Suggested exercise: faced with a non-specific statement, like “our software makes connections between people” or “this person is a slob”, come up with a specific story: say, about a particular customer using the software in a particular way, with the result that he gained two friends that he wouldn’t have without the software. Adding extra details to the story, like character development, might help to hit the right level of specificity.
There are, of course, a near-infinite number of possible different stories, with different specific elements that aren’t part of “making connections” or the “slob” concept. But you can underline the relevant part: “see, the day my boyfriend finished work at 5 pm and I came home from class at 11 pm and the whole kitchen was still full of dirty dishes, that’s one instance of slobbishness.”
The converse would be to come up with an almost-identical story that has nearly all the same elements, except that it’s not an instance of insert-concept-here. You can then compare the two stories: “if my boyfriend came home at 10 pm completely exhausted after a three-day hockey tournament out of town, and I came home from class at 11 pm and the dishes weren’t done, that’s not an instance of slobbishness because it’s understandable, hardly anyone would do the dishes in those circumstances.”
This method might cause problems with generalizing from fictional evidence, because of the extraneous details in the stories. But it would probably cater to the way human brains learn best (in my experience), which is by seeing examples and then creating their own internal abstraction, which is much better understood than an abstraction learned top-down, and avoids the pitfalls of memorizing the teacher’s password.
Suggested exercise: faced with a non-specific statement, like “our software makes connections between people” or “this person is a slob”, come up with a specific story: say, about a particular customer using the software in a particular way, with the result that he gained two friends that he wouldn’t have without the software. Adding extra details to the story, like character development, might help to hit the right level of specificity.
There are, of course, a near-infinite number of possible different stories, with different specific elements that aren’t part of “making connections” or the “slob” concept. But you can underline the relevant part: “see, the day my boyfriend finished work at 5 pm and I came home from class at 11 pm and the whole kitchen was still full of dirty dishes, that’s one instance of slobbishness.”
The converse would be to come up with an almost-identical story that has nearly all the same elements, except that it’s not an instance of insert-concept-here. You can then compare the two stories: “if my boyfriend came home at 10 pm completely exhausted after a three-day hockey tournament out of town, and I came home from class at 11 pm and the dishes weren’t done, that’s not an instance of slobbishness because it’s understandable, hardly anyone would do the dishes in those circumstances.”
This method might cause problems with generalizing from fictional evidence, because of the extraneous details in the stories. But it would probably cater to the way human brains learn best (in my experience), which is by seeing examples and then creating their own internal abstraction, which is much better understood than an abstraction learned top-down, and avoids the pitfalls of memorizing the teacher’s password.