Well said. I think the big takeaway, though, isn't so much in asking how we should better transmit knowledge, but in asking how we might ensure that what we become better receivers of knowledge.
So we should be asking ourselves how we can keep the castle guarded, but also accessible; and also asking under what conditions we place things in, or remove things from, the keep.
In my experience, smart people learn from their own experience. There are a lot of smart people out there. But truly wise people are able to learn from the experience of others.
I really liked your idea that core beliefs are held in the keep as a way of protecting them, but it also makes it hard to change them. That really resonated! However, I’d like to gently push back against the “siege” idea -- I don’t think changing what’s in the keep comes from forceful breaching, but rather from a gentle welcoming. The owner of the keep needs to let someone (or another part of themselves) in and survey the area and muck around a bit. One need to want to change or learn before they are able to.
The way you’re describing this made me think a lot about the internal family systems (IFS) model of understanding oneself (and also trauma). I think you might be interested! I’d highly recommend No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz.
You're right, the analogy is a bit aggressive. I suppose I think that way because I think anyone who is truly open to receiving a bit of wisdom perhaps already believes it a little bit, and so it's less about changing their mind, and more about watering the seed in their mind that then outgrows the other bits.
Re: " truly open to receiving a bit of wisdom perhaps already believes it a little bit" --> in 1981 legendary AI researcher Patrick Winston taught his students during Intro to AI: "You can't learn something unless you almost know it already." New information has to find a way to be integrated with existing information in order for learning to occur.
Richard Saul Wurman expressed the similar idea: "You only understand information relative to what you already understand." "Relative to" part is in my opinion is very important.
The title of this article could well have been, "The Parent's Dilemma." As a parent, there's so much wisdom that you want to -- and try to -- share with your kids. But from trying to do this, you come to realize that it isn't so easy.
You have years of life experience and context that they lack, such that there are many ideas that they literally cannot (yet) understand, no matter how how patient you are in trying to explain them, how well you express them, and so on. Most learning is inductive. It comes from living life and experiencing things first-hand. As you explained in your article, words from another person just don't have the same power.
So, as a parent, I try to let my kids encounter "cheap lessons," in which they are safe from really serious consequences, yet able to learn something by experiencing it directly. A really simple example: don't stop your toddler from satisfying his curiosity by sticking his finger into the flame of a candle. At worst, he'll get a small blister (and probably not even that). But the lesson will mean that later on, he won't be tempted to see what it feels like to stick his arm in a campfire. Simply saying, "Don't touch the candle! Fire can hurt you!" would not have the same impact.
For adults, life is more complex, cheap lesson opportunities are rarer, and you can't force such lessons on others. Hence, "Don't go to Oxford" falls flat, unless the person you're talking to is genuinely receptive and you can marshal supporting evidence they can relate to based on their own personal context.
Yes, I thought often while writing this of all the things I'm sure my parents would have liked to tell me, but knew that I wouldn't understand. I look forward to the same frustration with my kids!
This is wonderful advice. Here’s a story: When I was in high school, I wanted to wear open-toed shoes to school. This was in winter, in Minnesota, so it was well below zero (Fahrenheit) that day. My mom didn’t put up any kind of argument but just said, “Wear what you want. They’re your feet.” We lived two blocks from school, and as I walked those two blocks, I rapidly discovered that I was an idiot. I had a bit of frostbite but nothing worse. Lesson learned! When I became a mom, I tried to follow my mom’s example and, in situations that weren’t particularly risky, let my kids learn their own lessons. It’s really a much better way.
May I amend your concluding statement to: "Don't go to Oxford as a visiting scholar to do a Masters." I had a good time at Oxford in the 1980s, but was as a UK native and for a Bachelors. I got the impression that a masters degree isn't much of a thing there. Perhaps the dons were confused because you weren't doing a bachelor's or a doctorate.
That aside, this is a really good read. Great use of analogies.
Agreed––the folks I met there doing bachelor's degrees seemed to be having a good time and learning a lot. The DPhils, in my experience, were all right if all they wanted to do was read old books in beautiful libraries, or write equations on chalkboards. If they needed to spend much time talking to other people, they shriveled up like me.
I also had a good time at Oxford in the 1980s (which is what I write about in my Substack, or at least I did initially) when I was doing my D.Phil. It could be that Oxford has changed since our time there. It also probably depends on your college (I was at Keble). The problems arose when I tried to reintegrate into US academia. My applications would be deemed incomplete because I could not provide a transcript from Oxford, since no grades were given in the few classes I attended. Also there were few opportunities to get teaching experience as a graduate student.
Yes. US PhD programs are training programs to enter academia. At UK unis, it seems a PhD program is mostly so you can write a thesis. Some UK unis are now American-style but many aren’t.
And Oxbridge (UK unis in general) are a different animal from American colleges (continental European unis even more so).
The brain dead Pass It On campaign is funded by a “philanthropic” organization owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz who owes his success to inheriting his father’s oil company and experiencing a windfall from happening to own capital at a time of major US growth. His biggest contribution to society beyond PassItOn is owning various sports and entertainment properties, it’s completely unsurprising that his idea of making the world a better place is plastering tepid motivational posters on billboards. For all its recent struggles, wastes of money like him are why I’m glad we have the Effective Altruism movement so at least other billionaires can find something useful to do.
I dunno. Between noted promoter of "effective altruism" Sam Bankman-Fried and promoter of bland inspirational slogans Philip Anschutz, I prefer the latter. At least the money he's wasting is his own.
And why is writing a blog fun? I'm betting because the biggest bang for the buck in expressing (y)our views thoughtfully and creatively is that you (we) get to follow an idea through a garden (or wilderness) of intriguing paths. I still teach not because I really believe after all this time that what I say will get inside people's heads (much), but because formulating those ideas helps me figuring out what *I* think--and doing so in the presence of other people helps me get different angles on it and is more fun than just working it out solo. In the end, I guess I hope what will happen to a few students along the way is that they will notice how much fun it is to think, and how much more rewarding it is to do so in company.
Adam, this is SO entertaining, well-written, and spot-on. Thank you! (It has also given me the topic of my next Substack essay, so thank you for that, too.) I agree with everything you're saying, except that I do believe -- as Mercenary Pen already mentioned -- art can sometimes walk right in. And so can subconscious programming, as I wrote about here: https://marypoindextermclaughlin.substack.com/p/yes-you-sex-are-being-sex-influenced
Great post, enjoyed it. While the keep is very hard to breach, it is remarkable how some works of art, writers that speak to you just the right way, lovers that connect with you, and so on, can skip all the defenses and walk right in.
Problem is that there’s an infinite number of potential siege engines and no time to test them all.
This is great, and as always with your work, well timed.
I was recently talking a friend through a problem of theirs, and they were not at all receptive to my advice. I know, I know, the best thing you can be is a listener, but the only reason I went up to bat this time was that I myself was only *just a month ago* seeking their guidance on a near identical issue—and I was trying to give them back the advice they had just so easily imparted to me. It was maddening to see their blank expression as I tried my best to express the apparent (at least, to me) continuity between our two plights (or buckets), and after reflecting I really had to take this lesson to heart.
If I couldn't impart anything in this case, of all cases, I'm not sure I ever can, and that's a grave invitation for me to get in touch with how people actually need to learn and grow. Ironically, I hope there's a follow up piece to this someday that could help me learn that—hahaha.
*Exactly*! My fiancé and I do this all the time. She'll have some problem, and I'll give her some sage advice about what to do, and then I'll face the exact same problem, and she'll give me the same advice back, and I'll be like "ah but it's so much harder than that, I think my problem is in fact impossible to solve, I'll just be sad forever I guess."
Thank you for this. It arrive at an opportune moment, as I am about to 1. give a presentation of part 1 of my dissertation to fellow grad students, and 2. meet with someone about faculty bullying. I will now not try to stuff my perspective in their ears.
Full disclosure: I got my LL.M. at LSE in 1996 but my reasons for going and spending all that money were different from the usual and I enjoyed my experience and got a lot out of it. Now, getting my PhD is also not the dumpster fire it could have been, given my reasons for doing it.
This reply will allow me to correct the typo in my comment! "It arrived..."
In fact, my presentation was engaging enough that instead of posing questions and challenges for the usual 30 minutes, they went on for the whole 90 minutes we had the room.
As for the bullying, two of us who have been bullied met with someone for an hour and hashed things out as far as we were able. We all seemed to be listening to each other, so that was good. In the end however, we decided there was nothing we could really do about it, that would change the bully, so we couldn't accomplish that.
Wonderful post! I can’t help but also think about your posts on vibes - it seems like a corollary post. Not only do vibes “seem to stick around a lot longer” than facts, but they’re also one of the main things you can actually use to get into the terminal of the mind (ie Joseph Campbell power of myth)
Maybe you can reach it through the eyes though. Your blog has convinced me to NEVER attend Oxford for my graduate studies.
Granted, I live in the US, I'm nearing 50, and have two college credits to my name, but no matter what I'm definitely never going to even consider going to Oxford! What a wretched place!
I've put two kids into American universities. I'm not sure you know what you're talking about here. They were definitely expected to be very independent.
I have studied and taught at both Oxford and also two US state universities. In the US, students are given well-defined topics and assignments. There are clear expectations about what they must do to earn a degree and what they will learn in each course (I was required to state the learning objectives on the syllabus). So, in that sense, they have little or no independence in terms of their intellectual development within the university structure. Under the Oxford tutorial system, the students have more agency in terms of what they learn (in some subjects they can choose what they want to read and write about in their essays). There is a great deal of ambiguity about what is necessary to succeed, as the results depend on an exam at the end (and essay exams can be graded in subjective ways). So, in that sense, Oxford requires students to be intellectually independent and not rely on their instructors. In terms of personal responsibility for doing the work and taking care of themselves, students in both countries are independent. And in both places, there are lively discussions taking place outside the "classroom."
You've provided an explanation for why Santayana's over-quoted "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" are always, in fact, doomed and repeat it.
Well said. I think the big takeaway, though, isn't so much in asking how we should better transmit knowledge, but in asking how we might ensure that what we become better receivers of knowledge.
So we should be asking ourselves how we can keep the castle guarded, but also accessible; and also asking under what conditions we place things in, or remove things from, the keep.
In my experience, smart people learn from their own experience. There are a lot of smart people out there. But truly wise people are able to learn from the experience of others.
I liked it, but exceedingly few people are wise (including myself).
I really liked your idea that core beliefs are held in the keep as a way of protecting them, but it also makes it hard to change them. That really resonated! However, I’d like to gently push back against the “siege” idea -- I don’t think changing what’s in the keep comes from forceful breaching, but rather from a gentle welcoming. The owner of the keep needs to let someone (or another part of themselves) in and survey the area and muck around a bit. One need to want to change or learn before they are able to.
The way you’re describing this made me think a lot about the internal family systems (IFS) model of understanding oneself (and also trauma). I think you might be interested! I’d highly recommend No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz.
Thanks as always for your musings!
You're right, the analogy is a bit aggressive. I suppose I think that way because I think anyone who is truly open to receiving a bit of wisdom perhaps already believes it a little bit, and so it's less about changing their mind, and more about watering the seed in their mind that then outgrows the other bits.
I like that analogy! The growth of a seed once dormant.
Re: " truly open to receiving a bit of wisdom perhaps already believes it a little bit" --> in 1981 legendary AI researcher Patrick Winston taught his students during Intro to AI: "You can't learn something unless you almost know it already." New information has to find a way to be integrated with existing information in order for learning to occur.
Richard Saul Wurman expressed the similar idea: "You only understand information relative to what you already understand." "Relative to" part is in my opinion is very important.
The title of this article could well have been, "The Parent's Dilemma." As a parent, there's so much wisdom that you want to -- and try to -- share with your kids. But from trying to do this, you come to realize that it isn't so easy.
You have years of life experience and context that they lack, such that there are many ideas that they literally cannot (yet) understand, no matter how how patient you are in trying to explain them, how well you express them, and so on. Most learning is inductive. It comes from living life and experiencing things first-hand. As you explained in your article, words from another person just don't have the same power.
So, as a parent, I try to let my kids encounter "cheap lessons," in which they are safe from really serious consequences, yet able to learn something by experiencing it directly. A really simple example: don't stop your toddler from satisfying his curiosity by sticking his finger into the flame of a candle. At worst, he'll get a small blister (and probably not even that). But the lesson will mean that later on, he won't be tempted to see what it feels like to stick his arm in a campfire. Simply saying, "Don't touch the candle! Fire can hurt you!" would not have the same impact.
For adults, life is more complex, cheap lesson opportunities are rarer, and you can't force such lessons on others. Hence, "Don't go to Oxford" falls flat, unless the person you're talking to is genuinely receptive and you can marshal supporting evidence they can relate to based on their own personal context.
Yes, I thought often while writing this of all the things I'm sure my parents would have liked to tell me, but knew that I wouldn't understand. I look forward to the same frustration with my kids!
This is wonderful advice. Here’s a story: When I was in high school, I wanted to wear open-toed shoes to school. This was in winter, in Minnesota, so it was well below zero (Fahrenheit) that day. My mom didn’t put up any kind of argument but just said, “Wear what you want. They’re your feet.” We lived two blocks from school, and as I walked those two blocks, I rapidly discovered that I was an idiot. I had a bit of frostbite but nothing worse. Lesson learned! When I became a mom, I tried to follow my mom’s example and, in situations that weren’t particularly risky, let my kids learn their own lessons. It’s really a much better way.
May I amend your concluding statement to: "Don't go to Oxford as a visiting scholar to do a Masters." I had a good time at Oxford in the 1980s, but was as a UK native and for a Bachelors. I got the impression that a masters degree isn't much of a thing there. Perhaps the dons were confused because you weren't doing a bachelor's or a doctorate.
That aside, this is a really good read. Great use of analogies.
Agreed––the folks I met there doing bachelor's degrees seemed to be having a good time and learning a lot. The DPhils, in my experience, were all right if all they wanted to do was read old books in beautiful libraries, or write equations on chalkboards. If they needed to spend much time talking to other people, they shriveled up like me.
I also had a good time at Oxford in the 1980s (which is what I write about in my Substack, or at least I did initially) when I was doing my D.Phil. It could be that Oxford has changed since our time there. It also probably depends on your college (I was at Keble). The problems arose when I tried to reintegrate into US academia. My applications would be deemed incomplete because I could not provide a transcript from Oxford, since no grades were given in the few classes I attended. Also there were few opportunities to get teaching experience as a graduate student.
Yes. US PhD programs are training programs to enter academia. At UK unis, it seems a PhD program is mostly so you can write a thesis. Some UK unis are now American-style but many aren’t.
And Oxbridge (UK unis in general) are a different animal from American colleges (continental European unis even more so).
The brain dead Pass It On campaign is funded by a “philanthropic” organization owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz who owes his success to inheriting his father’s oil company and experiencing a windfall from happening to own capital at a time of major US growth. His biggest contribution to society beyond PassItOn is owning various sports and entertainment properties, it’s completely unsurprising that his idea of making the world a better place is plastering tepid motivational posters on billboards. For all its recent struggles, wastes of money like him are why I’m glad we have the Effective Altruism movement so at least other billionaires can find something useful to do.
Did not know this! Thank you.
I dunno. Between noted promoter of "effective altruism" Sam Bankman-Fried and promoter of bland inspirational slogans Philip Anschutz, I prefer the latter. At least the money he's wasting is his own.
Wonderful article as always but Shrek isn't a Pixar film. It's a Dreamworks film.
Thank you! Fixed it.
And answers the question, "why do I feel so misunderstood when I spend all my time explaining myself?"
And why is writing a blog fun? I'm betting because the biggest bang for the buck in expressing (y)our views thoughtfully and creatively is that you (we) get to follow an idea through a garden (or wilderness) of intriguing paths. I still teach not because I really believe after all this time that what I say will get inside people's heads (much), but because formulating those ideas helps me figuring out what *I* think--and doing so in the presence of other people helps me get different angles on it and is more fun than just working it out solo. In the end, I guess I hope what will happen to a few students along the way is that they will notice how much fun it is to think, and how much more rewarding it is to do so in company.
Based on the number of individual responses Adam makes to these comments it is to illicit comments and interact with them.
Adam, this is SO entertaining, well-written, and spot-on. Thank you! (It has also given me the topic of my next Substack essay, so thank you for that, too.) I agree with everything you're saying, except that I do believe -- as Mercenary Pen already mentioned -- art can sometimes walk right in. And so can subconscious programming, as I wrote about here: https://marypoindextermclaughlin.substack.com/p/yes-you-sex-are-being-sex-influenced
But everything else -- you're right. Deaf ears.
I was about to write that first sentence in a comment ...And there it is! All I can say is: Ditto, and ditto Thanks for a fab post!
Great post, enjoyed it. While the keep is very hard to breach, it is remarkable how some works of art, writers that speak to you just the right way, lovers that connect with you, and so on, can skip all the defenses and walk right in.
Problem is that there’s an infinite number of potential siege engines and no time to test them all.
Is it wrong that hearing you talk so eloquently about life has made me want to go to Oxford?
Yes!
(Per Max More's comment, it's only for master's degrees that I would shoo people away from)
This is great, and as always with your work, well timed.
I was recently talking a friend through a problem of theirs, and they were not at all receptive to my advice. I know, I know, the best thing you can be is a listener, but the only reason I went up to bat this time was that I myself was only *just a month ago* seeking their guidance on a near identical issue—and I was trying to give them back the advice they had just so easily imparted to me. It was maddening to see their blank expression as I tried my best to express the apparent (at least, to me) continuity between our two plights (or buckets), and after reflecting I really had to take this lesson to heart.
If I couldn't impart anything in this case, of all cases, I'm not sure I ever can, and that's a grave invitation for me to get in touch with how people actually need to learn and grow. Ironically, I hope there's a follow up piece to this someday that could help me learn that—hahaha.
Thanks again Adam!
*Exactly*! My fiancé and I do this all the time. She'll have some problem, and I'll give her some sage advice about what to do, and then I'll face the exact same problem, and she'll give me the same advice back, and I'll be like "ah but it's so much harder than that, I think my problem is in fact impossible to solve, I'll just be sad forever I guess."
Thank you for this. It arrive at an opportune moment, as I am about to 1. give a presentation of part 1 of my dissertation to fellow grad students, and 2. meet with someone about faculty bullying. I will now not try to stuff my perspective in their ears.
Full disclosure: I got my LL.M. at LSE in 1996 but my reasons for going and spending all that money were different from the usual and I enjoyed my experience and got a lot out of it. Now, getting my PhD is also not the dumpster fire it could have been, given my reasons for doing it.
I'm sorry to hear about the bullying. Good luck on both conversations!
This reply will allow me to correct the typo in my comment! "It arrived..."
In fact, my presentation was engaging enough that instead of posing questions and challenges for the usual 30 minutes, they went on for the whole 90 minutes we had the room.
As for the bullying, two of us who have been bullied met with someone for an hour and hashed things out as far as we were able. We all seemed to be listening to each other, so that was good. In the end however, we decided there was nothing we could really do about it, that would change the bully, so we couldn't accomplish that.
Wonderful post! I can’t help but also think about your posts on vibes - it seems like a corollary post. Not only do vibes “seem to stick around a lot longer” than facts, but they’re also one of the main things you can actually use to get into the terminal of the mind (ie Joseph Campbell power of myth)
Maybe you can reach it through the eyes though. Your blog has convinced me to NEVER attend Oxford for my graduate studies.
Granted, I live in the US, I'm nearing 50, and have two college credits to my name, but no matter what I'm definitely never going to even consider going to Oxford! What a wretched place!
It’s not wretched if you know what to expect going in and want that. Plenty of folks went to Oxbridge and loved it.
UK unis in general expect students to be much more independent than American colleges.
I've put two kids into American universities. I'm not sure you know what you're talking about here. They were definitely expected to be very independent.
I have studied and taught at both Oxford and also two US state universities. In the US, students are given well-defined topics and assignments. There are clear expectations about what they must do to earn a degree and what they will learn in each course (I was required to state the learning objectives on the syllabus). So, in that sense, they have little or no independence in terms of their intellectual development within the university structure. Under the Oxford tutorial system, the students have more agency in terms of what they learn (in some subjects they can choose what they want to read and write about in their essays). There is a great deal of ambiguity about what is necessary to succeed, as the results depend on an exam at the end (and essay exams can be graded in subjective ways). So, in that sense, Oxford requires students to be intellectually independent and not rely on their instructors. In terms of personal responsibility for doing the work and taking care of themselves, students in both countries are independent. And in both places, there are lively discussions taking place outside the "classroom."
This is a great explanation. Thank you.
I went through American universities for both undergrad and Masters so I definitely know what I am talking about.
As shocking as it may seem to you, there are universities in the world that expect their students to be more independent than American colleges do.
You've provided an explanation for why Santayana's over-quoted "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" are always, in fact, doomed and repeat it.