Read Fewer Books • Hacker News Board

Re: Read Fewer Books

#91

Post by theonemind » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:09 PM 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…

Hah. I appreciate the School of Life rant. Something about it bugged me, but I never bothered to articulate it or think very hard about it. I think 'pseudo-philosopher trying to capitalize on the religion-shaped hole in western morality' get pretty close to it.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#92

Post by shoes_for_thee » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

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.'

It's easy to miss the point of any analogy if you try hard enough.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#93

Post by WillDaSilva » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

fnord123 wrote: post #29

thaumasiotes wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the religion-shaped hole in western morality Religion and morality aren't distinct concepts. What's lost in the west is the stability of having an orthodoxy.

> Religion and morality aren't distinct concepts How so? They seem pretty orthogonal to me.

I imagine there is a typo, and they meant to say they are distinct. I can't make sense of the comment otherwise.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#94

Post by r0s » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

I can heartily recommend skipping books from the "school of life" and any of their publications.

I was gifted one on relationships, which is a topic I read often. I can say it was unfocused, terrible advice that seems like the author's rants about their own frustration with modern love conventions. Reactionary and sneaky with appeals to religion sprinkled throughout. No useful information, plenty of hand-wringing about how things were in the old days.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#95

Post by jhbadger » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

TheUndead96 wrote: post #44

Heronymus_Anon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-fronta…

I don't think is is true at all. In anything, the past was much more into reporting sensationalist news about murder than now. The infamous UK "News of the World" tabloid, which existed to give titillating reports of murder and rapes, started publishing in 1843. It closed in 2011 in the wake of the phone hacking scandal because society began to care about victim's rights. The idea that the past was more moral than the present is just rose-tinted nostalgia without support.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#96

Post by martin_a » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

justforyou wrote: post #74

martin_a wrote: post #8

All those "Oh, I have read sooooo many books this year!"-thing is just another elitist posture. It's pretty much like the minimalists who run around and tell people that they only own a MBP and an iPhone XPro+ (or whatever the maxed out version is) and two potted plants. Most people will not have enough disposable income to buy a full-fletched MBP and that iPhone. You need to be rich (kind of) to be able to have a mi…

Incoming pedantry... Full-fledged, unless the Macbook Pro is adorned with feathers for better flight.

Hah, thanks! Non-native speaker here, learned something today. :-)

Re: Read Fewer Books

#97

Post by paultopia » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

What total nonsense. Of course medieval scholars had fewer books; books were much more expensive. Gutenberg hadn't come along yet (or, when Jerome was around, had just barely come along). Perhaps if the author of this post had read some history or economics they wouldn't have wasted the time of the people who had read that blog post.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#98

Post by jaaron » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #10

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 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 particularly sensitive the power of faith and community. Once you know what you're looking for, you start to see it everywhere: in businesses, in politics, in fandom. People want belonging and a sense of being part of something greater than themselves. Belief in the supernatural is not required to engender that feeling.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#99

Post by spicybbq » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:37 PM 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.

It's elitism and it's a bad heuristic. There are lots of situations where someone might know a lot about X yet for some reason never did X. Being able to do X, and being able to usefully explain X are two different skills and few people can do both.

Re: Read Fewer Books

#100

Post by closeparen » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

null_object wrote: post #12

I simply don't recognize the article's analysis of why we read. I read (voraciously) during my 'downtime': in bed before sleeping, sitting on the toilet, during lunchbreaks. Often the times that a lot of people are game-playing/watching youtube/scrolling FB. I'm not aspiring to "know everything" or to appear to be an "intelligent person". I think reading a lot is just a habit. It may be that I'd be better off reading…

> and having more of my own thoughts

The thoughts you have are shaped by the stimulus from your environment. Reading more and better books is a way to have more and better thoughts; it's not a zero sum game.