人们为什么讨厌精读

Why People Hate Intensive Reading

> By Li Xiaolai · 2009-11-25 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113101245/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/7832.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

As for developing reading ability, the original intention and sequence of the designers of education was very likely this:

1) First learn to read characters, and learn enough of them (obviously the three thousand common Chinese characters are not enough—for those who pursue knowledge);
2) Acquire a large enough vocabulary;
3) Learn more and more complex concepts [Translator's note: the original writes 更复杂的是概念, literally "more complex is concepts"; 更复杂的概念 ("more complex concepts") is meant; translated by the intended sense]—every important concept needs a great deal of space to expound;
4) At the same time acquire basic ability in applying logic, so as to be able to understand and organize known concepts and their related information more effectively;
5) Acquire more concepts and ideas through constant intensive reading;
6) Expand and supplement one's own concepts and ideas through large amounts of extensive reading;
7) Re-understand important concepts through practice, and correct one's understanding of important ideas;
8) Intensive reading and extensive reading complement each other and are used alternately……

However, for all sorts of reasons, the most important being that education itself is a process so difficult that it can hardly succeed, every link in this process can go wrong.

First, many people in fact have not learned enough characters (actually, for people who keep pursuing knowledge, only recognizing characters but not being able to use them is a rather embarrassing thing); second, many people have also not acquired a large enough vocabulary—especially the words that look simple but can at any moment form all kinds of logical traps (for example "all," "any," "if not… then…" and so on); what is more frightening is not that some one link has gone wrong, but that every link has defects to a greater or lesser degree.

Much of the time, an entire distorted worldview is actually rooted in nothing more than the lack, or the mistaken understanding, of one or two concepts—"double-blind testing" or "Stockholm syndrome," for example, are concepts of this kind. And logic, which is actually quite simple, is something many people never figure out in their whole lives. "Being afraid of making mistakes," and from that "worrying about receiving terrible punishment," is the only root cause of most people ultimately failing to master the ability of logical thinking—education sometimes has to rely on "compulsion," which lets "fear" occupy many people's minds, to the point that they can never escape its shadow.

So, in a certain sense, many people never had the ability to do "intensive reading"—not enough characters learned, not a large enough vocabulary, a stock of concepts not rich enough [Translator's note: the original writes 不否丰富, literally "not-whether rich"; 不够丰富 ("not rich enough") is meant; translated by the intended sense], logic not rigorous enough… In a word, they aren't qualified for "intensive reading." Yet people always assume that their abilities automatically increase with age, and so a completely untenable assumption begins to seem utterly natural: everyone, after graduating from school, assumes that they have learned enough characters, have a large enough vocabulary, a rich enough stock of concepts, a rigorous and powerful enough ability for logical thinking… The most deadly thing is that they self-righteously believe they no longer need "intensive reading"—that's something primary and middle-school students only do when forced to—and that "extensive reading" is the activity befitting their age……

They are just like investors fooling around blindly in the stock market: now and then, on luck, they make a bit of money, even a big fortune, and become all the more convinced that their success is no accident—thinking to themselves, "I am someone with a story behind me; walking among the common multitude this feeling is especially strong……" But as long as enough time passes (the greatest effect of the fact that people are living longer and longer is that certain illusions will in the end have to face reality), the higher they climb the harder they fall—and afterwards there is no longer any chance to start over.

The "extensive reading" ability mastered by people who have proceeded step by step, solidly, to the very last link, and the "extensive reading" most people imagine, are in fact worlds apart. The former, though "reading extensively," have enough ability to "not miss any important information," and often can even manage to "read the implications between the lines"; the latter really are "merely extensive," have never obtained complete information, and [obtain their own peculiar illusions from riddled, fragmentary information](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/7702.html) (without knowing it themselves).

After reaching a certain age (I suspect after 20), wanting to redevelop one's ability for "intensive reading" is already an almost impossible thing, because too many wrong "patterns" have already formed, and all sorts of wrong understandings have long been tangled and intertwined, without any thread that can be sorted out. A pity.

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