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

The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

aliabdaal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 184 posts

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#121

Post by mcguire »

nwienert wrote: post #108
Ma8ee wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sports are often pretty close to battle, and you can learn fencing. Most great writers about swordsmanship could never have written about it without having used them for years... I have a whole long piece I want to write about this some day but physical experience is about 100x richer than reading. If you read about the best restaurant in some place, and tell me it, your ability to convince me it’s good is very weak.…

Currently reading Greek and Roman Naval Warfare A Study of Strategy, Tactics, and Ship Design from Salamis (480 B.C.) to Actium (31 B.C.) by William Rodgers (the 1964 edition).

While in general I agree with you that experience is the best way to gain understanding, there are rather a lot of topics that are hard to get experience with.

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#122

Post by mcguire »

j7ake wrote: post #37
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…

The worst is some arbitrary goal of reading X books per year. That clearly optimises for short, easy to read books (eg New York Times Best Sellers) and avoids more technical and difficult books (eg Art of Computer Programming)

Please try to avoid gatekeeping in public, particularly with regards to what people read.

Please?

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#123

Post by mcguire »

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…

But keep in mind, data is not information, information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not understanding.

A quick question: Is the plot summary on the Wikipedia page for Hamlet equivalent to watching the play, or to reading the play with timeouts to look up the references?

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#124

Post by brokencode »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #114
brokencode wrote: post #112

Am I the only one who thinks most novels are 90% fluff? Like, they can certainly be entertaining, but the idea of the author making an argument that you need to decode and become enlightened by sits with me the wrong way. Why not just come out and say your points in a condensed form without the story around it? Does it improve learning to have to decode information from a novel? Does it stick with you better, or make…

If you are reading literature, real literature, purely for information, I'm afraid you've lost the plot somewhere. As with everything worthwhile in life, good literature is work. Don't expect to pick up a classic novel and understand it immediately.

That’s a pretty weak argument. You are saying that I should invest time and effort into a book to understand it, but also that the purpose of literature is not information.

What is there to understand then, if not information? I always hear the author is making a point about life, but why water it down in hundreds of extra pages instead of saying it directly?

The only thing I can think is that the story helps us connect with the author’s point and learn from it better. It can influence and persuade in a way that just laying out arguments can’t, because it stirs up emotion in the reader. Is that what you are trying to say?

I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced something like that from a book, but it sounds enjoyable. Maybe I’ll give it another shot sometime.

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#125

Post by dougmwne »

pricecomstock wrote: post #97
dougmwne wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I agree that social media and news media in particular can be an information torrent and very quantity over quality. The best that can be said about it is that it can be up to the minute timely, which is occasionally very important. And the news pre-internet was not much better than post-internet. It's always been a pretty bad source of nuanced info.

I don't think books are dead. I read books. I just think they are no longer the only game in town. For example, it was often said that through a book, you could step into someone else's experience. I had a great time reading Red Mars. Now we have VR and I have come closer to standing on the surface of Mars than anyone else in history; far better than imagining Kim Stanley imagining it. The huge expansion of new digital and interactive media is a lasting win for education and human knowledge. I think we all need a reminder of that in the trough of tech disillusionment.

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#126

Post by mcguire »

a9h74j wrote: post #102
Bakary wrote: post #55

I really don't see the point of all that productivity in every facet of life. It sounds like cargo-culting to me. Generally, people who do fascinating things don't need to analyze their own productivity since they are naturally drawn to their projects and work on them on their own and for their own sake. People who do things out of ambition don't need the boost either, by definition. And for people who just want to e…

As you suggest, there is something so transparently ironic or off about his path in particular. For me his videos were part of a quick off-ramp from the productivity porn. In the irony department, I am reminded of a woman who once billed herself as the smartest person alive or something. My thought was: You are the smartest person alive, and you are writing articles for the Sunday supplement in my local newspaper?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#127

Post by nwienert »

mcguire wrote: post #121
nwienert wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sports are often pretty close to battle, and you can learn fencing. Most great writers about swordsmanship could never have written about it without having used them for years... I have a whole long piece I want to write about this some day but physical experience is about 100x richer than reading. If you read about the best restaurant in some place, and tell me it, your ability to convince me it’s good is very weak.…

Currently reading Greek and Roman Naval Warfare A Study of Strategy, Tactics, and Ship Design from Salamis (480 B.C.) to Actium (31 B.C.) by William Rodgers (the 1964 edition). While in general I agree with you that experience is the best way to gain understanding, there are rather a lot of topics that are hard to get experience with.

There’s a lot of history certainly. Though I’d rather read historians with as much physical connection as possible - familial ties, visiting ruins, practicing the traditions, speaking the language etc.

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#128

Post by mcguire »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #2

In 4-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferris brags that he is a judo champion because he found a loophole in the judging criteria. By forcing people out of bounds 3 times in a match, he could disqualify them and win by default. Ok, sure. Those are the rules, and he won. But in any way that really matters, he was not a judo champion. Further, this guy’s association with Tim Ferris (see his Youtube) is an automatic disqualification…

https://www.martialdevelopment.com/how-to-win-kickboxing-wro...

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#129

Post by ceilingcorner »

brokencode wrote: post #124
ceilingcorner wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are reading literature, real literature, purely for information, I'm afraid you've lost the plot somewhere. As with everything worthwhile in life, good literature is work. Don't expect to pick up a classic novel and understand it immediately.

That’s a pretty weak argument. You are saying that I should invest time and effort into a book to understand it, but also that the purpose of literature is not information. What is there to understand then, if not information? I always hear the author is making a point about life, but why water it down in hundreds of extra pages instead of saying it directly? The only thing I can think is that the story helps us conn…

Have you ever enjoyed a meal? A movie? Done anything at all other than for mindless entertainment or gathering information? Admired a sunset or bought flowers?

Literature is an art form. It is almost by definition not practical.

Re: The Art of Reading More Effectively and Efficiently

#130

Post by ARandomerDude »

cratermoon wrote: post #94
gen_greyface wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can I learn from what you wrote, or do I need to do something to learn I can't learn anything from reading?
Post reply on HN