Writing summaries is more important than reading more books • Hacker News Board

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#131

Post by apsurd » Sat, May 20, 2023, 9:15 PM UTC

dmotz wrote: post #75

rahimnathwani wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried 'related' with a couple of passages. For the first passage, the first result was a good semantic match, but the rest were a little too far off. For the second passage, the results were amazing. Perhaps for the first you just didn't have any more snippets that were closer? Are the related snippets taken from a selection of snippets you created, or from the full text of other books? A nice workflow might be to…

Yes, the demo mode is a random subset of things I've highlighted and it's heavily weighted around certain topics and sparse on others, so that's why some passages don't have the strongest semantic matches. You're right that it would be nice to see things in situ as you're reading, but it would seem that most e-reading experiences are locked down. I appreciate the feedback!

im really enjoying reading your samples. It's a very lightweight way to explore books i don't know about and haven't read.

i like it a lot!

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#132

Post by quickthrower2 » Sat, May 20, 2023, 9:19 PM UTC

More importantly do the exercises - make up some if they are not provided.

Summaries are useful for 2 years time to ease you back in I would say.

I learned so much in Karpathy’s NN course I feel I need to summarize to avoid forgetting much of what I learned even though I did the exercises. I might then re-embed (ha) the knowledge by playing more with the nets to get more tacit experience.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#133

Post by bikenaga » Sat, May 20, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

bikenaga wrote: post #81

travisporter wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be cultural but I just cannot bring myself write in a book even in pencil. post-its notes for me this is a great idea if I have the discipline

I was using Post-Its to mark pages and add comments, but I stopped after reading some warnings about the glue damaging pages: https://siarchives.si.edu/blog/post-it-or-not-post-it http://libraries.ucsd.edu/preservation/postits.html It's not clear from these articles how soon damage becomes apparent; I haven't noticed any yet in books which had Post-Its. It may not matter if you don't intend your books to have archiva…

Here's a working second link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110128174227/http://libraries....

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#134

Post by nonethewiser » Sat, May 20, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

jrm4 wrote: post #104

I can't speak for others, but for me this headline and idea is exactly and perfectly wrong, so I suppose I just want to reach those for whom this generates unnecessary "guilt" or something like that. As a voracious reader, I've personally found that I got the most out of books when I stopped trying to summarize and highlight. I very rarely do either anymore. I realize that what happens is sort of a Darwinian "surviva…

Another way of thinking of it is that you are indexing. Perhaps you will come across something in the future which makes you recall that thing you read. This might give new significance to what you read and gives you a reference you can fall back on as needed.

For me this happened with distributed transactions and sagas in Building Microservices by Sam Newman. He went into detail on these techniques and pretty much the only thing I retained was that they existed and what problem they solved. I didn’t remembered the other 95%. But I ran into a need for them and instead of having no idea what to do I thought: “I should learn more about distributed transactions, sagas, or other alternatives.”

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#135

Post by divan » Sat, May 20, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

wenc wrote: post #45

It’s not worth summarizing every book. I took a course at UChicago on how to read a book based on Mortimer Adler’s book of the same name, and the takeaway is that the first reading of a book should be a quick one (table of contents, skimming, dipping into pages). Only after a book is shown to have promise are we then to engage in deep reading which not only involves summarizing but also syntopical reading, which is t…

Why stop at two? Susan Rigetti suggests four times! [1] I've never tried that but I fully agree with her :) and just quietly dream about regaining my focus for reading so I could reread books 4 times.

Quote to save people from falling into the rabbit hole of her blog:

> Over the years and after much formal and informal study, I’ve learned a pretty foolproof method for studying philosophy: read everything four times. Here’s how it works:

> - First read: Read casually, as if you’re reading a novel or a newspaper or magazine article. Your goal here is simply to observe, not to engage (yet).

> - Second read: This time, read to understand. Take notes. Ask yourself, “what does the author really mean here?” Summarize things in your own words. Try to break down the arguments being presented into bullet points, identifying the premises and the conclusions. When you read a term you are unfamiliar with or want to understand better, google it or look it up in the SEP.

> - Third read: Read again, and this time engage with the text. Go back to your notes, where you identified the arguments being presented. Think of arguments in favor of what the author is saying and arguments against. Think of counterexamples.

> - Fourth read: Now read for one last time. Read casually, the way you did in the first read. Notice how your understanding of the text is now so much richer and deeper than it was on the first read.

> If you study this way, you’ll walk away with an incredibly solid understanding of philosophy and an intellectual foundation that will serve you well for the rest of your life.

[1] https://www.susanrigetti.com/philosophy

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#136

Post by blangk » Sat, May 20, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #67

jonsen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be an autobiography.

An autobiography is not a novel, because it lacks the fundamental aspect of being fictional . There is such a thing as an autobiographical novel, but that is not nonfiction. Because novels are, by definition, works of fiction. The closest thing to a ‘nonfiction novel’ is probably the historical novel, which is a fictionalized historical account… but I’m not sure why such a thing would particularly be suited to this s…

Not sure about this one but something like Atlas Shrugged seems to half fit. Its a novel but it more or less describes a philosophy.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#137

Post by teodorlu » Sat, May 20, 2023, 10:02 PM UTC

221qqwe wrote: post #83

teodorlu wrote: post #70

No, don't summarize. Remix! Write about your own ideas! Your mind is a living collection of your own ideas, and a history of their significance to your prior life. Not a dead library of pointers to other dead libraries. Books are great. But you shoudn't outsource your brain. The learning happens when you think for yourself. Reading is good. Thinking about what you've read is even better. But don't stop with the summa…

IMHO realistically for most people the ratio between "your own ideas" and everything else should be like 5% or so. If you're exceptionally gifted maybe up to 20%.. (unless you're writing fiction)

If you mash together two ideas, is the new composite idea yours?

I'd say it's yours. In that frame, there are lots of ideas.

Lets assume there are 10 000 known ideas. Then there's 10^8 combinations of two ideas, and 10^12 combinations of three ideas. That's a lot of ideas, even for the internet! I bet not all of them are named. And different people are going to frame ideas differently.

I also believe trying to form your ideas in reference to existing knowledge is a great way to learn existing knowledge.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#138

Post by rgrieselhuber » Sat, May 20, 2023, 10:07 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #134

jrm4 wrote: post #104

I can't speak for others, but for me this headline and idea is exactly and perfectly wrong, so I suppose I just want to reach those for whom this generates unnecessary "guilt" or something like that. As a voracious reader, I've personally found that I got the most out of books when I stopped trying to summarize and highlight. I very rarely do either anymore. I realize that what happens is sort of a Darwinian "surviva…

Another way of thinking of it is that you are indexing. Perhaps you will come across something in the future which makes you recall that thing you read. This might give new significance to what you read and gives you a reference you can fall back on as needed. For me this happened with distributed transactions and sagas in Building Microservices by Sam Newman. He went into detail on these techniques and pretty much t…

This is exactly how I look at it as well. Our culture seems obsessed with “takeaways” when a lot of the time I might not discover the takeaway for some time, until I happen to encounter some other experience that made reading that previous book completely worth it.

I guess it comes down to wanting a wide funnel of experiences to sort through or a narrow focus on whatever is going to help you achieve your objective. In reality, we probably need both but I sure wouldn’t trade some of the experiences and insights I’ve gained by having a wide funnel and not worrying about takeaways.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#139

Post by calf » Sat, May 20, 2023, 10:15 PM UTC

Summarization is actually a less effective learning technique, according to Dunlosky and other literature in cognitive learning science. Dunlosky recommend other techniques namely "practice testing" and "distributed practice". So I guess those more powerful (and time consuming) techniques are worth using if the book is worth learning thoroughly, whereas summarization and outlining, etc. are less mentally challenging/effortful techniques but still somewhat useful, just empirically less proven to be very effective.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#140

Post by leroy-is-here » Sat, May 20, 2023, 10:27 PM UTC

jrm4 wrote: post #104

I can't speak for others, but for me this headline and idea is exactly and perfectly wrong, so I suppose I just want to reach those for whom this generates unnecessary "guilt" or something like that. As a voracious reader, I've personally found that I got the most out of books when I stopped trying to summarize and highlight. I very rarely do either anymore. I realize that what happens is sort of a Darwinian "surviva…

It depends on the books I am reading. I get the most out of philosophy and learning books when I actively engage with the text with responses in kind. But when I am reading mind candy? No, I don’t write back.