(1) I love this post and how you’re thinking. I don’t like many things and I want to offer you my highest compliments. There’s many points of clarity in here that are super super valuable. Thank you.
(2) I’ve got something that I think might be really really important for you about a flaw in your reasoning. Not like “hey this is an important comment” but like — really really important for your thinking. Can I suggest reading this comment I’m making closely and processing the implication?
Take your point:
“A stage presentation of publicly-available educational material, hand-produced and performed by a professor who works at your educational institution, which you watch by locating yourself in a set building at a set meeting time, and which proceeds in a fixed order and at a fixed rate like broadcast television pre-YouTube.”
This is, I suppose, correct enough to work with.
But I strongly suspect you’re reasoning from first principles about the current state of things based on a certain set of unspoken premises of what’s valuable and missing orthogonal tracks of valid and correct reasoning, specifically, historical context of how we got here that’s off the mainstream understanding of the topic.
To break that down,
A. You’re reasoning from first principles,
B. Current state of things,
C. Unspoken premises about what’s valuable,
D. Missing orthogonal tracks,
E. Which are valid and correct reasoning,
F. Specifically, historical context,
G. No, not that historical context. The historical context that nobody’s thinking about, that you only get through very careful thought.
I suspect you’d grant A, B, C are uncontroversial and at least true-ish. “D” you’d probably grant (there’s a lot of tracks of reasoning we don’t bother with, either because they’re irrelevant or unhelpful). “E” is the key statement the thing swings on. “F” is the one you’d be like “no actually I do that”, and I’m like no — take a look at “G”.
Specifically, look at who went to university and why, and when that changed, and why.
Lectures used to make sense, and indeed, still make sense. If we ever wind up meeting in person, ask me about the story of the friend of mine who went from American public school to a Swiss boarding school when his father moved abroad. You don’t even need to remind me of the context, I’ll tell the story and it’s both funny and insightful.
Pardon me for being vague! There’s probably a reason. I certainly ain’t going to spell it out. Nietzsche is too hardcore, and I certainly don’t stand by what he says or anything, but his “insights … follies” thing is worth Googling. It’s the third part of his sentence that’s the key part.
I don’t like that the world is this way! It is, however, this way. This is a small thing but might be useful to you. This is probably kinda important — pardon me for being subtle, I just wrote it for you since there’s a lot of great thinking here that’s been quite valuable for me. This is just kinda “ah, thank you, this is valuable — but you know, you’re like 95% correct, you’re just missing ________” — what’s the blank line there? (Just process it in your head, don’t reply or anything, sheesh.)
It’s what I’m trying to point out. Thanks for the post. This might be important btw, at least, once I got cleared up on this my thinking improved in lots of obvious and non-obvious ways. Oh, one last thing—do me a favor and don’t try to convert my subtext thing here into text publicly? If I wanted to do that, I would’ve just done that. Even this isn’t subtle enough, it’s kinda “subtle like a hammer.” The more subtle version would be the one sentence “Specifically, look...” — again, we’re talking about whether lectures have any value, in what context, etc, as an illustration of a larger point.
Anyway, that’s the best I could come up with. The world is a strange place. Awesome post and great reasoning, thanks again.
Upvoted for trying to communicate something hard to communicate. This can be really frustrating leading to people often not trying, so thanks for trying.
This is just kinda “ah, thank you, this is valuable — but you know, you’re like 95% correct, you’re just missing ________” — what’s the blank line there?
Hm, colleges and lectures have various justifications for existing that are valid 5% of the time, that seems obvious enough, even if I didn’t acknowledge it in the post… I guess I’ll try to privately puzzle out your intended subtext.
Hi Liron,
(1) I love this post and how you’re thinking. I don’t like many things and I want to offer you my highest compliments. There’s many points of clarity in here that are super super valuable. Thank you.
(2) I’ve got something that I think might be really really important for you about a flaw in your reasoning. Not like “hey this is an important comment” but like — really really important for your thinking. Can I suggest reading this comment I’m making closely and processing the implication?
Take your point:
This is, I suppose, correct enough to work with.
But I strongly suspect you’re reasoning from first principles about the current state of things based on a certain set of unspoken premises of what’s valuable and missing orthogonal tracks of valid and correct reasoning, specifically, historical context of how we got here that’s off the mainstream understanding of the topic.
To break that down,
A. You’re reasoning from first principles,
B. Current state of things,
C. Unspoken premises about what’s valuable,
D. Missing orthogonal tracks,
E. Which are valid and correct reasoning,
F. Specifically, historical context,
G. No, not that historical context. The historical context that nobody’s thinking about, that you only get through very careful thought.
I suspect you’d grant A, B, C are uncontroversial and at least true-ish. “D” you’d probably grant (there’s a lot of tracks of reasoning we don’t bother with, either because they’re irrelevant or unhelpful). “E” is the key statement the thing swings on. “F” is the one you’d be like “no actually I do that”, and I’m like no — take a look at “G”.
Specifically, look at who went to university and why, and when that changed, and why.
Lectures used to make sense, and indeed, still make sense. If we ever wind up meeting in person, ask me about the story of the friend of mine who went from American public school to a Swiss boarding school when his father moved abroad. You don’t even need to remind me of the context, I’ll tell the story and it’s both funny and insightful.
Pardon me for being vague! There’s probably a reason. I certainly ain’t going to spell it out. Nietzsche is too hardcore, and I certainly don’t stand by what he says or anything, but his “insights … follies” thing is worth Googling. It’s the third part of his sentence that’s the key part.
I don’t like that the world is this way! It is, however, this way. This is a small thing but might be useful to you. This is probably kinda important — pardon me for being subtle, I just wrote it for you since there’s a lot of great thinking here that’s been quite valuable for me. This is just kinda “ah, thank you, this is valuable — but you know, you’re like 95% correct, you’re just missing ________” — what’s the blank line there? (Just process it in your head, don’t reply or anything, sheesh.)
It’s what I’m trying to point out. Thanks for the post. This might be important btw, at least, once I got cleared up on this my thinking improved in lots of obvious and non-obvious ways. Oh, one last thing—do me a favor and don’t try to convert my subtext thing here into text publicly? If I wanted to do that, I would’ve just done that. Even this isn’t subtle enough, it’s kinda “subtle like a hammer.” The more subtle version would be the one sentence “Specifically, look...” — again, we’re talking about whether lectures have any value, in what context, etc, as an illustration of a larger point.
Anyway, that’s the best I could come up with. The world is a strange place. Awesome post and great reasoning, thanks again.
Upvoted for trying to communicate something hard to communicate. This can be really frustrating leading to people often not trying, so thanks for trying.
Hey lionhearted, thanks for your kind words!
Hm, colleges and lectures have various justifications for existing that are valid 5% of the time, that seems obvious enough, even if I didn’t acknowledge it in the post… I guess I’ll try to privately puzzle out your intended subtext.