On Unread Books
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On Unread Books
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Re: On Unread Books
#2TLDR; the most important thing about a book is it's historical and social context in the web of literature of it's time, so by understanding relationships, peers, and authors, reading the actual text is not necessary
Re: On Unread Books
#3Strategizing about how to discuss a book you haven't read has to be the ultimate form of pretentiousness.
Re: On Unread Books
#4I've felt a very small version of this in watching certain movies. When I saw Stand By Me, I understood Stranger Things and Super 8 a lot more.
Re: On Unread Books
#5Strategizing about how to discuss a book you haven't read has to be the ultimate form of pretentiousness.
Very literally so.
Re: On Unread Books
#6Imo a lot of literature has 0 novel content, so this is not suprising.
Additional: I'm always shitting on the humanities in the comments here. I dont have anything against them, I both produce them and consume massive quantities of them. My point is simply that they are trivial. If all art suddenly disappeared it wouldnt really matter. If knowledge about, and/or the fruits of STEM stuff disappeared it would be a huge setback, it could cause civilization to collapse.
Additional additional: It bugs me how large a percentage of our resources we plow into entertainment.
eg.
"On a global scale, the entertainment and media market was worth 1.72 trillion U.S. dollars in 2015 and is set to rise to 2.14 trillion by 2020"
NASAs current yearly budget is about 18.4 billion
Re: On Unread Books
#7Imo a lot of literature has 0 novel content, so this is not suprising. Additional: I'm always shitting on the humanities in the comments here. I dont have anything against them, I both produce them and consume massive quantities of them. My point is simply that they are trivial. If all art suddenly disappeared it wouldnt really matter. If knowledge about, and/or the fruits of STEM stuff disappeared it would be a huge…
Not everything we produce needs to be valued by how much they contribute to industrial/scientific civilization. I specify that because loss of much of STEM won't lead to collapse of civilization, it will only set us back to the dark ages. We'll begin again. Same as we'd do if all art disappeared.
Re: On Unread Books
#8Imo a lot of literature has 0 novel content, so this is not suprising. Additional: I'm always shitting on the humanities in the comments here. I dont have anything against them, I both produce them and consume massive quantities of them. My point is simply that they are trivial. If all art suddenly disappeared it wouldnt really matter. If knowledge about, and/or the fruits of STEM stuff disappeared it would be a huge…
Not everything we produce needs to be valued by how much they contribute to industrial/scientific civilization. I specify that because loss of much of STEM won't lead to collapse of civilization, it will only set us back to the dark ages. We'll begin again. Same as we'd do if all art disappeared.
Its not the same. If all existing art disappeared we would still be able to produce art at our current rate with no discernible or measurable difference in its quality or effect.
Scientific or technological progress on the other hand is iterative. More advanced theories are slowly formulated on the backs of older ones. For precision tools for example you need to start off building crude tools with nothing, then use those to build the infrastructure that will allow you to build slightly more precise tools and so on.
Re: On Unread Books
#9Imo a lot of literature has 0 novel content, so this is not suprising. Additional: I'm always shitting on the humanities in the comments here. I dont have anything against them, I both produce them and consume massive quantities of them. My point is simply that they are trivial. If all art suddenly disappeared it wouldnt really matter. If knowledge about, and/or the fruits of STEM stuff disappeared it would be a huge…
How much less of a budget would NASA get without entertainment such as Star Wars to fire people's imagination?
Re: On Unread Books
#10TLDR; the most important thing about a book is it's historical and social context in the web of literature of it's time, so by understanding relationships, peers, and authors, reading the actual text is not necessary
tldr of your comment: book is good, smart is very good