METHODS OF KNOWING : USE AND VALUE DIVERSITY

Intuition  -- often thought of as an a priori instinct or sixth sense
Experiential -- learned belief rooted in experience
Rational    -- learned belief rooted in the mind
Emotional   -- wisdom of the heart from this lifetime or previous
Gut Reaction -- coming from the core, unclear if t is instinctive or able to be learned

Learning vs. Unlearning
Part of the way I understand the unlearning of Gaia University.  On a very literal level, I understand unlearning as eliminating some of the unhealthy learning tools and beliefs that standard education and conventional culture has conditioned into me.  On a subtler level, I understand unlearning as trusting my intuitive gut over my rational brain.

Malcolm Gadwell in Blink lays out very clear ideas of why to trust intuition and articulates techniques to sharpen and gain trust in our intuitive side.  The nerve centers in our gut do "know" and often instinct is better than overthinking.   Overly rational doctors 'analysis paralysis' or Hamlet's existential dilemma are times when it can be useful to sift through too much information to what is truly essential.  Malcolm Gladwell tells stories of a fireman saving other firefighters lives with his instinct to 'get out' of what appeared to be a minimal danger situation or the art curator's aesthetic reaction to a piece judging it more accurately than the best science of the day that cost the Getty a 4 million dollar error.   Gladwell acknowledges that our intuition can mislead us into stereotypes which is why he insists on learning how to use it: the Warren Harding Error assumes that tall, handsome men are going to be good CEO's or presidents.  Prejudice based on thin slicing is a weakness of trusting too quickly our gut reaction.

The third aspect that unlearning points to for me is learning of content vs. learning of systems.   Many of us get trapped in believing the learning happens with the content.  However, cramming 40 formulas in my head from geometry or physics is not comparable to learning methods of derivation.  In my recent solar energy course, the instructor put five formulas on the board and encourage us to memorize these five and illustrated how to derive any other formula we would need from these five.  This feels akin to me of the identity.  Learning systems of classification is useful.  

METHODS OF LEARNING :  INFORMATION AS A RESOURCE

Repetition
Teaching
10,000 hours
Memorization
Etymology -- defining the terms

DEFINING THE TERMS -- READING THE GLOSSARY -- Information is a Resource 
Observation is a key factor in design. Having an appropriate vocabulary and terms can greatly assist the observation phase. For many tests that I have taken, the simplest way for me to study was to read the glossary.  I often experienced that what many questions were asking was whether I understood the language of that community.  It is hard to get the right answers when we don't know the terms being discussed.  My first couple years in the permaculture world were spent learning the terms/tools of this system and unlearning the systems of another.  Geoff Lawton emphatically pointed out that when he is working with earthmovers and telling them to construct an on-contour ditch that we call swales, they would ask over and over if he really didn't want a very low slight slope as they had always aimed at drainage.  He was aiming at a different result.  Permaculturalists want to catch  and sink the water.  This isn't the language or the systems of the most earthmovers.   The world of flowers and herbs felt very overwhelming to me until i started naming them and placing them within a system.  I am grateful for the permaculture world to allow me to look at a site in terms of water, wind, sun, relative  location of components of garden, house, animals, orchard.
    I often reflect on the good fortune I had of taking a wonderful etymology class while i was in high school.   Beyond shooting my SAT scores up an extra hundred points, I'm sure that my comprehension everywhere increased by looking at the fundamental roots of our tools for communication.  Parsing these out and seeing where they come from.  Incidentally, I think that playing with the etymology of phrases is a very illuminating  way of seeing how expressions come to be and language evolves. . . .