The Super Simulator

Here is something interesting that I read today: The first known flight simulator was developed in 1909 to help pilots learn to fly the Antoinette monoplane. Apparently some of the controls, more specifically the one concerned with controlling the roll of the plane, were slightly counterintuitive. The purpose of this was to give the pilot a chance to get used to controlling the plane before taking the real thing up into the air. Needless to say this saved the people building the planes a considerable amount of money that would have otherwise been spent on ads in the classifieds reading “Man wanted. Must have a head for heights. No fatties.” And if at this point you find yourself thinking “Surely Developing the world’s first flight simulator would be more expensive than a few more ads in the paper” think again. Take a look at what passed for a flight simulator in 1909.

"We admire your enthusiasm Frank, but this has got to be your shittiest parade float yet"

Compared to this; my shenanigans as a young boy, in which my brothers would push me down the garden in a box on a skateboard, look like astronaut training. If all this sounds just too ridiculous to believe, there is apparently a full-size model of this piece of high tech kit in the foyer of the Airbus Training Centre in Toulouse for you to check out at your convenience.

What does this have to do with anything? Well it’s like they say: Practice makes perfect. Simulation is a widely used method of teaching that has been around for a very long time, and I’m not just talking about barrels on seesaws here. Simulation is a natural part of how humans and animals learn to do things. Ever watched kittens play fighting? Lion cubs on the telly stalking each other in the grass? Or children playing house? These are all natural ways in which we learn to do the things we’re supposed to do (or in humans’ case, occasionally, expected to do). Some of it is instinct, some of it is imitation. As a child you might see your mum or dad talking into the phone, you might have a toy phone and so you do the same. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing but everyone else seems to be doing it, so it can’t be that weird. You even know that you have to start by mashing the keypad a few times because you’d just look stupid otherwise.  By the time you’re old enough to be allowed to use the phone you will probably be told that the numbers you press are important and that they need to be input in a certain order, but other than that, you almost instinctively know how to use the phone. Some children talk to their toys or have imaginary friends. This isn’t antisocial; it’s practice (bare in mind the fact that I’m not a qualified child psychologist here. If your four year old child tells you he put Mr Fluffykins in the microwave because ‘Fred’ told him to, you should probably seek professional advice). Children use these games and role-plays to practice being a proper ‘grown-up’.

Beyond the realms of imitation, we have an even more powerful simulator at our disposal: our brain. People daydream all the time. We fantasise about things we’d like to say or do with members of the opposite sex, having lots of money, or a big house, or fantasise about pushing that loudmouth prick on his blackberry off the station platform into the path of the 815 to Southport. Whilst each of these fantasies looks at a larger goal; they contain smaller, more everyday scenarios, such as how you might smooth talk your boss into giving you that raise, or how to resist pushing that loudmouth prick on his blackberry off the station platform into the path of the 815 to Southport. Still not satisfied with that, Mother Nature has seen fit to install an automated simulation cycle in the form of dreams. It’s still near impossible to explain in any certain terms exactly how dreams work and why we evolved to have them (or why the divine being that picked us from his nose gave them to us), but one theory that has caught my attention is the idea that at least some dreams are a way of training us to deal with situations that may arise in our waking lives.

As adults, we simulate situations in our dreams often. If something is worrying you, such as an upcoming job interview, you might find yourself running through that situation in a dream. It’s not uncommon for these things to feed back negatively. If you have low expectations for the job interview you might find things going horribly wrong in the dream, far worse than might be reasonably expected. These nightmares, however, might spur you on to prepare even more vigorously for your interview and ultimately aid you in getting the job (if you don’t have a mental breakdown first). Even if you end up with the old ‘naked in front of an audience’ situation you can at least go to the interview knowing that, as long as you’ve double checked you’re wearing your pants, things can’t get that bad.

The mind’s power to provide us with a safe environment in which to simulate various scenarios has led to some people using it as a way of learning actions through meditation and lucid dreaming. It’s around here that things all start to get a little hokey, and despite my own interest in this area of self improvement, I feel I’m better off skipping it here.

Whatever you think of dreams, it’s hard to ignore the impact they can have on our waking lives, and their application as a natural simulator makes a lot of sense. And even if you don’t think much of this mental training, it’s hard to ignore the benefits of learning through simulators. Simulators continue to be used as effective learning tools in many walks of life, and whether it’s in your head or on your computer, chances are that you learn from one on a daily basis.