Last week I broke into Rhymer Enterprises and stole an experimental device designed to increase human brain capacity by several orders of magnitude.
The problem is that I dropped it on the kitchen tile last night because I was using the bowl portion to hold chopped mushrooms for a sauce I was making. The sauce turned out great but the device is damaged.
It can no longer increase your brain power or even your natural abilities. What it can do is rewire your brain so that you will derive great enjoyment from the *process *of learning one skillset of your choice.
In other words, it can’t make you the next Einstein but it can give you the ability to stick with math, learning at your natural pace, until you work your way up to theoretical physics.
Given this opportunity, what would you pick? Or would you pass it up altogether?
It’s almost certainly going to be foreign language fluency. I can never seem to stick with it on my own. I’d probably soak up every language I could. Of course, with the device in question here being a Rhymer device, there’s probably some conveniently forgotten side effect to using it that will render the ability useless. Eh — ya takes your chances…
I would love to learn to play the piano, but reading music was so hard for me. My elementary school music teacher told my mom to pull me out of class because he did not see me ever being able to learn it. And I was an A student in every other class.
I had an equally difficult time with trying to learn Spanish, but I’d rather have the joy of making beautiful music.
The machine is not going to make you talented. It will make the process of learning the mechanics of art fun and interesting, but if you lack talent you will end up as a technically proficient but otherwise uninspiring artist (if you believe that there’s a difference).
I would say that what you describe is pretty much in line with how I have approached guitar. I feel like I have had to work for every little advance I make, grinding away at it with bazillions of reps, hour after hour. But I love it and can’t imagine my life without it.
I wish I had the same grit with regards to singing. I can generally hold a tune, but have no clue how to best “frame” whatever vocal abilities I do have and sell a song really well. But I don’t have nearly the stick-to-it-tiveness with that vs. guitar. So that would be my choice.
My flip answer would be that I’ve already learned to fly, thank you very much, but one a second pass I’d go with either math or foreign language skills.
I don’t think it makes a difference for me. I already love learning, especially learning the sorts of things I’m interested in learning. The only reason I haven’t learned everything already is that I don’t have the time, and with this device, I still wouldn’t.
The OP could even be interpreted to say you’d lose the love of learning for all but one skillset. If that were the case I’d rather stick to the things I already love to learn.
I also would choose a language. Can we choose “foreign language learning ability” in general or would we need to pick a specific language? If I had to pick a specific language, I would choose something not as common in my country to maximize the marketability of the skill. Persian/Farsi (national language of Iran) might be interesting and useful - not many speakers here. Plenty of people here speak Arabic.
Writing. My technical writing skills are decent, but I really hate the whole process. It’s the #1 reason I want to leave academia, in fact. A life time of grant writing seems like torture.
If I really loved to learn to write, uh, more better, I’d also love to do all the professional level writing that I can’t stand right now, all the while progressing from “decent” to “good” to “great”.
Music. Specifically, learning to play the cello. I began learning on my 70th birthday, but although I enjoy it on some level, it quickly became the “daily grind.” Gaining the ability to “stick with it” would help a lot.
I already know math, art, and everything else I need to know.
French. I already know as much math as I am capable of learning at my age. I sure would like to be able to read the alleged proof of the abc conjecture. (Google it is you want to know what it says. Suffices to mention that it pretty directly implies Fermat’s Last Theorem.)
Does a skillset count? That is, I’d like to find great pleasure in learning the skills involved in becoming a published author. I vaguely know what’s involved, and it sounds dreadful to me, all of it but the writing, and even the writing is hard for me to sit down and do. If I could change it so I got great pleasure from it, I’d give it a go.