An important tenet of modern education is that true knowledge is that which the learner (re)constructs in their mind. Heuristic learning (i.e. "trying to figure things out") is often a great way to do this.
Definitely. As instructors, we see this in action all the time. We describe stuff in writing and in lecture, discuss it with the students, and everybody seems to have good understanding. And then we have them implement it.
And that's when the shit hits the fan. :-D Only after concerted effort do the students actually gain understanding.
On another post I've already argued that Romans already had a proverb "Scribere bis legere." Translated, this means "writing is reading twice".
In practice, what this means is that you have to know how to reproduce the knowledge you've read, in your words. Only then can you be sure you've mastered what you've read. It's the reason for homework and all other stuff we have to do. Reading something five or more times simply does not suffice for our brains.
"Normie" and "happens to own one or two extra homes" seem a bit contradictory to me... And doesn't everyone who invests in something that makes them money exploit economic conditions?
Someone said in another comment, that it makes more sense together with the dereference operator, so int *var means: "dereferencing var gets you an int."
I don't really know C, but personally prefer your version.
However, I can also get behind considering the * to be part of the variable, rather than a type: "var is a pointer that happens to hold an int". I mean, maybe they could have used the & operator meaning "var is an address holding an int"? Honestly, it just feels like there's too much tradition and legacy and so on, and what one considers intuitive is the thing that they're most used to.
A somewhat more depressing take:
"There comes a time in everyone's life when you look into the mirror and realize that what you see is all that you'll ever be. And you accept that fact - or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking into mirrors."
(Babylon 5, quoted from memory, so probably not 100% correct)
As I'm nearing 30, still in the "I can be anything I want" phase, I wonder when this time will arrive. And whether it is true for everyone - maybe some people possess the ability to reinvent themselves no matter their age. But can you even do that without giving up some contentment?
I think you are always in this phase of being able to be anything you want. Even as you are growing up, there are usually more choices than you can see. What experience and age gives you is a broader understanding that that really is the case and then, speaking from personal experience, you start feeling foolish for not realizing this before.
That said, changing things is never without some loss of contentment. Even if status quo is abysmal, we humans seem to prefer it over changing it. It is worth exploring, though, even if it is uncomfortable.
"It is the most shattering experience of a young man's life when one morning he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself: 'I shall never play the Dane.'"
You have made an interesting point but I think your arguments would have more force if you exercised some restraint in categorically stating your opinions about what is wrong and in what way as facts, basically.
Anyway, while I agree on these other types of "wrong" being important, I don't know about calling 1-3. wrong, per se. Also, I'm curious what part of linguistics you consider to belong under the "vanity" label, and why it would be apt to call "pointless" facts (like the age of the Earth) wrong.
