201–210 of 290 posts
I read a fair amount and I actually do research as leisure all the time, but I can’t stand these elitist and unoriginal think pieces about how much better and cooler this person’s habits are than yours. >> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the discipline’s foundational texts I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia aesthetic fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior to ever…
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> You’ve been siding with Russia since 1776? Huh? In most senses of "siding with," I don't think that this statement has really been true for this broad a sweep of US history.
To say I misread your original comment would be an understatement, my apologies.
I read a fair amount and I actually do research as leisure all the time, but I can’t stand these elitist and unoriginal think pieces about how much better and cooler this person’s habits are than yours. >> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the discipline’s foundational texts I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia aesthetic fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior to ever…
Books are dense on info (assuming its not a churned out book which are also a problem now with self publishing) the internet tends to be full of fluff and greatly increases the time that I spend sifting rather than just learning and researching. My best purchase in the last couple years is a 10.3" ebook reader. Technical subject books don't work well on smaller readers and it makes a huge difference in quality of my personal development/research/learning.
I do agree that right now LLM's can help you a lot when you are starting on especially on a subject you know little about. However this will absolutely be poisoned over time because marketing will always creep in until it dominates the HTTP source. There is simply too much money to be made jamming a product in someones face no matter how subtle over providing impartial information when it comes to HTTP. The subtle ads are the most insidious because they can often waste lots of your time without you realizing it. Sometimes for years if you don't realize you were evangelized rather than educated.
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I think people are confused by the definitions of primary/secondary sources. As an example, almost all textbooks are actually secondary sources. The primary source may be a journal article. And yes, often, those secondary sources are far superior than the primary sources. Insisting on reading all those journal articles as opposed to a good textbook is simply indulging in a fetish, IMO.
> I think people are confused by the definitions of primary/secondary sources. Sorry: Primary - the actual evidence. The actual letter written by Jefferson; the ice core itself, etc. For example, if you are an historian writing about Jefferson, you actually travel to the archive and read Jefferson's letters and look through the other papers, etc. - the actual stuff. Secondary - the journal article, the scholarly book…
In historical research at least having a primary source like the "actual letter written by Jefferson" is often rare and only found in more modern historical sources preserved by stable institutions. A great example is the Library of Baghdad where we know many texts existed but we still don't know the breadth of all the available texts nor their contents.
Did that population do all that much in-depth research. Some sure. Not all that much.
So there was perhaps an anomaly in research for a short while and we are now back to deeper research belonging again to the people who enjoy the rabbit hole and the full fledged projects. And for us, research has never been easier.
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I think you're generally right about the OP, but I don't see your alternative method as a tonic to the problem the author is discussing. I agree that treating reading as the only way to ingest information is probably wrong, and that the original post tends towards hierarchy in an almost reactionary way, yet at the same time I also see that many people tend to ingest information from other forms of media less critical…
> I agree that treating reading as the only way to ingest information is probably wrong The good news is that not only does the "private researcher" (curious individual person without a research background or job) nowadays have the ability to read online in far-removed libraries, they are even empowered to download the data of many studies, fire up their Jupyter notebooks to replicate some work. The danger is that so…
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Similar to other commenters I disagree. You can definitely read without parsing and just “move on”. Or accept a superficial understanding and fail to see the deeper point. Philosophy might be a good domain to see this happen with - read the words but don’t parse the meaning.
> Similar to other commenters I disagree. You can definitely read without parsing and just “move on”. What do you disagree with? Nobody said that reading makes you immune to moving on without understanding. What they said was that while reading it is possible to pause if you don't understand something and move on when you are ready to move on. That's harder to do in videos or lectures. Do you disagree with this?
“if I don't understand I cannot move on to next step”.
I disagree that you can not move on. You definitely can. So your statement about what “nobody said” contradicts what was actually said.
I started reading history as a hobby a few years after college when I heard some things from people that just didn’t make sense or didn’t seem true. So I picked up a booked that was well cited, read it while checking the citations after each chapter. Between the Library of Congress and Google, checking original sources has never been easier. It was a really mind blowing exercise. Much more interesting than fiction. W…
Curious, what events are documented in the bible that correspond to actual historical events? Does it have good historical accuracy for the time it was written? (forgive my ignorance, I have never read the bible) Have you read Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore? I admit I didn't finish it, but what I did read was very interesting. Although I admittedly didn't fact check it.
My gut feeling (with bias) is that most people don't think about things around them because society is in a constant state of hurry. If someone is wondering 'how did zoning laws came to be?', they are not being productive. And our western society seems to value the individuals based on how much they produce. The person working, or commuting to/from work, is tired and doesn't have the energy to ponder about the world…
It's not that they are too stupid, but they don't even __try__ to think.
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I cannot say what works for other people. For me, unless I’m reading with my eyeballs, taking notes, and working examples, I’m not really convinced I’m learning anything difficult.
disagree. You just have to actively listen, and cannot let your mind wander. you can also read and have no idea what you just read if you let your mind wander. Currently learning spanish via a podcast and its very effective, I just have to pause and rewind constantly to make sure I fully understand whats going on