I'm not so sure about that gear theory. I think you can have new gears installed. When I took some higher level courses that required new kinds of thinking, I didn't get it. I looked and felt retarded for a while, because no matter how it was explained I didn't get it.

Then by continuing to study, and thinking about things, eventually I was able to see it, and it started to integrate itself into my thinking. It's almost like I can feel my brain being rewired.

I think that what's required is enough exposure and determination to reset some neural connections and eventually the idea will integrate itself into you.

Yeah, for me it's always been struggling through. Stepping away and then coming back to it. Then I get it.

Same with piano lessons as a kid. I had chopsticks down pat after a few weeks. Then it was time to play a triad (a 3 note chord) and I just couldn't do it, pushing three keys at once with one hand.

Spent a whole lesson with my teacher literally just pushing my hand down on the piano while I looked on in horror at how badly I was at it. That sucked.

Then my family went on vacation for a week. At my next lesson I could play them just fine. Something clicked.

But it wouldn't have clicked had my teacher not spent an hour pushing my hand down onto the piano over and over again.

Thats how i learned driving. I couldn't get it, my instructor tried to teach me, but i couldn't do anything right. My instructor was pretty good and knew that it was normal and the next day after a good nights sleep i was starting to get good at driving. After a while of driving with mixed success i stopped for a week, and when i got in the car again i was really good. I got my license, but didn't drive for a month and today i got in a car and after a few minutes of remembering, i was good at it, it was all easy, you couldn't tell that it was my 30-th hour in a car, and i haven't driven THIS car ever before, so i had to 'learn it', and get used to it. The mind is an amazing thing, learning is one of the strangest things we are capable of.

I agree. There are definitely many styles of thinking, and they seem to be developed or discovered independently of the skills which they are associated with, i.e. you can learn Java without learning how to think like a programmer. We can call it "talent" and say it's innate, but I think that's a cop out from the hard problem of trying to find better ways to develop it.

In a sense, it's not unlike personality disorders, in that that those who "have it" generally don't know where they got it, and frequently don't recognize it as an "it" that not everyone has it, at least until they're confronted with evidence.

I happen to have recently transcribed something from Seymour Papert's Mindstorms, about LOGO, that seems relevant:

"By deliberately learning to imitate mechanical thinking, the learner becomes able to articulate what mechanical thinking is and what it is not. The exercise can lead to greater confidence about the ability to choose a cognitive style that suits the problem. Analysis of "mechanical thinking" and how it is different from other kinds and practice with problem analysis can result in a new degree of intellectual sophistication. By providing a very concrete, down to earth model of a particular style of thinking, work with the computer can make it easier to understand that there is such a thing as a "style of thinking." And giving children the opportunity to choose one style or another provides an opportunity to develop the skill necessary to choose between styles. Thus instead of inducing mechanical thinking, contact with computers could turn out to be the best conceivable antidote to it. And for me what is most important in this is that through these experiences these children would be serving their apprenticeships as epistemologists, that is to say learning to think articulately about thinking."