Meta-design is much more difficult than design; it's easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it.
I think I tend to live in sort of a meta state of existence where I'm always analyzing and analyzing whatever I'm going through at any given moment, and a lot of times I'll reflect back on and go, 'Oh look at that - if I acted this way when that happened, I might not have thought of that that way.'
I wonder why. I wonder why. I wonder why I wonder.
"Thinking about thinking" has to be a principle ingredient of any empowering practice of education.
I am told, in a dream you can only get the answer to all your questions through a dream. So in my dream, I fall asleep, and I dream, in my dream, that I'm having that absolute, revealing dream.
Being gritty doesn't mean not showing pain or pretending everything is O.K. In fact, when you look at healthy and successful and giving people, they are extraordinarily meta-cognitive. They're able to say things like, 'Dude, I totally lost my temper this morning.' That ability to reflect on yourself is signature to grit.
When you start talking about the known knowns and the unknown unknowns, you're thrown into a crazy meta-level discussion. Do I know what I know, do I know what I don't know, do I know what I don't know I don't know. It becomes a strange, Lewis Carroll - like nursery rhyme.
First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.
And then you think about what you think, which is very dangerous.
I have definitely had experiences where I can feel the shift from simply living my life to being slightly outside of my life and taking notes.
Can you use the rational mind to transcend itself?
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't.
I've figured out my learning curve. I can look at something and somehow know exactly how long it will take for me to learn it.
Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick?
The difference between the reason of man and the instinct of the beast is this, that the beast does but know, but the man knows that he knows.
Thought is the thought of thought.
We not only interpret the character of events... we may also interpret our interpretations.
I am not very smart, but I recognize that I am not very smart.
As soon as I observed myself from outside myself, I recognized and understood that I had a long-standing habit of keeping an eye on myself. That's how I managed to pull myself together, over the years, checking myself from the outside.
I talked about becoming stupid, but I've always been stupid. Fortunately I've been just smart enough to realize that I'm stupid.
How do you make a compass? Uhhh hmmm so if I was a compass how would I make myself?
I know that you don't know, but you don't know that you don't know.
I didn't know what I knew. I wasn't aware of what I knew.
A system can not understand itself.
Learning is not doing; it is reflecting on doing.
