yet our instructions are sequential and language-based.
Care to elaborate on that?
Edit: OK, I realize why I was confused by this. The act of instruction in a subject, as opposed to a metaphor for elements of thought as computer instructions?
Sure. Our brains contain millions of neurons working in parallel. Our spoken words come one at a time; thus the natural way to speak is one word at a time, one after the other, which in computer lingo is sequential instruction. While it is entirely possible to say thinks like, “the first thousand things you do are these, the second thousand things are those, …” I can guarantee you no human will be able to follow that instruction, not in the requisite number of milliseconds anyways. Besides which, instructions of this nature will also be out of reach of the instructor’s consciousness, so he too will be unable to understand how he does it.
Like Lumifer said, you can still teach such things, but you do it differently. You don’t explain how much to twitch each of the hundreds of muscles you have to maintain balance, you plunk your kid on a bicycle and steady the bike and let him figure it out on his own. Ironically, tasks like these that would be impossible to verbally teach or understand, are simple enough that you can do them without thinking about it.
Care to elaborate on that? Edit: OK, I realize why I was confused by this. The act of instruction in a subject, as opposed to a metaphor for elements of thought as computer instructions?
Sure. Our brains contain millions of neurons working in parallel. Our spoken words come one at a time; thus the natural way to speak is one word at a time, one after the other, which in computer lingo is sequential instruction. While it is entirely possible to say thinks like, “the first thousand things you do are these, the second thousand things are those, …” I can guarantee you no human will be able to follow that instruction, not in the requisite number of milliseconds anyways. Besides which, instructions of this nature will also be out of reach of the instructor’s consciousness, so he too will be unable to understand how he does it.
Like Lumifer said, you can still teach such things, but you do it differently. You don’t explain how much to twitch each of the hundreds of muscles you have to maintain balance, you plunk your kid on a bicycle and steady the bike and let him figure it out on his own. Ironically, tasks like these that would be impossible to verbally teach or understand, are simple enough that you can do them without thinking about it.