musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!


If Age teaches us anything, it’s that knowledge must be analysed before it is applied. There’s a Goldilocks’ Zone: too little and it might be misinterpreted; too much and it might be misused. I suppose that Wisdom is the ability to find the correct balance. Perhaps the best way lies in examining the way it is acquired.

Of course there are several ways of acquiring knowledge: doing, listening, and reading, to name a few. But each of these assume that what is learned is reliable; that the sources are not biased; that ‘facts’ do not change even if the world does. Science, for example, tries to remain fact-based, and yet accepts that the conditions which created those ‘facts’ in the first place may change. To stay abreast, requires recognizing this and seeking confirmation from a variety of sources -even those which disagree about the original information upon which we have relied. Belief should be contingent, seldom absolute; even suspicion of confirmation bias should signal a need for continuing exploration: an abandonment of accepting what is offered merely because it reflects what we might have read elsewhere. Mirrors reflect reality with precision only if their surfaces are reliable… But, place a mirror in front of another, and all hell breaks loose: infinite repetition…

I suppose we all learn by watching: young children depend on it; listening, too, allows us to understand things that cannot always be demonstrated: things which require explanation of the principles involved, of the background intricacies essential for learning about a topic.

Pedagogy often utilizes repetition -as if by endless reiteration, some details might end up clinging to our minds like crumbs on a woolen shirt. Of course, there is a risk that by overly repeating something it risks being considered factual: why else would it be repeated? Nonetheless, we were seldom warned about the dangers of tautologies in the lower grades of school: saying the same thing again, but in different words. Repetition reflected our teacher’s zeal to make sure it was understood, no doubt hoping that even by changing the prefix might explain it better…

Reading has often seemed to me like a quicker way to acquire the essential knowledge about a topic not easily demonstrated, not easily intuited. Unfortunately, the same reasoning applies when we read something more complex that we need to remember; something important that we were assured was hidden in the forest of words when we realized we were lost; and simply adding more trees does little to help us find our way back to the trail…

You’d think that things would improve with Age, but after Retirement the inevitable descent from the summit proceeds at pace. I find myself increasingly skimming along the surface of long paragraphs, pausing only at delightfully intriguing words, and being so impressed with them, losing track of the reason for their appearance. I love words, especially long explicative words placed like bright flowers along an otherwise congested sidewalk: threnodies, I suppose.

But hope springs eternal in the human breast, and I was encouraged when I felt that succour might be at hand on one of my internet skims through the trees; I happened upon a clearing, a meadow bright with promise: ‘How to practice active reading’ was what broke through my admittedly cursory scan, although I’m pretty sure there was more to the title than that.[i]

For example, it informed me that, in terms of internet searches, ‘the reliability of that content varies considerably. Some information domains, such as health, politics and controversial news, can have misinformation rates of 30 to 50 per cent or higher… Reading plays a central role in this process by serving not only as a means of acquiring information but also of distinguishing credible claims from misinformation. But only a specific kind of reading builds that capacity. The difference is between passive and active reading.’

Professor Pozzulo obviously figured people like me were going to read her article because she assumed we would only dip our toes into it –skim it, in other words. ‘By continuously delivering bite-sized, emotionally stimulating and rapidly changing content, they condition you to skim rather than engage deeply, reinforcing a preference for quick dopamine rewards and making passive scrolling the default.’

Busted!

She nailed my embarrassment even more firmly, though: ‘Common indicators of passive reading include losing focus mid-page and being unable to recall or explain what was just read, reading while simultaneously doing something else that requires mental effort, skimming content just to get through it rather than searching for key ideas and marking large portions of text without processing or restating the main ideas.’ I have to admit I needed to re-read that paragraph a few times to test whether she had me in mind. And that’s a problem, because I’m not sure that even on several flights over the page (okay, the screen) I had absorbed enough to analyse its merits: I hadn’t read enough to satisfy myself that I even understood the point she was at pains to assert.

Therefore, I was not a sufficiently active reader; I had not challenged her credentials let alone understanding my own abilities to analyse on the skim. I mean, even pausing for a moment on each sentence didn’t really entitle me to judge whether or not she was just offering yet another opinion…

Thinking about it for a moment (that was all I could spare before I skimmed on), she did make an interesting suggestion: foreverizing her points, she wrote, should be done by taking notes (on my phone? Come on, eh?), or highlighting words. I already employ a highlighting program on my laptop for future reference of salient ideas; it slows me down a lot, though, but at least it gives me time to admire the particular colours I’ve chosen -admittedly introducing a bias of my own that I should consider, of course…

But I get the drift of her arguments: I should challenge myself to pick articles to skim from which I may be able to get more than a dopamine surge.  And, I should slow down my reading: I don’t really have to finish it before I’ve eaten my breakfast, or before dishwashing calls me while still chewing on both the article and other bits and pieces that have wedged between my teeth on my way to the sink.

But the very fact that I was sufficiently impressed with her suggestions that I have now taken the time to write about them must mean something, don’t you think? Maybe the way I read things is by cudding them later. I mean it gives me a chance to digest what I’ve skimmed more thoroughly than simply chewing more vigorously on the first go-over.

Maybe I should write an advice column for others to read… Of course, I’m sure they’d probably skim it, too… Damn!

[i] https://theconversation.com/want-to-be-a-better-reader-heres-how-to-practise-active-reading-285447

, , ,

gozzter

, , ,

Leave a comment