Why books don't work (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#211

Post by wakawaka1 » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:30 AM UTC

hacknat wrote: post #66

The very premise of this article shows how demented Western culture has become. The attitude of, “I invested 15-20 hours reading this book and, boohoo, I’m not a subject matter expert on the book’s topic” is absolutely insane. It takes a decade of serious work to really get a strong handle on a topic. Books aren’t supposed to teach you something to know, they’re meant to teach you how much you don’t know. Hopefully f…

I totally agree.

A person must learn actively while reading:

- By taking notes

- By summarizing important/difficult to understand sections in their own words via writing

- By looking up and exploring alternative explanations of complex idea, and following the two aforementioned avenues towards solidifying one's understanding

Rinse & repeat.

Reading != Learning.

Reading is more of a casual perusal of knowledge, when one isn't actively engaged in the above 3 ways mentioned (or other strategies to absorb the knowledge presented in a book or other compendium of information)

Learning = actively engaging with subject matter with a strong intention to understand and even memorize when necessary.

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#212

Post by ramraj07 » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:04 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #34

ramraj07 wrote: post #26

Brilliant article,but I'll give a simpler factor as well - people read too many damn books! Not reading too much per se but just too many books! That combined with the fact that most books are bloated crap (because the author is incentivized to make a book out of what should be a New Yorker article at best), means that most people can't even see the point because they've been ricocheted around a concept by a single o…

If you read only one book per year and most of them are old, how could you possibly know that "most books are bloated crap"?

I have read a few chapters and given up on more numerous books for sure!

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#213

Post by friendlybus » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

Books work well when they are helping you solve a problem in your life. They are vital in communicatung new concepts and exploring old ones.

Who needs to remember more than the general idea of guns, germa, steel or darwinian memes in their life?

People who prosper from retaining a broad general knowledge tend to remember it better. I don't see the failure to instill articulated memories, people read books they don't need to consciously recite.

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#214

Post by sriacha » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:38 AM UTC

lthornberry wrote: post #75

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…

I can't comment on the others, but I'm a trained historian, and hating Guns, Germs, and Steel is probably the single thing that unites our field. It's vastly oversimplified, and gives anyone who reads it the idea that they understand the major forces shaping world history while ignoring most of the things that historians agree are more important than environmental determinism in that process.

What would you say are "most of the things that historians agree are more important than environmental determinism" that Diamond ignores?

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#215

Post by hvasilev » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 6:22 AM UTC

Consequently I think a common tasks in software development that contribute to burnout are defined as: "In this very limited time, go into this completely unfamiliar code and try to fix this bug/extend this feature". All tasks of this sort usually require "understanding" and it is a hard thing to do in a limited time. If you are a time conscious person or a person that is prone to stress, that stuff just burns your soul.

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#216

Post by b0rsuk » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 6:39 AM UTC

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #204

b0rsuk wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to learn from a book, you have to play a more active role. I have a mind-blowing insight for you. African tribes have figured this out. The way they teach history is by re-enacting events from myth and history. Those "silly" and noisy dances make a lot of sense. As Confucius said, I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. Participation in a tribal ceremony has the potential to te…

Idk, university classes seem a bit more efficient than African tribal dancing?

Consider the Confucius quote above. What are your memories of learning math? Can you learn math from a podcast? Does it work better if you see it done on a blackboard? How about solving a list of problems yourself?

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#217

Post by 0x737368 » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 8:02 AM UTC

b0rsuk wrote: post #150

mindcrime wrote: post #74

I don't find this line of thinking to be compelling at all, unless you make certain assumptions that I don't agree with. For one, you'd have to assume that the "big idea" of a book is that you read it once, like a novel, and should have great recall of a large body of details / minutia from said book. IMO, it just "doesn't work like that." If you want to learn from a book, you have to play a more active role. Persona…

> If you want to learn from a book, you have to play a more active role. I have a mind-blowing insight for you. African tribes have figured this out. The way they teach history is by re-enacting events from myth and history. Those "silly" and noisy dances make a lot of sense. As Confucius said, I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. Participation in a tribal ceremony has the potential to te…

Perhaps mind-blowing for you, reenactment rituals were a part of human culture since time immemorial

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#218

Post by doubletgl » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 11:47 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #47

doubletgl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 not…

Yeah of course, if I'm already in the process of acquiring some skill, willing to do all the exercises, look up what I don't understand somewhere else, etc., I will learn that skill and the book will help and be a good foundation or guideline.

But the point remains: Just reading the book, as in consuming page after page, is not enough.

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#219

Post by Schiendelman » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 12:41 PM UTC

rajandatta wrote: post #65

Schiendelman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Platforms and Apps like Blinkist offer this. Curated summaries in about 10% of the original length.

Thanks, I hadn’t heard of Blinkist - I appreciate the direction!

Re: Why books don't work (2019)

#220

Post by vmilner » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:23 PM UTC

For maths and physics lectures, I always got vastly more out of them if I could somehow obtain a summary beforehand and be conscientious enough to read it through. (Similarly, I found the best way to read the Feynman Physics lectures was to read through the published text, then listen to the audio recordings while reading the text. You can do the same with Leonard Susskind's Theoretical Minimum physics lectures).