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> Compare the journey of Newton inventing calculus to that of the modern day student learning it in a semester. The student is presumably experiencing "compress
by lapcat 1y ago
> Compare the journey of Newton inventing calculus to that of the modern day student learning it in a semester. The student is presumably experiencing "compression", but the alternative is they spend their whole life merely returning the point that humanity has already achieved.
I wouldn't call learning calculus the compression of inventing calculus, any more than reading a novel is the compression of writing the novel. There's no continuing value in reinventing calculus or rewriting the same novel, but there is continuing value in learning calculus and reading the novel. Compression culture is refusing to do any work, demanding instead a mere summary of calculus or a novel. If you go to class for hours every week, read the calculus textbook all the way through, and do the homework, I wouldn't call that "compression" in the terminology of the article author. On the other hand, if you merely have a summary of calculus, you've actually learned nothing. You can maybe fake your way through a conversation about calc, sound intelligent without being intelligent, at least until someone forces you to do a calc problem and reveals your sham.
- j_w 1y agoConflating the process of discovering something new and learning it after the fact feels like saying "why do I need to know arithmetic when I have a calculator in my pocket?" Anyone giving real critical thought to either statement knows they are not intending to achieve the same goal. They shouldn't be compared when talking about "compression."
- wredcoll 1y ago> Compression culture is refusing to do any work, demanding instead a mere summary of calculus or a novel This sounds rather tautological. My intent was to give an example of compression that is an obvious good. If we re-define compression to exclude that, pretty quickly we've just reduced the definition to compression = bad things. Bad things are, you know, bad, by definition, so this gives us no guidance for our future decisions. > more than reading a novel is the compression of writing the novel I was just having a conversation over in the jutjusu post about how and why you make commits, when you squash them, when you reorder them, and so on. What is a "pull request" if not a compression of the work I did to develop the required change? I even include a summary at the top so people don't have to read all of the actual code.
- lapcat 1y agoI never said that compression was inherently bad, and I don't think the article author did either. Here's what I said about the subject in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44649897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44649897 My objection wasn't about good vs. bad. I think the distinction is between mastery and superficiality. You can master calculus without starting from complete scratch like Newton did. But you can't master calculus by reading the CliffsNotes (for the older crowd) or AI summaries (for the younger crowd) of a calculus textbook. You have to put in the work. Even standing on the shoulders of giants such as Newton, it still doesn't come easy.