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The joy of reading books you don't understand

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Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#81

Post by fhe »

sfink wrote: post #53

This reminds me of something that I heard once from a Chinese teacher. I can't vouch for the accuracy of it, but he was definitely on to something : In the West, it is assumed that it is the speaker's job to make himself understood to his listeners. In the East, it is the other way around. In recent times, it seems like we've gotten even more extreme. The speaker or writer must not only spoon-feed the understanding,…

my Chinese teacher supplied me with this supposedly ancient piece of Chinese scholarly wisdom: read any book a hundred times, and its meaning will be obvious.

i have found this to work amazingly well -- particularly with poorly written technical papers.

your comment also reminded me of this one time I was hanging out and watching the Matrix (for the 100th time probably) with a film maker friend. and he was pointing out to me that American film editing guides you with a rather heavy hand on where to look on the screen, whereas European films did little of that and the viewer has to search for what to pay attention to in a scene. after he showed me the editing techniques it all made sense, and explained why i could mindless follow hollywood movies, whereas watching an european film i'd get lost if not paying attention.

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#82

Post by brianush1 »

scubbo wrote: post #15
jyunwai wrote: post #10

A useful habit that I've begun to follow with more complicated books—especially when reading them out of personal interest—is to actively avoid taking notes or worrying about background material on a first read. I've recently read and greatly enjoyed a historical fiction novel called "Augustus" written by John Edward Williams and published in 1972. On the surface level, it's about the events of the life of Augustus C…

Fascinating. My first response to your opening paragraph was horror - how on Earth could you hope to really internalize and learn from a textbook without taking notes on it? - before realizing that you were (mostly) referring to fiction or entertainment media. In which case, yes, I wholeheartedly agree with you - don't do anything to pull yourself out of the story, remain immersed and (if it's a well-structured work)…

it works with textbooks too though

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#83

Post by cal85 »

brokenmachine wrote: post #35
dr_kiszonka wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no research to back this up, but I think the need to understand everything may result from low self-esteem. Specifically, when not knowing something, people with low self-esteem may feel stupid. To eliminate this feeling, they† focus on learning. It is a good adaptive mechanism, especially compared to maladaptive ones like avoidance behaviors. A potentially better one is learning not to derive self-worth from…

But it's kind of high self esteem to think that you're actually capable of understanding everything. Low self esteem would assume they're not capable of understanding and just give up.

People are complicated. You can have a high view of some aspects of yourself and a low view of other aspects.

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#84

Post by dr_kiszonka »

brokenmachine wrote: post #35
dr_kiszonka wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no research to back this up, but I think the need to understand everything may result from low self-esteem. Specifically, when not knowing something, people with low self-esteem may feel stupid. To eliminate this feeling, they† focus on learning. It is a good adaptive mechanism, especially compared to maladaptive ones like avoidance behaviors. A potentially better one is learning not to derive self-worth from…

But it's kind of high self esteem to think that you're actually capable of understanding everything. Low self esteem would assume they're not capable of understanding and just give up.

I think this might be more closely related to self-efficacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-efficacy

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#85

Post by emmanone »

I’ve recently moved to Europe and found myself surrounded by hundreds of famous galleries, which are essentially the main entertainment here.

I started visiting them and looking at classical paintings, little by little googling what it was and why. It turned out to be so exciting!

Now, a year later, I can say for sure which of the women with a severed male head in their hands in the painting is Judith and which is Salome. And I understand much better how people lived in these parts before, and why they live the way they do now.

Therefore, I completely agree with the author of the article - sometimes you need to plunge into the unknown, and this unknown will reward you.

I’m afraid to imagine how many discoveries await me in museums of contemporary art.

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#86

Post by lmm »

lukan wrote: post #80
forgotusername6 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the beginning of the book or just read that one quote? The first chapter on a story about meeting etiquette in Chinese business culture is actually quite insightful. It certainly resonates with me a least. I wish I had a manual so I knew how to behave in a meeting with people from different cultures. We are not all the same and there is no one size fits all way of behaving in a meeting.

I stopped at that quote. There are no doubt interesting anecdota inside, that might be insightful and there is no doubt some truth to some clichés, but I seriously doubt a box so big as "asians" has much value. And even for "small" boxes like "germans", there are for example great differences between east and west germany (seperated by the iron curtain and different systems for over 40 years) - but more so for the ol…

The alternative to considering "asians" or "germans" is probably not understanding each person's cultural background individually but rather putting everyone in a single "world" box. Which is the biggest and most useless one of all. Once you have a good understanding of a typical german you can of course zoom in and get more detail, but if you refuse to learn about germans in general then that's going to make you less understanding of both an old person from east germany and a young person from west germany, not more.

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#88

Post by lukan »

lmm wrote: post #86
lukan wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped at that quote. There are no doubt interesting anecdota inside, that might be insightful and there is no doubt some truth to some clichés, but I seriously doubt a box so big as "asians" has much value. And even for "small" boxes like "germans", there are for example great differences between east and west germany (seperated by the iron curtain and different systems for over 40 years) - but more so for the ol…

The alternative to considering "asians" or "germans" is probably not understanding each person's cultural background individually but rather putting everyone in a single "world" box. Which is the biggest and most useless one of all. Once you have a good understanding of a typical german you can of course zoom in and get more detail, but if you refuse to learn about germans in general then that's going to make you les…

There is also the alternative of treating humans as humans first, if you don't know much about them, except their looks and their passport nationality.

And not assuming one has these and those traits, because they look "asian", but were raised in the US for example.

I know I met many people from many backgrounds all over the world and my thinking in boxes default mode, was never really helpful, but often very wrong. So it is good to know what some common traits are for a person from a certain cultural background, but not with the assumption that the individual in front of you is in fact like this. That can also offend people.

For example some cultures do not like to shake hands. Germans usually do, but personally I also don't. So just be conscious and try to read body language, would be my advice. And in case of doubt, asking a person on the side and not in front of everyone usually works to work around missunderstandings.

Re: The joy of reading books you don't understand

#89

Post by zo1 »

renewiltord wrote: post #56
sfink wrote: post #53

This reminds me of something that I heard once from a Chinese teacher. I can't vouch for the accuracy of it, but he was definitely on to something : In the West, it is assumed that it is the speaker's job to make himself understood to his listeners. In the East, it is the other way around. In recent times, it seems like we've gotten even more extreme. The speaker or writer must not only spoon-feed the understanding,…

You'll see this often on the Internet: proof? Proof? Citation? Boy, no one's going to do any work for you. If you believe the wrong thing, the consequences are your own. In fact, only people with no better use for their time will spend their time teaching you. This means you're being taught only by people whose time is worthless or for whom it is useful for you to believe in something. If you're not paying for the kn…

I only wish for people to take a "little bit" of a charitable interpretation of my comments. Lot of time they simply find one little gap, wrong wording, etc and just run with it and dismiss my entire comment. I do it too, sometimes, but I like to think I do it for a reason.

Alas, we're all humans: greedy, and biased towards our own views.

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