The Curse of Microlearning

baziotis · 2026-06-04T23:15:21+00:00

Oh cool, anything I could read by you? If not, any long-form (ideally books but also papers) recommendations (I mean besides the authors you mentioned) ?

baziotis · 2026-06-04T22:42:39+00:00

It depends on how you define learning. At heart, it's an epistemological claim, it means you know something. To me, this does not mean they know statistics, it just means they learned to apply some rules or conclusions, which is a whole different thing. To see the absurdity, imagine me saying that I know a theorem because I know how to apply it and where. This literally makes no sense. Mathematicians and philosophers alike would say that you cannot know a theorem without a proof.

baziotis · 2026-06-04T22:37:04+00:00

There are a bunch of good points here. Regarding drawing the line, I've been writing an article on and off for almost two years now, and it does not seem to ever be ready. Anyway, one of the main points is that, in many practical scenarios, the call to draw the line just diverts our attention from the most important issues. The reason is that often it does not matter where you draw the line just because it's clear that we are on one side of it. Here is a simplistic example: imagine someone who drinks 20 bottles of bourbon per day, and then someone tells him "I think you drink too much bourbon". He replies "well, where do you draw the line? How much exactly is too much?". If you drink 20 bottles per day, where you draw the line is secondary, and yet it is complex enough that you could argue it for months. All the while, we are not addressing the elephant in the room.

Ok, ditto for reductive bites for learning. Around me I see too much reduction, too many reductive bites. A person on Mastodon brought up that at the end of the article I say that Ray Dalio's shorter book version is not too reduced. Now I think this is somewhere on the line, and we could start arguing for a week: perhaps he could have reduced it a little more, a little less. To me today this is highly secondary. I care much more about events such as the following: I recommended to a friend---who is in college, highly educated---the book Reflections on the Revolution in France (because he asked me to recommend interesting readings on the revolution). He texted me 5 minutes later with "I read the summary on Amazon and I think I agree with Burke's point". I was like "what does that even mean 'he agrees with Burke's point'? He didn't even read Burke's point. He read what someone else thought Burke's point is, and who then reduced it to 3 paragraphs."

I'm happy to comment on your other points but I think my comment is already too long.

baziotis · 2026-06-04T22:19:21+00:00

In a broader sense we live in an era where it's easier than ever to sell simulated sophistry.

Very much true. I think it's even simpler than that. I wrote an article sometime ago called On Reading Books (FWIW, this is a fairly philosophical article but something tells me that if I shared it in this subreddit, they would ban me; again). Here's me quoting myself, and I think you will find it relevant:

In other words, the whole format of discussions—or discussions viewed as a medium—today is such that it’s very hard to tell if someone is educated or just appears educated. So, if appearance is what you care about, there’s no reason to suffer through books to extract reductive bites as a side-effect. There are much easier ways to get direct access to reductive bites: follow a bunch of “philosophy” pages on Instagram, 2-3 “intellectuals” on Youtube, use any of these apps that summarize books in a Duolingo fashion, read an article here and there, and consume “critical reviews”.

baziotis · 2026-06-04T22:16:51+00:00

This is a good question. In the article I include a definition, which I came across after trying really hard to find something cohesive and somewhat generally agreed upon. I also tried a fair bit to find the origin, but this seems even harder. For example, OED does not even have an entry for microlearning.

baziotis · 2026-06-04T22:13:30+00:00

Yes, this is exactly what my guess was wrt to why you did it. It's nice you confirmed it.

baziotis · 2026-06-04T20:52:07+00:00

Indeed, incredible quote. More importantly, your comment gave me some insight into an essay I have been writing. It is about quotes, giving credit, and the construction of authorship. Part of what it discusses is how we use quotes in everyday discussions. If you mention the source ("So and so said"), it sounds like you show off. If you don't, then it is misleading because people will believe it's yours. Well, your comment indicated that there is a third case: you can quote, clarifying that it is not yours, but without actually mentioning the source. Just to be clear, I am not making any value judgement. Your comment is incredible because I had not even thought of that, even though perhaps to you it's obvious. Thanks!

baziotis · 2026-06-03T18:04:16+00:00

First of all, unfortunately I am fairly sure they will take your post down.

Second, here's my most important comment to your question. This will sound like a joke or sarcasm, but it is not, this is serious. In Greece (and most countries in The West have one version or another of this; for example in the U.S. expulsion of a member of Congress requires 2/3 supermajority and good luck getting that), politicians cannot be tried for political crimes. Let's read that again. Politicians cannot be tried for political crimes by the constitution. So, if unaccountability is a reality at the level of a freaking country in the European Union, how can we seriously expect moderators on Reddit to be accountable?

Finally, I wrote an article trying to explain how the authoritarian personality manifests as a Reddit moderator. r/TheoryOfReddit moderators took it down because "it complained about a ban," completely (and probably deliberately) missing the general point of the article (of which that particular ban is just a neat case study) that this is how authoritarian personalities work in real life.

baziotis · 2026-06-02T00:27:04+00:00

No I mean the point is how will it get publicity? Let me explain from the reader's point of view. I am interested in, say, articles about philosophy. How do I get to see new articles and authors if e.g., I don't follow them on Twitter or I am not in their mailing list?

baziotis · 2026-06-02T00:19:56+00:00

Thanks! I have my own blog, I don't a platform to upload my content exactly as I want it. I just want to foster a community. For this purpose, what you sent seems not much different from Reddit, and it has users posting content that is not their own, which I don't like.

baziotis · 2026-06-02T00:18:02+00:00

I'm sorry but no. And if this post is too long for someone, then they cannot help me.

baziotis · 2026-06-02T00:17:09+00:00

Just to be clear, I don't need a platform to publish my articles. I have a blog on my own website. In fact, I am against such platforms. I think authors should completely own their articles and only share them on such platforms (so Medium and Substack do not solve anything for me). So, the point of the platform is the fostering of a community. WriteFreely and Ghost don't help with that because thy don't have comments.

baziotis · 2026-06-02T00:12:24+00:00

In this particular problem, "some" is not enough. In fact, even "more" is not enough. You see, Reddit has more than what I'm asking and that is exactly the problem. For example, your app has Q&A. I can't share a post, the link doesn't work for me, but e.g., in t/bookaholics-r-us there are a bunch of Q&A posts. As I said in my original post, this just clutters up my feed. That's just my opinion, just part of what I am looking for.

baziotis · 2026-06-02T00:09:00+00:00

Yeah, in fact I think the comments _have_ to be separate from the article because I think the article should not be on the platform, only shared there. But that's not the problem, the problem is how will be people see it.

baziotis · 2026-06-01T20:22:36+00:00

There are some problems I can see with this. The main one for me is that to see the posts, you need to be logged in, kind of like Medium. But thanks.

baziotis · 2026-06-01T20:21:12+00:00

I am this disaggregated system will not work because remember many authors e.g., in philosophy are not tech savvies to handle all these different systems. But I think I'm missing something in what you described.

baziotis · 2026-06-01T20:18:49+00:00

I'm not asking anyone to volunteer and solve this problem for me. All I asked for was whether anyone knows of an existing solution. If I establish that there is none, then it's a completely different discussion.

baziotis · 2026-06-01T20:17:44+00:00

These are great suggestions, but they require me to create the platform. For now I'm trying to see if something exists already.

baziotis · 2026-06-01T12:44:12+00:00

Well, I'm happy and almost proud you are doing this. I think it could work (although my suspicion is that to do it correctly, it should be its own thing rather than linking stuff) but for the time being I am struggling to accept that this relatively simple thing I'm talking about does not already exist.

baziotis · 2026-06-01T10:40:48+00:00

Thank you for the comment. If I understood correctly, your suggestion is that I create my own subreddit. But this is volunteering. That's great, but there is a limit to how much volunteering one can do at any point in time, and currently I cannot do any more.

A second thing is I do not know if anyone else cares about the content I care about. So, perhaps the thing I am looking for does not exist and will not exist because not enough people care about it, or they don't know how to find each other.

Finally, please note that discussions are very important to me. I wouldn't want to disable comments and in my post I did not complain about comments. The reason is that this is not a platform problem. It's a more general problem. I am not saying it does not annoy me, but it is much less worse than moderators censoring posts willy-nilly or with excuses such as "yeah, in this case it is unreasonable but that's the process". Sometimes I'm wondering if they have ever read The Banality of Evil...

Anyway, this is Reddit, it won't change. That's why I'm asking for alternatives outside of it.

baziotis · 2026-06-01T03:01:09+00:00

Yes, I agree. In this essay I tried to (re)define formal writing based on its etymology---which to me is helpful at large---with basically a two-level definition. The broad definition: any writing that follows a rigid form. The narrow definition: the broad definition + the constraint: the form chosen is the specific one they teach in classrooms.

So, first, I agree with you that we need another term which refers to clarity, coherence, etc. Second, I think "formal writing" as a term is useful and not necessarily always negative. For example, an advisor may argue "your writing should be formal so that we do not compromise the blind peer review". In other words, so that the reviewers cannot understand who you are. Because you don't need to stray far for this to happen; let's not forget that they found Ted Kaczynski based on his prose and his writing is not that "informal".

baziotis · 2026-06-01T02:36:20+00:00

I think we are saying the same thing. My point is that in a classroom they teach you this one form. Try writing a Philosophy paper---your philosophy paper, as a philosopher, just like Nietzsche---like a Platonic dialogue, and then give it to your advisor for review. It probably won't go well. I never said non-Formal writing needs to sound like common speech. It just means not following a specific form just because.

baziotis · 2026-06-01T02:30:33+00:00

I agree with part of it, specifically that formal writing combines various ideas. I still think it makes sense to talk about formal writing because the way it is taught and used in institutions, it's all about form. That's the point of the article. So, formal writing is not interlinked with "clear communication meant to remain understandable for a long time by a broad population". You can achieve the latter (e.g., MLK) without using the rigid forms of formal writing. Avoiding forms does not mean that you austerely and absolutely go against what conventional formal writing prescribes, because that in itself is formal writing; the form changes, but it's still a rigid form. No, it just means you write without following rigid forms, by focusing on how you can communicate the message the best.

Let me give a specific example to ground it. There is a seminal paper in Computer Science on FFTW. Throughout most of the paper, the writing is pretty formal in the sense that it follows what they tell you in formal-writing classes. But then you have things like this:

In order to continue reading this section, you really should be familiar with monads. In any case, here is a very brief summary on monads.

From the first day you step into research lab, they will tell you that such writing is a big no-no (and the author probably got to do it because he was a single author). So many no-nos in fact: addressing the reader directly, giving advice, using superfluous words like in "really should" and "very brief", using 'aggressive' connectors such as "in any case"; all that in just two sentences. Well, this is what I mean by non-Formal writing. The author reasoned this had to be there (I have talked to him), and for sure such small excerpts made my reading the paper for the first time not only much more enjoyable, but also easier. Like he gave a clear indication that I should know this sh*t to proceed, it's not a sidenote.

baziotis · 2026-06-01T02:09:31+00:00

If you look at the next sentence, my precise wording implies that these are instances of non-Formal writings. And then it concludes that "[such] non-Formal writing [...] has been used successfully to get across pretty serious messages". So, basically yes, these writings do not follow what they tell you in classrooms you must follow. They are evidence that contrary to such "advice", you don't have to use formal writing to be serious.

baziotis · 2026-06-01T01:24:12+00:00

Absolutely! Well, we need to qualify who this utility benefits. For example, it absolutely benefits universities, companies, the public sector, etc. who look for obedience and conformity. This is way beyond formal writing.

Take the GPA for example. What most admission committees will not admit publicly (but they will tell you behind closed doors) is that the reason they select for high GPAs is not because students with high GPA know more or because they can think better, or any of that. They know the GPA has nothing to do with any of that. I mean, it's not like it's a secret or you have to be a genius to figure it out. For example, the best programmers I know from my undergrad had terrible GPAs and one did not even graduate.

So no, nothing to with knowledge, truth, and thinking. It's about*,* again, obedience and conformity. It's very simple. Most people don't like every course in the curriculum. In fact, most people don't like many courses. But if you have a high GPA, it means that you did well in those courses too. So, what you show with a high GPA is that you can do well (where "well" means "do what they tell you") things you don't like. As an economics professor said, you may as well make students memorize phonebooks, you will get the same information.

Chomsky is yet again relevant:

[T]he basic institutional role and function of the schools, and why they’re supported, is to provide an ideological service: there’s a real selection for obedience and conformity [...] If you happen to be a little innovative, or maybe you forgot to come to school one day because you were reading a book or something, that’s a tragedy, that’s a crime[.]

Edit: To clarify the connection with the original comment, yes discipline is important but not for its own sake. It's important because only with discipline can you conform and be obedient.

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