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Read Fewer Books

theschooloflife.com

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Re: Read Fewer Books

#141

Post by webmaven »

Cro_on wrote: post #73
rgoulter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sports is to war as pornography is to sex." — Jonathan Haidt

Except that the universal adoption of sports would result in a net positive. The same cannot be said for pornography. Also it makes just as much sense like this: 'sports is to sex as pornography is to war.'

> Except that the universal adoption of sports would result in a net positive. The same cannot be said for pornography.

By adoption of sports, do you mean universal participation or spectation?

The former I suppose would be a net positive, if you limit the requirement to just making sure everyone does at least some physical activity every day, but if you mean that everyone should be required to play some sport as a significant pastime the negatives start reducing the net positive.

If the latter, I must vehemently disagree. We would probably be better off banning spectator sports entirely rather than making everyone watch.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#142

Post by loughnane »

auganov wrote: post #123
loughnane wrote: post #53

My biggest problem with this thinking is that it seems to consider "books" a unit of measure rather than distinct objects. Surely there are those among us who use the amount of books we've read as a sort of decoration for our intellect, but that's not really the point of reading books.The point is to make the knowledge in the books a part of us so we can live a better life. For that end some books are clearly better…

The problem is, if a book fulfills all your 4 criteria it's extremely unlikely its "wisdom" hasn't become common knowledge. No surprise = no information. A truly life changing book would need to have been ignored or misunderstood by the world at large. But most such books will obviously be junk so I'm not sure there's a simple way to discover the good ones.

Even if such wisdom had indeed become common knowledge (which I doubt, but don't have time to draft a proper response), just being exposed to a piece of information doesn't do much for the individual. As I said above the goal isn't to stack up books and be briefly exposed to many ideas, but rather to have some ideas become a part of you.

Or, put more pithily, it is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you'll be when you can't help it.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#143

Post by sifar »

dominotw wrote: post #70
paganel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not a religion apologists, but his videos and lectures are structured exactly the same way as sermons. He even feigns a false pastor modesty I highly recommend Jacques Ellul's "Les nouveaux possédés." (translated in English as "The New Demons" [1]) an analysis written back in 1973 describing this exact process you're describing, i.e. modern stuff (rock stars among others) trying to fill the hole of the disappe…

> Jacques Ellul doesn't seem to fit gp's "people who have done something" crietia.

Ellul, I would like to think, is someone who came back from the Abyss without losing himself.

Preserving once sanity while reading him is difficult enough, imagine what you would have to go through while you think through these things for years.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#144

Post by sifar »

metaphor wrote: post #22
quincunx wrote: post #5

Please forgive me the pretentiousness of what I'm about to share, but this is so great: "You complain that in your part of the world there is a scant supply of books. But it is quality, rather than quantity, that matters; a limited list of reading benefits; a varied assortment serves only for delight. He who would arrive at the appointed end must follow a single road and not wander through many ways. What you suggest…

Voltaire's perspective[1] struck me as more compelling: > To-day people complain of a surfeit: but it is not for readers to complain; the remedy is easy; nothing forces them to read. It is not any the more for authors to complain. Those who make the crowd must not cry that they are being crushed. Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! and if one read profitably, one would see the deplorable foll…

>> Those who make the crowd must not cry that they are being crushed

Nice. Can be said about the social media/tech companies/leaders.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#145

Post by sifar »

haffi112 wrote: post #4

A book is a somewhat large time investment. Often it is worth it but often it isn't. The main problem is the sheer amount of books out there. Deciding what to read next is a non-trivial decision problem. Currently I'm basing my decisions on ratings, recommendations from friends and book clubs. It would be nice if sites like Goodreads kept statistics on ratings for second/third/... reading (maybe they do?). Such infor…

Develop an internal barometer for a good book, instead of an external one.

Simple - if you enjoyed it, if it made you think, gave a different perspective, if you found something profound, if you keep returning to it, if it is a topic you are interested in.

Of course to develop this, one needs to read significant amount of books - even bad ones (and drop them once you find they are not good enough). But once developed, you can largely detect within a few pages whether a book is worth reading. Also appreciating a book depends on you state/age/mental framework at the time.

You augment this with human curation from places/forums you appreciate. Also original sources of books/authors you like is a good way to go down the rabbithole.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#146

Post by mercer »

jaaron wrote: post #98
paganel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not a religion apologists, but his videos and lectures are structured exactly the same way as sermons. He even feigns a false pastor modesty I highly recommend Jacques Ellul's "Les nouveaux possédés." (translated in English as "The New Demons" [1]) an analysis written back in 1973 describing this exact process you're describing, i.e. modern stuff (rock stars among others) trying to fill the hole of the disappe…

I was raised in a highly devout religious environment. I was a true believer myself. One of the more remarkable experiences of my early adult life was attending a sales conference. I couldn't believe how much that business event felt like a _religious_ event to me. The format, the language, the emotions... I recognized all of these. I'm no longer religious in the same way, but those experiences have made me particula…

My background is pentecostal/evangelical, and I was also a true believer well into my twenties. I mostly left on good terms with God; not being able to believe in his existence just made it difficult to be in a relationship.

The expertise in 'marketing' in this environment was incredible, and I've been both surprised and somewhat relieved to find that for the most part nobody 'outside the fold' seems to properly study how it works and apply it to stuff like selling their startup, especially startups that rely on some degree of community... Some do, but it's surprisingly rare to me.

For a brief time I got involved with the School of Life / Church for Atheists stuff in a desire to find some of what I've lost since leaving church, and I was astounded to find that they seemed to mostly try to emulate all the worst parts of what made 'church life' work.

For examples, the Evangelicals/Pentecostals figured out that rock concert-style Sunday services work to get people interested, but the attrition rate is terrible. Instead, to get people to stay and become part of the church, emphasizing the 'small groups' (~12 people meeting weekly) is by far the most effective strategy. Make people spend time in a small subcommunity and eat together, and you got a member!

So what does School of Life do with their 'Sunday Assemblies'? Awkwardly emulate church but neglect the 'small group' aspect, and hoping that somehow this is more successful than, say, the rapidly-dying Catholic/Protestant churches that mostly rely on boring Sunday services.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#147

Post by friendlybus »

Can't say I agree at all. The self-improvement crowd emphasize interest and small daily gains, not maximization of everything. Some people don't read to know everything, some read to know something. Which can be a lot.

Not a big fan of school of life's work.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#148

Post by Cro_on »

webmaven wrote: post #141
Cro_on wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the universal adoption of sports would result in a net positive. The same cannot be said for pornography. Also it makes just as much sense like this: 'sports is to sex as pornography is to war.'

> Except that the universal adoption of sports would result in a net positive. The same cannot be said for pornography. By adoption of sports, do you mean universal participation or spectation? The former I suppose would be a net positive, if you limit the requirement to just making sure everyone does at least some physical activity every day, but if you mean that everyone should be required to play some sport as a s…

Just a quick way to say that I think a little exercise goes a long way :)

Re: Read Fewer Books

#149

Post by truth_be_told »

sys_64738 wrote: post #47

Reading isn't about intelligence. It's about knowledge. Knowledge expands the mind but doesn't necessarily make you more intelligent. E.g. I can read as many theoretical maths books as needed but it'll always be over my head. But if I read a C++ book then I might get a job versus reading a Java book.

I think your definition of "Intelligence" is much too restricted. It is "Knowledge" which leads to "Wisdom" and makes you more "Intelligent" (for a certain definition.) "Knowledge" is the pre-requisite. It is what allows you to see the inter-play and interaction between concepts and ideas leading you towards better understanding thus making you more "Intelligent".

Re: Read Fewer Books

#150

Post by thaumasiotes »

msla wrote: post #134
thaumasiotes wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my analysis, I'm shearing what I believe you mean by "faith claims" from the term "religion". But I'm definitely leaving in dogma and the funny hats social club cultural aspect. For example, look at the scandal from some years back in which some European (Spanish?) meat products were found to include horse meat. Everyone agreed that (1) there was no risk of any kind involved in eating the "contaminated" products;…

> I'm saying that the modern Western prohibition on eating horse is a religious phenomenon, regardless of whether people are comfortable calling it one. And this is contrary to what people understand as religion, which seems to avoid carving reality at the joints: All of a sudden you can dispute the notion that people can be irreligious by pointing to some social conventions they follow, and demanding that those conv…

> And this is contrary to what people understand as religion, which seems to avoid carving reality at the joints

It's not. It matches exactly what people understand as religion in any context that doesn't involve themselves.

Compare the Roman Emperor, who was never referred to as a "king" -- by the Romans -- because the concept was taboo. The Greeks went ahead and referred to him as a king. Who was right? What would we gain by excluding imperial Rome from a study of monarchical societies?

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