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I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately - there seems to be more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much self-help and "motivation porn" focuses on reading books, as if it's a magical activity that will unlock the best version of oneself. It's part of the new aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, a…
Have employer/employee relationships always been so squeezed, so antagonistic, that the aspirational message included "living off dividends from your stonks" and "leanFIRE" because the only thing worth aspiring to is getting out from wage slavery? It can't be a healthy economy when so much of the public discussion is how unpleasant work is, and not because the work itself is bad, but because the management/expectatio…
The concept of "wage slavery" was coined back in ancient Greece (i.e. the people who had to work for a living were not considered really free). The Puritanian work ethics, which consider work to be a virtue and something of innate value, are more a weird quirk of some Western countries rather than an universal stance. Basically, through all times and places, most people dreamt of being wealthy, so that their needs would be met and they wouldn't have to work. BTW now this dream is monetized in the form of various national lotteries.
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But I can’t lead armies in battles or travel under the sea or challenge a rival to a swords duel. In such cases I’m accepting the reading as substitute.
Sports are often pretty close to battle, and you can learn fencing. Most great writers about swordsmanship could never have written about it without having used them for years... I have a whole long piece I want to write about this some day but physical experience is about 100x richer than reading. If you read about the best restaurant in some place, and tell me it, your ability to convince me it’s good is very weak.…
And if we for a moment ignore the fact that reading about food is one of the most boring things I can imagine, reading about someone else's experience of food let you see aspects you aren't aware of which your own experiences richer.
People don't read as a substitute for living their own life. People read because it enriches the life they live. Not only in the moment of reading, but also in everything else they do.
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One thing about reading is the ROI aspect. Internet comments take ~5 minutes to write, 30s to read (6x ROI). Blog posts are ~4 hours to write, 10m to read (24x). Magazine articles are ~3 months to write, 30m to read (960x). Books are ~5 years to write, 8h to read (1300x). Obviously, books are one of the best reading ROIs. Now, of course, you've got to balance the book quality, your interests, the thesis, the author's…
What ROI? There are tweets more information dense than articles, articles more valuable than books.
I have noticed an interesting trend in our discourse about reading lately - there seems to be more and more moralizing and virtue signaling. So much self-help and "motivation porn" focuses on reading books, as if it's a magical activity that will unlock the best version of oneself. It's part of the new aspirational message - imagine yourself rich, happy, driving a Lamborghini, living off dividends from your stonks, a…
Getting people amped up about things they're gonna do feels good (so good, in fact, they forget to do them).
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Internet comments have room for your current thought. Is there any reason to think that your current thought is in some way less informed by your experiences than a book is? Blog posts give you 4 hours to write, backed by years of life experience, probably based on things you've had on your mind for a while. Magazine articles pay you to write what the audience/advertisers want to see. They've got to be a net negative…
I'm curious. What is the blog post that tore "Why we sleep" apart?
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Doing pottery and kayaking is a better choice for me than reading someone do pottery and kayaking. Edit: and not everything can be learnt from books
But I can’t lead armies in battles or travel under the sea or challenge a rival to a swords duel. In such cases I’m accepting the reading as substitute.
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Is reading good for you because other forms of entertainment have gotten worse? I suspect reading is so great because time spent reading is not time spent toiling away on social media or other shallow distractions. The same reason tea is good for you simply because it's not soda. Or do successful people tend to read because successful people don't tend to get dragged into shallow activities. The reading didn't make t…
Do "successful" people in fact read more? It might be true, it certainly sounds good. But I don't know if we can so easily make that assumption. I recall a section of "The Millionaire Next Door" where most of the people interviewed chalked up their success to some combination of "Luck" and "Hard Work". Education was a bit lower on the list, and I don't remember anything about reading in one's spare time.
There are also people like myself for whom "success" means getting to read everything that we want. Well, not everything, because at some point in life one gets to acknowledge that death is a thing that actually happens and that will interrupt said reading, but other than that reading and the thought that there will always be interesting books for us to read is one of the main thing that keeps us (as I think I'm not the only one thinking like that) feeling alive.
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Sports are often pretty close to battle, and you can learn fencing. Most great writers about swordsmanship could never have written about it without having used them for years... I have a whole long piece I want to write about this some day but physical experience is about 100x richer than reading. If you read about the best restaurant in some place, and tell me it, your ability to convince me it’s good is very weak.…
No, sports are not pretty close to battles. People killing and getting killed makes a difference. My emotional state would be very different if I would meet a rival at dawn for a fight on life and death than if I'm fencing for points in a club. And most importantly, by reading I get the thoughts, feelings and motivations from other people, which teaches me different ways to see the world and empathy. And if we for a…
UFC and boxing are certainly life and death and I'm sure you'd have quite a similar feeling to going to battle. Though again this really misses the point: going to battle is a great example, in fact, not replicable through reading in a million important ways.
No one who has only read about war will ever be in the room deciding important things about war, nor will their stories about war (reciting from a book) ever be quite as interesting or well-said. Of course it's a spectrum, and someone who has read and experienced it first-hand can be better, but the point stands.
I'd argue empathy manifests in real life experience more than reading, but it's hard to convey in writing.
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The worst is some arbitrary goal of reading X books per year. That clearly optimises for short, easy to read books (eg New York Times Best Sellers) and avoids more technical and difficult books (eg Art of Computer Programming)
Please try to avoid gatekeeping in public, particularly with regards to what people read. Please?
Anyway, if it's gatekeeping to suggest that people should pursue personal growth through their own authentic interests rather than reading as a chore to be "more efficient", then call me president of the gatekeeping club for all I care.