491–500 of 980 posts
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I can like a book without agreeing with it.
And have it change your life?
Yes, a literary work can both be life-changing and not something you agree with.
EG:
I do not at all agree with Marx. Me and others reading his works changed my life irrevocably. Ditto for Hitler.
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Dunno, testing people like that is such an incredibly unhealthy and misguided way to talk to people that I have a very hard time thinking I'm missing out here. Maybe that's just me though
Yeah, it's likely that the two of you wouldn't get along. I think that's the point, though. They want to associate with people who would respond with curiosity to a controversial statement, you don't want anything to do with someone who likes Atlas Shrugged and you aren't interested to know more. The filter worked and neither of you waste your time!
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I read this and didn't find it all that interesting, although it was quite funny in parts. I'm curious to know what you found amazing about it?
The idea that entertainment could be all engrossing and some forms of entertainment addictively destructive to our well-being? That we could have cameras in video conferences but would want them effectively off? It was delightfully/scarily prescient in some ways.
I see a lot about David Foster Wallace and "it meant a lot to me personally at once time" but very little about its objective merits (which are real to be clear).
Its premise is extremely simple (simplistic even) and you can boil it down to “just listen to people”. But it did affect me - maybe because it finally made it “click” how humans work.
And further more, I did recommend it to my friends, and whoever managed to actually read it, changed too, sometimes literally overnight.
Honestly it was incredible to witness people who used to be jerks to transform into thoughtful and tolerant people right in front of my eyes.
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> I think you're dismissing the people such as myself that would note you as an idiot without comment and move on wanting nothing to do with you. > Edit: tests ... with people you just met is an ineffective way to navigate the world. My 2c Do you see the irony here? I wouldn't personally run the kind of test OP is running, but I think that even in your case the test succeeded: they've successfully separated themselve…
> If they react inappropriately, I'll be cordial and treat them with respect, but I don't want to be friends. If they're way too supportive - the same rule applies. > Really, I'm just looking for people who won't jump down my throat on a faux pas. I think when cactacea says "huh, ok", this is neither inappropriate, or "jumping down someone's throat", or being "way too supportive" -- so I think by tb_technical's state…
If someone silently puts OP in a bucket and never reaches out again, the end goal is still achieved.
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It’s on my to-read list, but starting is daunting. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (the essay collection) was amazing. I think about it often.
Read a physical copy. Use two bookmarks, one for the footnotes. Read until the toothbrush photo before thinking about putting it down.
its a wonderful read but sometimes dfw just seems unecessarily hostile to the reader.
"The best book I've ever read was Atlas Shrugged in 8th grade. Changed my life." Not because I remember anything about it, or believe anything it espouses, or even like it all that much, but because it's a useful filter for obnoxious people in meatspace. If someone I don't know too well asks me what my favorite book is, I say Atlas Shrugged. If they react inappropriately, I'll be cordial and treat them with respect,…
Man, what an ass way of choosing your friends... I doubt it's optimal.
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a better strategy would be a follow-up question on how it changed their life i'm with the parent commenter here as i find your response very much telling on how you evaluate things and frankly, more idiotic than someone's life being changed, even by the "intended" interpretation of the book e.g. would you say that everyone who liked / was influenced by reading "mein kampf" is a nazi?
yes pretty much or at least a wanna be one. Who start reading "mein kampf" beside scholar anyway?
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Yeah, it's likely that the two of you wouldn't get along. I think that's the point, though. They want to associate with people who would respond with curiosity to a controversial statement, you don't want anything to do with someone who likes Atlas Shrugged and you aren't interested to know more. The filter worked and neither of you waste your time!
I think that is a bit of a misunderstanding of where I'm coming from here. Their assumption is that there is a limited subset of reasons why someone would not engage on this specific topic. I pointed out another that they may not have considered since this requires an assumption of intent that is unwarranted and in my opinion, unwise to make.
> I know they can either tolerate ideas they hate
Your explanation:
> would note you as an idiot without comment and move on
Maybe I'm also misunderstanding what you're trying to communicate, but it sure sounds to me like your motivations are exactly what they're trying to filter out of their life.
If you are still hungry, Propaganda by Eduard Bernays would be the second.