Dear Sir:

Some recent news reports have occasioned me to call attention to a principle of learning which, in our era of existential unease and fracture, often escapes notice.  A professor at an institution of higher learning, we have been told, worries that he may not be able to “compete” (as he says) with the volumes of information made available to his students by the machines of artificial intelligence.  In this I think his fears are misplaced, and that he need not heat his mind to such a state of fretful ebullition; and I will attempt, with a few disjointed thoughts and unconnected meanderings, to explain why I believe this to be so.