I don’t buy it at all. Effective learning[1] is about effortful recall. Things that you just read have a transient learning effect. But the common way of cramming is done through this transient means because it is a simple strategy for unstructured/otherwise busy students and it works until the exam (but not much after).
And you are… maybe in the sense that it always remains in your unconscious. But what use is that? Memory and learning is about being able to pull things out of the subconscious (unconcious?).
Look at any serious craft or activity where people have to learn things. They learn by doing. Doing things as realistically as possible is better. And doing-learning also transfers to talk/read-learning (discussing how to do something). Meanwhile talk/read-learning does not transfer to doing-learning as much.
Frankly our culture overrates book-learning. By a long shot. This might not seem the case because now frequent long-form reading can be regarded as a practically monastic activity, what with all the stupid alternatives we have at our disposal. But book reading and learning hardly ever directly translates to practical learning.
This attitude (of Emerson’s) sounds like Behavioralism. That you’re whatever input you have processed. I find Chomsky’s Nativism and Rationalism to be more compelling. Consider a socialist who reads 500 liberal think tank pieces. He’s more likely to either be as socialist by the end or more (double-down effect).
> I have to constantly remind myself of this. Especially in an environment that prioritizes optimizing and maximizing personal productivity, where it seems if you can’t measure (let alone remember) the impact of a book in your life then it wasn’t worth reading.
This for sure is a problem if you have set some goal of reading one book every week. But that goal is borne out of that exact same Optimization Mindset. Most people don’t fret over how many Good Words pass by their eyes in a year.
[1] the book Make it Stick