I kinda have the instinct that if I’m reading a book or a blog post or something and it’s difficult, then I should buckle down, focus, and try to understand it. And that if I don’t, it’s a failure on my part. It’s my responsibility to process and take in the material.
This is especially true for a lot of more important topics. Like, it’s easy to clearly communicate what time a restaurant is open—if you find yourself struggling to understand this, it’s probably the fault of the restaurant, not you as the reader—but for quantum physics or metaethics, those are complicated enough topics such that you can’t communicate them clearly, and so if you are reading something on one of those topics and struggling to understand it, it would be unfair to think “this author isn’t doing a good enough job”. It’s easier to think “this is a complicated topic; the writing is reasonable; I need to do a better job of comprehending it”.
But recently I’ve been questioning how true this is. There are three things I’ve read recently that I’ve found to be very easy reading, but also covering difficult and important topics.
It’s not common for me to find such great writing, but at the same time, it does happen from time to time. I’m just thinking out loud, but maybe I should up my standards and decline to read stuff that is more difficult to read.
Of course, there are a lot of things to consider here. How important is the material? How urgent? Is it fun to buckle down and try to parse difficult material?
Against difficult reading
I kinda have the instinct that if I’m reading a book or a blog post or something and it’s difficult, then I should buckle down, focus, and try to understand it. And that if I don’t, it’s a failure on my part. It’s my responsibility to process and take in the material.
This is especially true for a lot of more important topics. Like, it’s easy to clearly communicate what time a restaurant is open—if you find yourself struggling to understand this, it’s probably the fault of the restaurant, not you as the reader—but for quantum physics or metaethics, those are complicated enough topics such that you can’t communicate them clearly, and so if you are reading something on one of those topics and struggling to understand it, it would be unfair to think “this author isn’t doing a good enough job”. It’s easier to think “this is a complicated topic; the writing is reasonable; I need to do a better job of comprehending it”.
But recently I’ve been questioning how true this is. There are three things I’ve read recently that I’ve found to be very easy reading, but also covering difficult and important topics.
Refactoring UI
The Mom Test
1000-Word Philosophy
It’s not common for me to find such great writing, but at the same time, it does happen from time to time. I’m just thinking out loud, but maybe I should up my standards and decline to read stuff that is more difficult to read.
Of course, there are a lot of things to consider here. How important is the material? How urgent? Is it fun to buckle down and try to parse difficult material?