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Obviously, just because you study something intently doesn't mean you understand it
by sixQuarks 13y ago
Obviously, just because you study something intently doesn't mean you understand it
- derwiki 13y agothis comment seemed unnecessarily mean :(
- antoinec 13y agoWhat the purpose of studying something then, if at the end you still don't understand it?
- coldtea 13y agoJust the fun of it? Learning other stuff in the process? Gaining a better idea of what the thing you study entails, even if you don't understand it fully yet?
- antoinec 13y agoI don't even know how to argue with that...can't do anything against bad faith I guess
- coldtea 13y agoHuh? Where's the bad faith? What I mean is, you can study something even if you know that you won't understand it at the end of your studies. There's even stuff that you can have a full career in and still not understand completely, like Quantum Mechanics. It's not a guarantee that by studying something you'll understand it, but learning more about it can be valuable in itself. For example I can study some X technique in a language, e.g Monads, and know when to apply it and what it does, and be quite productive with it, even if I don't yet understand it (or never get to understanding type theory).
- Sharlin 13y agoBut it certainly raises the priors. Corollarily, if you haven't studied something intently it is actually quite probable that you don't understand it.
- mikestew 13y agoThat's an unnecessarily mean-spirited way to say "I disagree", along with no explanation as to why you think parent is wrong. Here, have a downvote.
- smokeyj 13y agoI think OP is trying to say, studying golf does not make a golfer.
- Bootvis 13y agoI didn't interpret it as mean (but I see why someone could) but it raises a point different from 'I disagree'. "I studied this stuff intently" is a simple appeal to authority and does not make an argument credible. In this case, it does not tell anyone why central banking is the best idea since sanitation which is a very strong claim that needs some better support.
- mikestew 13y agoI agree that studying doesn't automatically make one an authority, and comes across as an appeal to authority. OTOH, prefacing the statement I replied to with "Obviously..." just came across to me as "it's obvious, because you don't know what you're talking about". Maybe I'm just reading too much into it.