We might all have knowledge without conscious learning

[Music]

can you all tell me what flag this is

yeah don’t be shy just shout it out

easy right

i mean it’s the country we’re all in

right now

what about this one

yeah

not quite as easy as a czech republic is

it this is the bhutanese flag

all right i’ll go back to another easy

one then

yeah it seems like most of us got that

one

and how about this one

anyone

this is south sudan’s flag

and finally what about these three

these three almost identical flags are

the polish indonesian and monogask flags

most of you struggled with some of those

but ever since i was small

i’ve known every single one of those

i can name any of the 195 national flags

of the world and i could also tell you

their capital cities

i’m not kidding here let me show you

some

andorran

paraguay

the central african republic tonga

kyrgyzstan

and siege barbuda

i could go on and name any national flag

ever since i was five or six i’ve had

all this knowledge memorized

but the thing is

i never learned

it i never searched up any world flags i

never studied them

i never looked at them

and honestly i never even thought about

them

that was until i turned six

and ever since then i’ve been a huge

geography nerd

and it all spawned out of that

spontaneous emergence of those flags in

my memory

out of nowhere i had access to an

entirely new door to knowledge

one which wasn’t there before

or was it

you’ve all probably heard the saying

that children soak up new things like

sponges

whether that be languages or any new

skills

as it turns out the notion that children

are better learners than adults

is actually true

and that is because as children our

brains have heightened plasticity

meaning they are much more flexible

and because as children we are much more

receptive to new information

as we grow older mature though the

brain’s capacity for change decreases

with time our brains settle into the

lives that we’ve made for ourselves

this process of decreasing the brain’s

plasticity is controlled by inhibitory

neurons

which regulate the creation of new

connections in the brain

they decide what to rewire in the brain

in response to any experience

so they essentially regulate what the

brain learns

not to bore you to death with this

lecture about neuroplasticity and

inhibition

but these inhibitory neurons will

essentially allow most information to

enter the brain when they’re young

as the neurons grow older they become

much more like us judgmental

but there is that critical period during

which they will allow most information

to enter the brain and create new

connections

that critical period is when i must

memorize the

flags i may sound a bit uncertain about

this to you and that is because

truth be told

i am

i have no idea how i know all those

flags and neither do my parents or

anyone else close to me

they seem to have just appeared out of

nowhere

which is why i claim to have never

learned them

at least not in the traditional sense

that strange phenomenon which has made

me so obnoxious to play against in flag

memory games has no obvious logical

explanation

and with that flag game annoyance i’m

being completely serious

for my seventh grade christmas my

grandmother gave me a game named flag

spectrum which revolves around naming

the flags of the world

the first time we played

i won

even against my parents and grandparents

the next time i was alone while everyone

else was in teams

i won again this time by an even greater

margin

as you can imagine we haven’t played it

to me played it too many times since

but this game is what truly made me

aware of my flag knowledge

for some reason a seven-year-old me

beating my adult parents and

grandparents in a knowledge-based game

didn’t shock me at first

i could confidently surprise anyone who

witnessed me naming the flags of the

world as if those flags were ingrained

inside my brain

my knowledge of flags felt so natural so

unforced that it was as if i was born

with it

but i wasn’t born with that knowledge

it’s not as if my memory came as a

preloaded hard drive with the flags of

the world stored on it

and like i already said

i never searched up in your old flies

when i was five

i never tried to memorize the flags of

central america

but somehow they’re in my brain now

and now i have the special ability to

point out the only two flags in the

world which have the color purple on

them

which are nicaragua and dominica by the

way

based on my reading on brain development

i believe that my knowledge of flags

comes from me playing with some flags in

my preschool

but surely i can’t have subconsciously

memorized 195 flags that way

or so i thought

because realistically there was no other

place where i possibly could have been

exposed to and memorize those flags

so even though i have no strong memories

of me playing with any flags in my

preschool that is most likely where i

learned them

having settled on the origins of my flag

knowledge being me playing with some

flags or looking at a poster with the

flags of the world in my warsaw

preschool

let’s move on to the next piece of this

knowledge puzzle

i have the knowledge in my brain

but how do i access it

i’d like to imagine that on my 6th

birthday i woke up and could suddenly

name every single flag in the world

but life is not like a movie and that is

certainly not what happened

it was a more gradual process

at first i would mess up on some of the

similar flags like the polish indonesian

and monogask flags asked you all about

earlier

but relatively quickly my brain ironed

out those errors and i could soon

differentiate all the flags of the world

my access to this knowledge are still

extremely sudden though as i had no idea

i knew any flags before that one day

of course my learning the flags at such

a young age helped because of the

heightened plasticity and inhibitory

balance

but that still does not explain how i

could access that knowledge

so i continued my search for an answer

until i reached my memory

now my memory is certainly not

exceptional

but it is relatively strong

i can remember many things after reading

them just once

i can remember my speeches

and well i can name any of the 195

national flags of the world

perhaps the strength of my memory is we

made that door to knowledge inside my

brain accessible

but what about other doors

what about a door to the ditto pie

what about a door to chest openings

and what about the doors in your brains

we’ve all been children at some point so

we’ve all lived through that critical

period we’ve all had high brain

plasticity and the optimal inhibitory

balance and we all put unknown things

during that period

so where is that knowledge now

we might all have this knowledge in our

memories and our brains

the challenge

is finding a way to access it

there are almost endless possibilities

for the knowledge that might be hidden

inside your brains that you are yet to

discover

whether that knowledge is one of flags

like mine

or art theory

or even physics concepts

so when you go home today start

searching for that potentially hidden

knowledge it could be anywhere

as i’m doing this tedx talking to school

i find it only thing that i give you all

a small test don’t worry though it’s

nothing too difficult

actually i just spoke about these three

flags a couple minutes ago

remember these

i’ll tell you this these are the flags

of poland indonesia and monaco but can

you tell me which is which

if you said that flag a was monaco’s b

poland’s and c the indonesian flag you’d

be right

if you got all three of those correct

you might just have that same hidden

knowledge of flags that i have

and if you didn’t

don’t worry

your head knowledge may just be in

another area

i’m not saying that we can all become

the next chess grandmasters and you

should definitely not expect to become

the next einstein who bang your head

against the wall enough

but we might all have a layer of

knowledge in our brains that we never

learned

we just need to learn to tap into that

knowledge

[Applause]

you