Why books don't work (2019)

I became excited with Jordan Peterson's first videos and bought his book "12 rules" when it came out. I skimmed it and... I'm literally using it as a footrest. Peterson is a powerful speaker but has little content.

Older books:

(a) Have stood the test of time.

(b) Typically arose in a time where intellectual celebrity fermented in core intellectual circles first, and only then popularized.

Kahneman and Tversky have their share of technical contributions but were catapulted to thought leaders (and Nobel-Sveriges Bank prize winners) due to classic tokenism: someone from psychology or behavioral science had to win. The same just happen to someone two rungs below their level, Esther Duflo.

If she comes out with a popular book, don't buy it. Read Polanyi's "The Great Transformation", if inclined to left-ish ideas, or Richard Powers' novel "Gain", otherwise.

If you want to learn from a book, you have to play a more active role. Personally I find that the process of learning from a book involves A. read it once, straight through like a novel - maybe underlining key passages in pencil, then B. reading again and taking detailed notes as you read, and possibly looking up citations, or related references (the Wikipedia page for a particular term or phrase, for example), then C. re-reading your notes a couple of times as well as reading and re-reading supplemental material that you found, and finally D. writing your own synthesis of the material.

Yes, that's a lot of work and yes it takes a long time and no, not every book justifies doing all that. Sometimes it's OK to just read the book like a novel, and walk away with just a vague memory of the highest level themes and maybe detailed recall or one or two specific points that resonated with you. It all depends on why you're reading the book and what you hope to get out of it.

Edit: and if it's a book with exercises, then add "do the exercises" as another step. That said, I see reading / working through a textbook to really "learn a subject" as being a slightly different thing from reading the typical pop-sci book or business book or whatever, that doesn't generally have exercises. "Learning a subject" to me usually involves using multiple books, videos, articles, maybe writing some code, etc.

As someone who has deep experience of learning from novels and communicating what they have to offer, the alternate protocol you outline for learning from books applies also to novels.

Under the auspices of literature there is much enduring value that readers can glean by reading through once, rereading passages of interest, and synthesizing an interpretation or response.

Unfortunately this approach is way too expensive and doesn't scale which is why we have all sorts of tech to distribute knowledge (books, classes, lectures, blogs, videos, etc).

I imagine 100 years from now we will have AI teachers that can reproduce the one-on-one experience.