41–50 of 179 posts
I can entirely relate to what Lewis writes about reading Plato. I was interested in philosophy but found myself gravitating to reading and listening to podcasts about philosophy rather than reading it directly. Once I actually picked up a volume of Plato's works I was surprised how approachable it was to me, a complete layman of philosophy.
Got any recommendations for philosophy podcasts?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are no old books in computer science, because it is a new field, but already the effect that Lewis talks about can be seen... I think we know what the classics are. If someone's name is in all the textbooks, it's probably worth looking up their original works. Turing and Shannon come immediately to mind as people who are more often read about than read, despite being quite approachable.
Well, I don't know about that. For example, back when I was at university, my graphics professor mentioned that there were hundreds of algorithms for mapping a texture to a sphere going back hundreds of years because map makers had been coming up with them so that they could place maps on globes. There are old books, but you have to be a bit more creative to find them.
I can entirely relate to what Lewis writes about reading Plato. I was interested in philosophy but found myself gravitating to reading and listening to podcasts about philosophy rather than reading it directly. Once I actually picked up a volume of Plato's works I was surprised how approachable it was to me, a complete layman of philosophy.
Got any recommendations for philosophy podcasts?
About 1/15 humans who have ever existed are still alive. And that includes the period before writing.
I think it's not unreasonable to think that most books have been written in the past 125 years.
I do not see any reason to deify the past. I say this as someone who has read the Bible in the original Hebrew and the Talmud in original Aramaic. They're of interest as a window to a different time, but fundamentally they're probably no smarter than many people today, and they have less mental tools and worse nutrition (which is linked to intelligence).
I can entirely relate to what Lewis writes about reading Plato. I was interested in philosophy but found myself gravitating to reading and listening to podcasts about philosophy rather than reading it directly. Once I actually picked up a volume of Plato's works I was surprised how approachable it was to me, a complete layman of philosophy.
Got any recommendations for philosophy podcasts?
Time is a fantastic filter. When I was cleaning out my grandparents attic I found a few dozen old books from the 30s and 40s. Wanting to see if they had any value I searched Amazon Ebay and even Google. I could find no record of them having ever even existed. I opened a few of them and found out why. They sucked.
This is exactly how I look at it. To quote Orwell: "Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival".
A lot of works that were under-appreciated during their time had their extemporaneous advocates and promoters that had their own motivations that often had little to do with appreciation for the work.
If Kafka's editor had listened to Kafka and burned his works instead of making sure they got on as many bookshelves as possible, or if Van Gogh didn't have the close relationship he had with his art-dealer brother, we almost certainly wouldn't remember their works today.
I don't doubt their are many unknown masters ahead of their time that will forever remain in obscurity.
I can entirely relate to what Lewis writes about reading Plato. I was interested in philosophy but found myself gravitating to reading and listening to podcasts about philosophy rather than reading it directly. Once I actually picked up a volume of Plato's works I was surprised how approachable it was to me, a complete layman of philosophy.
Same for me with Stoicism: I read everything modern book on it and while it was useful nothing comes close to when I actually decided to pick up the classics, starting with Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
I'm going to take a contrarian view on this. About 1/15 humans who have ever existed are still alive. And that includes the period before writing. I think it's not unreasonable to think that most books have been written in the past 125 years. I do not see any reason to deify the past. I say this as someone who has read the Bible in the original Hebrew and the Talmud in original Aramaic. They're of interest as a windo…
Furthermore it's not just that they are old, but that they are old and have survived that recommends old books to us.
I can entirely relate to what Lewis writes about reading Plato. I was interested in philosophy but found myself gravitating to reading and listening to podcasts about philosophy rather than reading it directly. Once I actually picked up a volume of Plato's works I was surprised how approachable it was to me, a complete layman of philosophy.
Got any recommendations for philosophy podcasts?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technological books do not age as well, because technical knowledge is predominantly cumulative. It's for fields where thoughts are evergreen (basically, anything to do with being human, literature, poetry, philosophy, etc) where this advice matters. A good modern book on math, or chemistry, or compiler construction has more knowledge than any old one. A good modern poet is not better than Shakespeare or Homer (and i…
> Technological books do not age as well, because technical knowledge is predominantly cumulative. Tell that to Claude Shannon, Fred Brooks, and Ken Thompson. "A symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits", "The Mythical Man-month" and "On Trusting Trust" have aged fine, I promise.
- aged extremely well in some ways (it still takes 9 months to make a baby no matter how many women are assigned to the project)
- aged poorly in others (disk space is no longer an issue when deciding whether to comment on code)
- remained ahead of its time in others (its a good idea to have an architect to ensure the conceptual integrity of a complex system, rather than to have developers hack it out a bit at a time in a series of scrums)