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Last modified on August 25, 2021

Even when explaining abstract, intellectual subjects – perhaps, especially when explaining abstract, intellectual subjects – creating strong emotional involvement is crucial. If someone’s desire to understand is strong enough, they can overcome tremendous obstacles. Part of what we can learn from the movie and game makers is how important such desires are, and the art of creating them.

It’s about creating an emotional investment in whatever you’re learning. Which ties into my thought about how the form of the message impacts the content of message itself. I feel inherently more attached to visuals, and really I have a good appetite for math – PROVIDED that it’s a subject I care about. Otherwise things tend to seem arcane and dry if you haven’t found an emotional “hook” into it, so to speak. I feel like university courses make an attempt to do this, to say, “why should we even care at all?” but it’s usually only in the introductory lecture, or the concluding lecture, and it’s rushed. It’s when we hook things into the fabric of our lives, of our thoughts, that they acquire deep meaning.

So yes, this has totally motivated me to use my digital laboratory as a playground for reinventing explanation. And just autodidacticism in general – it seems to be the best way. (The problem is, how to get people (myself) to be productive without the oppressive structure of traditional schools and workplaces? It’s much easier for people to do stuff when someone else tells them what to do. I guess that was one of my fundamental struggles in my gap quarter.)

And, I feel like people underestimate the importance of this topic. Explanation is fundamentally moving ideas from one mind to another, hopefully in their full grandeur (and then some.) Reinventing explanation is finding ways to increase the throughput between brains.

I feel like Kurzgesagt does a great job at what Michael is trying to get at here – they explain things in a really emotionally gripping way. Example:

Andy Matuschak does a particularly good job of this in his digital notes.