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Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

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Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#111

Post by ingvay7 »

joeguilmette wrote: post #79
titanomachy wrote: post #43

Thank you for this. I sorted the "technology" and "science" sections and saw a few excellent books that I've read and a few that I would really like to read. This motivates me to start setting aside "reading time" again every day, since I've lost that habit. The recent "society & culture" books gave me some good book club ideas. Bug report: filtering by "award" appears to be broken for some awards. If I select Pulitz…

I recently did this! I fixed my phone habit and my TV habit, and I just read no, the family has silent reading parties instead of movie night. Here’s what I did: 1. Install Jomo on the phone. There are other apps, but basically it makes me wait 5s before I can open a brainrot app, and then I can only use it for 5min, and every time I do this I have to wait an additional 5s. It resets at midnight. This introduces the…

Thanks for sharing jomo. My hack has been to read on my kindle while standing or even walking short repetitive steps (in surroundings or patterns where I can't hurt myself). This has been a game changer while waiting for kids soccer games to get done, lines in the mall, baggage claim etc. It also helps me avoid sedentary reading while sitting.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#112

Post by ahartman00 »

m463 wrote: post #20
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #12

I would bet that how your brain stores information that you read from long-form text is very different from how it stores information you acquire from chatting with an LLM. When I read something challenging or new to me I spend a lot of time thinking about how what I'm reading matches my own experiences or knowledge. Although I'm a fairly fast reader, it often takes me a long time to get through difficult pages since…

I listen to audiobooks while I walk and hike, and sometimes when I recall some particular thing I've learned, I can also recall where I was hiking when I heard it. I think there's a lot to learn on how we really process information.

"when events are represented in memory, contextual information is stored along with memory targets; the context can therefore cue memories containing that contextual information" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-dependent_memory

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#113

Post by philips »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #10

My bona-fides here amount to little more than being a big time reader of non-fiction. But IMO, there's a nice synthesis here. Rather than going long rounds of asking LLMs about a subject, I usually end up asking it for book recommendations. It's much better than a google search and you can push it into some deep corners if you go past the surface level recs. You can get quite specific. You can find texts you wouldn't…

I did this for a recent trip! I asked books related to or authored in the places I was visiting. Found some interesting titles.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#114

Post by justinnk »

m463 wrote: post #20
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #12

I would bet that how your brain stores information that you read from long-form text is very different from how it stores information you acquire from chatting with an LLM. When I read something challenging or new to me I spend a lot of time thinking about how what I'm reading matches my own experiences or knowledge. Although I'm a fairly fast reader, it often takes me a long time to get through difficult pages since…

I listen to audiobooks while I walk and hike, and sometimes when I recall some particular thing I've learned, I can also recall where I was hiking when I heard it. I think there's a lot to learn on how we really process information.

I once heard a lecture about „learning how to learn“. There are already a lot of well-researched things one can exploit about the way we process information. What you describe is known as retrieval cue. Our minds seem to be associative^1. It also seems a lot of the learning/processing happens after the actual learning process, which is why resting is important. Spaced repitition is a further method well-proven in practice.

^1 In the early days of AI, the concept of Hebbian learning was popular („neurons that fire together, wire together“). Its implementation is even simpler than gradient descent used today, but never caught on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#115

Post by theshackleford »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #99
theshackleford wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When interacting with LLMs it feels a lot more like I'm just receiving knowledge passively and I don't think it gets integrated as well. This sounds like it's more down to how the individual uses the tool. I am not someone who has even been particularly good at reading > learning the thing. I've only ever been capable of learning by doing and with capability to interrogate on the points I don't get. LLMs allow that…

> This sounds like it's more down to how the individual uses the tool. I genuinely agree with a lot of your comment but lines like this drive me crazy. Anytime somebody has a critique of AI, so many people hand wave away with “well you’re doing it wrong.” If we can just chalk up every negative thing with AI to “incorrect tool usage” then we’ll never honestly assess it.

I didn’t say they were using AI “wrong.” That’s a stronger claim than the one I made.

Their assessment was:

> When interacting with LLMs it feels a lot more like I'm just receiving knowledge passively and I don't think it gets integrated as well.

My point is that the passivity is not necessarily an inherent property of the tool. It depends heavily on an individual chooses to engage with the output.

Saying LLMs make learning passive is a bit like someone else saying books make learning passive because you can skim them without thinking. When we all know instead of reading a book passively you could in addition annotate it, question its claims, summarise it, test yourself, and ultimately apply what you learned. The medium permits both. The same is true of the output of an LLM. You'll get out what you put in and nothing more.

You can use it like a slot machine, repeatedly pulling the lever for another answer without reflecting on any of them. But the fact that a tool permits shallow engagement does not mean shallow engagement is the only option available to you.

That also doesn’t mean every criticism of AI should be dismissed as “incorrect tool usage.” AI has real limitations and deserves serious criticism, and I assure you, I am not popular with the AI hype bros for this reason. However we still need to distinguish between limitations of the tool and consequences of how someone uses it. Not every potentially negative experience is rooted entirely in the technology itself. Sometimes user behaviour is a significant part of the cause.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#116

Post by rincewind »

I'm not sure how I feel about "Entangled Life" on the first page of books in "science". Isn't that slop? I mean, it's pop-science bullshit, and it's based on feelgood extrapolation from a thin evidence base. Maybe that doesn't quite fit the definition of slop, but it's not a signal of quality for the rest of the list.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#117

Post by insane_dreamer »

Thank you! Wonderful idea, and very well executed. Useful discovery tool.

I understand your passion is non-fiction, but would be wonderful to have the equivalent for fiction, of which there is a great deal of excellent literature. Perhaps the same site could incorporate both fiction and non-fiction, with a filter?

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#118

Post by gabriben »

Thanks for this! I've been looking for a good book on the Spanish Civil War, in either Spanish or English. The one American book I was recommended by someone, I didn't like. I'd like to keep searching regardless of the book's language or what country it has won prizes in. Could you also include book awards from other non-english speaking countries?
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