Josh Fisher 7/29/25 Josh Fisher 7/29/25

Consciousness: The Qualia

Individual consciousness is not learned, it is inherited, and it enables and powers human social-cultural learning.

Josh Fisher 7/27/25 Josh Fisher 7/27/25

Consciousness: The Sex

We face this in the same way we always have—via real conversation, with above-board, meaning-based teaching, learning, and action.

Josh Fisher 7/24/25 Josh Fisher 7/24/25

Consciousness: The Tools

Give us the tools of 2000 generations or so of cultural evolution, joint attention, high stakes, a division of labor, and a lot of work, and we can form and reform, to a significant degree, our own consciousnesses.

Josh Fisher 7/23/25 Josh Fisher 7/23/25

Consciousness: The Scene

Consciousness allowed our ancestors to spread out while maintaining cultural alignment. It operates in the same way in human infants and adults, providing for rapid cultural learning in noisy environments with significant poverties of linguistic stimuli.

Josh Fisher 7/6/25 Josh Fisher 7/6/25

I Think Therefore I'm a Genius

The 'genius' thinking you feel yourself to have is just associative learning, combined, crucially, with your talents for ad hoc reasoning and self-deception.

Josh Fisher 7/1/25 Josh Fisher 7/1/25

Transmissions 2: Drunk on Inference

This game makes no sense at any stage of instruction—neither hook, nor development, nor demonstration. If this is what you want, you should not want this.

Josh Fisher 6/27/25 Josh Fisher 6/27/25

Transmissions 1: Monologics

Multiple, aligned inferential views that have not been conversationalized to shared views. They are the E Pluribus without the unum.

Josh Fisher 6/24/25 Josh Fisher 6/24/25

Transmission and the Individual

Cultures are built to contain the mutually agreed-upon yet evolving impressions of conversations, not monologics of any kind—neither tyrannical nor swarm.

Josh Fisher 6/15/25 Josh Fisher 6/15/25

The Culture of Childhood and the Science of Learning

"In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb ... In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed."

Josh Fisher 6/8/25 Josh Fisher 6/8/25

Transmission and The Blank Slate

We stand our ground and change our mind—and we help others stand their ground and change their minds—together, in conversation.

Josh Fisher 5/31/25 Josh Fisher 5/31/25

Behavior and Transmission

Our shared understanding is forged not in isolation, but through the active transmission and careful stewardship of knowledge from one to another.

Josh Fisher 5/13/25 Josh Fisher 5/13/25

Long Live the Transmission Model!

The foundational fact of individual experiential solitude forces us into an emergent inter-cognitive space where we can understand others and be understood by them.

Josh Fisher 4/26/25 Josh Fisher 4/26/25

The Secret to Student Engagement

People want to say, 'I'm not seduced by repetition! I like new things!' But disguised repetition is reliably pleasurable, because it leads to fluency, and fluency makes you feel good.

Josh Fisher 4/18/25 Josh Fisher 4/18/25

Known Forever By the Tracks We Leave

If there is really a toxic element in Rousseau's legacy, it is this: his promulgation of the 'myth of the stupid savage'—even if one he considered blissful in its state of stupidity.