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Hey Len. Hello Asami. So we've been talking about books. It seems like we can talk about books for a
long time. Oh my god, so long. But I wanted to slightly switch the gear and talk about
books that are not necessarily chosen for your own entertainment. The books that you are assigned
in schools or you know, you feel like you need to read. And this kind of comes from our
sideway conversation about how I, as a third culture kid, started self-assigning books
from sort of like the classics of different cultures. So just a short recap, I went to,
I started going to international school at age 14. So this was halfway through middle school
in my school system. And you know, first year I spent in ESL, so I was just like learning how to
write coherent sentences. And then about a year of that, I was thrown in, as with many other
students, to mainstream English classes with other native speaker kids. And suddenly your English
classes are no longer about the grammar or like your writing skills, but are about literary analysis.
Yeah, we just switch gears. We don't, yeah, it's fine, right? Yeah, it's like, I mean, I don't know.
Like, I have never thought about dissecting literature. It's also not fine for the other
students, honestly. But anyway, yeah. But like, and maybe it's like an age thing, you know, that's
right about the time, you know, even the native speaker kids are forced to move into the literary
analysis realm of things. Maybe it was new to everyone, I immensely struggled. And
part of the reason I decided that was my struggle is because I don't have all of these
pre-existing knowledge that people seem to have about references. Like, oh, these are referencing
this other classic books, or like these jokes, these things that they're mentioning,
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these characters, what they're talking about is another piece of literature that, of course,
everyone else have read, or are familiar with. None of which were to me. And so things like
To Kill a Mockingbird, you mentioned Catcher in the Rye, these are things that I decided that I am
going to have to assign myself to read because I don't get these literary references. Because I
don't have that background. And the literature world and art world at large is full of if you
know, you knows. But once I started to have a little bit of understanding of that, I started
to see and enjoy the connections a little bit better. So naturally, I continued doing that,
because it was fun. And then at some point, I realized, oh, I don't know these equivalent of
that in Japanese. So I have, you know, as a middle school student going into high school,
like 16, 17 years old age, there are things that, you know, every single Japanese kids
would have come across if they were in Japanese education system, like Natsume Soseki, or Mori
Ogai, or Oiken Zaburo, things like that. Again, because I was not part of that system,
I never had to read it. But then I felt like I'm missing out a lot for not knowing
these classics. So I started kind of digging into these like,
uh, yeah, the classic Japanese or like a landmark piece of literature in Japanese literature
history. And I don't know what I did to try and kind of get through it. But I do take a little
joy when people are surprised at like, my Japanese reading history, for instance, they're like, oh,
like, you have read this, like, or like, your Japanese is really good. I'm like,
wow, your Japanese is so good. Yeah, thanks. I guess sometimes, sometimes that's condescending.
Sometimes, I kind of like, enjoy, like, I take it as like a face value compliment.
And if it comes from the perspective of like, wow, I'm impressed by the literature reference you get,
I get that, that has more of a... That feels like a flex.
Yeah, that's a flex. I would agree. Yes.
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Especially, especially because I haven't gone to Japanese school since middle school.
Yeah, right. So you, it would be assumed if somebody knows this, it's completely out there.
Pretty up there for someone who has stopped going to Japanese education system in middle school.
Yeah, it's a good point.
So, so, so there's that. But like, yeah, like how it just, it was a long winded way to ask you,
like, how have you, do you have this kind of experience where you feel like
you need to make yourself read a certain type of books or a certain piece of literature,
and you kind of begrudgingly maybe went through it?
Oh, man. Yeah, so...
Or is it more in like an academic reading, like textbooks?
Textbooks, textbooks got harder in grad school.
I was actually fine reading them, I think, all the way up until that point,
probably because I also had a lot more people doing the same stuff that I was doing.
So it was really just about being kind of in that working together space, which actually,
I think I can connect nicely to your idea about you did those other readings,
and it started to give you a foot in the sort of literature reference space.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you started to feel like you were part of that. Not only are you part of it,
but you can, you can start putting the pieces of the puzzle together. And you can also...
You can speak more similar languages with these professors, with these other researchers.
And that's fun, right?
That is fun because it feels community building, feels sort of collaborative.
It has this sense of both...
There can be a sense of sort of fitting in,
because now you've like achieved this knowledge of connection that like...
Right.
Makes it easy to talk about. And also, it lets you begin to put pieces of the puzzle together,
or it can let you put pieces of the puzzle together in the way that you see them fitting, right?
This becomes the like, how do I connect the dots here based on all this context that I have?
Yes, I fully agree. Like your mental map of your little bits of scientific knowledge that you
learned in completely different contexts. Maybe a little bit in high school,
a little bit in your chemistry 101, a little bit in your biology 101.
Like all of these start to connect together, and it sticks better to your brain,
and you have a different landscape that you're looking at than before.
And it does feel like kind of like a cartographer's joy of like filling in the gaps
in the map, you know, where you didn't know how to...
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Like you knew point A, you knew point B, you didn't know how to go from A to B,
and then you like slowly build that connections.
Yeah. This was one of the most satisfying things, I think. I really enjoyed literature,
even in like high school and before. It was something that I found really satisfying
about this process.
So maybe you were naturally doing that.
I was sort of naturally doing some of those things. But, you know, then as I found myself
more and more in like the engineering and science spaces, I was putting like that to work.
I was putting that puzzling and that piecing together sort of to practice in this other way.
And that worked really well when I was sort of able to do both.
But when I lost the sort of like chance to do both, right, when I started to really
hyper-specialize, that's when it actually became very hard.
But yeah, so speaking about becoming very hard, I guess, this idea of trying to pick
something up and to read it or to get something out of it, even if you cannot seem to, maybe
you can't get the references, for example. This could be in literature or in the sciences,
right? You read a scientific paper and you are like, I have no idea what these sentences
are. Are they English? Are they Japanese? Is this a language that is supposed to be known
to the real world?
Yeah. What is this law that people are referring to?
What is this law?
That seems like a common knowledge, apparently, but it's not.
Yep. Yep. They've made some sort of wild assumption. And don't get me wrong,
sometimes the writing is just bad. And I mean that in terms of like connected thoughts,
not even like the, you know, structure, right?
I mean, I certainly don't claim to be that great of a writer. My scientific technical
writing is very dry and to the point. That is my style.
But the points are connected and it makes sense. Now, trust me, I've read your stuff.
I do try for the logical flow.
It works. Yeah.
Yes. And this is a good little piece of tidbits to slide in for me. If you open a textbook
and it has, I'm talking sort of like mathematical, scientific textbooks.
Yeah. We're sliding into more of the STEM versions of things versus the literary stuff.
STEM, academic writing. Not the most accessible to anyone, really. But like if you open a
textbook and you see words like obviously, naturally, and therefore, like in these kind
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of overused way where there's like, you know, the thing before and after the naturallys
are not natural at all. Stay away from that textbook.
Yeah. You're not, you're not, not that you're personally not ready for it yet,
but more that the author is not there to connect with you as a reader. They're there
to basically just state that these things exist and then probably make a point about
something else later, which could be relevant in future, but it's certainly not for you now.
Yeah. And like most of the time, people who are writing textbooks have been doing this
very specific thing for like decades. Of course, some of these things are natural to them.
Yeah. I've seen this 30,000 times every time I wrote a textbook and had to have it edited.
That's all you thought about for the past 20 years. And of course, it's natural to you.
But if you are trying to learn something from it, there are other textbooks or other sources
of learning, not necessarily maybe in a textbook format even, that have a little bit more
consideration for the people who are looking at this material for the first time. So
go look for those. Don't feel stupid because it's not natural to you. I mean, I felt stupid
reading quantum mechanics books. And feeling stupid because none of these
naturals and obvious things was not natural or obvious to me.
But yeah, not natural, right? You had to form it and think through the logic.
Don't let them make you feel stupid. Yeah. Don't let the author make you feel stupid.
And authors, don't make your reader seem or feel stupid, right?
So there's something, and I don't know, maybe Asami, if you've heard this, I'm going to sort
of deviate us for a moment, but it's relevant here. In writing, especially in a Western context,
and say in the US context that I have, and in literature, and honestly, I kind of apply it to
the sciences as well. We've been told that you must treat the reader as an idiot. And I don't,
I say that in the most brutal way, like that's not the way that it's necessarily taught, right?
It's taught that you are there to help your reader and to guide your reader to the point.
Assume nothing. Assume nothing, right? And this would certainly get rid of the naturally's and
the obviously's, right? If you were trying to help your reader. But what I was going to say in the
harsh connection here, right? An author should not make their reader feel like an idiot. If that's
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the intention, then you better have a damn good reason for doing so. But like at the same thing,
even if the author or the writer considers that their reader is not going to know, right? Or in
other words, in the mean version of that, right? They're an idiot. You don't make it clear that
that's what you're doing, right? You're trying to help this person. You're not trying to insult
them. You want them to read your stuff, hopefully, right? You want them to understand your thinking
so that maybe it becomes natural for that person in the future. What a wonderful thing.
Yes, yes, yes. And also we have to remember that like what's natural or logical? And we tend to
kind of take it for granted, especially in a STEM space. It's a really big mistake
to think that there's like, oh, like this one logical way. And usually that tends to adhere
most closely to sort of like a mathematical logic. Otherwise, like it's not logical,
and therefore it's bad, right? Yeah. Oh man, the moral founding here.
That's a different story of like why are we connecting logic to like morals, you know? It
just means that how you are trained to understand logic might be different from how the authors are
trained to understand logic. And that just might be it. And that's not because the author is mean.
That's not because you're stupid. It just is a different form of thinking. If the end goal
is to understand a new material, understand a new concept that you didn't know before,
it doesn't really matter how you get there. You have to forge your own way to get to the end
point. But there's no right or wrong way. Again, logic should not be tied to moral bearings.
Yeah. Yeah. It's just a reminder that I feel like in STEM field we often forget.
I not only forget, but I think it makes some of those, it makes people who use,
and reasonably so, completely understandably so, logic as a comfort for certainty
and for a lessening of uncertainty specifically, right? Yeah. Yes. But then you have to think
further. And I'm an advocate of discourse, right? You have to talk it out with either yourself or
with others, preferably, and you will use maybe different types of logic, but also to connect
what you said to culture. If we're talking about people and the way that they act and do things,
that is a huge space in which you can look and say, you know, one's logic, quote unquote,
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one's expectation and the if this happens, then this happens for a person. So even if you're
using those same structures, the people have changed, the environment has changed, the context
has changed. You need to make sure to incorporate that in your reasoning if you're dealing with
people, or at least the essence of people and their effect on things. Right. I mean, that's
what I think, at least, part of what it means to think critically. Yeah. Not just blindly accept
that this one sort of dogmatic way of logic is the way. Like, you have to consider all the other
possibilities of different interpretations and how one might still do go from point A to B,
but in a completely different pathways. And if you aren't able to take a tiny leap of imagination,
really, to consider these other possible pathways, I don't think you're being critical. I think
you're just blindly believing. Yeah. And you're also not being open minded. And right, right,
right. But like, for all of these phrases, I hear in these kind of scientific discussion,
like, of course, this is the most obvious way. This is the most natural way. This is the most
like effective way. Is it really, you know, is it really natural? Is it really obvious?
Being able to sort of think for yourself that way, I think, is very valuable. And I think
this kind of principle applies to reading some of the more headier, denser things that you might
have never encountered, you know. And I think these kind of textbook reading or journal article
reading is harder because they kind of impose and assume a lot that you know a lot of things.
And when you're not necessarily the same person as the writer, like, of course, that assumption
is bound to be wrong. But because, you know, the author is not going to do anything about it,
you as a reader have to adjust your expectations and like say, hey, this is one way this person
is thinking about it. Like, I don't have to agree with everything. I don't have to disagree with
everything either. And you are allowed to take a hybrid approach of take what you need and leave.
And that might mean not completing cover to cover. That might look like not reading word to word of
every single word on the journal article. And that's okay.
Yep. It might mean just taking... It is okay. Yeah. I like how you've connected us back here
because we certainly... I tried.
We pulled hard on the elastic band that was, you know, the pathway we were taking.
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And I think you just snapped us back, right? One takeaway.
But I would say that there was a logic to this.
Yeah.
Obviously. Was it not obvious to you though?
Damn it. That's on me.
That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening and find us on X at
lego.science. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C. See you next time!
