Lately I’ve been watching some interesting video lectures by neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky who is perhaps most noteworthy for the fact that he has carefully duplicated the hairstyle of Weird Al Yankovic.

Just recently, I was watching Sapolsky describe the brain’s process of learning. We all have a general sense that learning takes some repetition. You have to have someone tell you a fact several times, or practice to skill several times, before it sinks in. Sapolsky explained the physiological process that’s occurring during the situations. The brain is made up of neurons, and these neurons communicate to each other over brain synapses, which are essentially little bridges that neurons used to pass chemical messengers to each other. Now, you might have a neurons sitting there, being dormant, when suddenly several other neurons connected to it start passing signals to it. These other neurons might pass signals 20 or 25 times (I’m making these numbers up) but that dormant neuron refuses to pass along any signal to other neurons downstream. Then it gets the 26th knock, and whammo, it sends a signal shooting along. And here’s the kicker: it doesn’t take another 26 knocks to make that neuron send a signal, another one will do it. In essence, the neuron has been “primed.” And, of course, that’s what learning really is. Someone tells you your new neighbor’s name, and you forget it, and then someone else tells it to you, and you forget it again, and that happens a couple more times, but finally it sinks in that his name is “Bob.” And from that point on, you don’t forget it. The synaptic connections have been strengthened.

But it strikes me that there’s a bit of a downside to learning. I’ve recently been browsing through my highly regarded book, “Acid Logic,” and find myself occasionally cringing at some of the writing. How did I miss this or that grammatical or stylistic error, I find myself asking. The answer is that, at the time of writing and editing, I did not have the synaptic connections in place for these particular writing “rules.” But now I do; they are fully formed and unyielding, and will forever deny me a certain pleasure in reading my writing.

I recall, years ago, reading a piece of writing by a classical music critic (God knows why.) He stated that his sense of relative pitch had become so finely tuned that he could not enjoy most symphonies, since most instruments in an orchestra will — over the course of a performance — fall at least slightly out of tune with each other. As a result, this critic could not enjoy most orchestral music. What had happened? He had so strengthened the synaptic connections between the neurons in his audio cortex which sensed differences in pitch that he was noticing subtle dissonances most people would not. Learning had actually taking away his enjoyment of music.

We live in a culture which encourages learning and education. But it seems obvious that learning only leads to misery. A learned person is forever doomed to hear a sarcastic voice echoing in the brain, criticizing everything they see around them. It’s better to have the mind of a child and take simple pleasures at the most mundane delights — candies, nursery rhymes, pooping your pants. Only then can you be truly happy. (This realization might be the core of the adult baby movement.)