In "The Book" Alan Watts discusses how he would write a book to his children explaining things like morality, reality, etc. He decides that things like the Bibl

In "The Book" Alan Watts discusses how he would write a book to his children explaining things like morality, reality, etc. He decides that things like the Bible, books on secular moralism, etc are pretty useless because they just list a bunch of rules or ideas. He explains that you can't just say things, valid or not, but that you need to enable the cognitive tools and perceptions to see these things oneself. This is how people really learn, by practice, lessons, challenges, etc via some guiding teacher's hand. Writers call something similar to this, "Show, don't tell." Turns out we like to learn by solving puzzles. We just need to know the basics of how the puzzle works like its mechanics, how to start, and what being solved looks like. I'm surprised to see this trivial quote generator on the top of HN. Its all the things we make fun of, like the word a day calender your friend owns and everyday uses an archaic word in an ill-fitting way to never use it again. Or how we mock the idiocy of the lazy didactic learner. Or the buzzword memorizer. We're supposed to be doers right? Coders, creators, etc. I guess the facts are kinda cute, but some of these I've seen debunked in some way in the past or are written in a generalist 'know it all' way that doesn't apply to all examples of the thing explained. Everytime I encounter a person who has these memorized I know I'm not dealing with someone fascinated with nature or science or whatever. Just someone who found an easy way to not be so dull and can't really discuss these things past just quoting the 'fact.' The same way uninteresting young people pretend to have humor by memorizing Monty Python lines and repeating them ad nauseaum. Unfortunately, this does create 'nerds.' The Python quoting kind I mentioned above. Not the kind up all night excited to play with their new arduino kit or with some new framework or language. I know the above sounds elitist, but the fact that they couldn't be bothered for sources really kills this for me. It just seems like a way to spread disinformation and heaven forbid you try to argue against someone parroting these lines in the future. Afterall, he learned it as fact from a fact site. It can't be wrong!