After you read Middlemarch by George Eliot, at least 90% of the other Western (incl. Russian, Spanish, etc translated to English) classics you read will seem stupid and pointless.
Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
201–210 of 219 posts
Re: Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need to dig deeper, only ask questions. What is his current view of the world of humans, etc. Once you have a grasp of that, there is probably a fiction that can show him how his vision is incomplete. We are after knowledge and to be useful and interesting the new knowledge need to be just a bit farther than we are at the moment. (zone of proximal development) Not a book, but for AI I enjoyed watching Joshua Bach…
> We are after knowledge and to be useful and interesting the new knowledge need to be just a bit farther than we are at the moment. (zone of proximal development) I feel like I’ve run out of new proximal ideas. I used to devour (not only) science-fiction, but now I find it very hard to find anything whose concepts I’m not already familiar with. Or you have to read through 400 pages to get to just one interesting ide…
Have you read the bible?
Or see the biblical lecture of Dr Peterson on Youtube?
I am surprised myself to find it useful after the stoics and other quests for meaning.
It’ hard for me to suggest without any pointer to where you are. Maybe I don’t have anything for you?
What is the last thing you found interesting? How is your life?
Family, friends, career, hobies, plan for the next 6 month?
Re: Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
#203> Some deep truths about human nature require instead the reflection provoked by the classics. Yes, read Dostoevsky and the classics. There is so much to learn and to enjoy. But remember that great authors didn't discover deep truths of human nature from books alone, but from their attention to the experiences of real life. “When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning…
> "When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process."
Doesn't this depend a lot on what and how we're reading? I put a lot more thought into some passages from a book than a Stack Overflow code snippet. HN posts fall somewhere in between, and sometimes even those can permanently reshape how I think about something.
Re: Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
#204I met a young and apparently highly intelligent AI researcher the other week who confessed to me that he thought fiction (books but also movies etc) was a waste of his time: there was nothing to be gained there. Being a lover of fiction myself, I huffed and puffed and he challenged me to name him a book that would change his mind. Usually when people ask me where to start in literature, I advise them to start at the…
Maybe something like "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde? Something that rattles the foundations of life in a playful, unexpected way.
Re: Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you give some examples of these harmful memes you have found in Dostoevsky's works? Although I suppose by definition you might not be willing to do that...
I could totally imagine how out of 100000 programmers having read Crime and Punishment, a few would take an axe to their local pawn shop.
The ones that don't are the ones to be afraid of. Classics are such for a reason. They don't get republished for 150 years because they had an one-time influence on people once.
Picture the pawnbroker, having remained on the market precisely due to some insights from Dostoevsky, which had come in handy when dealing with the dregs of society. He buys the axe, kills the programmer with it, then fast-tracks redemption and just, like, carries on.
Russian literature has so many different ways of fucking with your head. Savage stuff, in the best of senses. I start finding it relevant to anything at all, I nope the fuck out of there. After all, life is known to imitate fiction, esp. when there's the less friendly kind of crazy aboard.
Best outcome for a programmer from reading Dostoevsky would be to stop being a programmer.
Re: Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should I be worried about that? Taleb is remembered now, it is relevant now, and it makes people think about Taleb now. So why not to try to understand Taleb deeper by reading Dostoevsky? If Taleb will fail to be relevant in 50 years, then no one would try to do it then. And what? Why should it worry me?
What I meant is that whether Taleb is a conduit to Dostoevsky or not has no bearing on the latter's continued relevance. Dostoevsky's relevance is not in any doubt but Taleb's is (or any other similar author). The GP was a bit hyperbolic but I am inclined to agree with their viewpoint. The intellectual trend they are highlighting (which goes way beyond Taleb) has real consequences because it is so prevalent among tec…
> What I meant is that whether Taleb is a conduit to Dostoevsky or not has no bearing on the latter's continued relevance.
Yeah. And then others will come to have no bearing on Dostoevsky's continued relevance.
Dostoevsky relevant while there are people to read him. If people didn't read him, then Dostoevsky would be irrelevant, wouldn't he? If all the people die for example, Dostoevsky would be irrelevant then. Isn't it a causal link? Modern people and their beliefs are a necessary cause of relevance of Dostoevsky.
> The intellectual trend they are highlighting (which goes way beyond Taleb) has real consequences because it is so prevalent among tech workers and capital owners who have enormous influence on modern life.
Didn't you considered a question: why techies and economists are so excited about Taleb? Why them? Why not plumbers for example? I can propose an answer. Techies and economists are two groups who rely on models the most. It is impossible to use math to solve a problem without conducting a math model of that problem first. So when Taleb had shown them that their models are not good enough, how did they feel? Their art failed them. Their methods can commit not just random blunders, they are guaranteed to blunder in unpredictable ways. Of course they are obsessed with Taleb.
And it is a good thing, exactly because "tech workers and capital owners [...] have enormous influence on modern life". Their blunders can hurt a lot.
I see as nonconstructive the attitude of scowling at techies discovering Dostoevsky and seeking there ways to refine their art of modelling. If you know better how to deal with a failure of a model, then help them kindly. Suggest them Shakespeare, or Plato, or something else to read that can help them to learn to walk without crutches of models. You can really try to see world their way, and you can really help them, if you are so good.
But I remember literature lessons from my youth, and history, and I hate them. I hated them then, I hate them now. I'm sure all these humanities' people are unable to understand a techie, and they are unable to explain themselves because of it. It doesn't surprise me that techies have difficulties when trying to understand people, but why humanities' people fail to understand tech people and moreover how they can be proud of it I cannot grasp. It is their specialty to understand others isn't it? Shouldn't they be obsessed with Taleb because they cannot understand why techies obsessed with him? Why they obsessed with Taleb more than with Judea Pearl? It is just because Pearl solves problems he stated, while Taleb does not propose a satisfying solution? Or maybe because Taleb's stated problem is more thrilling for them?
Why all these arts people think more about the relevance of long dead Dostoevsky than of people who live now? Dostoevsky was concerned of living people and of problems that were relevant at his time. Crime and Punishment is about a young man who had read too much of Nietzsche. More then it was good for him. Nietzsche was a thinker like Taleb. So now we have a lot of people who read too much of Taleb. More than it is good for them. Isn't it exciting? Isn't the best path is to help them and to write a novel predicting their punishment, than to scowl at them?
Re: Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
"life became the novel"... Sounds beautiful but idealistic. Surely risk perception plays a role in the difference.
Ah, gotcha. Yes my risk assessment was prehensile.
I meant that seeing the difference of risk perception between acting in real life and acting in theatre could be crucial on the point discussed.
Re: Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
#208I met a young and apparently highly intelligent AI researcher the other week who confessed to me that he thought fiction (books but also movies etc) was a waste of his time: there was nothing to be gained there. Being a lover of fiction myself, I huffed and puffed and he challenged me to name him a book that would change his mind. Usually when people ask me where to start in literature, I advise them to start at the…
"I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already." -- Nick Jenkins
Re: Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
do they really read it, or it's "in the curricula" but no one really gives a shit, there are a few standard questions-and-answers about them and that's it, no?
Well, they have to write essays based on these books to get passing grades. And I would guess wise teachers (who read all these books!) make sure that these essays cover main life lessons, right? FWIW I grew up in Russian culture (Donetsk). Personally, I find XX and XXI century books WAY better, more relevant, interesting, useful, etc.
> make sure that these essays cover main life lessons, right?
interesting approach :)
I'm Hungarian, we had to "study" a few of the classics (some Russians included too). I never read any of them. We were supposed to read them during the summer break. I fell for that in the first year. Fuck that. Still managed to pass the tests, but there was no requirement of writing essays, or distilling great conclusions, or life lessons from the books.
But spent my youth glued to other books. And as the years went by I just noticed I don't really want to read about other people's misery in so much detail thank you, at least add some interesting details, like in crime thrillers.
Re: Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say if the words of Christ are not enough to convince someone, who else could possibly say it better? I’ve read lots of Chesterton and CS Lewis, and they didn’t change my perception of Christianity a single bit. What they did though was expose the enormous inconsistencies of the materialistic worldview. It’s not an argument for Christianity as much as a critique of its critics.
> I would say if the words of Christ are not enough to convince someone, who else could possibly say it better? Christ didn't write anything. The words attributed to him, a few hundred years later, are inconsistent and unreliable. I'd love to hear from the man. I'm pretty unimpressed by those who claim to represent him.
If I had to choose, and my goal was to understand Christianity a bit more, I'd definitely pick a conversation with Paul of Tarsus instead!