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The immediate conclusion that you can take from that is...Your problem is assuming there's an immediate conclusion to be drawn.
Maybe you can take a step back and understand that this is a guy writing an article about some good books he read this year, rather than a treatise on the uselessness of fiction. Look at the context. Because I certainly didn't come to "the" immediate conclusion that you did.
A big component of reading comprehension is understanding context. Do you really think the purpose of what he wrote was what you imply? Maybe, but I doubt it. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
>I'll give you just one example of the opposite
Coming up with a single counter example doesn't dismiss the general. No one is arguing anywhere (including Mr. Gates) that all fiction is useless to learn from. Does me presenting one useless fiction book and one beneficial non-fiction book prove my point? Because I guarantee I have more examples.
>Sorry, but if you get to redefine things in order to suit your argument
Huh? My definition? I explicitly stated "as most of us understand it". Because, you know, most of us do understand the word a specific way. I stated it as such because I foresaw someone like you jumping in with some pseudo-intellectual argument that "learning is this, learning isthat", when 90% of us agree on what is implied by the phrase "to learn".
>For example: read "Confessions of a Heiress"
Wait a minute: on one hand you're telling me to read popular fiction of days past to gain insight into the views of others, then on the other you dismiss the non-fiction writings of a twentieth century pop-culture icon for its lack of similar insight? Brilliant. If you don't think the writings of someone like Paris Hilton can teach us anything about society and culture, on various levels, I don't know what to tell you.
>by your logic, you will surely learn more about the world reading that than something like "1984" by George Orwell, right? Give me a break.
Yes, that's my logic precisely. All non-fiction is better than fiction .
I'll do the same: Twilight vs. A Brief History of Time. Which can you learn more from? Apparently by your twisted logic and cherry-picking, Twilight. Have fun with that.
Are you trying to argue for the sake of arguing? Not shocking, for the same reason that it wasn't surprising to see the top comment on a "best books I've read list" attacking the nuances of a single, throwaway line in the text, irrelevant to the actual content of the article. This community loves that. I guess it makes people feel smart.