That said, the double negative that means the same as a single negative is well known in many English dialects, e. g. “I didn’t say nothing.”

The more widespread the language, the greater the likelihood of logical inconsistencies, because languages are not fixed rules but sets of malleable conventions.

The flammable=inflammable example is the one that immediately popped into my mind too, analogous to 好不容易=好容易.

Indeed! I’m just trying to look at the same core concepts from different angles with the hope that different metaphors work for different people. I also think different approaches can highlight different problems. Perhaps I should write something directly about pareto later.

Pareto said that, for many events, the 20% of the cause (or actions) are responsible for the 80% of the effects.

So if you are a business man, roughly the 80% of your earnings will come from the 20% of your customers.

Hence you are better off keeping your attention on them instead of getting crazy trying to make happy people that aren’t adding any value to your life.

The sad reality is that we often spend the 80% of our time doing silly things that only account for the 20% of our results. Some examples?

Compulsive email checking, Facebook updating, news checking, slightly modifying the CSS of our website (LoL). The list is endless.

It applies quite will to languages study. If you can identify the 20% of a language that allows you to understand the 80% of what’s going on, you will avoid boredom and learn faster.

In Chinese this may be: learn the most common characters in a context that matter to you, study the basic grammar structures and so on.

I’m not sure if this is related to the actual article in any way or if it’s just general commentary on how people in general learn Chinese. Personally, I always stress that you should find ways of studying that you enjoy, but I see no reason why you can’t do what you suggest and use Anki at the same time. I’m a little bit confused about who or what your comment is directed towards.