One of the things that I've realized over the past few years is that for many years, I deceived myself into believing I was thinking far more deeply about things than I actually was. Even now, I can fall back into old habits and scratch that dopamine itch by regurgitating information that I __feel__ like I fully grasp, only to realize I barely have a surface level understanding of the subject when deeper discussions occur.
I've come to the conclusion that I have a strong disposition towards feeling like I've actually done the hard work of deep comprehension, while also allowing my strong aversion towards doing the actual work to stop me from doing more than the bare minimum to sound knowledgeable.
In practice, the only method that I've found to counter that urge is to constantly self-analyze (i.e. ask myself the same questions that may come up in a deeper discussion) and interrogate my beliefs. By doing that, I force myself to confront the fact that I don't understand things as well as I believe I do.
Once I've broken past that mental barrier, it's far easier to actually commit to taking the time to fully comprehend a subject—the difficulty is primarily in identifying the barrier in the first place.
Thanks for sharing! I hadn't heard of The Feynman Method, but I'll work on integrating that into my learning habits. One of my main interests is philosophy, and I'm very much guilty of relying on jargon to obfuscate my depth of understanding certain concepts.
The Scott Alexander tweet resonates with me a little too much haha! I'm very guilty of that. It's a terrible habit that I'm actively working to break.
This matches my direct personal experience. I'm often tempted to say that people don't actually read, even though they've been taught to convert the marks on paper (or the screen) into sounds. The phrase "Barking at Print" is sometimes used to describe this, although like many similar phrases it's gain serious negative baggage, even though it's an accurate metaphor.
From the article:
> ... my sister watched me teach and said after, “You repeat yourself a lot.”
Yup.
Most of you here on HN are not typical, but I've defaulted to the position that the majority of people are functionally illiterate.
There are infinitely many different kinds of reading as well.
Skimming vs. careful understanding vs. visualization vs. holding a book to avoid conversation.
Steven King vs. Chaucer vs. Gibbon vs. so on.
Parents and the local educational system are primarily responsible for whether or not curiosity is murdered in young learners or it is given life-long inspiration.
As a European I had quite the opposite experience in (high) school: my literature classes (English, French, German) consisted entirely of close readings and going meticulously through every rhetoric device/figure of speech (german: "analysieren"). At one time we had a teacher who insisted that we had to learn and exclusively use the latin/greek/french schemes.[0]
An interpretation of a given text (usally after (or mixed with) the analysis) effectivley had to be aligned with the views of the teacher otherwise you had to fight an uphill battle in convincing a given teacher of your train of thought. I once had the audacity to use the Nietzschian concept of "Apollonian and Dionysian" in my interpretation of a literary text (after the "thorough" analysis of course). Even after I had illustrated the concept on some examples in the text, my teacher insisted it was rubbish (in hindsight I can now understand his "aesthetic" objection). My classmates looked at me: why you are taking up such a fight, it is Mister/Misses "xyz" and his/her views are clearly "such and such", are you out of your mind? I've never tried something out of the "expected and accepted" after that and was "rewarded" with good grades.
I think most students (in puberty at least when occupied with other things) are trying to read the "teacher" and do not bother to really read the text for themselves, that's why a general question gets a broad general randomly generated emotional answer, they are trying to decipher the biases of the teacher by taking shots. If the bias then is to go read "closley" and name "figure of speeches" they will learn/parrot quickly for good grades.
I never forget how one teacher was so proud of one student's interpretation, he let her read all of it (10+ pages) aloud for all of us to hear; for anyone who even bothered to listen it was a perfect rendition of his (aesthetic/ideological) views - a mirror he narcistically viewed himself - an insightful cartoon for me.
I would claim that readers naturally gravitate to reading that is entertaining, informative, and captures their attention with relevance and specificity. There are too many people like the author, ensconced in their ivory towers, who write polemical think pieces with premises like "why does no one read difficult books I like anymore?" and "why is no one willing to commit several hours to dissect the rhetoric of an obscure essay under a microscope?"
Is it even a question of difficult books? I find that plenty of people will read, or say that they have read, a book but will look blank when one points out absurdities in the text.
There is a perfect storm of contributing factors to expository writing: writer blandness and TL;DR, infinitely more sources of information, and reader limited time and attention. If you want to be read take some responsibility with style and concision.
I've come to the conclusion that I have a strong disposition towards feeling like I've actually done the hard work of deep comprehension, while also allowing my strong aversion towards doing the actual work to stop me from doing more than the bare minimum to sound knowledgeable.
In practice, the only method that I've found to counter that urge is to constantly self-analyze (i.e. ask myself the same questions that may come up in a deeper discussion) and interrogate my beliefs. By doing that, I force myself to confront the fact that I don't understand things as well as I believe I do.
Once I've broken past that mental barrier, it's far easier to actually commit to taking the time to fully comprehend a subject—the difficulty is primarily in identifying the barrier in the first place.