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How You Know

paulgraham.com

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Re: How You Know

#41

Post by sbensu »

lmkg wrote: post #27
sbensu wrote: post #13

I experienced this phenomenon starkly when I started a book, and felt it was filled with obvious remarks and little novelty. It took me 50 pages to realize I had already read it.

This is the primary downside of reading without a bookmark. Any book I've read on public transportation, I would guess on average each page gets read about twice (with some chapter intros reaching double-digits). It's hard to figure out if it's really something you've read before, or if it's just a very logical continuation of what you read yesterday. I also feel obligated to one-up you. One time in high school Engli…

that is a great story!

I saw the book at my friends house and thought it looked interesting. After borrowing and reading 50 pages I realized I had it in my shelf.

Re: How You Know

#42

Post by agentultra »

sbensu wrote: post #15

The problems is figuring out which books provide those useful mental models. I found that fiction usually doesn't but a list with recommendations in the comments would be great.

A good article on the importance of fiction from a scientifically validated point of view: http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/04/28/why-fiction-good...

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury L'Etranger - Albert Camus Frankenstein - Mary Shelley Metamorphosis - Ovid Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood The Picadilly Papers - Charles Dickens Permutation City - Greg Egan

Fiction allows us to experience the most intimate thoughts of people we've never met in a way we cannot emulate in reality. We can visit places we've never been to and experience situations we'd try our best to avoid. We sit for hours hallucinating vividly reading these stories as we download these characters, concepts, and ideas into our meat. And if the story resonated with us we walk away a different person: new connections in our synapses, reinforced signals in existing ones. Stories are one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal; perhaps even more so than mathematics or computation.

Re: How You Know

#43

Post by gatehouse »

arjunnarayan wrote: post #19
nilkn wrote: post #10

There's also a danger associated to this phenomenon. If the source of your mental model is later debunked, you may not realize that you need to revise your model precisely because you don't remember what your source was. You may even read about the debunking of the source but fail to draw the connection and realize the implications that it has for your own view of the world. I think that perhaps very squishy subjects…

This is an important corollary of Paul's essay that I wish he mentioned. Sometimes when you update your model of the world significantly, you still have a cache of previously computed facts that were computed using the old model. You have to clear out that cache and recompute with the new model, and that takes a significant amount of time. Often, rereading is a core part of that, since it forces you to revisit a lot…

For an example of this, ask yourself: What is the world population?

The longer it has been since you checked, the further off the number will be.

https://www.google.com/search?q=world+population

Re: How You Know

#44

Post by drawkbox »

The idea of compilation without the source is a great way to put it. A beginners mind is a good way to look at things and learn. With a beginners mindset when needed, maybe temporarily you can recompile portions to take down the filters and walls in your current binaries, with that mindset maybe you can update and refresh from the basics.

Re: How You Know

#45

Post by temuze »

ctchocula wrote: post #24

I really enjoyed Paul's compilation analogy. It reminds me of a quote by Robertson Davies. "A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight." It also reminds me of that MIT paper that gives advice on how to do research. The part it talks about why it is that when your colleague gives you a paper to rea…

Yeah, his analogy extends to art pretty well. Let's say we use Tolstoy's definition of art, that art is about communicating a feeling to others via a medium.

There are times in our lives where our state of mind makes us more likely to be moved by a piece of art.

It's why you should revisit your favorite books from your youth - you'll often find the same words mean completely different things later on.

Re: How You Know

#46

Post by not_that_noob »

nilkn wrote: post #10

There's also a danger associated to this phenomenon. If the source of your mental model is later debunked, you may not realize that you need to revise your model precisely because you don't remember what your source was. You may even read about the debunking of the source but fail to draw the connection and realize the implications that it has for your own view of the world. I think that perhaps very squishy subjects…

In practice, people rarely if ever revise their mental model as the world around them changes. Which is why a younger generation without this baggage inevitably rises to supplant the older one.

Re: How You Know

#47

Post by sbensu »

agentultra wrote: post #42
sbensu wrote: post #15

The problems is figuring out which books provide those useful mental models. I found that fiction usually doesn't but a list with recommendations in the comments would be great.

A good article on the importance of fiction from a scientifically validated point of view: http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/04/28/why-fiction-good... Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury L'Etranger - Albert Camus Frankenstein - Mary Shelley Metamorphosis - Ovid Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood The Picadilly Papers - Charles Dickens Permutation City - Greg Egan Fiction allows us to experience the most intimate thoughts…

I agree that good fiction book can be an eye opener. I'll give the ones from you list I haven't read a try. By non-fiction I didn't only mean science but also historic novels and biographies. I find they come with connections and lessons that no human could have come up with.

Re: How You Know

#48

Post by skaplun »

ColinDabritz wrote: post #32
nilkn wrote: post #10

There's also a danger associated to this phenomenon. If the source of your mental model is later debunked, you may not realize that you need to revise your model precisely because you don't remember what your source was. You may even read about the debunking of the source but fail to draw the connection and realize the implications that it has for your own view of the world. I think that perhaps very squishy subjects…

Over time, my 'urban legend' bullshit detector has been refined, and is much improved from earlier in my life. I have, on a few occasions, found myself relating some 'fact' or 'story' and realized immediately that it was likely an urban legend. Both times, the detector was right, and a quick search cleared it up. I wonder if there is a good way to intentionally 'paw through' your repository on purposes, and apply you…

very interesting

Re: How You Know

#49

Post by Gravityloss »

lmkg wrote: post #27
sbensu wrote: post #13

I experienced this phenomenon starkly when I started a book, and felt it was filled with obvious remarks and little novelty. It took me 50 pages to realize I had already read it.

This is the primary downside of reading without a bookmark. Any book I've read on public transportation, I would guess on average each page gets read about twice (with some chapter intros reaching double-digits). It's hard to figure out if it's really something you've read before, or if it's just a very logical continuation of what you read yesterday. I also feel obligated to one-up you. One time in high school Engli…

Weird. I always notice from the first sentence or so if I've already read a page, so it's relatively quick to find the page I was at with binary search...

Re: How You Know

#50

Post by d0m »

> Intriguingly, this implication isn't limited to books.

We can see it clearly with the functional paradigm renaissance right now. The same arguments already existed 40 years ago, but _something_ changed recently where the perception of some people toward functional paradigm completely changed.

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