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Books and lectures don't work

andymatuschak.org

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131–140 of 162 posts

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#131

Post by grblovrflowerrr »

freshhawk wrote: post #111
molteanu wrote: post #60

I think you might be reading books wrong if that's what you're hoping to take out of them, that is, remember this or that specific quote out of it. For me, at least, the value of a book is changing your way of thinking, or better yet, present new questions that you did not even dare to ask. I would recommend Darwin's own Origin of Species instead of Dawkins' Selfish Gene. I've read both. They can't even begin to comp…

STEM educations generally don't teach you how to read properly. Not "read" as in turn letters into works into sentences into ideas. I mean "read" as in absorb what the author is saying, understand it, evaluate it in context and absorb these new ideas. I had this kind of education, and I'm still pissed about it. It was such a wasted opportunity and so much wasted time. At least I learned this later on, but it was not…

How can one gain this kind of education?

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#132

Post by grblovrflowerrr »

kartan wrote: post #2

> How might we make books actually work reliably? The read is interesting, and it has an interesting premise. But, it is one well known. Techniques like SQ3R ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R ) have existed for decades. Books are a great source of knowledge. But, you need to use the right techniques to read them. If you read for fun, then don't bother. Whatever sticks is better than nothing. If you read to memoriz…

What if the book made SQ3R easier?

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#135

Post by grblovrflowerrr »

perfunctory wrote: post #71

"In this section we’ve seen that, like lectures, non-fiction books don’t work because they lack a functioning cognitive model. Instead, like lectures, they’re (accidentally, invisibly) built on a faulty idea about how people learn: transmissionism. When books do work, it’s generally for readers who deploy skillful metacognition to engage effectively with the book’s ideas. This kind of metacognition is unavailable to…

Bodybuilding is a great example of a discipline that's become much more efficient at turning pain into gain than it used to be. Having to put in effort is fine, but it should be the right kind of effort.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#137

Post by threatofrain »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #38

Almost all the books and blog posts can be made at least 10 times shorter without loss in educational value. People just include too much of irrelevant stuff when writing. Schools should teach brevity and search engines should encourage it instead of requiring people to inflate their writings as much as they can. For many books you can just find summaries online, read/watch them and hardly loose anything compared to…

That's partly because people write for several audiences simultaneously. Once you say, "Oh, but some of my readers won't know X, I can't assume that..." It's an endless question, so at some point you have to admit that you can't write the most accessible book in the universe.

But if you begin to even think "Oh, but some of my readers won't understand X" and you write a little supplemental chapter or section, the book starts to engorge. Then you go to one of those condensed books for math and you think about what kinds of people meaningfully consume these books.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#138

Post by lowken10 »

I love Anki. Once I formulate a concept or piece of information into a Anki card I’m 100% sure I will master it. I can learn from books, videos, tutorials using this technique. The key is to never try to learn something passively. It doesn’t work.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#139

Post by trickstra »

lefstathiou wrote: post #5

I used to believe this too until I was taught how to read a book, a skill that unfortunately is taken for granted and hasn’t made its way into curriculums. Reading “thinking fast thinking slow” should not take 8-9 hours... it could easily take 50 (after all, it represents many years and thousands of hours of work by the preeminent thinker on the subject). Scholars have spent a lifetime studying the Inferno. I am typi…

It took me about 9 months to read "Thinking fast and slow". But that's because after every paragraph I spent at least 15 minutes pondering about the consequences of each of the new information. Best book I've ever read.

Re: Books and lectures don't work

#140

Post by trickstra »

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #112
wellpast wrote: post #97

This guy seems to be searching for that magic pillow that you put the book under and sleep upon and later wake up with all the information & learning you were after downloaded and integrated into your person. He says the key to getting there is better understanding our cognitive learning models. But ask anyone who has mastered 'learning' (plenty such people exist) and they won't confess to you any magic pill. Each ti…

This is incredibly insightful. I have two friends who primarily youtube, but their subject interests are cars. Believe it or not, youtube contains an extreme wealth of car related knowledge from top gear all the way down to how-to's on maintenance/uprades of very specific models of vehicles. They're extremely knowledgeable about their crafts in ways that other mediums wouldn't be able to convey. Now I'm sure reading…

I also learn a lot of things from youtube videos. However, with this source one needs to be extra careful about the veracity of the information in it. Even if videos were the most effective way of learning it wouldn't be very helpful if we got caught in flat-earth videos or similar.
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