
We Aren’t Here to Learn What We Already Know (2016) - severine
http://avidly.lareviewofbooks.org/2016/09/13/we-arent-here-to-learn-what-we-know-we-already-know/
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JadeNB
I never understand these context-free posts. The domain of what could be
interesting to a hacker is very broad, but shouldn't we say _something_?

Anyway, the actual title seems to have almost nothing to do with the meat
(such as it is) of the article; the point seems to be the content of a handout
distributed in class by the author, a teacher of a feminist and queer theories
class, called "Some Notes On How To Ask A Good Question About Theory That Will
Provoke Conversation And Further Discussion From Your Colleagues". The
guidelines aren't bad overall, even if they'll probably say nothing new to any
curious hacker; they're mostly just addressing "Some Notes on How to Ask a
Good Question" (a very important skill for everyone, hackers included),
without much focus on the social-theory part of it.

~~~
severine
Hi, I posted the link. I wouldn't call myself a hacker, I'm a reader.

I'm often in awe of the stuff I read, but I love to spark conversations by
posting interesting articles.

Thanks for your input!

~~~
JadeNB
I didn't mean to criticise the article, or your posting it; I just would have
liked to see a word or two from you to give some context, or just further to
spark the conversation.

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duxup
>One challenge is that theory is not theology, though it sometimes tries hard
to be, and though students, particularly students looking for language with
which to critique various forms of power, often treat it that way.

I feel like this is something I see often where new language and ideas come
out and folks who find it convient use them as a sort of unquestionable club
to unleash upon the world.

I'm not sure that no matter how correct the theory is, that doing so is
helpful in their cause.

Taking theory out of the classroom and into the larger world seems very
difficult.

~~~
roenxi
A related observation; we try to teach critical thinking but it never really
gets spelled out how _uncritical_ thinking works; so students are generally
unprepared to recognise it in themselves.

Uncritical thinking isn't the same thing as stupid. It is possible to make
really great decisions and achieve the preferred combination of wealth, fame
and influence by thinking intelligently but uncritically.

Uncritical thinking as far as I can tell boils down to trusting authority
figures. That works really well for people with a slight knack for choosing
reliable authority figures. You can see it in action when people start
treating learned facts as faith-based truths.

~~~
dabbledash
Critical thinking, IMO, has more to do with WHY you trust or mistrust
authority and expertise in a particular area than whether you do.

~~~
espeed
Why? is the hyperlink of the mind -- the unifying link between domains of
knowledge know-how and true understanding. It's the most important question in
the world.

Truth is optimal, and why? is how you get there.

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calluna
Oh wow, this is totally my jam. I love seeing this on HN because it’s a
challenge to me to find analogies of how I can use this to inform my
programming practice (and how I might use programming to inform my queer,
feminist theory and critique)!

Here are some analogous experiences I thought of while reading:

>The work of undoing what you know, or what you think you know, is hard.

Trying to swerve around cargo culting, not getting so locked into one
programming pattern

>“next step is to get students to interact critically with the writing”

One of the main reasons I love programming. Ask why one sequence of operations
was applied versus another. Surface hidden complexity. To me, the exchange of
code review and questions makes programming such a fun and in-depth form of
collaborative writing.

> “Take notes in the margins: mess with the text. Underline, star, jot down
> questions.”

This mindset of interactive reading is exactly what has helped me be
successful as a programmer. When I am reviewing code, I pull and try to mark
it up with comments, drop in debuggers locally, snoop on variables.

> Linger over passages that are unclear or that strike you as particularly
> helpful or that don’t jar well with you

How I know when I’ve found a code smell, haha.

> Contextualize the writing

A good reminder for writing PR descriptions. I tend to get my note into the
trees right before a PR and sometimes it’s hard to zoom out!

> “Scaffold your question with the information people need to answer it;
> ground your question deeper into the text itself.”

This is lovely. A nice reminder to me: before I run off and bug our senior DBA
with a vague question, I should gather nearby context clues, log output, what
I’ve tried, repro steps, whatever I can to support my question.

> A good discussion question reframes some of the problems of the text

Some of my fav technical mentors would ask questions to poke holes in my
argument (my code), rather than telling me “X won’t work.” Their questions
would inevitably cause me to dig into the why.

> If you can answer your question while you are writing it

Rubber ducking!

On charting institutional and personal knowledge: > when we pool all of our
knowledge because it really makes clear the overwhelmingly rich and global
resources for left thinking that are both there to be accessed and also
suppressed and forgotten as origins for our current thinking.

I can think of many engineer discussions where mob diagramming what the group
believes the architecture / structural history is reveals new information to
folks and gaps in understanding.

This are just some of the bridges I see between this post and my daily work of
writing code. Thank you for sharing this!

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kleer001
Color me stupid, and maybe this isn't even in my wheel-house (or near my hobby
horse), but isn't it important to find out what is demonstrably true?

What good is a theory (or "theory") if it doesn't bang up against reality and
have the potential to die and be forgotten? Is there some clade of humans that
just regurgitate theory back and forth to each other? Or is this
entertainment?

I'm probably missing something. I'm probably thinking at the wrong level of
analysis. I'm lost. Help?

~~~
marcosdumay
> Is there some clade of humans that just regurgitate theory back and forth to
> each other?

Oh, there are many. Go through the department of any non-applied academic
field, or just turn your TV on the news. (Although one can claim the later is
entertainment.)

~~~
kleer001
AHHH! Yes, thank you. I knew it was familiar. I know it through my particular
beef with some air-headed philosophers.

Now, not all philosophers... some of them ask very good questions and propose
smart thought experiments which lead to positive change in the world.

Some of them, not so much. These talk in jargon filled circles, paint
themselves into corners, shoot themselves in the feet, then drag down
countless impressionable miserable children along with them into an empty
revolution and drag down the collective unconscious retarding the good of
civilization.

------
omarhaneef
I enjoyed this article too, but it amuses me that people want to find a
connection between this and programming, perhaps to unite their two tribes.

Not everything has to do with programming, nor would you want it to. Even if
the article is on hacker news. Sometimes just enjoy the thing-in-itself,
without drawing a connection to technology.

These connections exist, like they do between anything else in life. But that
may not be the most interesting thing about the piece.

