Quantifying destroys.
The process of reduction eliminates essence--truth, beauty, passion, heat, intricacies, universes--to ones and zeros, to x's and y's, to necessarily empty, inherently meaningless abstractions, where we (foolishly) seek and expect to find meaning.
We want a shortcut. We want to pass our knowledge along, our 'experience' on, our learning from joy and pain--and language is our preferred (default?) vehicle for that. But it doesn't work because it can't work. Letters, characters, strokes are meaningless. Signs do not 'signify'... they don't do anything.
We cannot circumvent the process of learning by experience. Well-meaning, sound advice, while 'successful' at preventing or causing behaviours, does not increase understanding. If I successfully 'argue' you into action or inaction, your 'understanding' has not been increased... you've merely (literally) 'taken my word' for it, but the experiential 'lesson' has not been learned.
We are not meant to be able to put these into words 'effectively' because it sidesteps the purpose for existence--ultimately a trial-and-error process. And while taking another scientist's results into account can save both time and resources, if the researcher has no 'fundamental understanding' of the basic processes through personal observation, he/she is in fact limiting usable data and ultimately prone to basic errors further into the complex processes, where mistakes are far more costly.
This is why reading books can't make even the dent that hands-on experience can. You can read a fact 50 times, but seeing it in action just ONCE can prove more to you in a lasting way. I'm not about to list the countless examples that qualify for that statement, but I shouldn't really need to.
While language can reinforce the concepts behind what we learn, words alone will never teach us anything.
EVER.
So what are our other options? Patches? Quick-fixes?
I have some ideas, but I can't express them yet--or at least, I cannot put them into words.
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