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The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

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Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#91

Post by Ma8ee »

gen_greyface wrote: post #38
tines wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time. I agree with the rest of your post, but this sentence is a hard disagree. Books let you live a version of the lives of other more intelligent people from almost any point in history. How can pottery and kayaking do that?

Doing pottery and kayaking is a better choice for me than reading someone do pottery and kayaking. Edit: and not everything can be learnt from books

But I can’t lead armies in battles or travel under the sea or challenge a rival to a swords duel. In such cases I’m accepting the reading as substitute.

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#92

Post by milansm »

Balgair wrote: post #75
dawg- wrote: post #26

I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately - there seems to be more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much self-help and "motivation porn" focuses on reading books, as if it's a magical activity that will unlock the best version of oneself. It's part of the new aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, a…

One thing about reading is the ROI aspect. Internet comments take ~5 minutes to write, 30s to read (6x ROI). Blog posts are ~4 hours to write, 10m to read (24x). Magazine articles are ~3 months to write, 30m to read (960x). Books are ~5 years to write, 8h to read (1300x). Obviously, books are one of the best reading ROIs. Now, of course, you've got to balance the book quality, your interests, the thesis, the author's…

What ROI? There are tweets more information dense than articles, articles more valuable than books.

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#93

Post by jodrellblank »

Balgair wrote: post #75
dawg- wrote: post #26

I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately - there seems to be more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much self-help and "motivation porn" focuses on reading books, as if it's a magical activity that will unlock the best version of oneself. It's part of the new aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, a…

One thing about reading is the ROI aspect. Internet comments take ~5 minutes to write, 30s to read (6x ROI). Blog posts are ~4 hours to write, 10m to read (24x). Magazine articles are ~3 months to write, 30m to read (960x). Books are ~5 years to write, 8h to read (1300x). Obviously, books are one of the best reading ROIs. Now, of course, you've got to balance the book quality, your interests, the thesis, the author's…

Internet comments have room for your current thought. Is there any reason to think that your current thought is in some way less informed by your experiences than a book is?

Blog posts give you 4 hours to write, backed by years of life experience, probably based on things you've had on your mind for a while.

Magazine articles pay you to write what the audience/advertisers want to see. They've got to be a net negative, convincing someone to write when they didn't necessarily want to, to say something they didn't necessarily want to say.

Books are an item for a CV or resume, and a status symbol. Sure there are respected textbooks, but there are a lot of worse books out there than respected textbooks. Look at "Why we sleep" recently - years to write, torn apart by one blog post. Look at bestseller lists rigged by false purchases. Look at tech books where writing a book on a language or tech stack is almost more of a status grab, or at worst a "teach myself $thing by writing a book about it" than a long standing tome.

(Also, 8 hours to read a book??)

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#94

Post by cratermoon »

gen_greyface wrote: post #38
tines wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time. I agree with the rest of your post, but this sentence is a hard disagree. Books let you live a version of the lives of other more intelligent people from almost any point in history. How can pottery and kayaking do that?

Doing pottery and kayaking is a better choice for me than reading someone do pottery and kayaking. Edit: and not everything can be learnt from books

> not everything can be learnt from books

I'd argue that you can't actually learn anything from reading. Mortimer Adler argues in "How to Read a Book" that you can only actually learn by action, which means doing something with what you read.

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#95

Post by algebrazebra »

ohduran wrote: post #27

I have a contrarian view about reading productively, which is: READ WHAT OTHERS AREN'T READING. It's as if there is a similar process as the Efficient Market Hypothesis happening with books: the best-sellers define our shared reality, and apparently (at least for me), they aren't worth reading. For example, think of Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell. Virtually everyone has heard of the 10'000 hour rule. That means that th…

Yes, the 10,000 hour rule is known by many. For the lack of a better term, the "10,000 hour rule" is a label for an idea. And this idea is as misunderstood as it is popular. Simply spending X hours of time on a skill does not an expert make; indeed, Malcolm Gladwell specifies that these 10,000 hours need to be spent as what he calls "deliberate practice".

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#96

Post by noud »

ohduran wrote: post #27

I have a contrarian view about reading productively, which is: READ WHAT OTHERS AREN'T READING. It's as if there is a similar process as the Efficient Market Hypothesis happening with books: the best-sellers define our shared reality, and apparently (at least for me), they aren't worth reading. For example, think of Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell. Virtually everyone has heard of the 10'000 hour rule. That means that th…

How do you find books that others aren't reading (and are interesting to read)?

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#97

Post by pricecomstock »

dougmwne wrote: post #50
dawg- wrote: post #26

I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately - there seems to be more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much self-help and "motivation porn" focuses on reading books, as if it's a magical activity that will unlock the best version of oneself. It's part of the new aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, a…

I've been thinking about the halo around books on and off for years. I think whatever special value books used to represent in our society from before the internet is long gone. I remember the pre-internet times when the information world you had access to was small. You could consume silly low-information things on the tv or radio or you could read a book on the topic, which had a much higher information density and…

I think there is value to reading 20 10-minute articles on the internet. I think there is a different kind of value to reading 1 200-minute book.

I like the knowledge I've gained from reading lots of articles. The problem comes up because I have to very intentionally choose to read a long book instead of defaulting to many short articles. Over time and in large enough quantity, this feels subjectively bad. Like I'm overloaded with information and lots of different perspectives, but without much of the depth, nuance, or understanding that can come from really sitting with one topic, world, story, or point of view in a deep and extended way.

I think the internet is amazing for providing the torrent of information it does. I just found that, for me, I was drawn to the bright, shiny, always-new, always-now nature of it at the expense of reading books. As I've made more of an effort to read lately, books feel like a different kind of information intake, and I like diversifying in that way.

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#99

Post by lmarcos »

dawg- wrote: post #26

I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately - there seems to be more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much self-help and "motivation porn" focuses on reading books, as if it's a magical activity that will unlock the best version of oneself. It's part of the new aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, a…

> reading is just a hobby. It's a fun, intellectually challenging, infinitely variable hobby with a very long and distinguished history. But ultimately you could learn just as much about yourself and the world by doing pottery, woodworking, kayaking, knitting or whatever else you like to do with your spare time. Making it into such a self-serious pursuit kills most of the joy (and value, for that matter)

Definitely, but reading is easier :)

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#100

Post by ssivark »

dawg- wrote: post #26

I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately - there seems to be more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much self-help and "motivation porn" focuses on reading books, as if it's a magical activity that will unlock the best version of oneself. It's part of the new aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, a…

Note similarities with the discourse about getting a full night’s sleep, and eating healthier :-)

I think all of these sometimes play the role of “premium mediocre” virtue signaling.

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