[HN Gopher] Writing summaries is more important than reading mor...
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Writing summaries is more important than reading more books
Author : 42point2
Score : 295 points
Date : 2023-05-20 13:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.andreasfragner.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.andreasfragner.com)
| charlie0 wrote:
| I've been using Obsidian recently and I can say it's had a big
| impact on my life. When I was younger I used to read a lot, but i
| hardly remember anything. Now, when I read something important,
| I'm sure to summarize it in Obsidian. I can remember it easier
| and even if I can't, I know where to go to find that information.
| syntaxing wrote:
| You can use llamaindex to load your vault and parse it to a
| local LLM (you can use openai if you're comfortable with it).
| You end up getting your own personal search engine and it's
| amazing. I really should finish my write up about it (also
| written in Obsidian)
| sendfoods wrote:
| Do you know how this compares to
| [PrivateGPT](https://github.com/imartinez/privateGPT). I am
| honestly at the point of choice paralysis with all these new
| tools
| syntaxing wrote:
| It's more or less the same exact idea! Use langchain,
| import llm and embedding model, and query against it. The
| repo you provided does the same exact thing but using llama
| cpp python as the backend. I opted to write my own custom
| llm class with using textgen as the api backend so I can
| use the gpu since its way faster. But with the new cuBLAS
| support on llama cpp, it's a game changer so you can use
| either now. I do find the llama cpp + cuBLAS about 25%
| slower compared to pure GPU which is really good for what
| it is.
|
| I get how there's so many choices nowadays and it's
| overwhelming but 95% of the repo you'll see just uses
| langchain. For the backend, llama cpp is your best bet
| minus the constant updates that break the quantized models.
| If you look for TheBloke on huggingface/reddit, you'll find
| all the best models. Look for the "ggml" ones which means
| its supported by llama cpp. But like I mentioned before,
| llama cpp has been doing so many model breaking changes so
| using TheBloke's models is your best bet because s/he
| updates really frequently. I personally prefer wizard-
| vicuna 13B, the uncensored one is pretty damn amazing.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Here's some example output how fast it is running 13B on
| a 3090 with a Ryzen 9 5900X
|
| In [5]: output = llm("Q: Name the planets in the solar
| system? A: ", max_tokens=32, stop=["Q:", "\n"],
| echo=True)
|
| llama_print_timings: load time = 209.23 ms
| llama_print_timings: sample time = 11.39 ms / 32 runs (
| 0.36 ms per token) llama_print_timings: prompt eval time
| = 209.16 ms / 15 tokens ( 13.94 ms per token)
| llama_print_timings: eval time = 1806.98 ms / 31 runs (
| 58.29 ms per token) llama_print_timings: total time =
| 3033.91 ms
|
| In [6]: print(output) {'id': '', 'object':
| 'text_completion', 'created': 1684604167, 'model':
| './models/Wizard-Vicuna-13B-Uncensored.ggml.q5_1.bin',
| 'choices': [{'text': 'Q: Name the planets in the solar
| system? A: 1. Mercury, 2. Venus, 3. Earth, 4. Mars, 5.
| Jupiter, 6. Saturn', 'index': 0, 'logprobs': None,
| 'finish_reason': 'length'}], 'usage': {'prompt_tokens':
| 15, 'completion_tokens': 32, 'total_tokens': 47}}
| charlie0 wrote:
| Ditto. There's so many llms out there now. Is there a
| website where these are aggregated and ranked? Man, I've
| been too busy to keep on top of these developments.
| cout wrote:
| Why obsidian?
| charlie0 wrote:
| Mainly because it's open source and has a ton of
| functionality. I can bring text docs, diagrams, spreadsheets,
| images, audio, and even video under one single pkm. Because
| it's an offline app, it doesnt have any of the drawbacks of
| the online proprietary solutions.
| LorenDB wrote:
| Obsidian is _not_ open source. It 's a widely held idea
| that is unfortunately false. Don't believe me? Try to find
| a repository for it. You can't.
|
| It's a shame, because Obsidian is kinda neat software
| (although I'm not the note taking type myself).
| [deleted]
| dandarie wrote:
| For what?
| asdfman123 wrote:
| This may be true in certain cases, but I think with any form of
| self improvement, the most effective thing you can do is
| something that you're going to stick to.
|
| If you can stick to a rigorous reading and writing program, yes,
| that will give you the most rewards. But even reading 20 minutes
| of lightweight fiction before bed every night is much better than
| nothing.
| dahves wrote:
| Next step reviewing (rewriting) those summaries. Currently using
| Anki for this, anyone has success using other tools?
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| I love Readwise.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I _love_ Readwise Reader, and subscribed within a few days of
| trying out Reader Beta.
|
| Despite my best intentions, though, I've not started to turn
| my highlights into flashcards, or started a daily review
| habit.
|
| To GP: AIUI the workflow in Reader is meant to be (i) add to
| library, (ii) read and highlight, (iii) review highlights and
| create flashcards, (iv) review flashcards.
| veryfancy wrote:
| Derek Sivers does this and has a section of his site with all his
| notes: https://sive.rs/book
|
| Great source of interesting reads, too. So some potential
| prosocial utility there, too.
| cptaj wrote:
| If you don't enjoy writing summaries, I recommend just getting
| drinks with your buddies and telling them about the interesting
| stuff you read.
|
| I do this regularly and it works great.
| teodorlu wrote:
| No, don't summarize. Remix! Write about your own ideas!
|
| Your mind is a living collection of your own ideas, and a history
| of their significance to your prior life. Not a dead library of
| pointers to other dead libraries.
|
| Books are great. But you shoudn't outsource your brain. The
| learning happens when you think for yourself. Reading is good.
| Thinking about what you've read is even better. But don't stop
| with the summary! Go further. Apply it to your context. Try it,
| it's fun.
| brudgers wrote:
| I don't disagree. I think this article isn't written for people
| like me.
|
| What I mean is I f someone is already remixing, they're already
| writing about what they read and probably don't need advices
| from articles like this because they already read differently
| from what the author imagined.
|
| On the other hand, the article encourages people to write about
| what they read outside a formal academic context, and most
| people don't have that habit.
|
| To put it another way, writers don't need rationale to write.
| But writers are not the target audience.
| 221qqwe wrote:
| IMHO realistically for most people the ratio between "your own
| ideas" and everything else should be like 5% or so. If you're
| exceptionally gifted maybe up to 20%.. (unless you're writing
| fiction)
| teodorlu wrote:
| If you mash together two ideas, is the new composite idea
| yours?
|
| I'd say it's yours. In that frame, there are lots of ideas.
|
| Lets assume there are 10 000 known ideas. Then there's 10^8
| combinations of two ideas, and 10^12 combinations of three
| ideas. That's a lot of ideas, even for the internet! I bet
| not all of them are named. And different people are going to
| frame ideas differently.
|
| I also believe trying to form your ideas in reference to
| existing knowledge is a great way to learn existing
| knowledge.
| mathgeek wrote:
| For context, this article is specifically referring to reading
| for comprehension (not for pleasure).
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| I don't see why it wouldn't apply to both? I just finished
| crime & punishment and could see how this summary strategy
| would help better understand the book.
| [deleted]
| thenerdhead wrote:
| It may be more important to the author at this point in their
| life, but that will likely change with time.
| [deleted]
| bowsamic wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more. For me it's much more important to have
| a broad knowledge and gain retention and comprehension by
| repeated readings of books I enjoyed. Writing summaries might be
| good, but certainly not at the expense of not reading as many new
| books
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| Alongside this, I enjoy condensing the summaries down into their
| base ideas, which I put into a Zettelkasten.
| counternotions wrote:
| Inspectional reading is one of the key limitations for me when
| reading books on the Kindle. I need to be able to quickly flip
| around from toc to glossary and between chapters. There's still
| too much friction for that with the ebook format.
| LorenDB wrote:
| I strongly disagree. I read for enjoyment, even when I'm reading
| a more educational work; I don't wish to ruin my enjoyment by
| making myself summarize every book I read.
| BlueBall wrote:
| Relevant:
| https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/linux_literature/to...
|
| Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away
| I realized that like most books, it had too many words. The plot
| was the same one that all James Bond books have: An evil person
| tries to blow up the world, but James Bond kills him and his
| henchmen and makes love to several attractive women. There,
| that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took
| _thousands_ of words to say it.
|
| Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian
| alcoholic Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who
| kill their father.
|
| Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to
| tell because what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand
| pages. If all Russians talk as much as the Karamazovs did, I
| don't see how they found time to become a major world power.
|
| I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
| the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just
| come right out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck
| out of me."
|
| Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few
| words:
|
| * "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they
| symbolize nature and will kill you.
|
| * "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
| -- Dave Barry
| jameshart wrote:
| Well it really depends what your goals are, right? What kind of
| books are you reading, to what end? I personally struggle to
| think of any book I have engaged with which I got value out of,
| that could be meaningfully summarized in a couple of hours. The
| author was an expert on the subject and they only managed to
| summarize it down to a few hundred pages - if there was only a
| couple of pages worth of ideas in there presumably they would
| have just written a blogpost.
| taeric wrote:
| Summarizing is not the same as condensing. Just jotting down
| your view helps you. Such that you don't even have to worry
| about making your version for an audience.
| esafak wrote:
| Summarizing _is_ condensing. I think you are thinking of
| _paraphrasing_.
| taeric wrote:
| I mean, they are synonyms, yes; but my point is you don't
| have to distill down to an essential element.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I feel like this works a lot better with a typical nonfiction
| novel, and not eg. a reference textbook.
| jameshart wrote:
| What's a nonfiction novel?
| jonsen wrote:
| Could be an autobiography.
| jameshart wrote:
| An autobiography is not a novel, because it lacks the
| fundamental aspect of being _fictional_.
|
| There is such a thing as an autobiographical novel, but
| that is not nonfiction.
|
| Because novels are, by definition, works of fiction.
|
| The closest thing to a 'nonfiction novel' is probably the
| historical novel, which is a fictionalized historical
| account... but I'm not sure why such a thing would
| particularly be suited to this summarization methodology.
| blangk wrote:
| Not sure about this one but something like Atlas Shrugged
| seems to half fit. Its a novel but it more or less
| describes a philosophy.
| JenrHywy wrote:
| Atlas Shrugged is most definitely fiction. Just because
| it was written in service of communicating a
| philosophy/ideology doesn't change that.
|
| Same with Camus' The Stranger, or Sartre's Nausea.
| jonsen wrote:
| "Fictional narrative: Fictionality is most commonly cited
| as distinguishing novels from historiography. However
| this can be a problematic criterion. ... Several novels,
| for example Ong co van written by Huu Mai, were designed
| to be and defined as a "non-fiction" novel which
| purposefully recorded historical facts in the form of a
| novel.":
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel#Defining_the_genre
| quest88 wrote:
| It's up to you. For me, I may write the parts I presently find
| most useful in detail. And some high-level summaries for
| reference. Then I can search my notes to know what book I need.
| jameshart wrote:
| I'm still not sure _why_ someone would need to do this? What
| kind of information are you obtaining from books that you
| later find yourself wanting to search for?
|
| These kind of productivity tips always confuse me when they
| lack context of what the person writing is _trying to do_.
|
| Like: Anki flashcards and spaced repetition. I see a lot of
| people advocating for them. I have never understood why
| because, in my personal experience, retaining lots of
| disconnected facts has never really been something I've
| needed to solve for. I do sort of see how it could work for
| rapid language learning (though I still think immersion,
| reading and writing are better than randomized vocabulary
| memorization, if you can take the time to do it that way),
| and I think I understand it in the context of fields like
| medicine where there's just a lot of facts you need to
| acquire, but people will advocate it for _everything_ , and I
| just don't get it.
|
| When I read a book, the process of reading it adds to the sum
| of my knowledge; I absorb the ideas, combine them with my
| own, and come to a new understanding of a topic. At that
| point, the book has accomplished its goal, for me.
|
| But I acknowledge that's just _how I read_. I 'm not an
| academic who might be later on finding myself needing to
| recall where I read something so I can cite it (although I
| find in general I _can_ remember where I read certain
| things)... is that the use case here? What 's the goal with
| building up an externalized knowledgeable?
| MichaelNolan wrote:
| > retaining lots of disconnected facts has never really
| been something I've needed to solve for.
|
| At in regards to Anki usage, the "disconnected facts" seem
| to be something that only students (high school/college) or
| people new to Anki do. These people are very much using
| Anki for a short term goal like passing a test or class.
| For that use case, "disconnected facts" works just fine.
|
| The people who use Anki (long term) outside of school and
| outside of 2nd language learning usually have much more
| connected webs of cards. While the individual cards are
| usually atomic, they might have a dozen or more cards all
| attacking a concept from different angles. Also in this
| usecase it seems just the act of formulating the questions
| is the biggest part of the learning. The reviewing part is
| almost secondary.
| jameshart wrote:
| If I've looked at a concept enough to write cards
| attacking it from different angles... why would I need to
| see those cards again? At that point I _know_ that
| concept.
| rolisz wrote:
| One of my use cases is to memorize function names that I
| use about once a month - not often enough to memorize
| them from usage only, but frequently enough that the
| gains from not having to Google their name every time are
| worth it.
| somsak2 wrote:
| Unfortunately, knowledge decays over time.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve
| jameshart wrote:
| That is indeed what advocates of spaced repetition say.
|
| Personally I find that knowledge that's internalized and
| used does not decay. And devoting effort to refreshing
| the DRAM for knowledge I'm not using seems like it fails
| the YAGNI test. Let my brain's cache eviction algorithm
| do its thing. If I learned something once I figure I can
| probably learn it again.
| quest88 wrote:
| Facts I find interesting and relevant at the time I was
| reading them. As an example, the book "Invisible Women" has
| a lot of great data in it. I don't wanna know the exact
| numbers, but concepts like:
|
| - The normal human dummy in crash tests define "normal" to
| be like a man, so women tend to have more injuries in car
| crashes.
|
| - Women are more at risk for cardiac failure because their
| heart attacks go undiagnosed. Women experience different
| symptoms of heart attack than men, and most doctors have
| been trained using research done on males. For example, men
| feel it in their chest and left arm whereas women
| experience pain in their stomach.
|
| The process of writing it or summarizing helps me remember
| these things so I don't need to look them up as often. But
| going through my notes again I saw I forgot some things! I
| don't know when I'll use them when I'm writing them, but I
| have referenced them conversations before.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| If your genuinely curious there is an attempt at an answer
| in this book:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34507927-how-to-take-
| sma...
|
| Gist of it being, like you say, to not only summarise but
| to process into ones own knowledge base. And yes, this book
| is targeted at academics with the purpose of setting them
| up for producing papers, books, or other artefacts from
| that knowledge base.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I find that most of the things I read can be pretty effectively
| summarized in a single thesis sentence and a few additional
| sentences to generally describe how that thesis was supported.
| If you're only reading things that can't even be summarized in
| an abstract, you must be reading a lot of unopinionated
| biographies?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The vast majority of literature has much of its value in the
| way it is told, not just in the story it is telling. You can
| summarize Hamlet in a sentence or two, but that's not the
| reason it is still being read and performed 400+ years later.
| jameshart wrote:
| If after reading an entire book you haven't already
| internalized its main thesis, it's probably not a very
| valuable thesis.
|
| But reducing a book down to a single thesis minimizes the
| takeaway value of the book, surely?
|
| Take a book like _Godel Escher Bach_. Sure, that book has a
| thesis. But the value of having read that book is not
| captured in 'strange loops are all it takes to create beauty,
| complexity and consciousness' - all the different ideas that
| underpin that thesis are what makes it valuable. That book
| lives as a set of new connections and pathways between ideas
| in my brain. And I read it over 20 years ago.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I can't speak for others, but for me this headline and idea is
| exactly and perfectly wrong, so I suppose I just want to reach
| those for whom this generates unnecessary "guilt" or something
| like that.
|
| As a voracious reader, I've personally found that I got the most
| out of books when I _stopped_ trying to summarize and highlight.
| I _very rarely_ do either anymore.
|
| I realize that what happens is sort of a Darwinian "survival of
| the fittest ideas" in my head, often subconsciously. Once I
| relaxed and decided, "If the stuff in this book is good enough,
| my brain will keep it FOR me" both my satisfaction AND utility of
| books increased dramatically.
|
| (which is to say, it's not that I never write anything down. It's
| that if I do, it's not tied to the book, but to the "thing" or
| "topic" that I'm interested in, with a reference TO the book)
| leroy-is-here wrote:
| It depends on the books I am reading. I get the most out of
| philosophy and learning books when I actively engage with the
| text with responses in kind. But when I am reading mind candy?
| No, I don't write back.
| causality0 wrote:
| In my opinion it's just another symptom of the trend in tech
| circles for ever-increasing self-documentation. Thing is, it
| doesn't matter how hard you try to shove your life up its own
| ass, you're going to be just as dead as me at the end of it.
| And I'll have read more cool stuff.
| grugagag wrote:
| I generally disagree with any assertion on what's more
| important on such a wide array of variation, for who and when.
| Sure, it could be important for some things and irrelevant for
| others things at the same time.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Yup. Thats another thing I've noticed. When I think of the
| phrase "a man never steps into the same river twice," I feel
| that way A LOT when it comes to reading good books. That was
| maybe the biggest reason I stopped highlighting in them, I
| want to come to it fresh.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It strictly depends on the category of the book:
|
| Insightful - process subconsciously;
|
| Informative - summarize.
|
| --
|
| Update: yes, it is not just a matter of texts. The annoying
| snipers that infest these boards should summarize as a general
| practice: this will help them with an exercise in thinking,
| expression, so that maybe one day they will also be able to
| formulate and present an argument. And stop abusing the freedom
| they should not be granted.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Not gonna lie, it strongly feels like the latter is a job for
| them newfangled AI thingies :)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If it's informative, you can't really summarize. Summarizing
| is the act of throwing most of the information away.
|
| If it's informative, you have to read and take your
| conclusions. And if you later decide to use the information
| for different conclusions, you'll have to read it again.
|
| It's little wonder that informative texts don't usually come
| in the form of books.
| aeturnum wrote:
| It's a classic begging the question fallacy. Summary is
| absolutely a way to maximize certain outcomes of reading, but
| not all outcomes! Which outcomes to value is a question we can
| all reflect on.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > I've personally found that I got the most out of books when I
| stopped trying to summarize and highlight.
|
| The good thing is that it's not an either/or proposition. I
| often read a book straight-through then decide it will be
| useful enough to me in the future that there are elements I
| want to retain, in which case I'll engage in a second cursory
| extraction process. Often I just don't know in advance whether
| I will feel that way at the outset.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I now find myself googling for other peoples notes on a book
| if I want to extract more. I read through those notes and
| rewrite with a pen in a journal and start to pull apart the
| dense notes further and connect to my own experience and life
| jrm4 wrote:
| Yup, but conversely, I try to avoid reviews and comments on
| books (and movies etc) as much as reasonably possible
| beforehand.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Another way of thinking of it is that you are indexing. Perhaps
| you will come across something in the future which makes you
| recall that thing you read. This might give new significance to
| what you read and gives you a reference you can fall back on as
| needed.
|
| For me this happened with distributed transactions and sagas in
| Building Microservices by Sam Newman. He went into detail on
| these techniques and pretty much the only thing I retained was
| that they existed and what problem they solved. I didn't
| remembered the other 95%. But I ran into a need for them and
| instead of having no idea what to do I thought: "I should learn
| more about distributed transactions, sagas, or other
| alternatives."
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| This is exactly how I look at it as well. Our culture seems
| obsessed with "takeaways" when a lot of the time I might not
| discover the takeaway for some time, until I happen to
| encounter some other experience that made reading that
| previous book completely worth it.
|
| I guess it comes down to wanting a wide funnel of experiences
| to sort through or a narrow focus on whatever is going to
| help you achieve your objective. In reality, we probably need
| both but I sure wouldn't trade some of the experiences and
| insights I've gained by having a wide funnel and not worrying
| about takeaways.
| donutshop wrote:
| I disagree with this. Reading for the sake of summarizing takes
| the joy away from reading itself. I don't know anybody that'll
| read just because they want to read more books.
|
| If I wanted to read summaries I would just read from Coles notes
| or Sparknotes, but both are essentially me just skimming
| headlines, and not getting to the juicy bits of the materials.
| cosou wrote:
| I don't think that this author's point is that we read _for the
| sake of summarizing_ , per se, but rather that the act of
| summarizing forces us to engage more thoughtfully with what
| we've just read. It's that engagement itself that enriches our
| understanding of the book. By all means enjoy what you're
| reading while you're reading it!
| o1y32 wrote:
| That's the problem here -- for many books you don't need to
| develop a deep understanding of the book. Even for books in
| programming language, I may pick up a book because I am
| interested in the design of the language or a certain pattern
| of writing code, not because I want to use the language in
| the production or master the language, in which case
| understanding and thinking about pieces is good enough.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| If you had a different purpose for reading the book,
| presumably you'd summarize it with that purpose in mind,
| depth where you need it, omission where you don't.
|
| If you don't care to write that summary down... well that's
| kind of a separate thing.
| jasperry wrote:
| Strong agree from me, though what I do is less involved than the
| article. I normally just take a few per-chapter summary notes in
| an org-mode outline, in a filename that starts with the year I
| read the book.
|
| Recently I started creating my own topic index with pointers to
| which books I found certain insights in. I know I could generate
| such a thing automatically with tagging, but I enjoy manually
| curating my index.
| sailorganymede wrote:
| Pretty much what I do as well. I got a Notion account with
| links to all sorts of things from useful timestamps in videos
| to chapters in books and docs. It's been incredibly helpful in
| contextualising my information when I gotta go out and actually
| do something.
| paulcole wrote:
| I'm at 47 books read this year so far and mostly disagree with
| the author of the article. When you find a book that's worth
| summarizing, do it. But I get exposed to many more ideas (and
| find the ones worth thinking about more) simply by reading more.
|
| Also, I just like reading. My goal isn't to have some kind of
| personal knowledge base to prove how much I've comprehended to
| myself.
| mrits wrote:
| If getting exposed to a lot of ideas is the goal then spending
| your life on this site and reddit would be the way to go.
| paulcole wrote:
| I do that quite a bit as well. But generally the ideas here
| and on Reddit (including the ones I share myself) are pretty
| lackluster.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Not in my experience. The knowledge here and on Reddit is
| shallow and does not explore any topic in depth. Theres a
| reason why Hegel took 1000+ pages to develop his logic. You
| can never get exposed to the full idea
| pessimizer wrote:
| > My goal isn't to have some kind of personal knowledge base to
| prove how much I've comprehended to myself.
|
| The reason many people accumulate wealth is to spend it, not to
| stare at it insecurely. It goes without saying that knowing
| more things expands the number of things you can do.
| paulcole wrote:
| > The reason many people accumulate wealth is to spend it,
| not to stare at it insecurely
|
| Yes and the reason many people accumulate wealth is to stare
| at it insecurely. What's your point?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| More importantly do the exercises - make up some if they are not
| provided.
|
| Summaries are useful for 2 years time to ease you back in I would
| say.
|
| I learned so much in Karpathy's NN course I feel I need to
| summarize to avoid forgetting much of what I learned even though
| I did the exercises. I might then re-embed (ha) the knowledge by
| playing more with the nets to get more tacit experience.
| karaterobot wrote:
| If you're trying to answer questions, the even more advanced
| tactic is to read more books, but only read the parts that touch
| on your question. That's why god invented the subject index.
| Reading every word in order is not for people who have specific
| questions to answer, but for pleasure, or for learning the
| basics.
| pmarreck wrote:
| ChatGPT will do this.
|
| But also, try quizzing yourself about what you've read the day
| before. I bet the retention is slim.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Sure, ChatGPT _can_ do this. Just like you could drive a car
| over a marathon route. That's not the point though, the point
| of summarizing is to force yourself to understand. It's the
| journey not the destination that's important.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| Well said. And, in other words, while ChatGPT can summarize
| it for you, it cannot understand it for you.
| wenc wrote:
| It's not worth summarizing every book.
|
| I took a course at UChicago on how to read a book based on
| Mortimer Adler's book of the same name, and the takeaway is that
| the first reading of a book should be a quick one (table of
| contents, skimming, dipping into pages). Only after a book is
| shown to have promise are we then to engage in deep reading which
| not only involves summarizing but also syntopical reading, which
| is to read other books around the same topic.
|
| One thing that has really helped me is to scribble notes in the
| margins and to write a precis after every chapter, then a precis
| on the inside cover of the book to summarize all my chapter
| precis.
|
| Finally all good books should be read twice or more. Good reading
| is rereading. This is a hard rule to follow because nobody has
| time to read the same book twice but the truth is you can't
| understand a book deeply on first reading because you don't have
| the lay of the land and the benefit of retrospection. A rereading
| helps you focus on details missed the first time around. To be
| honest though, very few books meet my bar of my willing to reread
| them.
| divan wrote:
| Why stop at two? Susan Rigetti suggests four times! [1] I've
| never tried that but I fully agree with her :) and just quietly
| dream about regaining my focus for reading so I could reread
| books 4 times.
|
| Quote to save people from falling into the rabbit hole of her
| blog:
|
| > Over the years and after much formal and informal study, I've
| learned a pretty foolproof method for studying philosophy: read
| everything four times. Here's how it works:
|
| > - First read: Read casually, as if you're reading a novel or
| a newspaper or magazine article. Your goal here is simply to
| observe, not to engage (yet).
|
| > - Second read: This time, read to understand. Take notes. Ask
| yourself, "what does the author really mean here?" Summarize
| things in your own words. Try to break down the arguments being
| presented into bullet points, identifying the premises and the
| conclusions. When you read a term you are unfamiliar with or
| want to understand better, google it or look it up in the SEP.
|
| > - Third read: Read again, and this time engage with the text.
| Go back to your notes, where you identified the arguments being
| presented. Think of arguments in favor of what the author is
| saying and arguments against. Think of counterexamples.
|
| > - Fourth read: Now read for one last time. Read casually, the
| way you did in the first read. Notice how your understanding of
| the text is now so much richer and deeper than it was on the
| first read.
|
| > If you study this way, you'll walk away with an incredibly
| solid understanding of philosophy and an intellectual
| foundation that will serve you well for the rest of your life.
|
| [1] https://www.susanrigetti.com/philosophy
| axpy906 wrote:
| Thank for this comment; it's gold.
| samanator wrote:
| > I took a course at UChicago on how to read a book based on
| Mortimer Adler's book of the same name
|
| That's the same book mentioned in the footnotes of the article.
|
| "How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
| Mortimer J. Adler, Charles van Doren"
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/567610.How_to_Read_a_Boo...
| the_af wrote:
| > _Finally all good books should be read twice or more. Good
| reading is rereading._
|
| Fully agreed!
|
| > _This is a hard rule to follow because nobody has time to
| read the same book twice_
|
| Disagreed. I read fiction and I tend to re-read a lot,
| sometimes three or four times. I read for pleasure, so I have
| the time. Reading is "me" time, and I spend it however I want.
|
| It's only hard to re-read if you have some silly goal like "I
| must read N books this month". I find such goals worthless.
| namaria wrote:
| >It's only hard to re-read if you have some silly goal like
| "I must read N books this month". I find such goals
| worthless.
|
| I'm on board. I have a great deal of fun hunting books and
| sitting down with the good ones I find. I don't care how many
| I go through or how many pages. Reading good stuff is a
| matter of quality of life for me. "A life without books is
| unlivable" Erasmus
| ohmahjong wrote:
| Some books are especially suited for multiple passes. Every
| time I reread a Discworld novel, I find new jokes or
| references that I had missed earlier.
| travisporter wrote:
| This may be cultural but I just cannot bring myself write in a
| book even in pencil. post-its notes for me this is a great idea
| if I have the discipline
| wenc wrote:
| I had the same problem but my instructor told me: a book
| devoid of scribbles is a book that hasn't been engaged with
| deeply. If you have to, buy two copies of a book -- one for
| display and another to scribble in, knowing that you'll truly
| own the scribbled copy because you won't be able to sell it.
|
| Post-its work. For me I use a mechanical pencil.
| njarboe wrote:
| Scholars from the middle ages wrote on the edges of their
| scrolls and codexes. Some of these notes are very interesting
| and useful to scholars. In elementary and primary school most
| are taught not to write in books because they have to be used
| for decades, but there is a long tradition of taking notes in
| books. They are very inexpensive now compared to the past and
| when you write in the you leave a little extra something for
| posterity.
| Taywee wrote:
| The era is not the same. Our scribing in the margins is
| significantly less valuable than that of medieval scholars,
| because our mediums for recording, storing, archiving, and
| sharing information are significantly less restricted.
|
| The levels of waste produced in the modern era are
| unimaginably higher than then, as well, so our
| responsibilities are completely different.
| TheFreim wrote:
| It may help to look at it this way:
|
| A book you won't write in is a book that owns you, rather
| than you owning the book. A book is designed to convey
| information on the page, writing in your book only adds to
| and fulfills it's purpose.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Your insistence on this kind of 'consumptive' and
| 'territory-marking' ownership of books is kind of silly
| IMHO.
|
| I mean, suppose you have a 100 books. You're not reading
| more than 2 or 3 of them at once, if that; and it's not
| like you're doing anything with the rest other than keeping
| them on a shelf.
|
| Now, Once you either have a family, or have friends with
| similar interests, or with kinds of similar interests etc -
| those 98 (or 100) books become something you lend, or even
| give away. And when you get older, you will pass on your
| entire library, at some point, or sell it off, or bequeath
| it etc. At any of these points, you want the book to be
| free of your personal jots and notes, and as close to
| pristine condition as possible, for the other readers.
|
| Write your notes in a notebook, or on your PC or laptop (or
| whatever). They'll also be searchable and easily editable.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > And when you get older, you will pass on your entire
| library, at some point, or sell it off, or bequeath it
| etc. At any of these points, you want the book to be free
| of your personal jots and notes
|
| While I generally have a communitarian orientation, I
| predict that as I approach this point, other end-of-life
| matters will occupy my headspace to a greater degree than
| any psychic rumblings about the odd marginalia in my
| dusty collection.
|
| As an aside (because for the mere mortals among us it
| doesn't apply) occasionally some historical inferences
| are made based on the reader's margin notations.
| bigtunacan wrote:
| Or it is owned by the library
| TheFreim wrote:
| Good point, though I will say that I've checked out a lot
| of library books that have had useful markings people
| have put in them, though I wouldn't personally mark
| something that isn't my own property that way.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Same. I once had a professor who heard that and said "of
| course, you treat books like they're sacred objects."
|
| I do keep a notebook where I write about random stuff and a
| lot of thinking about what I'm reading goes in there.
| martinflack wrote:
| I prefer to write on ruled paper and tuck it into the front
| cover for the following reasons:
|
| - ruled paper is easier to write on
|
| - you won't run out of space (just add sheets)
|
| - you can rewrite summaries as you revisit books decades
| later and retuck the new summary
|
| - you can quickly scan the papers to archive a digital copy
|
| - you can remove your notes to lend the book (or not)
|
| - you can transfer your notes to a new edition trivially
|
| - you can be more candid in what you write, knowing it's
| trivially discarded without giving up the book
|
| - all the notes are in one place and you don't have to thumb
| through the book looking for where you wrote an idea that you
| half-remember
|
| - you have space to draw diagrams if appropriate
|
| - you can find something on the internet that importantly
| relates, print off a page or two, and adjunct your notes
|
| - you can do extensive internet research and build a whole
| matching folder of contents on your laptop, but you can print
| a page of Title/URL's to adjunct your notes as a backup (and
| for anyone who borrows the book+notes)
|
| (edit: formatting)
| bikenaga wrote:
| I was using Post-Its to mark pages and add comments, but I
| stopped after reading some warnings about the glue damaging
| pages:
|
| https://siarchives.si.edu/blog/post-it-or-not-post-it
|
| http://libraries.ucsd.edu/preservation/postits.html
|
| It's not clear from these articles how soon damage becomes
| apparent; I haven't noticed any yet in books which had Post-
| Its. It may not matter if you don't intend your books to have
| archival value.
|
| I've tried Book Darts for marking pages, and they can also be
| used like paper clips to hold notes. I write short notes in
| pencil, but try to avoid dark leads which make marks hard to
| erase.
| bikenaga wrote:
| Here's a working second link:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110128174227/http://libraries
| ....
| jonsen wrote:
| Second link of yours doesn't work for me.
|
| I have at least a few Post-it notes in every book. Some
| sitting there for thirty years or more. Never experienced
| any problem. Always used the real Post-it from 3M.
| konto wrote:
| Can you share some books you reread?
| aprinsen wrote:
| When I've done them, I always feel like I benefit from reflective
| practices like these.
|
| Does anyone have tips for successfully building reflection into
| one's life? In the mean time I'll reflect on it.
| grugagag wrote:
| Journaling is a good bet
| LegoZombieKing wrote:
| I have been meditating for a few years now and recently decided
| to start building some custom meditations into my routine. I
| had a meditation for when I get out of the shower that helps me
| reflect on the day ahead. One that I listen to before work to
| let me put down distractions and think about what I want to
| accomplish today. Then I have one for after work to help me
| relax and separate my work mind from my home mind. I created
| these with the help of ChatGPT, and an AI TTS, and audacity to
| put it all together. I could have voiced it myself, but I found
| that it distracts me from the meditation when I think about my
| own voice.
|
| Here is a sample one that I use to get out of work mindset:
| https://www.dropbox.com/s/r65gi7tk4str2h7/After%20Work%20Med...
| bottled_poe wrote:
| Any idiot can see that a summary is a blurred lens over the
| original content. Not much more to say, it's just sad.
| Swizec wrote:
| Here's a really good trick: Read a book then find the nearest
| victim to excitedly tell all about what you've learned. The back
| and forth conversation is even better than writing it down.
|
| If you really found the book useful, go write a summary after
| that conversation. It will be a much stronger summary and also
| way easier to write.
| ubj wrote:
| I realize there are different opinions about this article, but I
| personally agree with the overall idea.
|
| Learning is about recalling information. The more you practice
| recalling a fact, the more the memory "sticks".[1]
|
| Writing summaries is an effective way to both 1) identify the
| most important information, and 2) practice recalling it.
|
| [1]: http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
| esafak wrote:
| I prefer to say it is about understanding, which is closer to
| summarization, or having a model. A parrot or even a computer
| can recall blindly.
| davidthewatson wrote:
| Indeed! Learning is the three R's: Reading, wRiting, and
| Rumination.
|
| This piece on completing the learning loop through summaries
| resonates with me so strongly, I just hit print.
|
| Sadly, I didn't read Pirsig until a close friend recommended it
| to me. It's taken me years to grok. I find this summary to be
| among the best summaries ever written:
|
| http://www.butler-bowdon.com/robert-m-pirsig---zen-and-the-a...
| theusus wrote:
| In a nutshell the author is talking about Zettlkasten
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Tiago Forte popularized the idea of "Progressive Summarization",
| which starts with extensive highlighting, then rounds of
| progressive refinement, ie bold key phrases and concepts in a
| given passage, then later review those and summarize in your own
| words. Strong approach for retention and comprehension...
| molly0 wrote:
| Writing small summaries weekly (or daily) about what's on your
| mind or what you've learnt is the simplest and most powerful way
| of self development I know of.
| Rufbdbskrufb473 wrote:
| Do you review what you've written at a later date or is the
| value gained just in the initial writing?
| molly0 wrote:
| I read it, yearly, but the main value for me is probably
| identifying what I need to do/understand in order to "get to
| the next step" of whatever I'm currently trying to do.
| chubot wrote:
| I totally agree, and surprised it's a bit controversial here. I
| understand that reading for pleasure can be different than
| reading for comprehension
|
| But I lean towards reading for comprehension. I have a wiki which
| includes all the books I've read. The good ones get their own
| wiki pages with the main things I learned, and other notes.
|
| A key point is that I don't take notes while I read. I only do it
| LATER -- because if you can't remember what to write down for a
| few days, then you probably won't retain it, and it may not be
| worth retaining.
|
| ----
|
| As a specific example, when thinking about this -- I wonder if
| anybody has read "The Signal vs. The Noise" by Nate Silver? I
| remember reading it because a friend had a copy.
|
| Many years later, off the top of my head, I can't remember a
| single thing in that book. Question for other readers: can you
| remember a single thing from it?
|
| I think maybe it's because I kinda knew most of the stuff in that
| book? I will refer to my notes.
|
| On the other hand, I've been re-reading Antifragile by Taleb,
| which I first read in 2012 I believe, and it struck me how many
| things I absorbed unconsciously from that book, which I didn't
| ascribe to it.
|
| For example I remember talking about "hormesis" during COVID,
| i.e. small errors and stress. And also I took up some light
| weightlifting because I thought it was a good complement to bike
| riding. i.e. having 2 different kinds of exercise
|
| ---
|
| edit: Just went to back to my notes on Silver's book (finished
| January 2014). Surprisingly I was extremely positive on the book
| -- I said the writing was engaging, it's well-sourced, very good
| set of topics (weather prediction, earthquakes, terrorists,
| poker, basketball, financial markets), and novel insights
|
| Though the funny thing is that I didn't say what the actual
| insights were. The only one was the importance of knowing when
| you don't know, which I also got from Taleb
|
| So maybe I should go back to that book and see if I still think
| it's good, and if there were insights I didn't get elsewhere
|
| It's funny perhaps that my perception of the book has been
| clouded by Silver's reputation. I think he has been criticized
| for "predicting the present" and of "horse race coverage", and I
| think that's true now. But back when I read the book, I probably
| had a much more positive impression of him!! Very interesting
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I'm guessing a large part of the controversy is related to the
| fact that reading has many different aspects. Possibly the
| article is referring to the same kind of reading you're
| referring to - technical books on various real-world topics.
|
| However, it's much harder to see the value in doing anything
| like the article is suggesting for literature. Is there really
| much to gain from writing a summary of Virginia Woolf's To The
| Lighthouse, or of a book of poetry? Is that even the right way
| to engage with the material?
| the_af wrote:
| Such a proccess- and goal-oriented approach to books doesn't
| resonate with me at all. Such a mechanical, soulless way of
| thinking about reading!
|
| Is this for technical, self-help or startup/entreprenurship
| books? Sure, maybe this works.
|
| I read a lot for fun though. Most of my reading is like this. The
| books I read are not about "answering questions" and I don't need
| to "optimize" my reading in any way, either to summarize them or
| to "process" as many books I can in a year. It's not a contest.
| It's about the joy of reading.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| I had a similar reaction to a lot of the language in this post,
| but I think there's something to it here that is still valuable
| even for just the joy of reading.
|
| For me it's important that I am paying attention as I read. I
| used to rarely re-read books, and have started re-reading my
| favorite ones, and it's often surprising to me how many
| interesting ideas I missed, or maybe just forgot about. I enjoy
| talking to friends about books too and I find that helps me
| explore the ideas more deeply. I've recently started trying
| writing up my takeaways for books I've enjoyed, partially as
| something to send friends to talk about with or try convince
| them to read the book too so we can talk about it.
|
| I think the caveat here is that it's totally valid to not do
| any of these things if you are enjoying whatever process you
| have. I just appreciate being exposed to this idea because it's
| increased my enjoyment of my own reading.
| cptaj wrote:
| Totally agree. Although there is something to be said for
| having better retention as it will only aid your enjoyment of
| future reading on the subject.
|
| I recommend getting drinks with friends and telling them all
| about the interesting stuff you read.
| loughnane wrote:
| This nuance gets missed in most conversations about reading. I
| see there are motivations to read a book:
|
| 1. For fun 2. For information 3. For understanding
|
| If reading for fun, do what suits you... there's really no
| wrong way. Like food, whatever suits your tastes is best.
|
| If reading for information (eg on tactics in some battle or HR
| practices in some form when you are already broadly acquainted
| with tactics and HR) then there are tips for extracting
| essential points that apply to most everyone.
|
| Likewise when reading for understanding (eg having no
| conception about how war works and trying to grok it).
|
| Some books can be read in each way, other books only in one or
| two. In any case, making broad claims about "how to read
| better" without appealing to one of these modes usually sparks
| disagreement.
| dmotz wrote:
| I built a tool for myself for the purpose of grokking ideas from
| books called Emdash [1]. Over the years I've collected reams of
| highlights from books and articles but until recently, rarely
| reviewed or absorbed them. The core of this app uses on-device ML
| to show related passages with similar ideas from other books
| you've read, and I find that going broad and exploring concepts
| from different angles really helps in comprehension.
|
| I'm testing out a summarization/rephrase feature backed by LLMs
| that you can try in the demo. In HN fashion I'm trying to build
| this openly and gather feedback to see what works. I'd like to
| push this further in the active direction the article mentions
| with something like a Socratic dialogue mode where you're nudged
| to re-explain and examine ideas.
|
| If anyone uses this thing/has feedback, let me know. Source is
| available too [2].
|
| [1] https://emdash.ai
|
| [2] https://github.com/dmotz/emdash
| callistus wrote:
| This is really neat!! Love how you have a sample library for
| one to experience how using emdash is like.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I tried 'related' with a couple of passages. For the first
| passage, the first result was a good semantic match, but the
| rest were a little too far off. For the second passage, the
| results were amazing.
|
| Perhaps for the first you just didn't have any more snippets
| that were closer?
|
| Are the related snippets taken from a selection of snippets you
| created, or from the full text of other books?
|
| A nice workflow might be to select a passage I'm reading in a
| book, and then see related passages from other books. But that
| requires I have DRM-free ebooks, and that these have already
| been chunked and indexed.
| dmotz wrote:
| Yes, the demo mode is a random subset of things I've
| highlighted and it's heavily weighted around certain topics
| and sparse on others, so that's why some passages don't have
| the strongest semantic matches.
|
| You're right that it would be nice to see things in situ as
| you're reading, but it would seem that most e-reading
| experiences are locked down. I appreciate the feedback!
| apsurd wrote:
| im really enjoying reading your samples. It's a very
| lightweight way to explore books i don't know about and
| haven't read.
|
| i like it a lot!
| packetlost wrote:
| I would really love for something like this to be integrated
| into Logseq
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| This is cool. I imagine instructors creating instances for
| their classes so the whole class can engage with each other's
| notes.
|
| I wonder if one could couple it with OCR so that you could
| point a phone at a page and drop into an emdash experience on
| the text that you've got a physical copy of. Or, you know,
| point it at your kindle so that your notes aren't locked into
| their ecosystem.
|
| I'm building a backend that would support that kind of thing in
| a peer to peer kind of way (indexes content by piecewise hash
| so that you can recognize content you or your peers have
| annotations for and reattach those annotations despite
| differences in pagination, etc). If I ever get it into a demo-
| worthy state, I may reach out to see if we can make them work
| together.
| dmotz wrote:
| Yes, I'd like to focus on more seamless ways to import your
| text and OCR is something I've considered.
|
| Your content addressable system sounds very interesting, let
| me know when you have a demo.
| ssgh wrote:
| I've been looking for something like this to review books. Two
| suggestions: 1. allow to load a book from a url, so notes could
| be added to arbitrary books; 2. allow to select text and add
| notes to that selection.
| summarity wrote:
| I've built a similar thing at https://findsight.ai
| tester457 wrote:
| The design is beautiful! I'm shocked this isn't more popular on
| github.
| pkukkapalli wrote:
| This is such a neat tool. The presentation is very pleasant. Is
| the intention to have the snippets/notes be shareable in the
| future? I actually made a similar tool [1] (though your's is
| much more complete), which I use to quickly find passages and
| relevant text when I'm blogging. And, I was thinking it might
| be really useful to have highly rated notes on a snippet
| available so that you can get someone else's insight on a
| particular selection. I'll give this a more in depth look later
| when I want to write another blog post.
|
| [1]: https://ishmael.app
| dmotz wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, I like the name and I'll try it out. Yes,
| I'd like to add opt-in sharing features in the future --
| seeing others' notes can be very insightful as you said.
| a_c wrote:
| Not everything have to be in a false dichotomy. No need to think
| too much. Just relax and have fun.
| flerp wrote:
| Haha. This was special. The goal is everything. Gone is the road.
| emrah wrote:
| > read fewer books but take the time to write summaries for the
| good ones
|
| The odds of finding good books goes down if one reads fewer
| books. Taking suggestions from others is not a good substitute
| for finding one's own "good ones".
|
| If I find that a book I'm reading is not good for me, I start
| skipping, first a few parapgraphs, then a few pages, then a whole
| chapter and so on, to see if it gets better. And I'm even
| prepared to stop reading it altogether if it doesn't get any
| better. That gives me more time to find and read better books.
| calf wrote:
| Summarization is actually a less effective learning technique,
| according to Dunlosky and other literature in cognitive learning
| science. Dunlosky recommend other techniques namely "practice
| testing" and "distributed practice". So I guess those more
| powerful (and time consuming) techniques are worth using if the
| book is worth learning thoroughly, whereas summarization and
| outlining, etc. are less mentally challenging/effortful
| techniques but still somewhat useful, just empirically less
| proven to be very effective.
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