“Understanding,” I wrote, “is not the processing of information. It is the capacity to be wounded by it.
He picked up the paper, tucked it into his briefcase, and walked out of the lecture hall without a single word.
I understood.
The little girl, maybe four years old, was getting frustrated. The kite wouldn’t lift. She tugged the string harder. Nothing. Then, she stopped. She looked at the motionless leaves on the tree. She looked at her own hair, which wasn’t blowing. She sat down on the grass, hugged the kite, and began to cry.
“That the kite won’t fly,” I said. dr. stevens' final examination
Understanding is the ability to apply knowledge to a novel situation. But that was just pattern matching. A machine could do that, too.
Then I remembered something. It was a Tuesday afternoon, two years ago. I had been a sophomore, drowning in imposter syndrome. After a lecture on functionalism, I had stayed behind, my voice trembling. “Understanding,” I wrote, “is not the processing of
“Define ‘understanding’ in such a way that a machine could never truly possess it, yet a child does instinctively.”