4 ms·

He was against writing... in 370 BC. Although, having seen the blank faces of students in lecture halls mindlessly taking notes, I know there's some truth to it

He was against writing... in 370 BC. Although, having seen the blank faces of students in lecture halls mindlessly taking notes, I know there's some truth to it. When a good professor lectures, there's a lot of information expressed as pace, stress, and so on. It's like when I read Shakespeare's plays for the first time and thought the world was really crazy to put such high value on seemingly nonsensical words, but then I saw an actor speak them and the performance added the additional emotional overtones which decoded how the words were meant to be understood. That extra layer on top of words is surprisingly neglected.

alexanderdmitri 7y ago
The lectures I best remember are the ones I took notes in. Every now and then again, I like to flip through old notebooks and the feel of those moments come back, the general atmosphere created by the professor, the subject, the feel of the class, the turning of the season, that visceral sense of having been alive in another time and space and I'm very glad to have left a record.
hvs 7y ago
I think you hit the nail on the head that one of the most important things a good teacher does is stress the important information. You can pick up a book on anything (calculus, computer science, philosophy, etc) and just due to information-density, get lost in the minutia. A good teacher stresses the important points so you can get a broader understanding. Then you can go back for the minutia when it is needed.
roenxi 7y ago
The central dynamic when someone is lecturing is that there is some sort of audience learning from the lecture. Hopefully willingly :) Listening to a lecturer is very helpful if the listener already has a fair grasp of a topic and uses it as an opportunity to critique and refine their own opinions. I've been to lots of lectures in my time and I found it very counterintuitive that I got more out of lectures when I already had a deep understanding of the topic. They are much better used to figure out what a smart person's perspective is rather than for picking up facts (better done from a reference manual or other book). I might have a bias towards technical lectures with a few equations on the board, but most students in a lecture hall that I've seen don't understand the subject well enough to get much out of the lecture. It becomes more a process of reading the slides to them rather than anything that a lecturer is needed for. There will be three types of students in the hall, in order of best to worst performance; not taking notes because they already understand the topic; taking notes to aid them in private study, and not taking notes because although they don't understand the lecture they also don't know how to use notes in private study later on.
- cgriswald 7y ago
  I take notes because it’s part of my process. It’s like thinking out loud without bothering the people around me. If I’m new to the topic it helps me absorb it (even if I’ve come having already read up on the topic). If I’m not it helps me absorb the lecturers ideas/opinions. I’m writing down my points of agreement/disagreement or things to research or things I want to prove or disprove, or a wild tangent, or a possible connection to another topic... etc
- jacobolus 7y ago
  > [Lectures] are much better used to figure out what a smart person's perspective is rather than for picking up facts This is why college courses assign readings....
- hyperpallium 7y ago
  Even skimming the subject matter for 5 minutes beforehand helps you get more out of the lecture, by preloading the basics (structure and terminology). I try to understand during the lecture (there's little to revise where I succeed). I can do this while taking notes. In the past, I'd take semantic notes, based on my understanding, flagging keys, as an aide de memoire to trigger my memory rather than be it. But now I try to follow the precise words, in case there's some nuance missing from my understanding.
flukus 7y ago
> He was against writing... in 370 BC This is key, we've made some progress in punctuation since his day, probably since Shakespears too. The greeks were experimenting with full stops but others like spaces in words ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_(punctuation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_(punctuation) ) came much later. We still can't encode emotions in textual information well but we have other methods to convey important concepts, we can make them stand out or have a list of bullet points, these weren't available to Socrates. I wonder how he'd feel about audio books.
- empath75 7y ago
  Probably about the same as reading because the argument was that interactive dialogue was the important thing.
- JetSpiegel 7y ago
  > We still can't encode emotions in textual information well Emojis? The interrobang? Sarcasm?
watwut 7y ago
The information conveyed as stress and pace, keeps you focused bit longer, but you loose focus anyway. It will be completely forgotten. That is why notes taking for me - keeps me listening instead of zoning out aaand learning from own notes later if faster then from someone elses material. Dunno why, but I think that act of writing itself helps me to learn.
a_imho 7y ago
In Hungarian the same word (eloadas) is used for both play and lecture.
cryptica 7y ago
It's possible that information which a person reads doesn't synthesise as well with other ideas and information once it's in the mind. When you discuss something complex with a teacher in an interactive way, the teacher can probe for subtle gaps in your knowledge to make your understanding more complete. With reading, you build a foundation of knowledge with many gaps and you just hope that they will consolidate over time but the foundation is weaker and so you can't synthesise that knowledge as well until those gaps are closed off through random learning events. It requires a more flexible kind of intelligence and a modest personality to be able to constantly keep adjusting your old knowledge.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  That's why you go to the lecture at all. But if you didn't read about the subject, your knowledge is all a gap, and you get no benefit from interacting with the teacher.
oftenwrong 7y ago
It is sometimes said that the typical university lecture is way to transfer the notes of the professor to the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either party.

alexanderdmitri 7y ago

The lectures I best remember are the ones I took notes in. Every now and then again, I like to flip through old notebooks and the feel of those moments come back, the general atmosphere created by the professor, the subject, the feel of the class, the turning of the season, that visceral sense of having been alive in another time and space and I'm very glad to have left a record.

hvs 7y ago

I think you hit the nail on the head that one of the most important things a good teacher does is stress the important information. You can pick up a book on anything (calculus, computer science, philosophy, etc) and just due to information-density, get lost in the minutia. A good teacher stresses the important points so you can get a broader understanding. Then you can go back for the minutia when it is needed.

roenxi 7y ago

The central dynamic when someone is lecturing is that there is some sort of audience learning from the lecture. Hopefully willingly :) Listening to a lecturer is very helpful if the listener already has a fair grasp of a topic and uses it as an opportunity to critique and refine their own opinions. I've been to lots of lectures in my time and I found it very counterintuitive that I got more out of lectures when I already had a deep understanding of the topic. They are much better used to figure out what a smart person's perspective is rather than for picking up facts (better done from a reference manual or other book). I might have a bias towards technical lectures with a few equations on the board, but most students in a lecture hall that I've seen don't understand the subject well enough to get much out of the lecture. It becomes more a process of reading the slides to them rather than anything that a lecturer is needed for. There will be three types of students in the hall, in order of best to worst performance; not taking notes because they already understand the topic; taking notes to aid them in private study, and not taking notes because although they don't understand the lecture they also don't know how to use notes in private study later on.

cgriswald 7y ago
I take notes because it’s part of my process. It’s like thinking out loud without bothering the people around me. If I’m new to the topic it helps me absorb it (even if I’ve come having already read up on the topic). If I’m not it helps me absorb the lecturers ideas/opinions. I’m writing down my points of agreement/disagreement or things to research or things I want to prove or disprove, or a wild tangent, or a possible connection to another topic... etc
jacobolus 7y ago
> [Lectures] are much better used to figure out what a smart person's perspective is rather than for picking up facts This is why college courses assign readings....
hyperpallium 7y ago
Even skimming the subject matter for 5 minutes beforehand helps you get more out of the lecture, by preloading the basics (structure and terminology). I try to understand during the lecture (there's little to revise where I succeed). I can do this while taking notes. In the past, I'd take semantic notes, based on my understanding, flagging keys, as an aide de memoire to trigger my memory rather than be it. But now I try to follow the precise words, in case there's some nuance missing from my understanding.

flukus 7y ago

> He was against writing... in 370 BC This is key, we've made some progress in punctuation since his day, probably since Shakespears too. The greeks were experimenting with full stops but others like spaces in words ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_(punctuation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_(punctuation) ) came much later. We still can't encode emotions in textual information well but we have other methods to convey important concepts, we can make them stand out or have a list of bullet points, these weren't available to Socrates. I wonder how he'd feel about audio books.

empath75 7y ago
Probably about the same as reading because the argument was that interactive dialogue was the important thing.
JetSpiegel 7y ago
> We still can't encode emotions in textual information well Emojis? The interrobang? Sarcasm?

watwut 7y ago

The information conveyed as stress and pace, keeps you focused bit longer, but you loose focus anyway. It will be completely forgotten. That is why notes taking for me - keeps me listening instead of zoning out aaand learning from own notes later if faster then from someone elses material. Dunno why, but I think that act of writing itself helps me to learn.

a_imho 7y ago

In Hungarian the same word (eloadas) is used for both play and lecture.

cryptica 7y ago

It's possible that information which a person reads doesn't synthesise as well with other ideas and information once it's in the mind. When you discuss something complex with a teacher in an interactive way, the teacher can probe for subtle gaps in your knowledge to make your understanding more complete. With reading, you build a foundation of knowledge with many gaps and you just hope that they will consolidate over time but the foundation is weaker and so you can't synthesise that knowledge as well until those gaps are closed off through random learning events. It requires a more flexible kind of intelligence and a modest personality to be able to constantly keep adjusting your old knowledge.

marcosdumay 7y ago
That's why you go to the lecture at all. But if you didn't read about the subject, your knowledge is all a gap, and you get no benefit from interacting with the teacher.

oftenwrong 7y ago

It is sometimes said that the typical university lecture is way to transfer the notes of the professor to the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either party.