alex chiang: web 6.0

So when I was in college, I was always disappointed when I had to purchase a new textbook because it was usually 2x to 3x more expensive than a used one. Buying a used textbook meant saving lots of money and having more money meant being drunk more often. The only drawback was that you never knew what kind of yahoo (pronounced yay-who) owned the book before you.

In my experience, it was always a drooling, mouth-breathing, semi-moron who seemed to get at a book before it fell into my grubby hands. How do I know such things? Because invariably, it was awash in a mess of ultra-flourescent yellow highlighter spewed about the pages like so much alien diarrhea.

That person likely spent a few minutes scanning the page, looking for key concepts and highlighting them, for the purpose of expedited cramming the night before the midterm. The problem is, that person probably only had about 5% of their brain engaged, since he or she was only looking for the highlights (duh) and missed out on all the context that would actually help make the concept understandable.

This level of mental sophistication is about par with moving your finger under words and silently mouthing them as you read.

Let’s look at an actual example:

They set forth what, to the best of their knowledge, is the truth about some particular aspect of reality, they use reason to explain the facts they have observed and they support their point of view with arguments that appeal to reason in other people. All this is fairly easy in the fields of physical science and technology. It is much more difficult in the fields of politics and religion and ethics.

Seriously. What the fuck was this person thinking? How will that, in any way possible, be helpful to you when you go back to study before the exam? The sheer contrast of the yellow is so distracting and disorienting that it probably makes studying harder since your eyes can’t focus on the words.

Yellow highlighters suck. A pox on them and all those who abuse them.