> This assumes that the other person has a "thinking style" that is compatible with yours
No one has a thinking style compatible with mine. Communication is difficult, but the whole point is to share adopt novel ways of thinking. By the end of the conversation, both participants' "thinking styles" have changed.
Sure, some folks' lexicon and mental models might overlap more, but there's no one (speaking English) from whom I can't learn. Reminds me of that old line "you can't get there from here!" which I always considered funny, but you're saying it's true?
Wish I knew more about these "thinking styles" you're talking about, because I've never met someone I couldn't communicate with (in English).
> Wish I knew more about these "thinking styles" you're talking about, because I've never met someone I couldn't communicate with (in English).
It is plausible that you are sufficiently smart and thus never (or at least rarely) had such problems.
To give an extreme example: when Grigori Perelman published his papers about his proof of the geometrization conjecture, even experts in his area had a lot of difficulties understanding his proof (and thus verifying the correctness of it). Only after multiple groups of mathematicians came up with better understandable versions of the central arguments of his proof, (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geometrization_co... and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Poincar%C3%A9_con... ), they became convinced of the correctness of Perelman's proof.
This was clearly a particularly marked example, but in a school pupils of very different IQs and thinking styles are present. So I wouldn't say that this problem (pupil not understanding another pupil's solution) is uncommon at schools.
Perelman? I always thought his proof was self-evident.
Kidding!
For papers, yes, there's a lot of difficulty. I'm not sure it's possible to demand sense from a paper in the way that one can from a discursive partner.
As Emmanuel Levinas puts it in his "Toward the Other" (1963):
> This makes no sense. Our text must be understood in another way. I
worked hard at it. I told my troubles to my friends. For [the text] requires
discourse and companionship. Woe to the self-taught!
Admittedly, he immediately follows:
> Of course one must
have good luck and find intelligent interlocutors.
So if I were to accept his authority, I'd have to forfeit my position entirely!
> No one has a thinking style compatible with mine. Communication is difficult, but the whole point is to share adopt novel ways of thinking. By the end of the conversation, both participants' "thinking styles" have changed.
I can either focus on difficult conversation parts or at topic at hand. Cant really do both.
So, this means I will do only the social thing and wont get to be able to focus on what I was supposed to learn in the first place.
No one has a thinking style compatible with mine. Communication is difficult, but the whole point is to share adopt novel ways of thinking. By the end of the conversation, both participants' "thinking styles" have changed.
Sure, some folks' lexicon and mental models might overlap more, but there's no one (speaking English) from whom I can't learn. Reminds me of that old line "you can't get there from here!" which I always considered funny, but you're saying it's true?
Wish I knew more about these "thinking styles" you're talking about, because I've never met someone I couldn't communicate with (in English).