/lit/ - Literature

>>21560489
Every thread with a political text gets derailed by the opposition's strawman arguments. It becomes difficult for them to discuss any sort of nuance.
>>21560492
Ya got me, bud!
>>21560496
You are right, we cannot retreat into the past, no matter how much I want to burry my head and do that, but I also will completely undervalue the power of the individual when the systemic issues that plague this place are so overwhelming. None of our posts will survive. We are the band on the titanic as it sinks, but its every time we post.

I think the best discussions of literature I've had are always one on one back and forths, sometimes on /lit/ where other anons occasionally come in and talk about it. When two minds have actually actually read a text thoroughly they can discuss it and build on those ideas. That's the whole point of educational texts etc. Building upon the work as an experience itself to learn about the self and others and the world. I think twitter and other social media platforms turn into narcissistic bullshit limited by characters. Discussing actual literature takes a long time to do. It's why 30 minute lectures always feel too short and why a tweet is just going to say 'good' or 'bad'. DFW said in a few interviews when asked a question that required length to reply that 'we could go get a cup of coffee and it would take hours to properly explain it' or something like that. Real genuine connection with another person and material takes time. We just live in an age that's too fast for books or actually talking about real shit.

>>19495140
This is what I do to build on knowledge I've learnt. I don't know if this will make sense without variables so lets say you are trying to retain statement X and you have already retained statement Y which is something related to X.

Normally I try to put X in simple terms so someone dumber than me can understand. Then I try to find relationships between X and Y. So to recall X, I just have to recall Y, which I have already retained, and use problem solving skills to find the relationship between X and Y (this would be easier than normal because you put X into similar terms and the effort of creating that connection makes your memory better), then I follow that relationship till I recall X. This for some reason improves my retention even thought it looks like its good for memeory. With enough practise you'll be able to do this in your head. It might not work because I'm doing probably doing easier work than tho.

Also pc related

Literally talk about a book in this order so you can gauge where your audience is.

>>18034500
Look into blooms taxonomy.
I picked these books because they were the least motivational bullshit books on the subjects that weren't ancient tomes by old scholars. I wanted to provide something newer. Each book provides methods, rules, anecdotes, and data for their given thesis.

>>18017369
It completely depends upon the lens that you are looking at the work through. Take the platonic dialogue of ION for example. It's extremely short, but to know and understand it fully you have to look at it from quite a few different angles. There's the material content of their discussion, which involves contextual elements of literary merit, but that itself misses the point that Socrates was trying to make about the origin of knowledge, but even that doesn't yet take into consideration the actual writing of the dialogue and the procedural elements that the medium brings to the message, nor the historical context of the piece's place in the cannon of philosophy or even just the other works by Plato. You could then take any sort of modern analytical tool or any subsequent philosophers mode of operation and apply it to that work in reverse. The analysis of any given work is endless. At some point you have to move on.

Almost. You can divide the process into three parts:

1. Identify the explicit and latent abstractions. This is what Adler calls "the author's terms". I do research in CS and math so I prefer the term abstraction. But the word "definition" also fits, or "jargon" or "vocabulary" or "names". You might even generalize to the concept of language itself. e.g When Nabokov talks about the idea of the writer's "world" in one of his essays, he is partly talking about the abstractions that the author creates and then manipulates. These abstractions are extremely complex units of meaning (e.g characters can be considered a form of abstraction) and the good writer, in effect, communicates via an extremely rich and multifarious language, whose grammar is "story", and whose atoms are the ordinary language we are familiar with. In scientific or mathematical discourse (and perhaps also philosophical--though I'm not as familiar with it) things are simpler, abstractions map bijectively to meaning and are often orthogonal. At any rate, the first step in understanding anything is to "learn the language", list all the abstractions, the vocabulary, the terms, as well as their definitions in common speech, i.e "in your own words". Some of this work the author will do for you (again, in scientific literature, nearly all of it is done for you) some of it you will have to uncover yourself and will have to make up your own names for things.

2. Find an isomorphism to an existing mental representation. I guess you could simplify this to mere analogy, but I think it's a bit more subtle than that. What you're really looking for is some existing, familiar mental structure which perfectly (or in practice, approximately) captures both the gamut of abstractions as well as the connections between them. I like to think of this as the brain's natural means of data compression. If the approximating structures are personal or visceral, they are remembered more easily. If you wish to teach or demonstrate the representation however, it is better to use primitive structures (i.e structures universal to human experience). One primitive structure that I've found useful, is man himself. e.g to understand the "language" of Christianity, one might map its myriad abstractions to the character and body of Christ (the religion does this already, to an extent). If one wants to understand the history of ancient Egypt, he might use its pantheon of gods (which here, are made in man's image, for convenience) as the structure, assuming he is familiar with them. If he wants to learn auto-repair he might map the automobile's various parts to organs and tissues, etc. Obviously, you may have to do a lot of twisting to get things to map, but in practice this works well. The objective is to create a wireframe, or armature, upon which to hang all the abstractions so that all their interconnections can be understood at once and the structure itself can be easily manipulated and applied.

1/2

A literature board implies that the main focus would be reading texts and discussing them (this rarely happens though) Reading itself is an active task one has to go out of their way to do. The act of reading is exposing yourself to the thoughts of other people in a one directional mode of communication. You are allowing yourself to be vulnerable to others who have taken the time to craft the thing you are reading. Your opinion doesn't matter until after the reading is finished. You are allowing them to complete their thought. The more exposure to other peoples experiences the more you are able to empathize with other people. Reading is also pretty cool in that it's the one medium in which you are basically reliving the thoughts of another person. It is the closest to knowing what someone else thought. Watching TV or movies can't get close to this experience. All these things considered, most people that read things of literary merit, are going to be more open and expressive of these things. That means more leftist thought is exposed to these people. It is a deep intellectual stimulation, as opposed to places like /pol/ where the propaganda of an image listing off all the jews of some corporation is simply an expression of an ideological base. Even if someone calls themselves a fascist, accelerationist, catholic, etc. People that read a lot are going to at least be able to understand how someone else can have different opinions.

>>15065017
In quarantine I've stopped drinking, for the most part because I'm not going out to bars with friends all the time. This means I've recovered a day and a half for every night not going out drinking because there's no hangover (getting old and drinking a lot does a number to the body). So I've had some extra time, when not having anxiety paralysis over this whole covid thing, to focus on my hobbies. If you are starting from the point of the only skill outside of not working you have is that you are literate and you lift weights, then you have a wide swath of things you could do. At first it's all based on what you have a passing interest in. What things have you always thought about learning? To list a few that I've had some level of involvement to success have been:
>website design
>graphic design
>lifting
>photography
>guitar/singing
>writing fiction
>writing/researching
>painting/drawing
>woodworking
It really depends on what you want to do and the key is to stick with it. The goal is the self actualization manifested irl in the form of making something. Be it a song, a painting, a short story, etc. The flow state comes with progressive mastery of something. Being lost for hours in something can be extremly satisfying, and by the end of it you have something you made you can be proud of, something you can examine and make better the next time. It's a progressive flow. This is why people say you should get an "artistic" hobby. Reading and watching movies is fun, but if you don't do anything with it, then it just becomes passive consumption. Not to say it's bad, consumption allows you to be a well versed person and can be used as a tool when communicating with other people to show a shared interest or define likes and dislikes.

Law clerk waiting on bar exam results. I research legal theories my boss comes up with, make templates of forms, write the first draft of appeals and motions, etc.

>>14991028
>>14991006
>>14990999
>>14990974
I got a set of requests for production written up. Hooray!

What books have you read that have actually helped you develop skills? Not shitty self help. But actual skills that are useful?

>>14004065
You posses basic recall of improper citation. So youre basically unintelligent. Im not going to argue with you, asi have a very firm understanding of science, and you do not. I am an enviornmental scientist, and you are a NEET, or retail clerk or what ever you are. Youre wrong, get over it.

>>12803132
Not that anon, but most course curricula are available for free online, often with accompanying lecture videos/notes/assignments etc. That's usually enough to give you an idea of what an undergraduate course entails and how much progress you can make in a specified time period.

Furthermore, there's a lot of accumulated evidence in neuroscience and the science of pedagogy that says most learning actually occurs via "active learning", more specifically, the hierarchies established in pic related.

In humanities the higher levels are often addressed by having students write essays, but the pedagogical value of this exercise is diminished because the essays are assigned as tests. This automatically changes the focus from learning the material to "beating the test" or "getting the grade".

Regarding pacing, self-learning has the significant, almost overwhelming advantage of being able to modulate the pace. You cite that

>Academic courses are paced in such a way that allows you to invest a healthy amount of time into all aspects of your study, rather than simply rushing onto the next big thing.

But in fact, the opposite is true. Namely because most undergraduates are taking many other courses at the same time and their focus is divided. Focused study on one or two subjects (at a time) for an extended period is far more effective than scattered attention on a diversity of subjects. The material can also be learned more quickly and more deeply than in the alternative. The self-pacing ensures that one can take the time to understand the fundamental elements before being forced to move on to new topics, as is the case with a university course.

If the fear is illusory competence (which is a legitimate fear) then universities have no shortage of that either, in both humanities and STEM.

Probably the best system of higher education is the tutorial system employed by Britain's top colleges. I would say it is worth going to university if all unis were structure that way. Likewise if you plan to do any kind of research, as you'll need access to equipment, scientific journals, funding, etc. But otherwise, I think we live in an age where education can finally be democratized and improved far beyond what is possible in a university setting.

I also recommend everyone ITT to check out Sanjoy Mahajan's MIT course on Teaching Engineering and Science. It's an enlightening course, and it's scope goes far beyond its title.

>>9749284
I was on my phone at the time, sorry for the lack of clarity.

Learning something, anything, is a multi-step process. Social interaction is not any different. When people tell you to just go out and try it, they are skipping steps. Some people are more adapt to learning as they go, but testing yourself on material is simply another step in learning. Not everyone learns on the fly, and not all people are inherently good at socializing.

For example, lets take the social situation of wanting to leave a conversation. What are the goals? You want to leave, but you don't want to be rude. Leaving will take more than simply walking away, unless youre in a social setting where that is okay. But imagine you are at work or on campus in a conversation with another person you have no opinion of, but know will be seen a lot in the future, you don't want to upset him. You can't just walk away, and you can't just say "I think what you have to say is boring and its upsetting me, I'm walking away." What could you do in this situation? Well the easiest way is to come up with a good excuse.
>I have to get back to work
>I have to go to a thing
>I need to water my dog
But it is not just the excuse that makes the other feel comfortable around you as you purposely leave their boring conversation, its the delivery up to that point. Waiting for a pause in their explanation. Wrapping up any points you didn't finish so they don't tell it to you the next time you see them. Setting up your exit non verbally with glances away, wrist watch or phone checking. Pretending you just realized the thing your excuse is about. Showing a genuine interest, informing them in an explicit, but not too detailed way of the thing that you have to go do. Shaking their hand firmly. Not too soft, not to hard, allowing them to let go first. Waiving goodbye. The set up, delivery, and exit are all key points to this seemingly simple social interaction.

How are you expected to know all of this if your parents or someone else hadn't informed you of the ways of etiquette? If you were an antisocial schoolboy, you wouldn't have enough quality social interactions to have garnered all this information through action. You first have to know about the issue at hand, the ways to tackle the problem, and only then can you really benefit from real world practice. Just as with anything else you learn. I wouldn't go straight into a Texas Criminal Procedure exam without having read the code, cases relating to the code, supplemental reading, studied these things thoroughly, applied it to hypotheticals, and taken practice tests.

These last two points, hypos and practice tests, are somewhat a real world application, but they are not under the same constraints as, say taking the BAR exam, or in our previous example, speaking with real world people that effect your daily life.