Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why books don't work (2019)

andymatuschak.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 221 posts

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#41

Post by mathnmusic »

activatedgeek wrote: post #12

I see that this is the author of the excellent "Quantum Country" so perhaps the case being made here is obviously biased, for a good reason. I get a sense that the author seems to argue that most book authors are not conscious of the working memory of the reader. I don't think that is true. Many "good" non-fiction books I've read actually rely on space-repetitions throughout the text quite heavily. The author, to the…

> shift this burden to the medium

This is beautifully expressed. Knowledge consists of connections across concepts but those connections are rarely shown explicitly in textbooks. Even wikipedia, while allowing you to traverse the connections back and forth easily, does not do a great job of giving you the bird's eye view of a subject or a field. Check out this "map" of mathematics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmJ-4B-mS-Y Every subject needs a similar map.

Besides visualizing the connections, we'd also need interactivity to the topic that helps with forming new mental models - which is the core aspect of learning. Jupyter notebooks, ObservableHQ, Mathigon are some of the good projects working on this aspect.

Disclaimer: I am building the open-source project https://github.com/learn-awesome/learn/ which is attempting to build the complete map of knowledge/skills. So I too am biased against books and in favor of digital/interactive tools.

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#42

Post by watwut »

doubletgl wrote: post #29
henrikeh wrote: post #9

I don’t see how this is an argument for how “books don’t work”. The author’s point seems to be that books don’t support learning, because books are static and can’t adapt to the thinking and working process of the reader/student. Something more is needed to “learn”. This implies that the purpose of books is to “teach”, but is that so? Books at best “inform”. It is up to the reader to bring the framework for learning,…

Some books explicitly claim to teach you a specific skill. And some people have that general expectation towards books. This is what the author criticizes, as I understood their points.

None of the mentioned books teach specific skill through. And I had success learning new skills from books, but those books were meant to teach that skills. They were not among top popular, because for whatever skill you have in mind, only few people actually want to learn it at the same time.

Not that all book that claim to teach skill actually teach it, but plenty of them do.

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#43

Post by jezclaremurugan »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #33

Books work in different ways. Memory isn't freeform, it's triggered and asssociative. If I ask you what you were reading a year ago, you probably won't be able to tell me. But if I mention an associated experience or concept, your recall may be triggered and you'll be able to remember something relevant - and talk about it, possibly in some detail. People are much better at remembering narratives and parable than fac…

On a related tangent -

One thing that I learned from Gladwell's masterclass notes [1] is giving the reader (or listener in a speech) some candy. Candies are fluffy - but they also help readers/listeners retain more and also share more. Personally I've noticed myself using such candies to broach an idea with someone or a team - and the difference in interest is visible.

[1] - https://taimur.me/posts/notes-from-malcolm-gladwell-s-writin...

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#44

Post by tinktank »

It's incredibly unfair to expect broad introductory books to provide deep understanding and insight. These books exist to mostly make people aware the field/topic exists and as a starting point. They serve their purpose. Article seems mostly about expounding his book tbh.

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#45

Post by teraku »

If the author (or anybody) really wants to absorb knowledge from books, it's simple and only takes two steps:

1. Take notes while reading, which usually also has the side-effect that you have to re-read passage around your note taking

2. Convert notes to Flashcards utilising SRS (spaced repetition systems like Anki)

Thus all the info you noted and found interesting will go into your long(er)-term memory.

But that's not why we read most books now, is it?

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#46

Post by sandwall »

reubens wrote: post #13
trabant00 wrote: post #3

For the given examples: The Selfish Gene; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Guns, Germs, and Steel, there is another issue not covered in the article: the books are philosophical interpretations of some facts the author chose to support their theories. Even more so, some of those facts and studies have been since debunked. So for these examples it is my opinion that it's not a case of books not working, but of very healthy br…

Agree. I found Thinking, Fast and Slow painfully biased

Interesting, can you add some depth to that statement? I enjoyed the book, and found it useful in illustrating many cognitive biases.

I've gone on to read more of his work and agree the data is from, "WEIRD societies: Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic." (i.e. a lot of small study groups from ivy league schools) -- but nevertheless found the book enjoyable and useful

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#47

Post by chongli »

doubletgl wrote: post #29
henrikeh wrote: post #9

I don’t see how this is an argument for how “books don’t work”. The author’s point seems to be that books don’t support learning, because books are static and can’t adapt to the thinking and working process of the reader/student. Something more is needed to “learn”. This implies that the purpose of books is to “teach”, but is that so? Books at best “inform”. It is up to the reader to bring the framework for learning,…

Some books explicitly claim to teach you a specific skill. And some people have that general expectation towards books. This is what the author criticizes, as I understood their points.

Generally, books that attempt to teach a specific skill will be full of exercises. If you read through the book methodically (not like reading a novel) and do all the exercises, I would be shocked if you did not learn that skill.

I guess a lot of people don’t do that. They skim through a textbook like it’s a boring novel and they make a few notes or they highlight everything or they fill the poor book with sticky notes in a multitude of colours. Anything but doing the exercises! And then is it any wonder why they forget everything a year later?

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#48

Post by Schiendelman »

kleinsch wrote: post #32
Gravityloss wrote: post #2

Why does it have to be a long book with a million anecdotes? Just give me the idea.

Because most popular nonfiction could really be boiled down to a blog post or two, but it’s hard to justify $15 for a 2-3 page pamphlet.

Now that’s interesting. We used to have the concept of Cliff’s Notes, right?

For all these elongated pamphlets we could read, could we instead get a collection of related pamphlet-length core theses? Is there a model to that?

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#49

Post by drenvuk »

What about instead of chapters you break books down into concepts. You can then test the reader on the concept by embedding the page number of the immediately following concept into a problem that can be solved through mastery of previously read concept. So smaller chapters with locked physical material. They probably already do it for digital material.

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#50

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

Well, it depends on whad kind of books you're reading. Certainly mathematics textbooks work if only for the reason that if you move forward without really understanding what is being said, you wont understand the rest, so it will be incomprehensible and boring. SO you need to put some effort: go back, read the difficult fragments a couple of times, maybe take a sheet of paper and try to figure it out - and only then move forward. Whereas pop science books allow you to pretend you understand while reading.
Post reply on HN