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Fighting Infomania: Why 80% of Your Reading Is a Waste of Time (2016)

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Re: Fighting Infomania: Why 80% of Your Reading Is a Waste of Time (2016)

#101

Post by jdougan »

kiba wrote: post #16

I think this is a shallow article. First, just in time manufacturing has the noted weakness of having no slack or resilience in the system. This is part of why we experienced supply chain disruption during the pandemic. Second, it is assuming that knowledge that's not being 'used' right now in production environment is useless. For example, the way people avoid scam and snake-oil medicine is not by directly knowing e…

This feels a lot like the old saying about advertising: "I know that half of my ads are a waste. I just don't know which half".

Re: Fighting Infomania: Why 80% of Your Reading Is a Waste of Time (2016)

#102

Post by int_19h »

Tycho wrote: post #93
BlueTemplar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be more about philosophical knowledge, not tactical knowledge ?? And on its face, seems to be wrong, care to expand ? (And even some of the greatest fiction might apply here, not only nonfiction, not sure if you were considering that too ?)

Well what I mean is that eventually one forgets most of what was in a book, and all you remember was whether the book was particularly good. I’m thinking more about literature. So who is better read, the professor who read all of Shakespeare, but thirty years ago, or the student who has only read a couple of plays, but recently, and in depth, and can talk about them fluently and connect the to other works they recent…

Speaking for myself, there are several dozen books that I've read several times, and a few with double digit numbers. It's not just a function of that, of course, but also how memorable the book is to you... but it's certainly possible to remember a book so well that even thirty years later you can still do a coherent retelling of it.

Re: Fighting Infomania: Why 80% of Your Reading Is a Waste of Time (2016)

#104

Post by abenga »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #99
g9yuayon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why people find studying fundamentals in school useless. And I don't think ChatGPT is the answer to in-depth learning. My experience is that it is the fundamentals that are the most valuable that a college can give to its students. A smart person can learn anything on her own, but for an ordinary student like me, what school teaches is invaluable as it is so hard to learn such fundamentals on my own. A f…

> And I don't think ChatGPT is the answer to in-depth learning. I think ChatGPT is perfect for learning. Specifically because if you don't get something, you can keep asking it infinitely without worrying about seeming stupid. You could never do something like that in a classroom. Perhaps you could do it if your parents hired a special tutor with infinite patience for you. In school my main issue was - my mind wander…

> I think ChatGPT is perfect for learning.

I usually get stuck on "trust whatever it says". Maybe I'm wrong, but I find myself unable to get over the hump of trust in generated text at all. I shudder to think of the coming decades when a large portion of available information online is created from such systems.

Re: Fighting Infomania: Why 80% of Your Reading Is a Waste of Time (2016)

#105

Post by hintymad »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #99
g9yuayon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why people find studying fundamentals in school useless. And I don't think ChatGPT is the answer to in-depth learning. My experience is that it is the fundamentals that are the most valuable that a college can give to its students. A smart person can learn anything on her own, but for an ordinary student like me, what school teaches is invaluable as it is so hard to learn such fundamentals on my own. A f…

> And I don't think ChatGPT is the answer to in-depth learning. I think ChatGPT is perfect for learning. Specifically because if you don't get something, you can keep asking it infinitely without worrying about seeming stupid. You could never do something like that in a classroom. Perhaps you could do it if your parents hired a special tutor with infinite patience for you. In school my main issue was - my mind wander…

I think there's a substantial difference between "Hey ChatGPT, could you explain Maxwell's Equations" and reading Jackson's textbook and solving the problem sets on the book.

Re: Fighting Infomania: Why 80% of Your Reading Is a Waste of Time (2016)

#106

Post by mklepaczewski »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #66
kiba wrote: post #16

I think this is a shallow article. First, just in time manufacturing has the noted weakness of having no slack or resilience in the system. This is part of why we experienced supply chain disruption during the pandemic. Second, it is assuming that knowledge that's not being 'used' right now in production environment is useless. For example, the way people avoid scam and snake-oil medicine is not by directly knowing e…

I've only read the first part of the article, but something struck me here: : Over the next 6 months, I read 30+ books on entrepreneurship, startups, marketing, “growth hacking,” and everything tangentially related I could find. And that doesn’t include the countless blog posts, articles, reddit threads, and whatever else I could get my hands on. : A good plan, right? No, 80% of it was a waste of time, and most peopl…

Overall, I agree. However:

: A good plan, right? No, 80% of it was a waste of time, and most people make the same mistake with how they consume information every day.

>Well, yes, because a great deal would be repeated even on tangential subjects as the authors aren't necessarily assuming you've read anything else on the topic.

I also read a lot of these books and I can confirm that 70-80% of the content is unnecessary. It's mostly the author boasting about how great they or their methods are and stories about someone who implemented the method successfully. It seems that every book has to hit 200/300+ pages mark. Most of the content is just filler.

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