ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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I agree re: college classes. It isn't that I understood all of the (engineering) material after a few weeks. It was more that the lectures could generally have been 10 minutes instead of 50 minutes with very little negative side effects.
There's something terribly wrong about this padding idea. The padding in communication is there so that the important stuff gets attention and gets remembered.
When I give a 50 minute lecture there might be three things (if I am lucky) that students remember - but if I just told them the three things in three minutes (or e-mailed them a list) they would neither understand nor remember the three things.
If journalism consisted of bullet points, no-one would pay any attention - and if they did they would neither understand nor remember.
Part of the problem is focusing on mass media with mixed audiences - the congitive capabilities and interests of people are incredibly diverse, and the more mixed the audience the more 'padding' is needed. But the mass media are declining, arent they?, and people get more information from specialized and focused outlets. These can afford to be concise, because they can assume that audeinces are interested and knowledgeable.
It's like professional jargon. This can be both terse and precise; but only if you have the requisite knowledge base and socialization.
The British upper classes could/ can communicate volumes with just a few well chosen words and a subtle facial expression - and can have what amounts to a secret conversation in the presence of others, in which the implied meanings may be the opposite of the literal words. But this only works when there is a prolonged and homogenous socialization - for example by a relatively small and interconnected group of elite schools.
To ask for less 'padding' in mass media communications is just a covert hankering for an elite audience.
@bgc. Mm.
Most textbooks are padded. I assume the authors get paid by the pound?
As a college student, I disagree with the padding of classes. Obviously my opinion is merely anecdotal, and I am mostly studying the natural sciences.