In short, there’s a reason the classics are acknowledged as such.
It would astound me if this reason was that they were the optimal source of educational. That would completely shake my entire understanding of the fairness of the universe.
Better than the classics are the later sources that cover the same material once the culture has had a chance to fully process the insights and experiment with the best way to understand them. You pick the sources that become popular and respected despite not having the prestige of being the ‘first one to get really popular in the area’. You want the best, not the ‘first famous’ and shouldn’t expect that to be the same source. After all, the author of the Classic had to do all the hard work of thinking of the ideas in the first place… we can’t expect him to also manage to perfect the expression of them and teach them in the most effective manner. Give the poor guy a break!
Reading Dawkins may be more effective than reading Darwin, to appreciate descent with modification and differential survival as an optimization algorithm.
Reading Darwin may be more effective than reading Dawkins, to appreciate what intellectual work went into following contemporary evidence to that conclusion, in the face of a world filled with bias and confusion.
Reading Dawkins OR Darwin is—and I think that is Robin’s point—more valuable than the same time spent reading blogs expounding shaky speculations on evolution.
a “just the insights” version will probably leave out any caveats
Spectacularly so in the case of the Waterfall software development process. It’s as if the “classic” in question had said “Drowning kittens” at the end of page 1, and of course the beginning of page 2 goes right on to say ”...is evil, don’t do it”. But everyone reads page one which has a lovely diagram and goes, “Oh yeah; drowning kittens. Wonderful idea, let’s make that the official government norm for feline management.”
Reading Dawkins OR Darwin is—and I think that is Robin’s point—more valuable than the same time spent reading blogs expounding shaky speculations on evolution.
100% agree that is Robin’s point and another 100% with Robin’s point. Hmm. Wrong place to throw 100% around. Let’s see… 99.5% and 83% respectively. Akrasia considerations and the intrinsic benefits of the social experience of engaging with a near-in-time social network account for the other 17%.
You seem to be missing the examples at the moment, but I’ll give one… it’s damn hard to learn relativity by reading Einstein’s original papers. Your average undergraduate textbook gives a much better explanation of special relativity.
On the other hand, when it comes to studying history, sometimes classics are still the best sources. For example, when it comes to the Peloponnesian War, everything written by anyone other than Thucydides is merely footnotes.
It would astound me if this reason was that they were the optimal source of educational. That would completely shake my entire understanding of the fairness of the universe.
Better than the classics are the later sources that cover the same material once the culture has had a chance to fully process the insights and experiment with the best way to understand them. You pick the sources that become popular and respected despite not having the prestige of being the ‘first one to get really popular in the area’. You want the best, not the ‘first famous’ and shouldn’t expect that to be the same source. After all, the author of the Classic had to do all the hard work of thinking of the ideas in the first place… we can’t expect him to also manage to perfect the expression of them and teach them in the most effective manner. Give the poor guy a break!
As an example,
Reading Dawkins may be more effective than reading Darwin, to appreciate descent with modification and differential survival as an optimization algorithm.
Reading Darwin may be more effective than reading Dawkins, to appreciate what intellectual work went into following contemporary evidence to that conclusion, in the face of a world filled with bias and confusion.
Reading Dawkins OR Darwin is—and I think that is Robin’s point—more valuable than the same time spent reading blogs expounding shaky speculations on evolution.
I’m underlining your point about Darwin—just getting the insights doesn’t give you information about the process of thinking them out.
Also, a “just the insights” version will probably leave out any caveats the originator of the insights included.
Spectacularly so in the case of the Waterfall software development process. It’s as if the “classic” in question had said “Drowning kittens” at the end of page 1, and of course the beginning of page 2 goes right on to say ”...is evil, don’t do it”. But everyone reads page one which has a lovely diagram and goes, “Oh yeah; drowning kittens. Wonderful idea, let’s make that the official government norm for feline management.”
100% agree that is Robin’s point and another 100% with Robin’s point. Hmm. Wrong place to throw 100% around. Let’s see… 99.5% and 83% respectively. Akrasia considerations and the intrinsic benefits of the social experience of engaging with a near-in-time social network account for the other 17%.
You seem to be missing the examples at the moment, but I’ll give one… it’s damn hard to learn relativity by reading Einstein’s original papers. Your average undergraduate textbook gives a much better explanation of special relativity.
On the other hand, when it comes to studying history, sometimes classics are still the best sources. For example, when it comes to the Peloponnesian War, everything written by anyone other than Thucydides is merely footnotes.