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Writing by hand is good for your brain

nealstephenson.substack.com

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Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#571

Post by yurimo »

Diogenesian wrote: post #74
postalcoder wrote: post #20

A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up! Don’t be precious with them. Destroy the spine so it’s easier to read, fold pages, write the important stuff inside the front cover of the book. Cross out stuff you disagree with, draw a big circles around the stuff that resonates. Not only does it make consumption a lot more engaging, it makes a revisit of that book extremely rewarding. Don’t get caught up tr…

I buy used books: it sucks to see someone else's notes scribbled all over the page. It's like a really annoying guy whispering at you with vapid explanations while you're trying to pay attention to a lecture. "Cross out stuff you disagree with" actually makes me sick. It also seems useless for understanding and retention, since highlighting is almost always misleading and margin notes are almost always empty. If you…

Or use sticky notes! My friend annotated her favorite book with notes for me and it was awesome.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#574

Post by calf »

podocarp wrote: post #522
crdrost wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct that the reference is a little obscure -- if my memory serves it's Plato's Phaedrus . Plato argues, in a book, in the voice of his mentor Socrates, that books will destroy knowledge. And the reason is precisely to do with the thing that Socrates is famous for, his Socratic Method of asking his students (or rival politicians or anyone) questions about what they claimed to know, engaging them in a real…

That's actually kind of very similar to a passage in Zhuang Zi (ancient Chinese philosopher). He recounts this tale about a king and a wheel maker. The wheel maker asks what the king is doing, and the king proclaims he is reading. The wheel maker then goes on to inform the king how those books are just the trash of the ancients, and how he could not teach his son how to make a proper wheel, and the art "comes from th…

They weren't though. Socratic method was a singular argument and should not be confused with the argument in Chinese culture. As a Chinese American I literally hear the Zhuang Zi type argument in lay discourse and I would argue its legacy has been a strain of antiintellectualism in secular Chinese culture, e.g. whenever people say books are not necessary or book knowledge is not "real life" knowledge is a sentiment you hear from older Chinese, Hong Kong or Taiwan parents. It is very damaging and anti-intellectual. The Socratic idea is a very different argument because in Phaedrus the argument (as I recall from my undergrad critical theory class reading this text) is that through dialectic comes truth which is a discursive argument, not an argument that truth is learned from hands-on or religious experience.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#575

Post by calf »

crdrost wrote: post #393
calf wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok then please explain why Socrates is better than margin notes for an assumed purpose, because that is not reasonable common knowledge. If by that you meant to suggest that for formal study, some kind of self-review process combined with cold written practice/rehearsal sustained under interleaved spacing, then that is likely the gold standard for comprehension and memorization. But most people don't even know that,…

You are correct that the reference is a little obscure -- if my memory serves it's Plato's Phaedrus . Plato argues, in a book, in the voice of his mentor Socrates, that books will destroy knowledge. And the reason is precisely to do with the thing that Socrates is famous for, his Socratic Method of asking his students (or rival politicians or anyone) questions about what they claimed to know, engaging them in a real…

Yeah but Phaedrus was an implicit critique of Socrates so I don't buy the idea of taking Socratic approach at face value (and then in the 20th century many critical interpetations of Phaedrus in turn). A lot has happened since that time that has complexified notions of learning, and it strikes me as idiosyncratic to of the OP to cite Socrates as the solution instead. It is like ignoring the rest of the extant literature, including scientific literature on pedagogy and cognition, why do that? It is not justifiable from a STEM pov.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#576

Post by braedon-dev »

dhosek wrote: post #519

On the gadget front, I really love the paperlike screen protector for the iPad. This combined with the Apple Pencil made a huge difference in the usability of my iPad for writing/drawing. I still prefer to write on paper, but it’s really great for things like my writing group where we generally meet over zoom & I can give the author a marked up manuscript (with multicolor notes). I’m also opposed to getting too preci…

[flagged]

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#577

Post by ksenzee »

dhosek wrote: post #519

On the gadget front, I really love the paperlike screen protector for the iPad. This combined with the Apple Pencil made a huge difference in the usability of my iPad for writing/drawing. I still prefer to write on paper, but it’s really great for things like my writing group where we generally meet over zoom & I can give the author a marked up manuscript (with multicolor notes). I’m also opposed to getting too preci…

The cursive thing is almost certainly because he's using fountain pens. Pencils and ballpoint pens lend themselves to printing more easily, because they require pressure to write, and when you let the pressure up between letters, the line stops. The first time I picked up a fountain pen and tried printing with it, I found all my letters were connecting whether I meant them to or not, and I suddenly understood why cursive exists. Everyone who's learned cursive in the ballpoint pen era has been unwittingly taught a performance optimization for a tool they're not using.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#578

Post by AllegedAlec »

jskherman wrote: post #444
john_strinlai wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was funny seeing this right below the comment saying " I _love_ buying a used book and finding a previous reader's notes in the margins. It's the greatest. ". different strokes. if you want to ensure you don't get sick from a line being crossed out, buy new.

Well not everyone has the privilege to buy new books, especially course-mandated books that the professor "coincidentally" wrote and costs hundreds of dollars. I would even say that "crossing out lines you disagree with" is vandalism because a book can always be read by others and come to a different conclusion and debate in their mind from there. Why treat books as disposable mind scaffolds when they can be used aga…

> Well not everyone has the privilege to buy new books, especially course-mandated books that the professor "coincidentally" wrote and costs hundreds of dollars.

Do you even understand what you sound like? "Writing in something you own is vandalism because poor people".

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#579

Post by hyperadvanced »

Diogenesian wrote: post #74
postalcoder wrote: post #20

A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up! Don’t be precious with them. Destroy the spine so it’s easier to read, fold pages, write the important stuff inside the front cover of the book. Cross out stuff you disagree with, draw a big circles around the stuff that resonates. Not only does it make consumption a lot more engaging, it makes a revisit of that book extremely rewarding. Don’t get caught up tr…

I buy used books: it sucks to see someone else's notes scribbled all over the page. It's like a really annoying guy whispering at you with vapid explanations while you're trying to pay attention to a lecture. "Cross out stuff you disagree with" actually makes me sick. It also seems useless for understanding and retention, since highlighting is almost always misleading and margin notes are almost always empty. If you…

Crossing out things you disagree with is the most insane part of this. You should highlight or comment those if you’re going to mark the book up at all.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#580

Post by shanghuankk »

dhosek wrote: post #519

On the gadget front, I really love the paperlike screen protector for the iPad. This combined with the Apple Pencil made a huge difference in the usability of my iPad for writing/drawing. I still prefer to write on paper, but it’s really great for things like my writing group where we generally meet over zoom & I can give the author a marked up manuscript (with multicolor notes). I’m also opposed to getting too preci…

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