Digest #2 :On writing, always being wrong and having a structure
Khuyen Bui Gia
Digest #2
From Ary, on the need for writing in learning.
“the verbalizing part of the thought process is definitely important. getting your thoughts out (verbally or in writing) leads to the creation of new ones, which in turn leads to more learning. otherwise the ideas never evolve and just escape you”.
- Indeed. Ideas are like picky babies: they need time alone to stew, but most of the time they need some kind of interaction to grow.
- For Child Development/ Education nerds, this concept of something slightly more challenging to push us to the next stage is called Zone of Proximal Development #zpd
- For CS nerds, it’s called i+1 model. #i+1
On a related note, it’s also very reassuring to realize that if we aren’t even sure of what ideas we will have then how can we even be sure of what will happen to us? Uncertainty is apparently a built-in feature of life. Daniel Gilbert said it well: “Human is a work in progress who mistake itself to be a finished product”
More articulated words on the power from writing from Ary
“writing leads to new thoughts cuz it helps bring ideas from subconcious to conscious. It slows your thinking down to a level where you can see what’s going on. You think too fast to actually process most of it. And there are a lot of extra thoughts floating around that might get lost or be forgotten with everything else that you’re thinking. Writing them down captures them, and you can go back and look at later and expand. Like taking a picture of your thoughts at a certain point in time. once it’s recorded you can go back and analyze it. Or as you’re writing you’ll edit what youre thinking, cuz seeing thoughts on paper gives you a certain distance away from them that lets you see them in a new way. In other words, writing is magic.”
Why don’t people “capture the thoughts” more often?
Ary again:
“People like to share what they love. But somehow it’s difficult to share ideas beyond level of defense. “
It seems that people are afraid of sharing because of the fear of judgement? (even if none of us explicitly admits so, because it’s such a shame to say that I care about judgement right? Which is exactly showing that I care about judgement!)
The judgment side makes it hard to share. what’s interesting is that so many people want to do it, but so few will ever come to an agreement (either to withhold judgment, or ignore it and share anyway) to get it started, so instead you get a bunch of people wanting the same exact thing and not getting it - Ary
Question: How can we help?
On always being wrong:
A recent conversation with my roommate struck me as how we had always been wrong throughout history. The only way to know we are “right” is to consider and then discard other alternatives. That’s why now in retrospect we think of the mediaeval church as spreading dogmas when they didn’t allow the blasphemous thought that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center. The implication is that at best we can only be “temporarily confident” of current knowledge (Objective truth? Ain’t nobody has time and brainpower for that). Which is both scary and liberating at the same time: scary because it sucks to realize that we are wrong, and liberating because we know for sure (how ironic) that we can always get more “right”.
Many people would look at the above argument and think that it only applies to scientific knowledge, not personal world view. What is it about my opinion that seems “more right” than other people? My roommate said it well.
There’s a difference between conviction and being right or wrong about something
- My current answer: each of us needs to feel conviction to get on with life: without the belief that the we will not stumble on the next step we take, we cannot even walk.
We both agreed that Tufts is a very liberal place where everyone can speak up. But speaking up is just the first step; there’s no conversation without listening. : “Can you hear me?” is not “Can you listen to me?” Over the summer I read a great book called Difficult Conversation, and one of the central idea was that whenever we found the other party not listening to us, it’s almost always the case that we are not listening to her enough. We were both wondering about the effectiveness of all the protests: the louder we speak, the more the other side wants to shut off.
- Why do economists / other annoying practical folks like John Stuart Mill care about “freedom of speech”? Hint: it’s not about the right to express ourselves. Mill said in his On Liberty basically that we should let everyone speak because that’s the only way we can progress: only the “most correct” idea will survive. Then now we have a whole load of problems like “what if a huge conglomerate with lots of economic power says something that I know to be obviously wrong ?”, to which Mill will probably say “How do you know? If you are more right, your point should trump”. Messy issue, indeed.
The importance of having a structure in learning
Beginners need recipes & rules to follow. The worst thing a beginner can do is to dive right in a new field without any plan or guidance. Yet everyone hates the feeling of being dumb at first. Two implications follow:
- Self-learner should try to create immediate rewards. Celebrate small win! “I’m going to spend 30’ to sketch my friend’s portrait / learn a chord in Ukulele / write a program that calculates the average of two number / etc.., and I’m going to have a cup of tea afterwards to celebrate.”
- By the way, isn’t it awesome that beginners progress very quickly so they all feel so pumped to continue learning?
- Teachers should design the curriculum such that at the end of every period there’s a clear deliverable, something they could apply right away. Genuinely congratulate students on these small achievements; the more explicit we make them realize what they have learnt the more likely they are going to stick.
For more:- read this wonderful handout by Chip & Dan Heath. Teaching that sticks
- See more at this TED talk: We only need 20, not 10000 hours, to be reasonably good at a skill. 20 hours
=> I’m picking up drawing :D
Question to ask ourselves
Do I even care that much about what I do?
Random thoughts and links
- Writing is not instinctive Steven Pinker on Style thanks Ary
- If you have never read Brainpickings.org by Maria Popova, you should check out. I feel that although I don’t read a lot from it, I’m so affected by the her style of curating information.
- Podcast is an awesome source of learning. I’ve recently listened a lot to Tim Ferriss, the guy who the controversial 4-hour work week. His book club has good interviews. The most recent one with Maria Popova inspired me to write this.
- Noisli: Highly recommended to people who want a distraction free space to write.
- Sublime Text: Originally for coding, but this text editor (think Microsoft Word) is just too good I have to use it for writing. A sample screenshot of this digest right here
