Response to the article "A Point of View: Does more information mean we know less?"

The main point of the article “A Point of View: Does more information mean we know less?” is that people in modern day do not read books deeply. The article claims that we need to get the deep wisdom behind the typed letters, instance of just skimming thorough books and remembering nothing. The general idea of the article is irrefutable, but there are some points that are inaccurate. There are three main points that is inaccurate – points about “good” books, religious ceremony, and idea of religious books.

The most inaccurate point the author had suggested is that he emphasized the effect of “good” books. The author says that if the book is rare, the reader will treat the book more cautiously, thus reading it deeper. However, this is not logical. Thing that should be stressed is the knowledge inside the books, not the rarity of the books. Even if the book is a cheap paperback purchased on local bookstore, it would be enough if you are able to drain every single content, or knowledge, in the book. This point does not match the main idea of the article at all.

Secondly, the argument the author makes about strictly scheduled life of religion is hard to understand. The author suggested that strictly scheduled life helps the religious books be deeply understood. However, this may not be applied in the modern society. In modern society, all religious work could be considered as inefficient. Attending regular religion meeting is not the only way of gaining deep knowledge of books. There are much more efficient ways to understand a book deeply in modern age.

The third strange point the author makes is about religious books. The author claims that there is “the great stable truths” in religious books. This is an irrefutable point to the people who believes religion, but I don’t think every single people will agree on this thesis. As the statistic shows, about 47% people in South Korea do not believe in any kind of religion. The author should have mentioned why the religious books contain “the great stable truths”, instead of just inserting the point in to the article as if this is the truth, not considering the people not having religion.

As mentioned before, the main idea of this article is excellent. In order to live well in society, one should be able to collect deep knowledge from books. However, the author inserts some odd points to prove this main idea. These points make the article confusing and hard to understand. The best way to solve this problem will be to either delete or modify the points that do not make sense.

Essay 1

Every student studies in classroom in order to attain knowledge. However, they all acknowledge the fact that there is another source of learning – from the outside, from the real world. One could not live without gaining knowledge, so it is important to see the difference between two learning types, in order to learn facts more efficiently.

           Learning in classroom, somehow, is like studying a fake world. Knowledge from books and class in not from the real world – it is from the copy of the real world, which could be called a fake world. For instance, if I learn how to distinguish a butterfly and moth in a biology class, I will be the top at distinguishing a butterfly picture from a moth picture, but I might not be able to distinguish real moth from butterfly. Like this, the knowledge learned in classroom might not be well adapted to the real world itself, making the studying in classroom not so efficient.

           However, if you intend to study something that you are not able to observe and discover in the real world, such as philosophy, learning in the classroom is most likely be the best way to do so. Let’s say that you want to learn about Teleology. It will take a long time before you could figure out the core thought of the Teleology by yourself, but it will take much less time if you just read Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle’s books. As this shows, learning at classroom is extremely efficient at learning something that is difficult to learn in reality.

           Learning from personal experience is the exact opposite of learning in the classroom. If you want to interact with the real world and learn about them, learning outside is much more efficient than learning in the classroom. Also, there is another merit in learning from personal experience. Since the experience you learn from is special, and limited to you only, the learned knowledge last long. Imagine this. If you almost die from mixing chemicals which is explosive, the knowledge that mixing that two chemical will bring dangerous explosion would not be forgotten till the end of your life.

           As shown, the two types of learning style both have good point and bad point, making it impossible to say which one is better. The best way of learning should be using this two techniques efficiently in each cases.

Ode!

Ode on My Cup

           Though produced in a factory,

With a bunch of doppelgangers, identical,

You are special to me, even lovely,

For being so useful, so essential.

           Only thing that protect me in morning,

From a deadly creature named sleep,

Is a pureness called the water,

Which you, only you, could bring.

           When my eyes fail me, closing,

When my conscious abandon me, so easily,

You never disappoint me, faithfully,

Serving coffee, awaking.

           Even though coco makes you dirty,

I never saw you complaining,

And when tea leaves mark on you, carelessly,

I never saw you wailing.

           Stay at my side, dear friend,

Till the last day of my life, remaining same,

For you are special to me, even lovely,

Being so useful, so essential.