Books and lectures don't work • Hacker News Board

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#111

Post by freshhawk » Sat, May 11, 2019, 10:25 PM UTC

molteanu wrote: post #60

I think you might be reading books wrong if that's what you're hoping to take out of them, that is, remember this or that specific quote out of it. For me, at least, the value of a book is changing your way of thinking, or better yet, present new questions that you did not even dare to ask. I would recommend Darwin's own Origin of Species instead of Dawkins' Selfish Gene. I've read both. They can't even begin to comp…

STEM educations generally don't teach you how to read properly. Not "read" as in turn letters into works into sentences into ideas. I mean "read" as in absorb what the author is saying, understand it, evaluate it in context and absorb these new ideas.

I had this kind of education, and I'm still pissed about it. It was such a wasted opportunity and so much wasted time. At least I learned this later on, but it was not easy.

You are right that tell is referring to Selfish Gene and Guns, Germs and Steel as "serious non-fiction tomes". These are pop-science books that are summarizing the actual serious non-fiction works that developed these ideas. And I actually like both those books, I think they did a lot to bring these ideas to the public, to people who wouldn't read about these subjects deeply and critically, they are made for regular people curious about a subject to do a surface read and get familiar with new explanatory frameworks.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#112

Post by swagasaurus-rex » Sat, May 11, 2019, 10:26 PM UTC

wellpast wrote: post #97

This guy seems to be searching for that magic pillow that you put the book under and sleep upon and later wake up with all the information & learning you were after downloaded and integrated into your person. He says the key to getting there is better understanding our cognitive learning models. But ask anyone who has mastered 'learning' (plenty such people exist) and they won't confess to you any magic pill. Each ti…

This is incredibly insightful.

I have two friends who primarily youtube, but their subject interests are cars. Believe it or not, youtube contains an extreme wealth of car related knowledge from top gear all the way down to how-to's on maintenance/uprades of very specific models of vehicles.

They're extremely knowledgeable about their crafts in ways that other mediums wouldn't be able to convey. Now I'm sure reading would help advance their understanding, but in the same way that a purely book read mechanic might also benefit from a deep dive into the massive knowledge base that a platform that is able to host long-tail content like youtube can convey.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#113

Post by EForEndeavour » Sat, May 11, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #107

Jaxan wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you spend more time on it? My reading is definitely slower than youtube videos. And still a bit slower than most lectures.

Interesting, for me it's the other way around - I'd prefer to read because the videos are so slow; a transcript of a video can be read something like four-five times quicker than the video itself. Lecture videos can be listened with the audio sped up 1.5-2 times (though it really degrades the quality and can be hard to understand at times) but it's still much slower than reading the same thing, at least for me. I mea…

Same here. Not only do I read faster than people speak, but I can skip around much faster through text than through audio-video, and if I'm reading electronic text, I can search it.

Physically attending a talk is still valuable for me because I have the option to ask questions during and after. I usually don't, but the mere act of trying to think of good questions or counterarguments keeps me engaged really effectively. Also, I'm far less likely to get distracted than if I was watching a recording.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#114

Post by badpun » Sat, May 11, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

molteanu wrote: post #79

crimsonalucard wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would reading be better at conveying this info then video

There's less clutter and interference in the written word. It's just a dialogue between two people. One of them talks from his life experiences, like a grandpa, the other one listens, ask questions, wonders, like a little kid who doesn't know anything about life. What does a video add to this dialogue? Only clutter, in my opinion. If it's a word for word reading of the original, then that definitely adds some value,…

You don't need any production values - just a recording of a great lecture. For me, it was easier to grasp basic linear algebra concepts from G. Strang's video lectures than from his textbooks. That is because, in a lecture, you get the text content plus intonation/pauses/stresses/all other nonverbal stuff, plus drawing on blackboard [1], plus physically pointing to various elements of equations etc.

In text, all that nonverbal stuff needs to be expressed in a text format (plus illustrations), which is a narrower channel and thus often the content gets technical, awkward and hard to parse. Studying math is perhaps the best example of this - if you have some basic math literacy, someone can convey a new math concept to you in a short conversation, while parsing out the intuition of the same concept from the textbook could possibly take you a couple of hours.

[1] In the textbook, you only get the final illustrations, while in lecture you can see him drawing them, and the specific way he does it conveys information in itself.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#115

Post by wellpast » Sat, May 11, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

andymatuschak wrote: post #102

wellpast wrote: post #97

This guy seems to be searching for that magic pillow that you put the book under and sleep upon and later wake up with all the information & learning you were after downloaded and integrated into your person. He says the key to getting there is better understanding our cognitive learning models. But ask anyone who has mastered 'learning' (plenty such people exist) and they won't confess to you any magic pill. Each ti…

(Author here) You might be amused to learn that I actually have looked into prospects for technologies around learning in one's sleep. Unfortunately, things don't look great. But you might enjoy this paper, on learning smell–sound associations during sleep: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3193 To your central point: you're right that effortful engagement is a hugely important ingredient for learning, so we shouldn…

Thanks for your reply. The Euclid’s Elements example seems possibly a good anchor for discussion.

However I think the difficulty/effortfulness/dynamism of the learning process should signal that the communication/teaching side of the process is only going to be more effortful/dynamic/etc.

In other words whether or not to present Euclid with diagrams and how and when to present them seems to be such a context-sensitive concerns that any generalized approach is going to miss the mark.

As a learner/reader or teacher/writer I don’t think you can do better than to be equipped with some tools (words, drawing devices, audio, gestures, cinema) and then dynamically utilize these to reach your listener/“student”.

But any thesis that doesn’t respect that this as an extremely dynamic & context-sensitive process is going to fail I think.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#116

Post by Beldin » Sat, May 11, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

_57jb wrote: post #109

tw1010 wrote: post #30

Try only learning things with books for 4 months and then tell me it doesn't work. I tend to notice that learning from books get a lot harder if I allow my brain to be flooded with whatever chemicals are released when I watch youtube or game of thrones. If I avoid those for a while, and avoid sugar etc, and if I work out every day and get enough nutrients etc, then my ability to learn via books is no trouble at all.…

I agree that having a disciplined focus on learning as an exercise...there is more work on your part as a reader. I think the point from the article is that we have richer ways to convey information. I feel like that is fair. I mean we type out our thoughts, the most ineffective way to share our passion around a topic. I'd be interested in a seeming statement you are making; the book vs video (or possibly the attempt…

In my (anecdotal) experience in both attending and teaching classes (/presentations), richer ways to convey information incite the audience to switch off and undergo/experience the "class".

You whip out a blackboard & chalk, and the difference is palpable.

I'm not saying is impossible to teach with "richer" methods, but i am saying that there is more to teaching than conveying information.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#117

Post by wellpast » Sat, May 11, 2019, 10:39 PM UTC

wellpast wrote: post #115

andymatuschak wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Author here) You might be amused to learn that I actually have looked into prospects for technologies around learning in one's sleep. Unfortunately, things don't look great. But you might enjoy this paper, on learning smell–sound associations during sleep: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3193 To your central point: you're right that effortful engagement is a hugely important ingredient for learning, so we shouldn…

Thanks for your reply. The Euclid’s Elements example seems possibly a good anchor for discussion. However I think the difficulty/effortfulness/dynamism of the learning process should signal that the communication/teaching side of the process is only going to be more effortful/dynamic/etc. In other words whether or not to present Euclid with diagrams and how and when to present them seems to be such a context-sensitiv…

I think there’s a parallel to art. And effective teaching being like art.

You can’t formalize the artists process — or dictate a medium preference — without taking away the artist’s effectiveness.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#118

Post by colechristensen » Sat, May 11, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

The author's general thesis is that the medium needs to lead you by the nose into learning things. It's the book's fault you didn't absorb much because it should have forced you into metacognitive patterns of thinking.

This is a great and important topic to think about but I disagree with the conclusion. Instead I think people need to learn (and be taught) how to learn. Sitting and absorbing media is often ineffective (and something left out is especially recently popular books trying to teach you something are often garbage or could be delivered in a few pages instead of a few hundred).

One resource – which unfortunately is much longer than it needs to be (you can skip the extensive portion devoted to classifying books into types) – is How to Read a Book

In short: to get the most out of books, lectures, anything of the sort you need to do more than just consume at the normal rate. Skim, outline, ask questions for yourself to answer, research outside sources, skip parts which seem unnecessary and pour over the important parts many times, make yourself flashcards, make notes in the margins, discuss with people, teach somebody what you have learned, on and on and on, tl;dr actively read, don't passively absorb.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#119

Post by westoncb » Sat, May 11, 2019, 10:52 PM UTC

andymatuschak wrote: post #106

westoncb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s very true that you will absorb nothing from a book which you do not read. That's not quite what I mean by motivation. To be more specific I should say 'intrinsic motivation'. I'm assuming the book is actually read in either case, motivated or unmotivated. Let's take the case of Selfish Gene. You can be strongly motivated to read it because it's something educated people are supposed to have read. This is not '…

Gotcha. Yep, I'm sympathetic to this view. Research stemming from Piaget suggests the need to introduce information not authoritatively but rather in response to "disequilibria"—authentic intellectual needs in the listener/reader. Of course, good authors can also work to create these disequilibria. Do you think that the presence/lack of this intellectual need is the highest-order bit? That is: if you really have ques…

> ... but rather in response to "disequilibria"

That's a nice way of putting it—matches my view perfectly.

> Do you think that the presence/lack of this intellectual need is the highest-order bit?

I do (with an important caveat[0]). My view is that without it, you pretty much just get more or less effective ways of 'going through the motions'. I think updating schemas to take account of new information is something brains have developed to do with extreme refinement, even just in response to speech streams. We are probably not more 'sponge-like'—in the sense of just incorporating all new knowledge we're presented with—because there are costs to overhauling existing schemas, or even to adding new ones. So we have some built-in heuristics for when it makes to sense to actually incorporate new info.

My guess is that the most effective route to improving learning will relate to hacking those heuristics.

A basic form of that is something you pointed out:

> Of course, good authors can also work to create these disequilibria.

I think that should be taken more seriously than it typically is. It's also interesting, however, that if you start considering how to do it in a more serious way, you often end up confronted with the question of whether the student should really be learning the material or not... (Kinda vague but I don't want to bog you down with too much text—I know you've got plenty accumulating in this thread already ;)

[0] I see 'intrinsic motivation' basically as an ideal, but not always practically exploitable. For situations where we just need people to learn some things even though they aren't yet in a position to appreciate why—you may have to do without. Then again, maybe with radical enough revision to instruction, even those seemingly intractable cases could be sorted out.

P.S. Hi Andy! We met briefly at a conference in Sebastapol last year.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#120

Post by 92803nv3490 » Sat, May 11, 2019, 11:15 PM UTC

madhadron wrote: post #89

> Picture some serious non-fiction tomes. The Selfish Gene; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Guns, Germs, and Steel Serious non-fiction tomes? I mean, I guess if you regard Harlequin romance as difficult novels. Okay, I'll stop giggling long enough to skim the rest. Reading the rest, the core complaint seems to be that most people cannot effectively read and most people cannot effectively write. Which is true.

Yep. I mean sure, I guess technically those books are serious and are non-fiction. But the fact that those are the books the author chose as his examples makes it pretty hard for me to take his opinions about reading seriously.