Read Fewer Books • Hacker News Board

Re: Read Fewer Books

#41

Post by yuribro » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 11:29 AM UTC

I can only assume it's implied that the type of books this is about are philosophical (in the most broad sense, including self improvement) books, and so it makes sense to talk about religious books as examples?

People read for a variety of reasons, from professional books to books purely for entertainment. It also has to be said that while in those "pre-modern" times books were the most common medium, today there are many different ways to consume knowledge: newspapers, journals, blog posts and websites, graphic novels as written material, and we also have radio, tv, film, podcasts and many other types of source which serve the same role as books once did.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#42

Post by kranner » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 11:29 AM UTC

TheUndead96 wrote: post #7

The School of Life infuriates me for many reasons, but I will restrain myself and talk just about this specific post. Perhaps the small libraries of historic figures has more to do with the availability of books than it does their minimalism. I agree that people should not be reading every new self-help or business book that gets published. The majority of new books are bad. History acts as a great filter, which is w…

> I also agree with Nassim Taleb, who says that you should try to read the works from people who have actually done something (opposed to modern pseudo-philosophers like Alain de Botton, who is just trying to capitalise on the religion-shaped hole in western morality).

And is reading and writing books not 'doing something'? I don't know exactly what Taleb means by it, but it smacks of plain elitism.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#43

Post by theobeers » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 11:32 AM UTC

TheUndead96 wrote: post #7

The School of Life infuriates me for many reasons, but I will restrain myself and talk just about this specific post. Perhaps the small libraries of historic figures has more to do with the availability of books than it does their minimalism. I agree that people should not be reading every new self-help or business book that gets published. The majority of new books are bad. History acts as a great filter, which is w…

“The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us.”

— C. S. Lewis

source: https://reasonabletheology.org/cs-lewis-on-reading-old-books...

Re: Read Fewer Books

#44

Post by TheUndead96 » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 11:33 AM UTC

Heronymus_Anon wrote: post #38

TheUndead96 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this might be what is meant by religious people when they say that nothing is "sacred" anymore. Meaning that there is no longer any value or virtue high enough to not be questioned, even if these are the axioms of the society.

Well, those religious prejudices and injustices aren't sacred anymore, but if you have a public reputation to loose, or don't want to get burned as a company, you should avoid being associated with stuff like gender- or racial-inequality. (as long as you aren't targeting the Q-Anon or KKK crowd) So it seems the definition of sacred is simply changing. (luckily) At the time around '69 it maybe was like nothing was sac…

I think we might be talking about different things here. Up until very recently it was against the code of most publishers to broadcast things like murders, offensive language, acts of violence and gore. Some might say that the societies of the past were overly prudish, but I believe that this development is predominantly negative. For a modern Netflix series to take off, it is basically mandatory to have full-frontal nudity in the first season. Nothing is shocking anymore, which is what I meant by "sacred".

Growing up I had a mathematics teacher that told me that if companies could get away with it, they would just show real murders all day on the TV. In that way, popular culture is like a barometer for morality of a population.

I don't think anyone here is arguing for gender or racial inequality.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#45

Post by TheUndead96 » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 11:42 AM UTC

kranner wrote: post #42

TheUndead96 wrote: post #7

The School of Life infuriates me for many reasons, but I will restrain myself and talk just about this specific post. Perhaps the small libraries of historic figures has more to do with the availability of books than it does their minimalism. I agree that people should not be reading every new self-help or business book that gets published. The majority of new books are bad. History acts as a great filter, which is w…

> I also agree with Nassim Taleb, who says that you should try to read the works from people who have actually done something (opposed to modern pseudo-philosophers like Alain de Botton, who is just trying to capitalise on the religion-shaped hole in western morality). And is reading and writing books not 'doing something'? I don't know exactly what Taleb means by it, but it smacks of plain elitism.

I suppose more concretely "doing something related to what you are writing about". On principle I have nothing against pure philosophers, who integrate old theories and formulate new ones. However, in my experience, writings like that of Marcus Aurelius are more compelling, who was a success in his own right before ever writing anything. Most modern "business" authors don't have any business (other than selling books to people). Taleb is just warning people to not take advise from authors who don't actually have "skin in the game".

Re: Read Fewer Books

#46

Post by leokennis » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 11:46 AM UTC

Although the article is pretty pretentious, it does resonate with a though I've had for a long time and also commented about earlier (it's not an original thought at all):

Why is everything a contest these days?

Who cares that I read 40 books last year, you read 120 and my neighbour read 2? Does that make us better or worse people? You can do 1000's of things in life or you can do nothing. No one asked to be brought into this world. No one will stay on this world forever.

Just do whatever makes you go through your day in the most content way. Life is hard enough as it is.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#47

Post by sys_64738 » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 11:49 AM UTC

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.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#48

Post by Timpy » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 12:06 PM UTC

> Similarly, in the Ancient Greek world, one was meant to focus in on a close knowledge of just two books: Homer’s Odyssey and his Iliad

Can anybody on HN verify if this is true? I thought the Iliad and Odyssey were only two of Homer's works, the rest of them lost. Why would the Ancient Greek focus on those two and not any of Homer's not-yet-lost works? Did the Ancient Greek person really read these as fervently as a modern religious person reads their holy book? I know classicists debate these things all the time, but it seems like the author is just riffing "shout out to people who know these classics." I'll gladly be corrected on this point, but when I read this I began to suspect the author has no idea what they're talking about.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#49

Post by kranner » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

TheUndead96 wrote: post #45

kranner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also agree with Nassim Taleb, who says that you should try to read the works from people who have actually done something (opposed to modern pseudo-philosophers like Alain de Botton, who is just trying to capitalise on the religion-shaped hole in western morality). And is reading and writing books not 'doing something'? I don't know exactly what Taleb means by it, but it smacks of plain elitism.

I suppose more concretely "doing something related to what you are writing about". On principle I have nothing against pure philosophers, who integrate old theories and formulate new ones. However, in my experience, writings like that of Marcus Aurelius are more compelling, who was a success in his own right before ever writing anything. Most modern "business" authors don't have any business (other than selling books…

De Botton does not write about things he cannot know about. He has not proposed a Grand Unified Theory of Physics or a mechanism for how matter becomes conscious. He writes about things everyone can relate to, which means he can relate to them as well -- but the work seems to be in thinking about things in non-obvious and novel ways and in the actual writing process. The quality of de Botton's writing really speaks for itself.

It must be difficult work in itself because even Taleb, when he took a stab at this 'pseudo-philosophy' genre with his book The Bed of Procrustes, managed to produce absolute piffle which would never have been published if Taleb weren't already famous for his popular finance books.

There seems to be an underlying presumption that writing is not real work and so people should be successful in the real world before they should feel entitled to write anything.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#50

Post by tmaly » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 12:53 PM UTC

I try to avoid buying anymore books. Time becomes such a precious thing in modern life.

I seek to make knowledge actionable, to practice just in time learning. That is, if I need some knowledge to move forward on a task, then and only then do I turn to a book.