An exercise like this could be used to reinforce and build intuitive grasp of levels of abstraction: Tell people to get a candle and light it. Then they have to write fifty things that describe that candle. They will likely start struggling after a while. Then you could give them a hint – “Give your reader enough information to understand your experience“. They would have to include details – get more descriptive. But they cannot (as of 2015) transfer the experience itself.
Tags: communication, general-semantics, learning, and levels-of-abstraction