Ni no Tachi figured out how to use the hammer, but Bouzo only sold them without understanding their value.
“A bird in the hand is worth what you can get for it.”—Ambrose Bierce
Fiction is fiction, but it seems to me that that if student objects to wearing silly clothes and his master responds by ordering him to wear yet sillier clothes, it’s a lot more plausible that the student will conclude his master is a quack and drop out than that he’ll decide to extend his master’s teaching by taking silly clothes to a whole new level.
Maybe the whole point of this exercise is to remind us that one can’t come to reliable conclusions from fictional evidence? If so, well, maybe I haven’t learned anything… but at least I’ve learned I haven’t learned anything.
Ni no Tachi figured out how to use the hammer, but Bouzo only sold them without understanding their value.
“A bird in the hand is worth what you can get for it.”—Ambrose Bierce
Fiction is fiction, but it seems to me that that if student objects to wearing silly clothes and his master responds by ordering him to wear yet sillier clothes, it’s a lot more plausible that the student will conclude his master is a quack and drop out than that he’ll decide to extend his master’s teaching by taking silly clothes to a whole new level.
Maybe the whole point of this exercise is to remind us that one can’t come to reliable conclusions from fictional evidence? If so, well, maybe I haven’t learned anything… but at least I’ve learned I haven’t learned anything.