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Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?

#101

Post by danparsonson »

jemfinch wrote: post #91
katovatzschyn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could this be why incorrect facts may be recollected as true after proved false? Pathway for "false" not "rewritten / erased" but "pre-empted" by possibly "less robust" "true," to say this colloquially?

Obviously there are at least four people smarter than me here, because I can't for the life of me figure out what in the world you're trying to say.

I think what katovatzschyn is saying is that, if you've already decided something is true, it's encoded as 'true' in your brain and hence more easily remembered as such, even if you later discover that it's false.

Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?

#102

Post by melvinram »

nocman wrote: post #96
melvinram wrote: post #21

Key phrase: "reading creates pathways in the brain, strengthening different mental processes." I've read a boat load of business books and I don't remember a lot of the specifics in the books but because the books often reenforced a lot of the same thoughts from different angles, I've got well formed mental pathways in my head, which help me in all kinds of situations. Same thing happens if you're a regular consumer…

"creating marcos"? Marco who? :-D Please tell me you meant "creating macros" -- or is there some secret meaning of "marco" that I'm missing here?

:D yes, I meant macros

Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?

#103

Post by scotty79 »

If the book contains no ideas next month I hardly can remember about what it was.

If author of the book actually bothered to put some ideas in then I remember those ideas and usually the book in which I encountered them for many years. vide Iain M. Banks "Use of weapons", Orson Scott Cars "Ender's Game", Vernor Vinge "Fire upon the deep" or Henry Kuttner novels, Terry Pratchett "Nation"

If you don't remember the books you've read then change the books you are reading to some that have actual content not just crafty words.

Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?

#104

Post by grammaton »

Okay, I'm just going to go ahead and say it then...

“Perjury” , “Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”, “Taste for Freedom: The Life of Astolphe de Custine”. Anyone else notice how ponderously "literary" these books are? Is that how the author's choices run?

Because frankly, they all sound really, really boring. Perhaps it's a case of the author picking things to read because they think they "should" be reading them, instead of reading what they actually want or would enjoy reading. I know, I know, YMMV, but it seems to me like a lot of this is rationalizing the author's choice of "weighty" material.

I notice all the comments on here by people who are baffled by the idea of forgetting what one reads cite books that are more mainstream, less "important" and "literary", and more accessible - and probably enjoyable.

tl;dr the author may be forgetting what he reads because he picks boring reading material

Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?

#106

Post by eru »

csallen wrote: post #24
absconditus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost." http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhaue…

I'm not sure about the tablet analogy, but regardless this is great advice. It's not enough to just read something. It helps tremendously to be engaged while reading -- to take notes, and discuss ideas with your friends. Then, after you've finished, come back in a few days, and again in a few weeks to reflect on things. The amount of text and information contained in books (and on blogs, on HN, in emails, etc) is ove…

That's why Plato (or Socrates or so? One of the Greek philosophers) ranted against writing --- it makes people scatterbrained by allowing them to be scatterbrained, instead of having to remember everything.

Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?

#107

Post by astrofinch »

jemfinch wrote: post #91
katovatzschyn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could this be why incorrect facts may be recollected as true after proved false? Pathway for "false" not "rewritten / erased" but "pre-empted" by possibly "less robust" "true," to say this colloquially?

Obviously there are at least four people smarter than me here, because I can't for the life of me figure out what in the world you're trying to say.

He's saying that if you learn of an argument that shows Fact A to be false, instead of Fact A being deleted from your brain, that argument will be stored as Fact B in your brain. If Fact B is not sufficiently well-integrated in to your thinking then you will pretty much continue to believe Fact A.

BTW don't feel bad that you couldn't understand his sentence, it was pretty hackneyed.

Re: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?

#108

Post by astrofinch »

zzzmarcus wrote: post #79
jseliger wrote: post #77

A lot of the comments here about memory, recall, and learning are dealt with in Daniel T. Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/047059196X?ie=UTF8&tag=... ), which describes a lot of things, including how we move from a state of no knowledge to shallow knowledge to deep knowledge in particular problem domains. People with no knowledge and who have some introduced tend not to r…

Just to emphasize jseliger's last point, taking notes, specifically, writing reviews on books has helped me retain what I read more than I could have possibly imagined. While I'm reading I try to keep myself in a frame of mind of a book reviewer. What will I want my audience to know about this book? What do I agree with or disagree with? What are the highlights? I sometimes take notes while I'm reading, but more ofte…

And you might also be doing a public service: I suspect that reading book reviews may be a good way to get a solid 20-30% of the benefit from the book's factual content in less than a hundredth of the time it takes to read.
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