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"Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering" with Dr Scott Small review.

For my third interview, I chose to continue on the subject of memory. In fact, as much as I was not bad to learn new things, the field in which I excel the most is to forget things. Thus, I sometime need to make a list of things I need to do or think about for the coming days, it helps me remember them as well as organizing myself to deal with them. So I chose for this interview to talk about "Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering" with Dr Scott Small to help me better know about this phenomena which happen to me but also to lot of other people.

To begin about the subject, Dr Small tells us that a brain can be seen as a computer. We need to deal with information by learning them and store them in a part of our memory as a hard drive. This can be represented as a “save function” and happens in the part of or brain named hippocampus. Then, we need to find that information in our brain the moment we need them; and this can be represented as the “open function”. This action take place in our prefrontal cortex.

The science point of view evolved on the subject of forgetting; before it was seen as a failure of the brain and nowadays, we know that another part of the brain is dedicated to forgetting and so that is was a completely normal phenomena. As Dr Scott Small said, we all want a perfect photographic memory. However, this is without knowing the dark side of not forgetting. Actually, people with this ability usually suffer from it and need to isolate themselves to calm their pain.

After saying that forgetting was a very normal situation, Dr Scott Small emphasizes the difference between this and a pathological disease, which hits a millions of people. In fact, Alzheimer hits a very different part of hippocampus than normal forgetting. The question we can ask ourselves is “Why some people are affected by this disease and other are not?”. To answer this question, we need to understand that our brain has a trafficking system; proteins need to be carried from one part of a neurone to another part. However, sometime to much information on the same time can overcrowd parts of our brain which can be seen as hubs and this creates traffic jam in our brain and so lets the neurones which can’t get the protein slowly die. We now know that Alzheimer can be caused by a specific gene or by getting obesity or type 2 diabetes. Dr Small recommend us to live a healthy life and to do some check with a health professional if you have any doubt about your oversights.

To fight against this complex disorder; some drugs, which are used to make gene therapies are on clinical tries but nothing is completely done for the moment as well as we do not know the side effects of those therapies.

Now about Dr Scott Small, he is the Director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia University, where he is the Boris and Rose Katz Professor of Neurology. He is appointed in the Departments of Neurology, Radiology, and Psychiatry. He also contributed to more than an hundred and forty articles during last twenty years. Then, he is the developer of high-resolution functional MRI applications that can pinpoint the areas of the hippocampus most affected by aging and disease. His lab uses this “anatomical biology” approach of isolating pathogenic mechanisms to identify potential causes of these disorders and inform on drug discovery and development.

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“Learning How to Learn”: Techniques to Help You Learn with Dr Barbra Oakley (CLASSIC) review

The second topic I chose is Learning How to Learn": Techniques to Help You Learn with Dr Barbara Oakley (CLASSIC). After choosing a subject that describe me in my competences, let’s pick a subject that define in what I am as a student who need to learn. In fact, even if my studies are almost finished and even this is the place you will learn the most knowledge in your life, my opinion is that we need to continue learning at each moment of our life. I think it is the best way to keep an healthy way of life by training the body but also the mind. The problem here is how to learn properly. In fact, we learn many things at school but ironically not how to learn. That is why I chose this subject; to give answers to that issue.

First, Dr Barbara Oakley tells us the importance of training our brain to create strong connexions between neurones. In fact, we have two types of memories; the working memory, which have small efficiency, and a long time memory that makes the connexion of neurones with a set of link already existing. The main goal is to use the more you can your long time memory. A method given by Dr Barbara Oakley is to use something you already know to build new knowledge around them. Another method Dr Barbara Oakley give to us is to use the Pomodoro method, which consist of alternating between “focusing mode” and “negative network”. In fact, sometimes set your brain in the passive mode may give you answers to a problem you could not solve just by focus on this one; it lets you have a different point of view. To optimize your learning, you also have to remove all the distractions as phone notifications for example. You can also award yourself some breaks between your exercises by divide your session of work in many timed little sessions, do not use learning objectives as break trigger. Finally, she advises to speak to other people about what you are learning; it will also help yourself. Then, Dr Barbara Oakley tells us that being bad at learning is not fatal; if you are keep training your brain; you will be able to be better in that domain even if the use of medication to help our memory is not an unlikely hypothesis. To speak about Barbara Oakley, she is an American professor of engineering at Oakland Univerisy and McMaster Univerisy whose online courses on learning are some of the most popular MOOC classes in the world, “Learning How to Learn", which attracted more than 2.5 millions of users. She is also recognize for her works on complex relationship between neuroscience and social behaviour. We can take the example of “Pathological altruism” which is a book containing many academic papers in which she defines pathological altruism as "altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm".

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“The Technology Trap” and the Future of Work with Dr Carl Frey review

The first topic I chose is “The technology Trap” and the Future of Work with Dr Carl Frey. First, I wanted to start my blog by picking a subject that was in adequacy with my learning program so I went to the AI heading. Then, I chose more particularly that discussion because as a future engineer, we also must be aware of ethical issues that bring new technologies in which we will be involved. Regardless the environment consequences; the social issues have to be taken in account and I am interested in how can we deal with those futures possible issues.

First, Mr Frey begin with the history of technology improvements, which had happened in the past. In fact, we can possibly learn from those different experiences to predict the future of a potential technology improvement and face it properly. Actually, we can learn from 1st and 2nd industrial revolution of England. The first revolution was not welcomed; the new steam machines did not offer new jobs to the British population; even more, a lot of were removed. However, during the second revolution, new electricity machines allowed people to get better job, better paid, and that also for the people, which were considered part of poor people. Those helped to reduce the inequalities. In fact, we can notice the number of children who made longer studies increase. Speaking about future now, Mr Frey affirmed that it not possible to predict some mass job loss due to technology improvements but he estimates that actually 47% of jobs have risk to be automated. However, after what we know currently, it might be that low skill jobs might be replaced by high skill jobs. As example, robots can already replace the negotiation or motivation jobs; a study showed that 30% of people were not possible to know the person with who they were speaking with was a real person or not. There is no big solutions to face this future revolutions, but Mr. Frey propose some in his book “The technology Trap”. Among them, we have to manage this transition by make awareness campaign to people but without scaring them. We need schools, universities, and colleges, companies to works together to make those sensitizations to prepare people to the transition and be ready for the future.

Concerning the guest of that interview, Mr Carl Frey; he is Swedish-German economist and economic historian. He also is Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at Oxford University where he directs the programme on the Future of Work at the Oxford Martin school. He worked a lot about the subject of the “employment apocalypse” in collaboration with Professor Michael Osborne. Mr Frey is also known for his book “The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation” which was selected as book of the year in 2019 as a Financial Time (daily economic newspaper).