Accelerated learning (was RE: TOP 2 IQ Percentile Re: [extropy-chat] Seven cents an hour?)

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Herb Martin <HerbM at learnquick.com> wrote:
> The off-scale intelligent tend to be able to CHANGE
> their personality type to fit the context, audience,
> or problem also.

Actors can do this too, to play the many different roles they get.  It
is a skill that one can learn.

> This is also true of the NLP modalities:  visual, 
> auditory, kinesthetic:  A really good understanding
> will include a representation in two or more modalities
> and preferably all three (and some variations on the
> themes.)
> 
> Those who would really know something know it from
> many perspectives and using various methods.

While these various perspectives and methods can in theory be learned
in advance, I wonder...could it be the case that this rarely happens
while "book learning" (or any other sort of learning short of actually
doing the activity in question), and that almost always these alternate
modes and methods are only encountered when the skill is actually
applied (often in not-quite-textbook cases, as is the nature of real
situations), which is then the main cause for why "book learning" can
often be (and is) justifiably dismissed as not really "knowing" a skill
set or field of knowledge?

If this is the case, then would it remedy this lack of value of "book
learning", at least to a significant degree, to incorporate those
different modes and methods, rather than avoiding them and
concentrating on only the simplest mode and method to optimize for cost
(as often naturally happens in any prepared activity)?

Sorry for the run-on sentences.  I hope at least the idea was clear
enough.  ^_^;

> (If you care, I make my living by delivering accelerated
> training that allows even those who don't think of 
> themselves as particularly smart to learn about as much
> each day as they would with anyone else in a week.)

Checking your Web site - http://LearnQuick.com/ - you seem to focus on
low-level technical skills.  I wonder if a similar approach could be
used on a grander scale, say to compress multi-year college physics
courses into a single year?  Or how about teaching the usual K-12
cirriculum in only ten years, to even average children?  (Not
necessarily to those of significantly lower than average ability, but
those are already recognized as "special needs" and in many places have
existing programs to serve them.)

While browsing the thread Amara pointed out about women scientists and
their biological clocks, I saw that a major problem for said scientists
(and other women in degree-required careers) is that the years required
for the K-12-plus-college-plus-graduate-degree track means they don't
get to really do their own thing (like, say, take time off for a kid)
until they are old enough to face problems getting pregnant and having
children.  (Men don't have to worry about childbirth, and their
fertility falls off later, but neither is the average male at their
prime in this regard at 40.)  Longevity will hopefully alleviate this
problem eventually, but in the mean time, might it help society to
compress the education that currently spans about two decades into less
time?  (Family-wise, or simply by getting trained people into the
workforce faster, so that people have more productive years.  Either by
today's mortal perspective, or even if most everyone beyond a certain
age today will live to see practical immortality - an extra year is an
extra year, and perhaps the extra brains could help bring the
Singularity faster.)