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You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#211

Post by freilanzer »

kieckerjan wrote: post #182

A corollary of this idea that also the bad stuff that you read leaves a trace, and not necessarily a good trace. To continue the food metaphor: like junk food there is junk reading and while it may satisfy some need it is all informational empty calories and transfats. Which brings up a subject I pondered many times: to go on an information diet. Any thoughts on that would be appreciated.

Meditation would probably help a lot with that diet. Not just reduce your informational intake, but also live mindfully.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#213

Post by leobg »

keiferski wrote: post #153

I love reading as much as anyone, and probably finish on average, 100 books a year, but - I’ve gradually become skeptical of the idea that books are an ideal format for acquiring and retaining knowledge. I’ve written a few little comments about this in the past [1] but I’ve been meaning to explore the idea further. I originally began thinking this when I realized I could only remember a handful of details from books…

Do you rather read a tutorial or watch a YouTube video?

Personally, I find reading is a much more interactive activity. You can seek, you can skip, you can summarize, you can repeat. Innoway, it is much closer and deeper than a conversation with another person. And definitely much closer than a video audio recording of that person, which is more like a speech than a conversation.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#214

Post by schneebyte »

verisimi wrote: post #116
sublinear wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the blog post necessarily supports this view. You still have your free will. Your past experiences also teach you what to ignore. You are free to do that to my comment. :)

Lots of answers about free will. My criticism is that they all seem to make the same error, in treating the existence of free will as some sort of binary decision. My view is that the more one's model is coherent with the underlying reality, the more options are available to the individual. The greater the selection, the more free will you have. Eg, if someone pulls a gun on you, you may think you have no free will.…

Maybe you have a different definition of free will.

But to me those examples are just knowledge. Regardless of how many possible options, the process of making the choice would be free will, if it existed.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#215

Post by freilanzer »

al_borland wrote: post #47
Zambyte wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still encourage you to write though. Writing has seriously transformed the way that I think. I refer to my notes very often too.

I still write a fair amount, I just don’t write book reports. The environment I find comfortable for reading isn’t conducive to taking notes that would be needed for writing later. If there is a particular passages that really stands out I will note it down. I have a little collection of those (and other quotes) I sometimes read through.

I use a blank paper sheet as bookmark and carry a pen, so that I write down important notes from the book content on the bookmark. Afterwards the book is - ideally and dependent on the content - condensed to one sheet, that I can refer to later. It also helps with retaining the content.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#216

Post by helboi4 »

keiferski wrote: post #193
JacobiX wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, maybe books are not the ideal format for acquiring knowledge. I read a lot of fiction books, mainly classics for pleasure. And what I found unique is that only in books I have access to the interior monologue of the characters, their thoughts, and on some occasions, direct access to their "stream of consciousness". I love it, and I discovered that some characters (but in reality it's the authors) ha…

Yeah the funny thing is that the result of my realization above, is that I end up reading much more fiction - and appreciating fiction more than nonfiction. There is a general assumption, I think, that fiction isn’t really worth reading and that serious people only read nonfiction. I don’t think I could disagree more. Really good fiction is entirely its own unique thing.

Fr people who believe fiction is useless have a very shallow view of life. Fiction is about the human condition.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#217

Post by keiferski »

leobg wrote: post #213
keiferski wrote: post #153

I love reading as much as anyone, and probably finish on average, 100 books a year, but - I’ve gradually become skeptical of the idea that books are an ideal format for acquiring and retaining knowledge. I’ve written a few little comments about this in the past [1] but I’ve been meaning to explore the idea further. I originally began thinking this when I realized I could only remember a handful of details from books…

Do you rather read a tutorial or watch a YouTube video? Personally, I find reading is a much more interactive activity. You can seek, you can skip, you can summarize, you can repeat. Innoway, it is much closer and deeper than a conversation with another person. And definitely much closer than a video audio recording of that person, which is more like a speech than a conversation.

I would make a distinction between YouTube videos and a video, the format itself. YouTube videos tend to be even worse than reading when it comes to information access and retention. Videos, the format, on the other hand have the potential to be significantly more memorable than text, when you consider the fact that a video is a combination of images and audio. I am not familiar with research done on video, but there is a ton of research showing that images help memory considerably (the “picture superiority effect.”)

Which is a long way of saying that memory-optimized video content would be very different from YouTube videos.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#218

Post by jampekka »

NERD_ALERT wrote: post #54
sublinear wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the blog post necessarily supports this view. You still have your free will. Your past experiences also teach you what to ignore. You are free to do that to my comment. :)

Free will hasn’t been proven. It’s up in the air how much is predetermined, and how to even define “free” in the context of free will. Even if we do have free will it’s still influenced to some degree by our biology.

Free will is more ideological dogma than a factual claim. From materialist standpoint it's untenable. And empirically we see that environment dominates thinking and behavior.

Free will is the foundation of most judeo-christian moral systems, which were inherited by liberalism. It's the justification for punishshing and rewading individuals.

It seems to work relatively well, but I find it very cruel.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#219

Post by helboi4 »

leobg wrote: post #213
keiferski wrote: post #153

I love reading as much as anyone, and probably finish on average, 100 books a year, but - I’ve gradually become skeptical of the idea that books are an ideal format for acquiring and retaining knowledge. I’ve written a few little comments about this in the past [1] but I’ve been meaning to explore the idea further. I originally began thinking this when I realized I could only remember a handful of details from books…

Do you rather read a tutorial or watch a YouTube video? Personally, I find reading is a much more interactive activity. You can seek, you can skip, you can summarize, you can repeat. Innoway, it is much closer and deeper than a conversation with another person. And definitely much closer than a video audio recording of that person, which is more like a speech than a conversation.

I agree. I have done a lot of devouring podcasts and youtube videos over my years. I used to read a lot before that. Now I have dropped a lot of the audiovisual stuff and started reading more. The fact that reading requires more of my attention, that I find myself rereading things, annotating things, etc makes it a much better learning experience. The only thing that may be better is an in person classroom since it involves interaction.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#220

Post by wyclif »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #32
y04nn wrote: post #25

Don't forget that you are the result of all the past sensory interactions that you experienced in your whole life, people you interacted with, books you read, advertisements, songs, news headlines, etc. Even if you think you don't remember them, at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made, thus making you what you are now. Since I realized this, I am…

Very close to "I am a product of my environment"

I don't think it's quite that close. There is still a distinction between being a product of your environment and being influenced by your environment.

My HS college prep English teacher, who was one of the best teachers I ever had, put it this way: "Garbage in, garbage out." His point was that it simply isn't rational to believe that you can read nothing but National Lampoon, Mad Magazine, or the county newspaper and become a great writer. You have to read, digest, and breathe the air of the great works of fiction and literature and allow it to do its work in influencing your prose style, cadence, and structure.

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