This reminds me of something that I heard once from a Chinese teacher. I can't vouch for the accuracy of it, but he was definitely on to something: In the West, it is assumed that it is the speaker's job to make himself understood to his listeners. In the East, it is the other way around.
In recent times, it seems like we've gotten even more extreme. The speaker or writer must not only spoon-feed the understanding, they also have to provide the motivation and the entertainment. Which I find sad, because some things you can't get unless you go to the effort of extracting them yourself. (See many reproducible psychology findings about retention being highly correlated with depth of processing, for example.) It's like the information equivalent of highly processed food.
I find myself falling into this trap on sites like this. An interesting but difficult article will be posted, I won't immediately know what to think or where I stand on the topic, and I'll flip to the comments so that I can get some part of the collective to tell me what to think and how to feel about it. Which is also sad.
In paintings, it is known that the viewer can get out more than the painter put in. It used to be the same with writing, but it feels like that is becoming more rare and less acceptable. If a reader can't follow the argument, it's automatically the author's fault and a waste of the reader's time. Heaven forbid the reader might need to exert some effort and grow in the gleaning.
That is because the USA is low context while China is high context. For more about this and related topics, read https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00IHGVQ9I/ref=tmm_kin_swatch....
"Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd. It's no surprise that when they try and talk to each other, chaos breaks out."
Oh, it is a book about stereotypes. Well, as a german it seems I have to get straight to the point, I do not think, thinking in stereotypes this broad is helpful for communicating.
Did you read the beginning of the book or just read that one quote? The first chapter on a story about meeting etiquette in Chinese business culture is actually quite insightful. It certainly resonates with me a least. I wish I had a manual so I knew how to behave in a meeting with people from different cultures. We are not all the same and there is no one size fits all way of behaving in a meeting.
I stopped at that quote.
There are no doubt interesting anecdota inside, that might be insightful and there is no doubt some truth to some clichés, but I seriously doubt a box so big as "asians" has much value.
And even for "small" boxes like "germans", there are for example great differences between east and west germany (seperated by the iron curtain and different systems for over 40 years) - but more so for the older and less for the younger generation. Etc.
So reading in general about cultural differences when meeting someone from that culture can be surely be helpful - but in my experience it is not useful for taking such advice by the letter.
The alternative to considering "asians" or "germans" is probably not understanding each person's cultural background individually but rather putting everyone in a single "world" box. Which is the biggest and most useless one of all. Once you have a good understanding of a typical german you can of course zoom in and get more detail, but if you refuse to learn about germans in general then that's going to make you less understanding of both an old person from east germany and a young person from west germany, not more.
There is also the alternative of treating humans as humans first, if you don't know much about them, except their looks and their passport nationality.
And not assuming one has these and those traits, because they look "asian", but were raised in the US for example.
I know I met many people from many backgrounds all over the world and my thinking in boxes default mode, was never really helpful, but often very wrong. So it is good to know what some common traits are for a person from a certain cultural background, but not with the assumption that the individual in front of you is in fact like this. That can also offend people.
For example some cultures do not like to shake hands. Germans usually do, but personally I also don't. So just be conscious and try to read body language, would be my advice. And in case of doubt, asking a person on the side and not in front of everyone usually works to work around missunderstandings.
Well, the differences between western cultures are less pronounced, but I do think that knowing, say, Chinese etiquette when meeting mainland Chinese people is essential to not come across accidentally as rude. There are significant differences there, and natural body language does differ with culture.
Nonetheless, I agree with your general point/sentiment.
"Chinese etiquette when meeting mainland Chinese people is essential to not come across accidentally as rude"
For sure. And I read up about any culture I visit the first time. But chinese are quite different from mongolians and thais for example. So my issue was especially with "asian". This term is allmost meaningless to me, as it puts billions of different people in one basket.
Alternatively, by doing what you suggest you embed stereotypes into the person which may then need to be undone, which is harder then starting from a blank slate.
This is how we get to harmful (even if well intentioned) ideas like “Asians are good at math”.
https://ideas.ted.com/why-saying-asians-are-good-at-myth-isn...
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-racist-stereotyping-asians-goo...
Well it's not a book of rules.
What you think the book is, and what it actually is, are very different.
It is not about stereotypes for judging someone from another culture. It is about how to think about other cultures so that we won't fail in stereotypical ways when we have to function in those cultures. And how to understand and resolve common conflicts that happen between businesses from different cultures.
"The Joy of Reading Books You Don't Understand"
It seems you didn't even try to understand The Culture Map, and opted for a strawman.
You're trying to use it as a cookbook. If you instead see it as a dictionary to be used when someone you're interacting with isn't behaving the way you had expected, it will make more sense. We can still be unique flowers with a wide variance, even if cultural regions have shifted medians.
"If you instead see it as a dictionary to be used when someone you're interacting with isn't behaving the way you had expected, it will make more sense"
Well, to be honest, I doubt that. By now I have read some examples from the book and the way he uses nationality in absolute terms and placing them on scales is deeply offputting to me. So far I often experienced situations where people behaved differently, than what I would have expected - but I do not recall any situation where placing those people on mathematical sounding scales would have explained their reactions better. With some thinking and asking they all could be explained and resolved in a normal way. To me the whole thing sounds like something that sounds good and easy on first glance - but falls apart when you look deeper. The author as a "international business expert" likely knows his way around different cultures simply by experience - not because he makes cultural meassurments in his head. But he made a goodselling book, so good for him. And good for you that you find value in it. I don't. So maybe I "didn't even try to understand The Culture Map" - or maybe I just have a different opinion.
Culture correlates strongly with nationality, you are throwing away a very powerful tool just for an ideological reason.
And no, often it is too late once you have already made the mistake, first impressions matter and you massively improve your chances if you take their nationality into account. Sure they might take your nationality into account and adapt to you instead, as you say that often works for you, good, but some people actually wants to learn to adapt to others.
"but some people actually wants to learn to adapt to others"
Yes. And I said I don't want to learn by fixating on nationality. Not that I don't take it into account.
And the quote above from the cover already talks about "asians". Even less meaningless. Not completely meaningless, but allmost. And all I read about the book seems like strongly fixating on nationality. Maybe it goes deeper at some point. I only judged from what I read. And I am aware of the potential irony given the topic, but so far I think, I understood enough.
If you would like an answer to that, then I would suggest reading the section titled "Being open to individual differences is not enough", and perhaps the quoted passage in the later section "Tasting the water you swim in".
You're probably less "German" than she thinks you are, and more "German" than you think you are, but that's not incompatible with what she says. Don't mistake the blurb for the content. I agree that the blurb is a bit obnoxious, but then, its function is to appeal to (or piss off) someone enough that they'll pause and consider buying the book (maybe if only to prove how wrong it is).
I have not read the book but I have heard the author speak on the topic, and in my opinion she adequately addresses your complaint. I personally still find her message a bit oversimplified, but isn't that what we're talking about? That's what you have to do in order to get your readers/listeners to understand what you're trying to communicate!
Or do you? As in the original article here, there can be benefit to reading things where the author doesn't try to make it easy. Perhaps they put down the messy truth in disconnected fragments, or they pile up lots of examples that don't quite fit any simple orthogonal dimensions of explanation. Such compendiums incorporate deep insight to anyone willing and able to put in the effort to derive it for themselves. Let the reader figure it out by meditating on them, or rereading them 100 times, or trying them out in practice, or whatever.
that's extreme oversimplification of multifaceted topic.
All models are simplifications. High versus low context is only one of many dimensions in its model.
I have not read the book but I have heard Erin speak, and I do find the high/low context dimension to be very powerful in explaining a great many things. I don't see how it applies all that well to this one, though, other than perhaps explaining one way in which something can come across as dense or cryptic. Specifically, you could use it to say that a text is embedded in the context in which it was written, and so for example what is not said can speak louder than what is said.
But I don't see how it explains differences in what is expected of a listener/reader/learner. I may very well just be missing it.
I read this comment before the post, and now I feel bad.
I watched a spy movie from the 1960s recently with someone. We got 20 minutes in before she was confused about why the movie is just about a depressed drunk who lost his job in a spy agency, before my movie-watching accomplice looked up the plot of the movie on Wikipedia. Spoiler alert, there's a twist, and the movie didn't tell the viewer that.
It's interesting that modern movies have to make you think you understand something, before they pull the curtain back and reveal there's a twist. Otherwise people will get disengaged and stop watching before the twist occurs.
So how’s the movie called?
Probably "The spy who came in from the cold"
The book and the movie are quite rough, raw and extradry - i don’t mean this in a bad way. The mood reminds me more of eastern productions like tarkowsky (stalker) and the like.
"Bond for grownups"
Also called "stale beer" spy fiction to emphasize its lack of glamour and that settings like dive bars are more common in it than fancy casinos and cocktail parties.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpyFiction
I also strongly suspect you watched "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold". If you enjoyed this movie and the way it is narrated, please do yourself a favor and watch all the BBC mini series from the 70ies/80ies based on John Le Carré books, namely "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "Smiley's People", and "A Perfect Spy" (or read the books, John Le Carré is an excellent writer, and "A Perfect Spy" can be compared to works by Dickens). You usually have no clue what is going on, and only learn about it later.
Second this. IMHO Richard Burton and Alec Guinness give stellar performances in these shows/movies. I would also recommend the Len Deighton series Game, Set, Match with Ian Holm. You need to watch to the end to figure out what's going on.
I think these movies are attempting to put you in the position of a spy, where you need to pay attention and infer motives from actions, and actions from motives.
The IPCRESS File is probably my favorite in the genre of cold war spy thrillers. It's slightly more on the fantastical side of the spectrum, but still so good it makes grocery shopping interesting.
The camera work is just brilliant, with many shots taken from angles that emulate covert surveillance, yet still managing to beautifully frame the scenes. Since this is implied, but never spoken, some reviewers seem to have missed this aspect, and just though they were shooting scenes through building windows for the sake of it.
Even just the opening scene says so much about the main character on without him or anyone else speaking a single word: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBCqP7R42K0
"It's interesting that modern movies have to make you think you understand something, before they pull the curtain back and reveal there's a twist. Otherwise people will get disengaged and stop watching before the twist occurs."
I agree with this. For a particularly insidious example see the latest Star Wars series, the Acolyte, by Disney.
Well, I have watched 5 episodes so far, still waiting for the twist. So far I think the Acolyte is pretty dull. My girlfriend checked out after episode 3. Your comment fills me with hope!
So this is just storytelling 101...you don't have to give up the whole story but it does have to be engaging in the meantime...before the _big reveal_. Five dull episodes is not good storytelling and you're probably going to end up disappointed.
So why should you keep on watching a movie where nothing happens just because, in the end, it _might_ be that there is a twist? I do see the more general point about ever shorter attention spans, but in general, it's probably a good thing that we have enough options to entertain ourselves in order to not having to take these gambles.
“Nothing happening” can be as impactful and meaningful as a scene full of action.
I personally like to know as little as possible about a movie before I watch it, aside from genre. I want to experience the story as the creators intended, and at times this includes being completely in the dark. The transition from “wtf is going on?” to understanding is where the payoff resides.
Every movie you watch is a gamble, even if you read the Wikipedia page first. And it is possible to get a general understanding of the reception of a movie without having to know anything about the plot itself.
Different people watch for different reasons. I personally think it’d be incredibly boring to stop making gambles on potentially interesting movies.
Well the issue is that people panic, since honestly I think we are very insecure about our media literacy
I find a similar trend with education in general. Some states have phased out programs for gifted students.
Instead, many of them aren’t stimulated enough and end up going down a troubling path (worst case) or they don’t really reach their full potential during those formidable years.
Teachers are expected to make the content match the lowest denominator, outside of the occasional exceptional teacher
And so many of those programs were absolutely horrible.
I had a lot more homework than my peers and was expected to act more mature. Sorry, but we were all the same age as other kids - we didn't deserve a higher workload (as kids and teens) and we should have been expected to act our age.
It was pretty common to make fun of others for not keeping up well enough (struggling not allowed) or for appearing too smart (Not me, but a family member).
Some school systems completely separated gifted kids from 'regular' students. By high school, it was obvious that this created some issues communicating with a broader range of folks.
There is more than one way to make sure gifted kids get challenged - you don't necessarily need a special class for gifted kids.
And you'll need to provide proof for the last one. It is true that they do teach so that the test scores are good - and since funding and jobs are tied to that testing, other things are going to go down. This isn't really making content matching the lowest denominator, though.
Seems geographical/not uniform. In UK some schools just pocket the gifted and talented funds and deliver nothing.
It definitely isn't uniform in the US - it isn't even uniform in schools near each other.
Schooling systems between countries are very difficult to compare. I just learned that some UK schools have gifted and talented programs and funds, for example.
The UK doesn't even have a single education system (e.g. exams for university entrance and the length of first degrees).
Mine was great. It had a normal amount of homework, a smaller class size (which was a happy but unintentional accident), and accelerated four years into three. We shared electives with the rest of the school and socialised widely. I was bullied pretty badly through my pre-teen childhood and the program provided a way out of that, which in turn taught me how to interact with a group of people who didn't physically and emotionally abuse me for social gain - something a lot of people take for granted.
Which is to say that anecdotes are of course going to be mixed.
My daughter is in gifted. She still has a regular home room class that she is in 80% of the day. Gifted is treated as an elective where they have a class or two that is small in size and more intellectually stimulating (or so they say, I don't sit in there and have nothing to compare).
No extra homework...they don't give homework at all nowadays.
Because of how fragmented the United States school system is, your experience will definitely not be applicable to everyone. Heck, even the county next to mine does gifted differently.
Because making someone think is stupid-shaming and therefore not politically correct.
Eventually everyone is tested. I have received perfect looking resumes and cover letters, then you get the person on a call and they are… hopeless. It’s very sad. Who pushed them so far? How did they get the credentials? Who wrote and edited their materials?
Eventually the “rubber meets the road” so to speak, and all of the lies and gold stars and platitudes don’t count for anything.
There are certainly people like that, but there are also exceptionally smart people that just absolutely suck at selling themselves, and you might unknowingly decided the same way in case of both.
It’s very hard to fairly evaluate someone. E.g. I had interviews where I 100% know more than one of my interviewers on the specific topic (not bragging, my knowledge is ain’t a high bar), and that gap in this unusual direction made the process very awkward and strange.
In some ways this supports the point, in others it's the exact opposite.
He says spoonfeeding information to people in bite-size chunks is like processed food and it should be hard, but you're saying that information should be spoonfed to 'smart' kids in exactly the right level of difficulty or they'll wreck their lives.
Possibly it's like the concept of flow, where the standard suggestion is that things should be not too hard and not too easy, in order to keep your attention, interest and focus.
But philosphically, that's just 'spoon-feeding' information in bite-size chunks like processed food, it's just varying the size of the bite to suit the level of the reciever, which again is exactly what he's saying is bad.
The terror of the masses to join the molasses.
You'll see this often on the Internet: proof? Proof? Citation? Boy, no one's going to do any work for you. If you believe the wrong thing, the consequences are your own.
In fact, only people with no better use for their time will spend their time teaching you. This means you're being taught only by people whose time is worthless or for whom it is useful for you to believe in something.
If you're not paying for the knowledge, you're not the customer, you're the product. I never elucidate for those beneath me in understanding. I only discuss with peers.
Perhaps the only capable person I know who does different is Taleb but his pleasure appears to be in calling someone "imbecile" after proving them wrong.
I was waiting the whole time I read this to find a /s somewhere. Anywhere. Yikes.
Proof? Citation?
Jokes aside, I find that this sentence makes much sense, especially in the context of online forums such as HN or Reddit:
Why do you think that is inaccurate?Not only is it inaccurate, it is insulting to the person teaching you. Have you never been on a popular HN thread where a known expert in the field, someone who’s more productive and knowledgeable than you, provides context? But somehow because they did you feel it justified to call their time worthless? Well, certainly I’d regret wasting my time on someone like that and I’d hope the other readers were more appreciative.
What the OP is calling a “better use of time” I’m reading “more selfish use of time”. Maybe, just maybe, the person spending their time teaching others doesn’t consider their time worthless, but they manage it better and thus have some moments to share their knowledge. Or maybe they enjoy doing so. This is not a hard concept for those not affected by such a superiority complex they claim there are others “beneath [them] in understanding”.
That makes sense, thanks for the perspective. Much better than just "yikes". I hate tweetspeak.
Because there are plenty of people who just enjoy explaining things or helping others understand, and to say the only two reasons for that behavior is that their time is worthless or they have an agenda is myopic.
I will agree that it is big yikes. But I will, at least kind of, agree that you are more likely to meet more arm chair scientists than you are scientists and actual field experts online in this fashion. Though, obviously, there are actual scientists and field experts around. The issue, as always, is how to differenciate them from the not-so-obviously fake ones as a layman.
But yes. Still big yikes.
I only wish for people to take a "little bit" of a charitable interpretation of my comments. Lot of time they simply find one little gap, wrong wording, etc and just run with it and dismiss my entire comment. I do it too, sometimes, but I like to think I do it for a reason.
Alas, we're all humans: greedy, and biased towards our own views.
Precisely. They usually come to you with misbelief and intentional miscomprehension. I don’t think it is worth convincing someone of the truth if they insist on finding a way to believe a falsehood. Let them believe.
Oversimplification is bad, but there is a reason why Western/US universities are so much better at teaching students.
Imagine your professors and textbooks werent there to teach you, but they were there to show off their knowledge or to prove you that you know nothing.
A very known problem in my country is that a professor is not making a lecture to teach you something or to explain you something, the professor wants to show off his knowledge - that he is the king and you are a nobody.
Then you get unreadable textbooks full of big words (sometimes you think authors dont grasp them)... which are just plain student unfriendly.
I remembet that I had borrowed some statistics books from USA - and they were easier to read in English than the crap I had in my own language. They were easier to read and easier to understand. No big words. Just explanations and examples.
On a side note, they taught us physics with English abbreviarions. When most students didnt know English.
Think you are in 5th grade and they nake you memorize things like: d = s x t
You have to figure out that it is distance, speed and time.
Note that those abbreviations have nothing to do with the local language. Also why even use abbreviations? Lazy teacher (AND lazy textbook) could have used full words at least. In own language, not English.
Most people from US dont realize how much easier you have. For starters you dont spend a lot of time learning English as a foreign language. Then the non-Americans can get books that are written to teach you something* not to show that the author is great. (* although now I think most textbooks are written for profit).
I think this has more to do with budget. In many countries, professors are not paid specifically to write books, but if no proper book exists in the local language then they sort of have to do it one way or another. It usually ends up as some hodgepodge document, each chapter written by a different professor - whose are experts at their fields, but not at book writing!, which is a specific skill. Some or better at it, others absolutely suck. Then they just print it some way without any lecturing, unification of styles, references and use it as the course book, because they were sorta forced to.
In English, there is competition and people with actual experience can publish books, which will be used by multiple universities, if it becomes famous than multiple generations of students from multiple universities and years have criticized it making the nth version better, etc.
This is very different from the budget solution my med university (of which 4 exists in this language alltogether) could reasonably come up with.
Nonetheless, there were smaller topics, documents, chapters which easily surpassed the same found in any English language book, especially in mathematics (the Soviet block used to be famously good at mathematics, so the level was much higher than the west’s), for these small gems it does worth speaking obscure languages.
This sound ls very much like the experience of Greeks according to some friend.
100% agree, the same things happen in Poland and I wish it was closer to US.
Indeed, the truth often lies somewhere in between.
It sounds like you might not have been studying to become a mathematician but had to take a statistics course as a requirement for your degree. In such scenarios overcoming vague and complex teachings can indeed feel incredibly cumbersome, often resulting in a negative overall experience. However, when it comes to topics you’re passionate about the situation can be quite different. While exceptions exist in every field passion can make certain teaching styles more tolerable.
For instance, I taught myself programming at the age of 13 and I vividly remember struggling with OOP. It took me 2 months to grasp it, but I persevered. English is not my native language and I was quite poor at it in school. I began learning English on my own because there were far more programming resources available in English than in my native language. I was terrible at math and finished high school with an E in math. Fast forward a few years I developed an interest in algorithms and theoretical computer science because I wanted to understand how compilers work. I spent months learning to comprehend mathematical symbols and notation, reading numerous resources that assumed a solid mathematical foundation which I did not have. I persevered because I was genuinely interested.
Making learning too difficult isn’t helpful, but neither is making it too easy. Like most things, it really depends.
I work in academia, and the pessimistic/cynic standpoint is that university is not about teaching, but about filtering. Making a lecture "fun", comprehensible, or even "innovative" may not have the desired effect of improving the level of understanding among all students, because a fun and easy course is a worse filter than a hard course.
Personally I always learned the most in courses that were very hard and had a nerdy teacher/professor who did not care at all whether you could follow the stuff on the blackboard / in the presentation. Theses courses required work on your own: you had to read the actual literature again and again to even remotely understand the topics on the weekly exercise sheets, or to pass the exam. This "learning by yourself" lead to a much deeper understanding than just memorizing some concepts from a streamlined lecture.
If you're putting in all of the effort to make the material make sense to you, what is the role of the educator? If the way to learn things is to read a book a bunch of times, what value does my tuition money get me? A syllabus? The ability to ask questions of a possibly poor communicater?
The real answer? You gained a piece of paper which certifies that you are educated in a field.
Depending on the school you may also gain access to an insular professional network.
That's pretty much it. The notion that university degrees are worth anything more than that is moderately outdated.
The cynic answer would be: a highly standardized and comparable filter and testing environment. A more realistic answer: you are guided through and exposed to topics, motivated by exams, and in the end you will have proof that you understand the topics you received grades on. You also have - often direct and personal - access to top-level people in your field.
I paid all this money to get to a beautiful surf spot, and you’re telling me I have to paddle and stand up on my own?!
my Chinese teacher supplied me with this supposedly ancient piece of Chinese scholarly wisdom: read any book a hundred times, and its meaning will be obvious.
i have found this to work amazingly well -- particularly with poorly written technical papers.
your comment also reminded me of this one time I was hanging out and watching the Matrix (for the 100th time probably) with a film maker friend. and he was pointing out to me that American film editing guides you with a rather heavy hand on where to look on the screen, whereas European films did little of that and the viewer has to search for what to pay attention to in a scene. after he showed me the editing techniques it all made sense, and explained why i could mindless follow hollywood movies, whereas watching an european film i'd get lost if not paying attention.
That is probably what it will take for me to finally understand Calasso's The Ruin of Kasch.
There are notable exceptions, and I think the most commercially successful US director who largely ignored this advice was Francis Ford Coppola. In the "Godfather" trilogy, nothing is spelled out. You are not guided to anything. If you miss a minor detail in some scene, you are on your own, and you might not be able to follow the plot to the end.
aka ‘intensified continuity editing’ which is the modern evolution of the ‘Hollywood style’. David Bordwell out of UW-Madison did a lot of work on this.
If this is true in general, it might have been a factor in why the scientific and technological 'revolutions' of the so-called Enlightenment occurred in the West.
How?
I am all for the "western" side, where the speaker has to provide the understanding, motivation and entertainment, especially in the modern day where information is easily accessible. It doesn't mean that no effort should be expected of listeners, more like unnecessary effort should be minimized.
An example of unnecessary effort would be using a foreign language listeners have no particular interest in learning. Personally, I would rather have my math class in a language I am at least fluent it, so that I can focus my attention on the math and not on the language. I also like my teach when they have an understanding of the psychology of learning, so that I can learn more effectively. Entertainment and motivation is part of it. It is spoon-feeding, but that's also how you get people to focus on the heart of the matter.
At higher levels, it becomes less of a consideration, not because it is unimportant, but because at high level, knowledge itself becomes scarce, so you'd be lucky to find someone who really knows his stuff, even if he isn't the best at making it easy for people to understand. So the listen can spare some effort as it is the only way to get that knowledge.
In the old days, knowledge in general was scarce so it made sense to tip the balance in favor of the speaker as you'd be lucky to have a knowledgeable speaker at all. But now, almost everything is a few clicks away on the internet, and the entire point of having a speaker is to present the information is an easily digestible manner. If you want to go "the hard way" you can do it by yourself, papers, textbooks, etc... are everywhere on almost every subject at almost every level, even more so if you embrace piracy.
As for painting, or meaningful art in general, it is also part of the artist job to guide the viewer, not just dump a random idea on canvas, this is just lazy (on the part of the artist). Leave some clues leading to the big idea. Think like a puzzle. Puzzles are designed to be challenging, but they also involve guiding the player so that in the end, they can solve a more difficult challenge than they would have been able to with no help.
Another thing to consider is that in a speaker-listener relationship, there are usually more listeners than there are speakers, so it is more efficient to have the speaker spend the effort being understood than having the listeners spend it understanding.
I didn't intend to claim that the "Eastern" way is unconditionally better. I'm just used to the Western way of thinking, so it's a novel perspective that I keep finding applies in more situations than I expect.
Making things understandable is good. It's just not always the right thing to optimize for. Which is very different from saying that complexity is always better. Or as you said it:
If all the information that needs to be conveyed is in the material, then making it accessible, understandable, and digestible probably is most important. Again, as you said:
But it's kind of the difference between a sack of gold and the proverbial Golden Goose. For some things, you can't get all the benefit at once. As someone else here brought up with the idea of reading a book 100 times, some books/lectures/whatever give you more, and something different, every time you go back to them. It's like you need to incorporate the previous pass into your head before you can peel back a layer and grasp the next one down. It's a weird experience; with the same Chinese teacher I mentioned, I've many times had the experience of re-listening and hearing something totally different than I remembered. I sometimes doubt that I've ever listened to that one before. I think partly that's because the information is not coming just from the material, it's coming from the interaction between my mind and the material, and my mind is changing all the time. (Not necessarily for the better, but I'll leave that aside...) So I disagree that this applies universally:
It really isn't. A lot of stuff is, so much that we get overwhelmed and blinded by it to the point that we assume that it must cover everything. But some things are not out there, or at least not out there for easy picking. Nobody has yet been able to write up such a clear and accessible description of how to ride a bicycle that someone could read it and then ride off on a bike their very first time. And that's the rule, not the exception, even with cerebral subjects like calculus or programming or whatever.
It's not the difficulty that provides the extra value; you're not going to communicate more by making it artificially hard (as with your foreign language example)[1]. What helps is getting the learner to process more deeply, or apply the knowledge, or practice, or "use it in anger", or compete with it, or whatever way you want to say roughly the same thing. Our brains are not landfills of facts that benefit from the more you dump into them. They are coordinated systems of knowledge and behavior, where truly adding to one place requires adjusting everything else a little or a lot to accommodate.
[1] Actually, you might, but only because it slows the reader down enough for things to sink in. Any other mechanism would work as well, and a mechanism that adds something else to the mix like tests or reviews is going to be overall more effective and efficient than artificial friction.
I've experienced the receiving end of this a couple of times on HN. I once posted a blog post and it was extremely obvious that the detractors (who, despite toxic being a bit of an overblown word now, were being toxic and breaking HN rules and got away with it) hadn't even read perhaps a third or less before getting angry in the comments.
I don't care if people don't like the suggestion but I believe blocking should be implemented.
the problem is how much shite there is out there to read through. you could read all the monad tutorials in the world but it won't help until you start using them yourself. (admittedly I'm going a step further from your point, not against it).
however, I'd say if I can't understand what an authors trying to say, it makes more sense to find one that I can understand first, and then go back to the more abstruse one.
with Poetry, the onus is still on the reader to get something out of it, even in the west. I recently read "Pale Fire". (without the preface and Nabukov's commentary). I enjoyed it thoroughly, without understanding a lot, which is fine.
There’s something very much “Dabblers and Blowhards” about this statement that I can’t quite put my finger on it. [0]
Try painting, I mean really painting, before spouting nonsense. It wreaks havoc on the rest of your comment.
[0] https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm