Hi Oni!
I think you're putting a ridiculously strict definition on the meaning of learning, and looking at things in black and white.
It's an article though, for you to understand anything it's saying you have to have an understading of the subject. ... Any article.
How much of an understanding? A 100% thorough one? A 101 class level? 408? This seems to imply some magical threshold of familiarity with a subject, below which you can learn nothing from an article, and beyond which you do. Let's say you read an article that introduces 3 facts or concepts that are new to you. You understand very well what 2 of them are about, but 1 is quite over your head. Have you learned nothing? What if you "get" just 1 out of 10? Still nothing?
I think that the potential for learning from an article is a matter of degrees. It depends very much on the relative knowledge of the reader, the level of technical detail in the article, the way in which its ideas are presented, and the number of ideas that are new to the reader. It seems silly to suppose that for any given article and reader, you can stamp the experience with "learned it" or "learned nothing".
Now, I get what you're saying in the context of all the bull coming from Alfred here, but I disagree with your use of absolutes to describe the process of learning. It sounds like ivory tower talk to me.
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