• I was saved by the negativity in “The Intellectual Production of Engineers” about “if you are going to talk about 00, you should at least read xxx”. I’ll take that as a good thing since I was studying something else on my own time. People’s time is finite, and the reading experience depends a lot on people’s prerequisite knowledge and experience, and I don’t remember everything anyway.

Think about why you feel uncomfortable.

  • For ease of explanation, I’ll rewrite the symbols to “If you’re going to talk about A, you should at least read X.”
  • Good thing I was studying something else on my own time.
    • agreement
    • If you learned about B instead of learning about A, there is nothing wrong with that.
    • Compared to learning about A because “everyone else is learning about A,” you are choosing what you want to learn about, and that’s rather nice.
  • People’s time is finite.
    • agreement
    • You can’t learn everything because it’s finite.
    • What to invest limited time in is an individual investment decision
  • The reading experience is highly dependent on a person’s prerequisite knowledge and experience
    • agreement
    • You don’t get the same thing from the same book.
  • I don’t remember everything anyway.
    • agreement
    • It’s not like a human downloading a file to a computer.
    • We don’t remember everything, and computers are better at remembering everything.
  • Negative about “if you’re going to talk about A, you should at least read X.”
    • hmm
    • There’s nothing wrong with learning B instead of A, and in learning A, it might be a good idea to read Y instead of X.
    • But when someone talks about the KJ method, for example, and says, “The KJ method is a method of classifying things by writing them on sticky notes,” I say, “What are you talking about when the proponent himself says Do not classify. so many times?” And so on.
    • This is a “if you’re going to talk about X, at least read the book where it was proposed” composition.
      • I’m not saying, “Be faithful to the scriptures.”
    • This could be an impression that depends on the relationship between A and X.
      • If you’re going to talk about programming, at least learn Haskell.”
        • A is very wide and X is high cost
        • NG feelings
      • If you’re going to talk about Haskell, at least read the Haskell tutorial.”
        • A is narrower and X is lower cost
        • This is the opposite of the “of course” feeling.
      • NG feels that “claims that impose high cost burdens on a wide range of people”
      • If the scope is narrow, I feel that “if you’re going to talk about it, you obviously need to know the premise.”
    • You said you were negative about “if you’re going to talk about A, you should at least read X” which is not limited to A and X, even though my feelings are different depending on the content of A and X. You came up with A and X which are not negative, which led to your discomfort.

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