Ask HN: Are books worth it?

> I spend most of my day reading online articles/conversations, watching videos, and listening to podcasts [...] I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily conversations, YouTube videos, CliffsNotes, podcasts, Reddit posts/comments, blog articles, etc. I even find myself reading the comments and not reading the article most of the time. I'm fine with bullet point style summaries and don't care much about the fluff that fills most books I've read in the past.

Unless you find a really good community, most online discussions are largely banal. It is possible to occasionally find good discussions about fairly concrete topics (technical, or one-step away from technical), but for everything else, it is largely a crapshoot.

The quality distribution of content is such a sharp power law that it might be enough to read a couple of dozen good books in one's life to get that value -- but read them thoroughly and actively reflect on the message, rather than rifling through them for "collecting information". Really good ideas (deep truths) and really good communication tend to stay good for a long time (decades... centuries... millenia). The longer they've lasted the more likely they are to have true lasting value (otherwise why would anyone have bothered passing them down generations!? Check out the "Lindy effect"). Most new books haven't yet had the chance to get called out on -- assuming they are even interesting enough for that. I would rather spend more time listening to and thinking deeply about those messages from people who have thought as/more deeply about the topic.

Since it takes very low-effort to post on the internet (relative to the effort to understand a subject), and it takes an order-of-magnitude more effort to cut through bullshit than to create it, online discussions will typically be dominated by bullshit (unless the community has exceptionally good regulating mechanisms). Since (most) people today are conditioned to be driven by convenience and novelty (rather than quality), forums are not particularly good even for curation -- I would rather trust specific individuals.

For that reason, and the ubiquitous "sales culture" that has come about, I find contemporary discussions (including most contemporary books) to largely be undigested opinions spewed by people who have not thought deeply enough -- it's the Red Queen effect with people mostly trying to sell their messages (optimised for "engagement") better rather than actually improving the quality of their thinking. And advertizing is a very poor proxy for quality (irrespective of what market economists might try to argue).

Any reference to "content" or "engagement" in the contemporary sense---the very notion that one can generalize across all ideas/messages, without thoughtful discrimination---makes me want to puke.

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For 90% of the gain with 10% of the effort, how to find 2-5 good books to read each year? Here's the strategy which has worked for me so far:

1. Find a few authors (on the internet, or otherwise) whose thinking I admire/respect, and who I find to be speaking deeper truths than others.

2. Look at what they list as their most influential books; go read those books.

Those books typically turn out to be faaaaar better than generic online "content". Digesting ideas from reading is much like a muscle to be built by exercise, to it gets easier after the first few books.

Nevertheless, I'll admit, yes, most books are worthless.

However, the books that are important are so totally important that it's almost impossible to overstate how important they are.

Yet, there's no way to tell in advance which books those will turn out to be, for an individual, for a society, and for societies that come after. (A few books are thousands of years old and still relevant and important to this very day!)

Go! Search for treasure! (Cue theme of "Reading Rainbow"....)

Only content cannot replace good fiction however, so you will need to use books or an e-reader if you have an interest in that.

Like you don’t even know that books have to be digitized.

Or that part how magically the most salient and important points will rise up in natural conversation, which is just like what?

Also, this thing bout books being 90% fluff. That’s the biggest giveaway of a non-teaser. How do you even recognize what fluff is? You wrote 4 paragraphs worth of it

Like basically, this is just dunning kruger

Lindy effect should help. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Effect)

Start with classics. Or at least with books that have been out for a few years and are still talked about.

That's how I pick what to read.