On 1/31/06, Jon_Lincicum wrote: > > Of course, one might well ask (and I have) why it takes Dragaerans so long > to study things? I can only conclude that the same factors that give > Dragaerans a long lifespan also result in them being very slow learners, > at least by our standards. (How old was Savn? 80? 90? And he still needed > his hand held to perform basic medicine, after studying it for decades?) > This is something I've been pondering for a while, and while I don't have a good answer, here's a wildly pararectal handwave: Consider that there is more than one type of memory, event memory, and skill memory. Event memory is broken down into short-term and long-term memory, and skill memory is built from long-term memories. Now, if you have really, really long lived entities, it would make sense for them to be able to retain strong, long-term memories throughout their lifetime. However, it ought not be *too* easy to form strong, long-term memories, because brain capacity is finite. So it therefore makes sense that it takes a lot longer for strong, long-term skill memories to form in beings that have a lifespan of 2000-3000 years. Hm. This is a more scientific breakdown of the different types of memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory Fortunately for my handwave, many aspects of how memory works are still not well understood. But perhaps a 34- or 51-, or maybe even 68-year curriculum would be more appropriate for Dragaerans. Hm. 4 years (as in a 4-year college) is 4% of a human lifespan. 4% of, say, 2500, is a century or so.