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Read to forget

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Re: Read to forget

#31

Post by tombert »

kenanfyi wrote: post #30

This does not sound realistic for work in academia or technical stuff. In fact there are some techniques to read a technical paper. I never read a paper just once an move on. An abstract says a lot if a paper worths reading and after that I skim that quickly. Then I skim again more deeper a day or so later. Only after that I read it throughly and take notes. On taking notes/highlighting I agree with the author. A gen…

I read papers depth-first recursively. I read the abstract and see how much I understand. If there's a lot of stuff I don't understand, I hop down to the references, find one of those papers, and try again. I do this until I get to a paper I more or less understand and bubble upwards.

I take pretty aggressive notes in Obsidian for each paper [1], which carries the benefit of being able to MediaWiki-tag definitions as I find them and build up a dictionary of terms I can reference.

I've never really seen the point of highlighting, it takes zero comprehension of the material to rub a marker over a page. I try my best to summarize each paragraph into a bullet. I figure that if I can summarize stuff accurately, I at least have some understanding of the material, and again this builds up a repository of notes I can read later (though I rarely do because I usually have a decent enough memory of the source material afterward).

Some day I will start sharing my archive of paper summaries for the world to not-actually-read, though I can't right now because they're kind of intermingled with personal notes that will take some time in order to decorrelate.

[1] I have actually been experimenting with Logseq lately, and I use Codex to synchronize back to Obsidian for the time being.

Re: Read to forget

#32

Post by euvin »

admiralrohan wrote: post #3

I found it more useful to read more books than read one book again and again. This helps me to reinforce the same concept from different angles. Our brain is a pattern matching machine, and it automatically picks up related concepts.

That's true, and it's also the reason why it's so important to ensure your information diet is of high quality. Any concept (especially harmful or radical ones) can be reinforced.

I had to learn this lesson a long while ago when I realized many sites I casually browsed were injecting and repeating many dark thoughts that weren't truly reflective of reality. I've been way more careful of my daily intake and the groups I associate with ever since.

Re: Read to forget

#33

Post by jrrrp »

tombert wrote: post #31
kenanfyi wrote: post #30

This does not sound realistic for work in academia or technical stuff. In fact there are some techniques to read a technical paper. I never read a paper just once an move on. An abstract says a lot if a paper worths reading and after that I skim that quickly. Then I skim again more deeper a day or so later. Only after that I read it throughly and take notes. On taking notes/highlighting I agree with the author. A gen…

I read papers depth-first recursively. I read the abstract and see how much I understand. If there's a lot of stuff I don't understand, I hop down to the references, find one of those papers, and try again. I do this until I get to a paper I more or less understand and bubble upwards. I take pretty aggressive notes in Obsidian for each paper [1], which carries the benefit of being able to MediaWiki-tag definitions as…

I highlight as a way to categorize my annotations. I highlight in Zotero as I go, and in the highlight's comment section briefly jot down why (e.g. something to follow up on, or whether this reminded me of something else it contrasts with). I dedicate a certain colour to "background references I should have", another to ~ "things I disagree with" etc., which I find useful when coming back over the paper to type up my notes.

In a sense the highlighting is just a way to localize my thoughts to a particular passage of the text, and the colours (or even highlighting at all) are secondary.

There's some considerable duplication of effort (notes in Zotero, then I type up notes in Obsidian, then also extract out some of those ideas into their own files). But, much like the recent posts about "outsourcing thinking" and GP noting that people sometimes do nothing with their highlights, I find that the work is useful for understanding and remembering.

Out of interest, why have you been considering Logseq?

Re: Read to forget

#34

Post by tombert »

jrrrp wrote: post #33
tombert wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read papers depth-first recursively. I read the abstract and see how much I understand. If there's a lot of stuff I don't understand, I hop down to the references, find one of those papers, and try again. I do this until I get to a paper I more or less understand and bubble upwards. I take pretty aggressive notes in Obsidian for each paper [1], which carries the benefit of being able to MediaWiki-tag definitions as…

I highlight as a way to categorize my annotations. I highlight in Zotero as I go, and in the highlight's comment section briefly jot down why (e.g. something to follow up on, or whether this reminded me of something else it contrasts with). I dedicate a certain colour to "background references I should have", another to ~ "things I disagree with" etc., which I find useful when coming back over the paper to type up my…

> Out of interest, why have you been considering Logseq?

Primarily because it's FOSS; I love Obsidian (I even pay for it) but I have to consider the possibility that they'll be bullshit and start charging for stuff or start restricting things arbitrarily. If Logseq becomes bullshit then I (or someone else) can fork it and maintain/grow it. It's also written in ClojureScript, so legally I have to kind of like it :).

I've also kind of grown to like the way that the "unit" of Logseq is the "block" instead of the "page". Pages are more about aggregation than "units" of information, and as a result of this I find that the graph view is actually useful, instead of just something pretty in Obsidian.

There are some things I really don't like about Logseq (the lack of proper Vim keystrokes being a big one for me), but one of my biggest pet peeves is when people try software for five minutes, make zero effort to understand what the application is actually trying to do, give up, and declare the software as "bad". I felt like that's what happened with Gnome Shell, for example.

I will likely eventually go back to Obsidian, but I figured that I should give Logseq a fair shake, and it's different enough from Obsidian that I felt it's only fair to spend a few weeks properly learning it.

Re: Read to forget

#35

Post by treetalker »

hungmung wrote: post #29

Reminds me of one of my favorite stories, from Phaedrus : > Now the king of all Egypt at that time was the god Thamus, who lived in the great city of the upper region, which the Greeks call the Egyptian Thebes, and they call the god himself Ammon. To him came Theuth to show his inventions, saying that they ought to be imparted to the other Egyptians. But Thamus asked what use there was in each, and as Theuth enumerat…

Whenever I read this parable, I take memory to mean internalization or thorough learning. It doesn't fit the text word for word, but I think it's closer to the main point than the idea of memorizing something verbatim.

Re: Read to forget

#36

Post by jrrrp »

tombert wrote: post #34
jrrrp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highlight as a way to categorize my annotations. I highlight in Zotero as I go, and in the highlight's comment section briefly jot down why (e.g. something to follow up on, or whether this reminded me of something else it contrasts with). I dedicate a certain colour to "background references I should have", another to ~ "things I disagree with" etc., which I find useful when coming back over the paper to type up my…

> Out of interest, why have you been considering Logseq? Primarily because it's FOSS; I love Obsidian (I even pay for it) but I have to consider the possibility that they'll be bullshit and start charging for stuff or start restricting things arbitrarily. If Logseq becomes bullshit then I (or someone else) can fork it and maintain/grow it. It's also written in ClojureScript, so legally I have to kind of like it :). I…

That sounds fair enough, I'd be interested in reading your thoughts at a later date on the experience!

Re: Read to forget

#37

Post by tonyarkles »

skinkestek wrote: post #27
cantor_S_drug wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such statements are profound and vacuous, vapid because it holds for many other areas. I cannot remember all the naughty movies I have seen even though they made me ......

> I cannot remember all the naughty movies I have seen even though they made me ...... Exactly.

Honestly, I actually take OP’s somewhat flippant remark as a very real counterpoint to both the article and to the Emerson quote: be careful what you consume, lest you become it. I have met people whose core sexuality is obviously shaped by porn, I’ve met people who eat unhealthy food every day and are surprised that they’re unhealthy, and I’ve met people who read/watch a ton of useless shit and it subconsciously or consciously starts to shape their identity and beliefs, even if they don’t start out believing what they’re reading/watching.

Re: Read to forget

#38

Post by tombert »

jrrrp wrote: post #36
tombert wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Out of interest, why have you been considering Logseq? Primarily because it's FOSS; I love Obsidian (I even pay for it) but I have to consider the possibility that they'll be bullshit and start charging for stuff or start restricting things arbitrarily. If Logseq becomes bullshit then I (or someone else) can fork it and maintain/grow it. It's also written in ClojureScript, so legally I have to kind of like it :). I…

That sounds fair enough, I'd be interested in reading your thoughts at a later date on the experience!

I've been gradually updating this post [1] if you want to follow along. It's in a fairly rough state (all good blog posts require multiple rewrites and I haven't done that), but you are welcome to follow along as I compile stuff.

[1] https://blog.tombert.com/Posts/Technical/September-2025/Tryi...

Re: Read to forget

#40

Post by sevensor »

tombert wrote: post #31
kenanfyi wrote: post #30

This does not sound realistic for work in academia or technical stuff. In fact there are some techniques to read a technical paper. I never read a paper just once an move on. An abstract says a lot if a paper worths reading and after that I skim that quickly. Then I skim again more deeper a day or so later. Only after that I read it throughly and take notes. On taking notes/highlighting I agree with the author. A gen…

I read papers depth-first recursively. I read the abstract and see how much I understand. If there's a lot of stuff I don't understand, I hop down to the references, find one of those papers, and try again. I do this until I get to a paper I more or less understand and bubble upwards. I take pretty aggressive notes in Obsidian for each paper [1], which carries the benefit of being able to MediaWiki-tag definitions as…

I read the abstract and skim the intro before committing to a read. The authors have to convince me that they know the field, they think they’ve done something interesting, and I think what they’ve done is plausible. If it passes that bar, I assume the most adversarial possible mindset and look for holes in their methods. If their methods are junk, I may skim the conclusion just to see what kind of unfounded nonsense to watch out for in the future, but otherwise I’m done, and really most papers are done at this point. Papers in my field are mostly bogus, unfortunately. Every now and then, somebody uses plausible methods, and only then do I really bother to sit down and read the whole thing.
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