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Thanks for finding it. Here's my attempt at a tldr: Teaching with analogy is bad because it robs students of jumps in understanding. By scaffolding new concep

Thanks for finding it. Here's my attempt at a tldr: Teaching with analogy is bad because it robs students of jumps in understanding. By scaffolding new concepts on things they already know they are losing the opportunity to learn how to make cognitive leaps, which is a skill itself. One that Dijkstra believes is is paramount to combatting dictators or zealotry. Did I read that right?

snikeris 9y ago
Yeah I think so. My takeaway was that operational reasoning, e.g. "this guy receives a message from this guy, then does this" is a waste of effort. What Dijkstra wants you to do is elevate yourself above that so you're reasoning in more powerful abstractions. I thought his analogy was illuminating of the point: "The point to get across is that if we have to demonstrate something about all the elements of a large set, it is hopelessly inefficient to deal with all the elements of the set individually: the efficient argument does not refer to individual elements at all and is carried out in terms of the set's definition."