moved away fromschooling our children to not
schooling our children and thewhole.
I mean it's been such a longtime now that now it's just we
don't get up in the morning andnot send our children to school.
It's not a thing.
We just get up in the morningand not send our children to
school.
It's not a thing.
We just get up in the morningand live our lives.

(35:24):
But it was a big deal when ithappened and your TED Talks and
your work in general was a bigpart of okay.
This can be done in manydifferent ways.
It's just now.
I realize I don't like the ideaof the curriculum like a state
or school defined journey oflearning for 10 years of

(35:46):
children's lives.
I don't like that.
That's not where theresponsibility should be.
That doesn't make sense.
I don't like homeschoolingbecause that's like doing the
same thing.
It's just the parents doing it.
So I as a mom have to decidewhat my children are doing.
I don't like that.
But I actually also equallydon't like the idea of the
children having to plan it outand being responsible.

(36:08):
We've said many times it's oneof our kind of mantras that
learning is a byproduct ofliving, it's something that
happens.
And now I realize that sentencelearning is emergent has kind
of been lurking in there in thedepth of my mind.
I just didn't really give itlike it should have had more of
a center stage, because that'sthe same thing, right, that

(36:32):
learning is something thathappens because you're doing
something that makes sense orsomething that ignites your
interest, or something that weare social beings.
So maybe you want to be withyour friend and your friend is
talking about this thing and youmight have never been
interested, but now you arebecause there's this social

(36:57):
situation.
So that's where the learningcomes from, Is that?
Oh, we might have to change thename of the podcast.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Because I don't like the idea of the self.
Then you have like athree-year-old with
responsibility for the rest ofhis or her own life, and you
have to be so self-centered, ina way, and on your own path, and
that's not what it's.

It's not where the responsibility should lie
should there be responsibility?

do we trust the process?
Do we trust the systems toself-organize?
Yes, we do.
I just never put it that wayand we.

This talk for us comes shortly after we talk with
Peter Gray.
I don't know if you're familiarwith his work, but he is.
Yeah, he's very centered aroundwhat he called free play, and
what he's actually talking aboutis the self-organizing system
inside the free play that thechildren among themselves are

(38:01):
creating.
The rules are creating the gameand are creating that system,
or, as you maybe would say, itemerges.

We were together very recently, just last month,
peter Gray and I, at an event inOhio in the United States, and
I heard him and I remember oneline from him.
He said school may not get itexactly right, but he said we

(38:37):
send our children to school tobe disciplined and stopped.
He just put a full stop thereand you know, I thought he
didn't say anything bad aboutschool.
He didn't say anything badabout education.
He just said we send ourchildren to school to be

(38:59):
disciplined.
You sit where you have to sit,you stand where you have to
stand, you say good morning.
When somebody says good morningor you meet someone, you say
sorry and you say thank you.
When I say read your book, youread your book.

(39:20):
It's not what you're doing,it's whether you are following
the instruction.
And Peter Gray likes my work.
He told me this himself andboth of us decided that there

(39:43):
are a couple of things we don'tknow.
Okay, this is going to beanother bit of a problem.
You know you send your child toschool so that they would know
things or you homeschool them sothat they would know things.
In any case, you want yourchildren to know stuff.
But you know, the trouble is ifI were to ask you, what does

(40:07):
knowing mean?
We don't have a definition, sowhat do you want?
Now somebody just called mecalled this a sophist argument.
They said this is the kind ofthing that they used to do in

(40:27):
ancient Greece just tie you upby asking you stupid questions.
Everybody knows what knowing is, do we?
I think so.
And then came along GenerativeAI.
Just a year ago, two years ago,22.

(40:52):
And people started asking meabout Generative AI.
I had no idea.
I didn't know what it was, howit worked, I mean.
I knew what it did, but I didn'tknow how it worked.
So I decided to stay absolutelysilent until I knew how it
works.
It took only a few days tofigure it out, actually because

(41:13):
of the internet, but how itworks is an engineering I
believe we have never seenbefore.
You know in engineering, youknow what your machine does, we

(41:36):
know what it does.
We don't know how it does itand, worse than that, as of
today, as of this moment, wecannot know how it works.

(42:03):
It will take too long to goover that in a podcast like this
.
But I know the insights of it.
I know how to build one.
I actually tried building oneon my stupid laptop.
It obviously is a very stupidgen AI that I built.

(42:26):
But in building it I realizedone thing I can build it, but I
have no way to figure out why.
Of a saying from stephen hawkingagain one of those sayings that

(42:51):
sticks in your mind forever.
Remember?
Stephen hawking said, talkingabout god, he said a creator
that watches helplessly as hiscreation unfolds Watches
helplessly.

(43:12):
Well, I wish I could put it ina more funny way, but it's not
funny.
It's not funny at all.
So Gen AI works like that.
So Gen AI came along.
When I understood how it works,sort of I began to speak about

(43:35):
it.
How do you build Gen AI?
Well, you feed it lots of stuffinto it and where does that
stuff go?
You know people say.
You know the AI readseverything there is, does it?
No, it doesn't do anythingother than song.

(43:56):
It converts everything it readsinto numbers, everything you
feed it into numbers, and ituses those numbers to change
other numbers and those changednumbers change other numbers and
other numbers and other numbersinto an enormous, gigantic
matrix of numbers.
And then you ask a question.

(44:17):
The question enters the matrix,the numbers do their magic and
what comes up, if you've doneeverything right, is a sensible,
meaningful answer.
What do you as a programmer?

(44:37):
How much control do you have?
You know people ask.
They say you know Google shouldbe careful about what their AI
is doing.
You know Meta should be carefulabout what their AI is doing,
and we should.
You know Meta should be carefulabout what their AI is doing.
They must take responsibility,and I think to myself.
The creator that watcheshelplessly is creation and
product.
Well, gentlemen, does that makeany sense?

It makes sense.
It just also makes me think.
That's why I'm so silent.
That takes time.
I'm not a computer.

No, it makes me think two things.
One is I'm, for my work andcuriosity, using ChatGPT every
day more or less, and have forone and a half year or more in
my line of work.
And just yesterday we talkedabout was it cardamom?
Because we were making somefood and we actually have had

(45:36):
difficulties finding it in somecountries.
As we are full-time travelers,we see a lot of different
countries and I was like why dothe scandinavian countries have
this tradition of using cardamomin some of our food, in our
baking and stuff like that?
And I asked chat gbt and gotthe story about the vikings all
the way from back then theytraded, they traded in spices

(45:57):
and it showed well to use it andthat they used it in their line
of work.
So there's so much where itreminds me of the knowledge bank
that the hole in the wall wasfor these young people, that I'm
curious about your thoughtsabout what will it do for

(46:18):
learning.
And then there's the other part, as are we as a society ready,
which is a different dialogueabout it.
And I know I'm jumping a little,but among the things you said
about the self-organizing system, I am baffled and still

(46:43):
thinking about what kind ofworld have we created?
How self-organizing are thesystems?
The school doesn't seem like aself-organizing system when I
look at it.
The way we live in theso-called nuclear families
doesn't look as a self-organizedthing.
Least doesn't look as aself-organized things that the

(47:07):
individuality have become thegoal, where everyone have their
own trampoline, their ownchainsaw, everything, so you
don't need to interact with yourneighbors even more.
So I'm like the theself-organizing gets so small
that it's on a family basis andI'm just thinking that cannot be
healthy.
And those are some of thethoughts that what you're saying

(47:27):
is bringing into my mind andI'm like is there a question in
this?

yes, but I don't know.
Go in 19 different directionsfrom here very interesting yeah,
yeah, well, I mean, I, I guess,we should bring this to some
kind of a conclusion Of focus Offocus.

(47:52):
Can I ask an even harderquestion to conclude on what
about the question of truth?
That's my problem with the AIthing.
So we have this computer insidethe computer kind of program

(48:12):
and we use some of us, myhusband, uses it every day and
and he's begun the past, I don'tknow six months to send me long
whatsapp messages that areclearly not written by him but
by chat GBT.
And I usually say I'm nottalking to robots, not that the
information is bad, it's just.

(48:33):
I get this.
I'm an old fashioned studied atthe University of Copenhagen in
the 90s and we were readingactual books and you know this
is not before the internet, butit was with the modem kind of
system.
Um, I like books, I like atable of content, I like

(48:53):
references, I like knowing wheremy information comes from.
You know, and I think you putway more thought into this than
I have.
So the question is what aboutthe truth in ai?

well, what about the truth in in anything?
I mean, this is not a, this isnot a new question.
This the question that we youknow, who have the old sophists
have asked for many thousandyears uh, is there anything
called truth, or whatever.
But I think what you're askingreally is that what should I

(49:32):
believe?
I mean, after all, an easydefinition of truth is what you
believe.
So you know I mean, it's a longdiscussion Is there something
called absolute?
We don't know.
We have to ask Socrates.
But the thing is, what shouldyou do with your children?

(49:52):
Where is that generation goingto head towards?
Okay, in a world where knowingis obsolete, think about that.
We're so proud of knowing stuff.
I studied in the university.
I know this, I know this, Iknow this.
Is that relevant today, whenyou have this generative

(50:21):
machines which let you know?
anything you want at the pointin time when you need to know it
, provided you grasp it quicklyenough.
So suppose for a minute youtake this argument further.
So knowing is not necessaryanymore, and I know that a lot

(50:42):
of adolescents would kind of nodtheir heads because they ask
themselves the same question.

Why am I doing?

this?
Why am I sitting in this classand listening to this?
Why am I listening to a50-minute lecture and paying for
it, when I could have Googledit in five minutes or I could
have chat GPT'd it in twominutes?
Why am I doing this?

why are they doing this to?

me.
Well, one day they will havechildren.
Will they also tell theirchildren you have to know things
.
I don't know the answer, but Ihave two suggestions that
possibly could be the conclusionof where we are headed.

(51:30):
The first suggestion If we havea question to which there is an
answer, then AI knows thatanswer always.
So should I ask questions toyou to which an answer is

(51:56):
already known?
It's a waste of time, but Icould do something else.
I could ask you a question towhich no one knows the answer.
If no one knows the answer, theInternet doesn't know the
answer either.
If the Internet doesn't knowthe answer, generative AI

(52:17):
doesn't know the answer.
If I ask a question to which noone knows the answer, I have to
figure it out for myself or Ihave to give up.
So what if I focused on thequestions to which no answer is

(52:46):
known yet?
That's point number one.
Number two what else cangenerative AI not do, apart from
answering questions to which noanswer is known?
It cannot do another thing.
It cannot deal with nonsense.

(53:11):
You can try feeding in linesfrom Lewis Carroll.
You know, I don't know whatever.
The cat became a butterfly.
It will tell you immediately oh, this was written by Lewis
Carroll, the famous author ofthat, so on and so forth.
But it will tell youimmediately oh, this was written
by Lewis Carroll, the famousauthor.
But it will steer away from thecat becoming the book of life,

(53:34):
because you know that's nonsense.
I think children love nonsense.
Everybody knows that.
So point number one thequestions to which no answers
are known yet.
Point number two the value ofnonsense.

(53:59):
Imagine that a two-year-old, heappears in front of you and you
say morning good.
And the two-year-old kind oflooks at you and you say good

(54:21):
morning.
And the two-year-old saysmorning good.
And you say good morning.
And he said that's upside down.
And I say no, it's sideways andhe said what are you talking
about?
And so on and so forth Doesn'ttake much, it's just a little

(54:46):
switch you have to put off inyour mind, a switch they put off
for you in school.
Don't talk nonsense.
Put it back on.
Watch the two-year-old light up.
That's a good plan.
I don't have much of a plan,apart from at this point in time
.
I wish I could be more useful,but I can't be.

(55:06):
I an apartment at this point intime.
I wish I could be more usefulbut I can't be.

I think it's very insightful, it's very much
talking about and we have towrap up.
It's just hard because this isvery interesting Knowing what AI
can do and knowing what AIcannot do will be a discussion
about what makes us human.
And what makes us human ispartly to be able to think about

(55:35):
questions to which maybe thereis no answer, but we need to
think about it anyway, and alsoto be ridiculous, which is, you
know.
Your example about thetwo-year-old morning good thing
made me think about all the many, many times we've had fun with

(55:55):
small children saying, you know,pointing at grandma and saying,
is that uncle?
And they laugh.
You know, that's uncle.
Ah, it's funny and it's justridiculous.
But it's ridiculous small scale, but we're still having fun.
It makes you laugh.

yeah, ai doesn't laugh not yet no yeah yeah, do
we have time for uh?
An extra question.
I don't know your time frame umyeah, yeah, a couple of minutes
, yeah perfect, so Perfect.
So, talking aboutself-organizing systems and

(56:30):
learning when all knowledge isright in our pocket, professor,
the chat, gpt or the Gemini orwhich one ever we use is, then
what are we supposed to?
Yeah, my, my question is how doyou think we will organize uh

(56:53):
onwards?
And, as I said before earlier,I, to me it looks like that some
of the self-organizing systemsin our society, in our culture,
have been broken down.
There's not a lot ofself-organizing systems in our
society, in our culture, havebeen broken down.
There's not a lot ofself-organizing, there's a lot
of chopped down life.
How do we reclaim living inself-organizing systems?

(57:17):
Have you made thoughts aboutthat?

Yes, I do.
I have thought about why wemade ourselves the way we are
right now.
Thought about why we madeourselves the way we are right
now and in a very simplistickind of way.
You know, I'm not ananthropologist, but my
simplistic understanding is thatagriculture had a lot to do
with it.
When agriculture came in, weformed cities, we formed

(57:40):
societies and we decided we needorder.
In order to get order, you needa social hierarchy, you need,

(58:01):
eventually, kings and queens andministers and bureaucrats and
the whole system to keep themachine going.
We thought we were machines, wethought we could live like
machines and I don't know why wethought that living like
machines would make us happy.
But it didn't work.

(58:25):
It didn't work.
It didn't work.
It didn't work because, as youcan see from the world today,
every now and then the systemkind of revolts you know revolts
disintegrates into chaos andthen another emergent order

(58:45):
appears, and I remember the faceof Ilya Prigogine.
So if that's the way it is, Imean we see in nature that
that's the way everything works,that's the way we appeared over
here.
That's how we evolved into whatwe are right now.
That's how we evolved into whatwe are right now.

(59:09):
If that's the way it is, thenwhy would we want to oppose it
with a mechanistic culture?
If talking to each other is ourway of self-organizing, why do
we want to be alone our way ofself-organizing?
Why do we want to be alone?
Why do we want to segregate?

(59:30):
Why do we want our own lawnmowers and our own this and our
own that, so that we don't needto deal with anybody else?
Well, I don't know who has thatanswer.
I don't think physics has thatanswer.
I don't think physics has thatanswer.
I think maybe we need to ask theghost of Sigmund Freud.

(59:50):
I know this is not going to bevery popular, but Sigmund Freud,
nobody cares about him.
He's a pervert, he's blah, blah, blah.
I love that man, I think he wasa genius.
I love that man, I think he wasa genius.
Read him and you'll see why wewant to be the way we are and

(01:00:15):
why it's not going to work.
So what should we do then?
Is there a way to go back tohunter-gatherers?
I don't know if society canever do it, but we have done it
with information.
We don't need to go to thestructured library anymore to

(01:00:36):
pull out the books and read them.
We hunter-gather, we go afterinformation like a hunter going
after prey, and we have themeans to do it in every pocket.
If we could have done that withinformation, can we do that with

(01:01:00):
society?
What would the society looklike if it were to decentralize
into that format, the format forwhich I don't even have a name?
What if nothing belongs toanybody, just as the beehive

(01:01:20):
belongs to nothing, to nobody,just as the flock doesn't belong
to the bird, just as the linedoesn't belong to the line of
hand?
Is there a way to do that?
Well, there are philosopherswho have said that.
There are philosophers who haveattempted answers.
Mostly failures as far as wecan tell, mostly failures as far

(01:01:48):
as we can tell.
But one thing we cannot undo asfar as information and knowing
goes, we have gone fromstructured to hunter-gatherer
and our children have headed inthat direction.
Where will that take us?

(01:02:12):
Not for people of my age toanswer that question you have to
ask the 16-year-olds or maybeeven the 5-year-olds.

Cecilie Conrad (01:02:24):
They'll tell us.
Maybe it's one of thosequestions, you know, where there
is no answer maybe it willemerge with time it will emerge
with time.
Yeah oh, this has been sointeresting yes, I almost don't

(01:02:45):
want to stop.

Jesper Conrad (01:02:45):
Time is up, it is time.

Yes, I almost don't want to stop but I heard,
time is up, time is up, it istime.
Roll that back.

To Gertrud thank you for all the work you have
done earlier which have helpedus as a family to grow, to ask
ourselves questions about how welearn as a species, how our
children learn, how we learn.
It has changed so much in mylife and this dialogue we have

(01:03:15):
today.
I know it will linger on me foryears to come and it has been
very, very inspiring.

Sugata Mitra (01:03:24):
Thank you for your time and the laughs inspiring
and, um, yeah, thank you foryour time and the laughs.
Yes, my pleasure.
I I hope, uh, I hope all thisleads to somewhere.
I have a lot of things I don'tknow.

I'll go looking for them well, when you said
before that sigmund fre Freudwas a genius, I've read him,
obviously, as I'm studied,old-fashioned and long, many
years ago.
Um, I agree, I don'tnecessarily like all of his
conclusions, but the way he wasasking questions was asked by a

(01:04:03):
genius, I agree.
And that's the interestingthing about this conversation as
well is the questions I sitback with.

Sugata Mitra (01:04:14):
Yeah, well, that kind of caps, it all you know.
And the thing is what you justsaid, the last words, it's the
question.
Well, you haven't said it thefirst time and I haven't said it
the first time.
The last words, it's thequestion.
Well, you haven't said it thefirst time and I haven't said it
the first time.
It was said, I don't know, twoand a half thousand years ago,

(01:04:35):
the Buddha said it, socratessaid it, confucius said it, they
all said it's the question thatmatters yes, what a wonderful
place to stop, said it's thequestion that matters.

Yes, what a wonderful place to stop.

Thanks a lot for your time today.
Thank you, thank you.

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105: Sugata Mitra | How Learning Emerges Naturally Through Self-Organizing Systems

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}105: Sugata Mitra | How Learning Emerges Naturally Through Self-Organizing Systems