I found that even where I can parse a technical text (understand all introduced notions, without needing to look up the notions that are used without being defined), it’s not a sufficient condition for me being ready for the text. It takes a lot of background effort to build technical fluency that allows to take away a deeper and lasting understanding of a given topic, fluency that isn’t required to merely parse the text, or even solve the exercises and ace the exam. Without this fluency, without being prepared, acquired knowledge remains superficial, never becomes very useful, and quickly fades out of memory.
It’s like reading a novel in a barely known foreign tongue, translating with a dictionary, and juggling the syntax without feeling the flow of the language. Technically, you can translate everything, but there is no hope for understanding the subtle points of the narrative, and the only way to get there is through obtaining fluency first, and reading the novel later.
What this tells me is that where I can’t even parse a text on my own (i.e. there is a non-negligible number of statements I can’t understand, or exercises I don’t see how to solve), this is an absolutely unambiguous indicator that I’m not ready to try this particular text, and should work on something more elementary.
(This is a strategy for building deep knowledge of a favored subject; it’s much more useful to skim in order to obtain superficial general knowledge of many diverse subjects, although elementary textbooks should still be the way to go, not recent research papers.)
Thanks. “Fluency” is exactly the concept I needed to argue with the people who say you don’t need to know things, you just need to know where to look them up.
It’s like reading a novel in a barely known foreign tongue, translating with a dictionary, and juggling the syntax without feeling the flow of the language.
Hm. This is not quite on-topic, but I learned English that way, lo those many years ago. My dad is an avid science-fiction fan and his collection resided in the loo. As a kid I loved sci-fi, I’d gotten hooked after reading Star Beast (translated, natch). And everytime I went for a twinkle there was this treasure trove, mocking me because I couldn’t understand a word of it.
So one day (must have been 11ish) I picked up an Asimov, a dictionary and a French translation. (Why? The Loo Library was sorted by author; I started with the A’s.) I struggled through that first book, I have no idea how I didn’t just give up, but I made it through. The next one came easier, I didn’t rely on a translation. After a while I could pretty much do without the dictionary, and started building my vocabulary from unknown words made clear by contextual clues. By the time I started on Heinlein I was getting top grades in English at school, a nice added bonus.
I’d agree that my real fluency only came later, after I also got some practice writing. But I disagree that tackling a difficult but intrinsically rewarding work isn’t a good way to enter a previously unknown domain of knowledge.
Further to that, and getting back on topic, there are places in Jaynes where I can tell that I’m missing some pieces of background knowledge (e.g. familiarity with binomial coefficient manipulations) that others are likely to have, that don’t really detract from my understanding what’s going on but do make it harder for me to reproduce the derivations, but that having others to help me would add some “icing on the cake” to my appreciation of the math.
I’d agree that my real fluency only came later, after I also got some practice writing. But I disagree that tackling a difficult but intrinsically rewarding work isn’t a good way to enter a previously unknown domain of knowledge.
I thought so as well, for many years, and it cost me dearly. The problem with math is that the more elementary tools won’t be even mentioned in advanced specialized books, and are not necessary to parse them. The only efficient way to obtain them is to study from the ground up. Until recently, I was getting along on ability to parse more advanced texts relatively fine, but remained much weaker and near-sighted than I could have been. This made much of my previous study a waste of time, only moderately helping me to recapture the territory now.
I think one should learn on different levels at the same time:
If you only do what’s convenient, your progress stops.
If you don’t revisit the basics from time to time, you build on sand.
It is necessary to challenge oneself and at the same time work on the fundamentals. It is both inspiring and necessary to strike the right balance between the two extremes: A constant back and forth between them proved to be both the most productive and most entertaining for me personally.
This is the reason I am also interested in this study group: For me, it is revisiting the fundamentals. Although this book is relatively basic, it is very well written and focuses more on the right philosophy than the actual pragmatic issues. On the other hand, it is very detailed at places that other books easily take for granted and points out issues that other just step over. It is really a great reading to deepen one’s knowledge. I am unsure though, whether it is the best introductory reading for someone who just wants to acquire a practical skill set.
This is not quite on-topic, but I learned English that way, lo those many years ago.
Wow, I was planning to ask if English wasn’t your native language, since you said you lived in Paris but speak English like a native speaker … guess that one’s resolved! So French is your native language then?
I tried, many years later, to do the same for German. Süskind’s Die Taube was my first attempt, followed by Remarque’s Der Funke Leben, I still have a few on my bookshelves. It didn’t really work out—I can usually understand the gist of a text or conversation in German on a familiar topic, but I didn’t have the motivation or the opportunities to stay invested in German as I was invested in English, and never achieved anywhere near the same fluency. There was also a more recent and short-lived attempt to start learning Icelandic. On the whole I’d rate my language-learning ability as unremarkable, but I have lots of experience with English.
Hm. This is not quite on-topic, but I learned English that way, lo those many years ago.
So have I, but this didn’t help with subtle understanding of those novels spent in learning. (I’m currently breaking into fluency in German using TV shows, and find this method more enjoyable.)
Is this a roundabout way of saying that people ‘between levels 0 and 1’ should probably start with a more introductory text? Do you have any specific recommendations?
This is a comment about usefulness of a book club (for technical books of any difficulty), not about any book or topic in particular. In the lingo of levels of understanding, my argument is that you should finish a book with a deeper level than is possible to achieve if you barely understand what’s explicitly written, and otherwise you shouldn’t even start. If Jaynes reads easily, and you seek the knowledge it contains, read Jaynes (on your own). If you need help with reading Jaynes, don’t read Jaynes at all, find something simpler. Maybe after obtaining more basic knowledge you’ll discover that you shouldn’t read Jaynes because it doesn’t teach what you want to learn, even when you become ready for it.
Even when I am perfectly capable of understanding something myself, I find it extremely helpful to learn with other interested people in a “study, study, then discuss” kind of format. I come to my own conclusions about the text while I study, just as I would if I were working by myself, but then I additionally get to compare the details of my conclusions with those of other minds working independently. Also, having participants with diverse intellectual backgrounds means that they may be able to identify and share interesting tangential ideas that would not have occurred to me alone.
I also find that communicating my thoughts to other people forces me to clarify them to a greater degree, often revealing small gaps in understanding that I had papered over in my own mind.
My interest in the book club is as an anti-akrasia strategy. I’ve read the first few chapters of Jaynes and find it easy enough to understand but have not finished it because I generally have trouble with finding motivation to read technical books when I have no immediate application for the subject matter.
My interest in the book club is as an anti-akrasia strategy.
That could work, but there are other things you could be doing with your time, given that it’s not a fun/useful enough activity to drive you without additional help.
You haven’t really said anything about the book club aspect. Might that help with the obstacles you mention? For one thing, it’s often difficult to figure out the prereqs, but people in the club may know. One thing that does make your comments particularly applicable to clubs is that they suggest the choice of book should be individual.
This reflects in the fact that great artists are invariably technical virtuosos. Mastery makes way for creativity.
This is due to limited working memory. You may be able to juggle the concepts/math of a particular field in working memory, but that takes away precious space for the combinatorial exploration of novel ideas, or even higher level concepts. Only with practice, when most of the steps in your thought processes can be carried out subconsciously, are you free to do higher-level thinking.
It’s not all about working memory of course, since there is subconscious exploration going on as well. Still, things must surface to working memory to be checked that they make sense.
Also, there is also the fact that concepts are built upon concepts. To think at a higher level, you have to truly understand how concepts of the lower level work. It is simply impossible to do it all with limited working memory capacity.
Don’t drop a subject because you know you’d fail a test — instead, read other half-understandable journals and textbooks to accumulate vocabulary, perspective, and context.
I wrote the last paragraph specifically to distinguish this use case. And I set a higher standard—I said that even if you ace (not fail!) the exam, it’s still not enough.
I found that even where I can parse a technical text (understand all introduced notions, without needing to look up the notions that are used without being defined), it’s not a sufficient condition for me being ready for the text. It takes a lot of background effort to build technical fluency that allows to take away a deeper and lasting understanding of a given topic, fluency that isn’t required to merely parse the text, or even solve the exercises and ace the exam. Without this fluency, without being prepared, acquired knowledge remains superficial, never becomes very useful, and quickly fades out of memory.
It’s like reading a novel in a barely known foreign tongue, translating with a dictionary, and juggling the syntax without feeling the flow of the language. Technically, you can translate everything, but there is no hope for understanding the subtle points of the narrative, and the only way to get there is through obtaining fluency first, and reading the novel later.
What this tells me is that where I can’t even parse a text on my own (i.e. there is a non-negligible number of statements I can’t understand, or exercises I don’t see how to solve), this is an absolutely unambiguous indicator that I’m not ready to try this particular text, and should work on something more elementary.
(This is a strategy for building deep knowledge of a favored subject; it’s much more useful to skim in order to obtain superficial general knowledge of many diverse subjects, although elementary textbooks should still be the way to go, not recent research papers.)
Thanks. “Fluency” is exactly the concept I needed to argue with the people who say you don’t need to know things, you just need to know where to look them up.
Hm. This is not quite on-topic, but I learned English that way, lo those many years ago. My dad is an avid science-fiction fan and his collection resided in the loo. As a kid I loved sci-fi, I’d gotten hooked after reading Star Beast (translated, natch). And everytime I went for a twinkle there was this treasure trove, mocking me because I couldn’t understand a word of it.
So one day (must have been 11ish) I picked up an Asimov, a dictionary and a French translation. (Why? The Loo Library was sorted by author; I started with the A’s.) I struggled through that first book, I have no idea how I didn’t just give up, but I made it through. The next one came easier, I didn’t rely on a translation. After a while I could pretty much do without the dictionary, and started building my vocabulary from unknown words made clear by contextual clues. By the time I started on Heinlein I was getting top grades in English at school, a nice added bonus.
I’d agree that my real fluency only came later, after I also got some practice writing. But I disagree that tackling a difficult but intrinsically rewarding work isn’t a good way to enter a previously unknown domain of knowledge.
Further to that, and getting back on topic, there are places in Jaynes where I can tell that I’m missing some pieces of background knowledge (e.g. familiarity with binomial coefficient manipulations) that others are likely to have, that don’t really detract from my understanding what’s going on but do make it harder for me to reproduce the derivations, but that having others to help me would add some “icing on the cake” to my appreciation of the math.
I thought so as well, for many years, and it cost me dearly. The problem with math is that the more elementary tools won’t be even mentioned in advanced specialized books, and are not necessary to parse them. The only efficient way to obtain them is to study from the ground up. Until recently, I was getting along on ability to parse more advanced texts relatively fine, but remained much weaker and near-sighted than I could have been. This made much of my previous study a waste of time, only moderately helping me to recapture the territory now.
I think one should learn on different levels at the same time:
If you only do what’s convenient, your progress stops.
If you don’t revisit the basics from time to time, you build on sand.
It is necessary to challenge oneself and at the same time work on the fundamentals. It is both inspiring and necessary to strike the right balance between the two extremes: A constant back and forth between them proved to be both the most productive and most entertaining for me personally.
This is the reason I am also interested in this study group: For me, it is revisiting the fundamentals. Although this book is relatively basic, it is very well written and focuses more on the right philosophy than the actual pragmatic issues. On the other hand, it is very detailed at places that other books easily take for granted and points out issues that other just step over. It is really a great reading to deepen one’s knowledge. I am unsure though, whether it is the best introductory reading for someone who just wants to acquire a practical skill set.
This should be engraved somewhere in big letters.
Wow, I was planning to ask if English wasn’t your native language, since you said you lived in Paris but speak English like a native speaker … guess that one’s resolved! So French is your native language then?
Yep.
I tried, many years later, to do the same for German. Süskind’s Die Taube was my first attempt, followed by Remarque’s Der Funke Leben, I still have a few on my bookshelves. It didn’t really work out—I can usually understand the gist of a text or conversation in German on a familiar topic, but I didn’t have the motivation or the opportunities to stay invested in German as I was invested in English, and never achieved anywhere near the same fluency. There was also a more recent and short-lived attempt to start learning Icelandic. On the whole I’d rate my language-learning ability as unremarkable, but I have lots of experience with English.
So have I, but this didn’t help with subtle understanding of those novels spent in learning. (I’m currently breaking into fluency in German using TV shows, and find this method more enjoyable.)
Is this a roundabout way of saying that people ‘between levels 0 and 1’ should probably start with a more introductory text? Do you have any specific recommendations?
This is a comment about usefulness of a book club (for technical books of any difficulty), not about any book or topic in particular. In the lingo of levels of understanding, my argument is that you should finish a book with a deeper level than is possible to achieve if you barely understand what’s explicitly written, and otherwise you shouldn’t even start. If Jaynes reads easily, and you seek the knowledge it contains, read Jaynes (on your own). If you need help with reading Jaynes, don’t read Jaynes at all, find something simpler. Maybe after obtaining more basic knowledge you’ll discover that you shouldn’t read Jaynes because it doesn’t teach what you want to learn, even when you become ready for it.
Even when I am perfectly capable of understanding something myself, I find it extremely helpful to learn with other interested people in a “study, study, then discuss” kind of format. I come to my own conclusions about the text while I study, just as I would if I were working by myself, but then I additionally get to compare the details of my conclusions with those of other minds working independently. Also, having participants with diverse intellectual backgrounds means that they may be able to identify and share interesting tangential ideas that would not have occurred to me alone.
I also find that communicating my thoughts to other people forces me to clarify them to a greater degree, often revealing small gaps in understanding that I had papered over in my own mind.
My interest in the book club is as an anti-akrasia strategy. I’ve read the first few chapters of Jaynes and find it easy enough to understand but have not finished it because I generally have trouble with finding motivation to read technical books when I have no immediate application for the subject matter.
That could work, but there are other things you could be doing with your time, given that it’s not a fun/useful enough activity to drive you without additional help.
Yes, such as the things I am currently doing with my time. This would be akrasia.
You haven’t really said anything about the book club aspect. Might that help with the obstacles you mention? For one thing, it’s often difficult to figure out the prereqs, but people in the club may know. One thing that does make your comments particularly applicable to clubs is that they suggest the choice of book should be individual.
The most important parts of a technical book are often the non-technical portions, and this is especially true with Jaynes.
Yes!
This reflects in the fact that great artists are invariably technical virtuosos. Mastery makes way for creativity.
This is due to limited working memory. You may be able to juggle the concepts/math of a particular field in working memory, but that takes away precious space for the combinatorial exploration of novel ideas, or even higher level concepts. Only with practice, when most of the steps in your thought processes can be carried out subconsciously, are you free to do higher-level thinking.
It’s not all about working memory of course, since there is subconscious exploration going on as well. Still, things must surface to working memory to be checked that they make sense.
Also, there is also the fact that concepts are built upon concepts. To think at a higher level, you have to truly understand how concepts of the lower level work. It is simply impossible to do it all with limited working memory capacity.
So, you disagree with this? http://lesswrong.com/lw/gl/eric_drexler_on_learning_about_everything/
and this, too http://radicalacademy.com/adlerhardreading.htm
I wrote the last paragraph specifically to distinguish this use case. And I set a higher standard—I said that even if you ace (not fail!) the exam, it’s still not enough.